ROME FOR SALE

JACK LINDSAY

© Jack Lindsay 1934

Jack Lindsay has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published 1934 by Elkin Mathews and Marrot Limited.

This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.

Table of Contents

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

FOREWORD

I - CATALINA RETURNS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

II - CÆSAR AS CHIEF PRIEST

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

III - CATALINA IN ETRURIA

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

IV - THE TURMOIL

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

V - BEFORE THE ELECTIONS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

VI - THE ELECTIONS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

VII - THE CONSPIRACY

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

VIII - THE DUEL AT LAST

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

IX - AMONG THE REBELS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

X - THE BETRAYAL

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

XI - THE TRIAL

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

XII - THE END OF CATALINA’S YEAR

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

FOR PHILIP AND JEANNE LINDSAY

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

MEN

ACCO: a Gallic ambassador.

ANTONIUS (Gaius): one of the consuls, later (59 B.C.) exiled through prosecution by Cælius.

ANTONIUS (Marcus): ‘Marc Antony’ in his early youth, nephew of preceding.

ATTICUS: a banker.

AUTROTINUS: a radical politician.

BESTIA: a radical, elected tribune, 63.

BIBULUS: a conservative, later commanded fleet against Cæsar, dying 49.

BRUTUS (Marcus): son of Servilia, the future murderer of Cæsar.

CÆCINA: an enthusiast on horse-racing.

CÆLIUS: a youth attached to Catalina, later killed in an anarchist revolt of his own, 48.

CÆPARIUS: a conspirator.

CÆSAR (Gaius Julius): the future radical dictator and first Emperor.

CASSIUS: a conspirator.

CATALINA (Lucius Sergius): the radical leader of 63.

CATO: a strict reactionary, later committed suicide after Cæsar’s triumph.

CATULUS: a conservative leader.

CETHEGUS: a conspirator.

CICERO (Marcus Tullius): consul, 63, finally slain by order of Marcus Antonius, 43.

CLODIUS (popularised form of Claudius): a young noble who became proletarian organiser from 59 till 52, when he was killed in a brawl.

CORNELIUS: a conspirator.

CRASSUS: banker and politician, killed fighting the Parthians, 53.

CURIO (the elder): a senator.

CURIO: son of Curio the Elder, later as orator swayed politics for Cæsar at crisis leading up to the Civil War and died gallantly at head of his legions in Africa, 49.

CURIUS: a degraded senator, addicted to gambling and Fulvia.

DOMITIUS: a conservative, later fought fiercely against Cæsar and died in the war, 48.

FAVONIUS: a conservative, imitator of Cato.

FLAMMA: a friend of Catalina, devoted to farming.

FLAVIUS: a youth in love with Fulvia.

FULVIUS: a senator of conservative views.

FULVIUS (Aulus): his son.

FURIUS: a conspirator.

GABINIUS: a conspirator.

HORTENSIUS: a senator and famous orator.

LABDA: a soothsayer.

LABIENUS: a young politician (tribune 63) attached to Cæsar, fought as his chief lieutenant in the Gallic wars and then deserted to Pompeius on eve of civil war. Killed in Africa, 46.

LAECA: a conspirator.

LAMIA: a conservative.

LENTULUS: prætor for 63, a conspirator.

LEUCON: a soothsayer.

LUCULLUS: the general who defeated Mithridates.

LUCRETIUS: the great poet of On the Nature of Things.

LYCON: a slave belonging to Cæsar.

MANLIUS: a veteran centurion, a conspirator.

MARCIUS REX: a conservative ex-consul.

MATTHIAS: a soothsayer.

MEMMIUS: a politician and literateur (the officer under whom the poet Catullus served in Bithynia, 58).

METELLUS CELER: prætor, 63, a conservative.

METELLUS NEPOS: half-brother of preceding, an officer of Pompeius.

MUNATIUS: a conspirator.

NACCA: a proletarian boss.

NERO (Tiberius): a senator (grandfather of the Emperor Tiberius).

PAULLUS: a rich young noble (later joined Cæsar).

PETREIUS: a professional soldier (died fighting against Cæsar, 46).

PISO: a Conservative, vainly impeached by Labienus.

PISO (Gnæus): young conservative who married Tullia.

POMPTINUS: a prætor and conservative.

PUBLICIUS: a conspirator.

RULLUS: a radical, tribune 63.

SÆNIUS: a conservative senator.

SESTIUS: quæstor, 63.

SILANUS: a liberal, husband of Servilia.

STATILIUS: a conspirator.

SULPICIUS (Servius): a jurisconsult whose work was of great value in the codification of Roman Law; he retired after Murena’s trial, reappearing in 51 to fight for peace, and died on embassy to Antonius, 43.

TARQUINIUS: an informer.

TITINNIUS: a jeweller.

TONGILLUS: a youth attached to Catalina.

UMBRENUS: a conspirator.

VARGUNTEIUS: a conspirator.

VARUS (Alfenus): a young law-student, later attained very high rank as an authority on the law.

VOLTURCIUS: a conspirator.

WOMEN

ABRA: slave of Pompeia.

AURELIA: mother of Cæsar.

CHELIDON: mistress of Cassius.

CHLOE: a camp-girl.

CLODIA: sister of Clodius, later the mistress of Catulus and of Cælius.

DORIS: a slave-girl.

FANNIA: wife of Flamma.

FLAVIOLA: daughter of Nacca.

FULVIA: a well-born woman who has sunk to position of mistress of Curius.

IULIA: daughter of Cæsar, later named Pompeius.

MUCIA: wife of Pompeius and half-sister of the Metelli, divorced 62.

ORESTILLA: wife of Catalina.

POMPEIA: wife of Cæsar, divorced 61, for adultery with Clodius.

POSTHUMIA: wife of Servius Sulpicius.

PRECIA: mistress of Cethegus.

SEMPRONIA: a loose-living matron, in the conspiracy.

SERVILIA: wife of Silanus, mistress of Cæsar, mother of Marcus Brutus, half-sister of Cato.

SERVILIA: her sister, wife of Lucullus.

TERENTIA: wife of Cicero.

TULLIA: daughter of Cicero.

FOREWORD

When a young and little-known author produces an ambitious novel which confidently recreates an alien and long vanished scene, and which boldly challenges established opinion as to the central character in an important historical episode, one may well ask, and indeed one must ask, to what extent he is equipped with knowledge and a sound interpretative judgment.

Mr. Jack Lindsay has written an account in fictional form of the Cataline Conspiracy in Rome two thousand years ago. It is a spirited and colourful narrative, clearly displayed in general outline against a vividly detailed background, and with some highly controversial personal estimates, notably that of the luckless Catalina himself.

But there need be no misgivings about Mr. Lindsay’s qualifications. He is a classical scholar of distinguished credentials, and in his treatment of the political issues and personal factors involved in the abortive conspiracy he reveals himself quite unmistakably as a man of shrewd practical judgment and of acute insight into the motives of human conduct. He has a graphic pen for the social and economic conditions of an empire on which the shadows had begun to lengthen, and for the forms in which the decadence of her great patrician families was revealed. He has, too, a poet’s imaginative comprehension of the seasonal religious festivals which he adroitly uses as the milestones of his tale. Withal he knows how to tell a story; for there is not a dull moment in his account of how Catalina’s revolutionary movement against a soulless financial oligarchy was wrecked through treachery born of political jealousies and amorous rivalries.

Rome for Sale belongs to the domain of history rather than to that of fiction. Its setting, its characters and the incidents of its story are drawn so largely from recorded fact that only a thoroughly competent scholar will be able to determine with any assurance what is fact and what is fiction. Nevertheless, Mr. Lindsay presents a stirring drama, supremely well mounted. And his book is of considerable importance as a critical commentary by reason of the new angle from which he envisages the character and motives of the ill-fated Roman conspirator.

Possibly the time is now ripening for a revised estimate of Catalina, for between his Conspiracy and the European Fascist movement of today there are resemblances that could be emphasised with equal plausibility by partisans on both sides of our modern controversy. We should be unwise to carry the analogy too far; but it will serve my present purpose of illustrating one of the pitfalls in the path of historical scholarship.

If we could imagine a future historian writing of Fascism with nothing to guide him but a few records left by the most violent of its opponents, we can well believe that he would see it only as an assault upon liberty and the social order by jackbooted adventurers who had exploited the widespread discontent of their time by organising the vicious and the idle. He would not, we may be sure, perceive any constructive purpose, any impulse towards social amelioration, in a movement declared in the only available records to have been accompanied by savage excesses and to have had in its practical manifestations all the semblance of a kind of political gangsterism.

Such a picture of Fascism would, of course, be a grotesque distortion, as any fair-minded person must admit. And its falsity would be due to circumstances not dissimilar from those in which modern scholarship has formed its judgment as to the origin, nature and purposes of the Cataline Conspiracy. Relying upon the testimony of two or three hostile contemporary commentators, and especially upon that of the historian Sallust, modern scholars see in Catalina’s movement the attempt of an unscrupulous swashbuckler to seize power for his own personal ends by the help of all the disgruntled riff-raff in Rome. This view is accepted without demur, and in its most extravagant form, by Colonel John Buchan in his recently published biography of Julius Cæsar. Catalina, says Colonel Buchan, was the leader of the anarchists, the libertines and the underworld elements which had nothing to lose by violence. He engineered in Rome and throughout Italy a great plot of the lawless, the disinherited, the bankrupt and the desperate. He planned debt-repudiation and public plunder, and he made murder and deeper infamies the daily incidents of his life. He was a ruffian who served no ends but his own; and there was not, we are to suppose, a single redeeming quality about him.

Mr. Lindsay offers a more sympathetic view, and one which seems much more likely in the circumstances as he describes them. A plebeian class, grown rich by commercial exploitation following the rapid expansion of Rome overseas after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth, now ruled the state as a ruthless financial oligarchy. There was a heavy burden of public and private debt, and acute economic distress due to frozen credit. Farming and agriculture were in decay. In Rome itself a proletarian city population had developed which was workless and hungry, and which shared the revolutionary discontent of the bankrupt tradesmen and farmers throughout all Italy. There was corruption in public offices, debauchery among the patricians, and insensate extravagance by the wealthy. The old glories of Rome were forgotten, and the day of Cæsar was not yet.

Such is the scene as Mr. Lindsay depicts it. And in the midst of it he shows us the grim figure of Catalina, foe of the vested interests, a patriot genuinely moved by the spectacle of the neglected countryside and the wrongs of the common people, a single-minded and darkly passionate man, weary and often ailing, yet of a fixed ferocity of purpose, and under no illusions as to the character of many of those whom his policy attracted and inspired. It is a striking portrait, very persuasive in the background against which it is set.

Equally convincing, though subtler, are Mr. Lindsay’s studies of Julius Cæsar, patrician sympathiser with the popular cause, who escaped by a hair’s breadth from ruinous complicity in the plot, but achieved a clarified purpose of his own through contact with Catalina’s selfless fanaticism; and of Cicero, smooth, watchful, calculating, a plebeian lawyer with a shrewd sense of public situations, niggling in debate, an opportunist in action, an able and ambitious man, but a pompous and diffuse rhetorician, self-deluding and addicted to voluble and flamboyant moralising.

These are vivid and vital portraits. They are done, like the picture of Rome in that day, with a novelist’s imagination controlled by a scholar’s knowledge. And the result is a book to which it is a privilege for me to be invited to attach this enthusiastic commendation.

COLIN STILL.

I - CATALINA RETURNS

I

“I call on Lucius Sergius Catalina to come forward and speak his opinion.”

At the tribune’s voice the crowd that stood packed in the western end of the Forum fell silent; necks craned, and there was a swaying movement towards the corner where a man was seen to detach himself from a group and move towards the Rostra. He reached the rear steps and ascended the curving wooden platform raised on arches of stone, hung with the brazen beaks of captured warships and bounded by huge staring statues, where the magistrates stood at the open space in the railing to address the people. All eyes were on the man who, aware of the spell cast by his appearance, came slowly forwards. Turning, he smiled gravely at the tribune of the plebs who by invitation had given him, though not an official, the right of public speech. A man in early middle age, he was tall and strongly built; his lean, dark, handsome face was saturnine in expression, but his full lips and enkindled eyes added a warmth and vivacity which more than balanced the first effect of absorbed seriousness. He wore his toga with careful ease, and moved with the springy step of a man energetic and well-conditioned.

For a moment he stood looking down at the expanse of faces beneath the break in the parapet. The crowd filled all the paved space of the Forum, standing on the stairs of the basilicas and temples, clustering on the doorsteps of the shops, and leaning from the balconies. Every eye was fixed on him, and there was a low, unconscious murmur welling up that made the intent faces sway and merge in an ocean-surge of submission. He was the rock on which the tide foamed, and he felt the invincibility of this controlled force steal through his veins like a sweet chilly drug, like the immersion in a shaded spring on a sweltering day.

Turning his back on the Senate House and the antique Temple of Ianus that looked shrunken beside the later buildings, he lifted his half-clenched hand. Some eighty years ago an orator had first dared to turn from the consecrated ground of the Senate and the Comitium where the old farmer-aristocrats had held their assembly, and to address frankly the body of electors who were yearly becoming more cosmopolitan and insolent.

Catalina spoke with a voice which though deliberately quiet in pitch carried forcibly across the Forum.

“Romans, you know what I have to say. I have stood always for the liberty of the citizen. Would I then be likely to oppose a measure which merely states a basic element of our law—the rule that only the doer is responsible for the deed and that to visit the crimes of the father upon the children is a monstrous injustice?”

He paused and lowered his hand. The murmur grew deeper, swelled up on all sides; the crowd swayed again. The February sun, breaking through a silvery mass of clouds over the end of the Palatine Hill towards the River Tiber, poured its light down into the square. The bronze beaks, the carvings on the pediments, the beast-heads on the rainspouts, the gilded shields won of old from the Sabines and brought out a few days previously to hang before the shops for a festival, glittered in the broad sweep of light; the paintings on the southern balconies glowed with new life, showing the soldiers of Rome stabbing and trampling on hideously contorted and hairy barbarians whose tongues protruded in their death-agonies; and above the whole scene the Capitol Temple of Iuppiter seemed suddenly to grow out of the western sky, uttering impregnably the destiny of Rome.

Catalina, in the uplifted eyes of the crowd, was bathed with gold. When he spoke again, he spoke with increasing fierceness. He felt the vibrations of his voice gather up the enthusiasm of all these people and transform it to a single articulation of purpose.

“But I do not wish to speak only of one injustice. We cannot separate the evils that beset the state. By all means let us wipe out the unfair disabilities that Sulla placed on the sons of the men whom he proscribed. But what service will we do those sufferers if the state to which we admit them is a falling state, a state corrupted and sickly? No, those are the wrong words, the words that we hear daily on the lips of men whom I need not name. For those men wish to blame you, Romans, because when they chain you you are chained and when they give you poison you are sick. The state is strong enough if it could but own its strength. It is rich enough if it could but stretch out its hands to take the means of wealth that it has created. It is against the ropes of bondage and the prison doors that I speak, Romans. I bring you a knife to cut the ropes and a key to open the door.”

There was a roar of acclamation. The crowd surged forward, a sea wishing to batter out its life on the beaked reef of the Rostra, to smash the crests of its angry pride on the goal and then to sweep back, broken and triumphant, into the regathering depths. They were ready to die for him and the words that he spoke; nothing better could be asked than such a death. Catalina stood motionless, looking down upon the swirl of faces, his dark blue eyes savagely alive. This was power; it felt like a sword in the hand.

“Who fought under Sulla?”

He caught the shout and swung to the right. It came from a group standing on a stone-platform, the Græcostasis, which was used as a seating-place for ambassadors at the festivals. The men were collected before the brazen shrine of Concord on the platform and that of Venus of the Sewers on the floor of the Forum below.

“Twenty years ago I fought under Sulla,” replied Catalina vehemently, “and to-day I would root out every act of his tyranny.”

There was another roar from the crowd. Jeers and howls were directed at the group about the Græcostasis, who consisted of younger members of the Equites, the capitalist class, with a number of their slaves and freed-men. The group shouted back, and some stones flew, but Catalina raised his hand for silence. He went on to tell how he had been visiting South Italy, how he had found unemployment and poverty everywhere, how there was discontent even in such rich cities as Capua and Puteoli, and how the spaces which had once known the cottages of free men were turned into desolate ranches for ragged packs of shepherd-slaves. The crowd knew the story well, but they surrendered to his telling as if for the first time roused to a fury of comprehension; the city-proletariat saw themselves as the cheated inheritors of idyllically pastoral homesteads, and they wept. There was wealth everywhere, he told them; the world had been gutted; Rome had conquered the world, and a handful of men had stolen the spoils; in the midst of plenty the people starved. The mob saw themselves as the rightful owners of palaces and endless supplies of succulent foods, and they raged. Every time he spoke of usurers and financiers they snarled ferociously.

The group round the Græcostasis lost no chance to interrupt and hiss. At last the mob were unable to remain quiet even to listen to Catalina; they hooted back at the interrupters, and more missiles were exchanged, stones and lumps of wood. One of the youths knocked down a man who insulted him, and at once there was fight. Catalina saw that there was no use in speaking further. He watched the scrimmage with sombre satisfaction. The meeting had had no particular aim except to keep alive the popular sense of injury, and he was not displeased. He motioned to the tribune, who drew near; and they conversed in loud whispers while the shouts and screams grew more deafening.

“Your measure has no hope, of course?”

“No, my colleague Cæcilius will act for his employers, he’s ready with his veto. The consul Cicero is also bringing pressure to bear.”

“Tell the others to keep up the agitation as well as they can, I shall be in Rome for a few weeks before I canvass the north. I’ll speak with you and the others first. I expect to see Rullus this evening.”

Short swords and daggers were produced from under the shifts where they had been clasped. The group of interrupters were in retreat, keeping the mob at bay and sneering at them. Some wounded men were being carried off. The hubbub filled the Forum. Shopkeepers were busy barricading doors, and the few women who had appeared at the balconies hurriedly withdrew.

2

That was the usual ending of a public meeting nowadays. The Republican state with its jealous system of vetoes and obstructions spread among the magistrates was defeating its own end and producing an impasse. The rapid expansion of Rome overseas since the destruction of the great commercial cities of Carthage and Corinth had given the world over to the exploitation of the ruling classes, now composed largely of a clique of rich plebeians and the few old aristocratic families who had survived the advent of commercialism. Many efforts of reform had been made. They had risen first out of a conservative desire to stem the currents of industrial activity and the consequent uprooting of the people, to return the state to a simpler era of agriculture by devising schemes for the resumption of public lands, the limitation of estates, the dowering of poor families with inalienable farmlands, the planting of colonies; but they had failed. The financiers would not relax their grip; and in any event the efforts were partially impracticable, dreams of a farming age gone for ever. A proletarian city-population had developed, chiefly at Rome, though its discontents were shared by bankrupt tradesmen and farmers throughout Italy.

Catalina was now the leader of the rebels. He belonged to a proud patrician family which had been shouldered out of the race for office in the last 200 years. Beginning as a soldier of fortune, he had found the state of Italy prey more and more on his imagination, till, harassed by his own debts, he had come out openly on the side of revolt. His impoverishment, his sense of insulted lineage, had made him throw his sympathies in with the mongrel populace; and since his restless temperament demanded action and was deeply averse from compromise, he had after his first revulsions become violently convinced that nothing but total and ruthless reconstruction could save Rome and the world.

It was after he had reached the high judicial office of praetor that the oligarchs began to realise him as a danger. On his return from the province of Africa, to which he had gone as governor, they impeached, but failed to crush him; for the popular party had also discovered his merits of leadership. The oligarchs however succeeded in blocking him that year from the consulship, the highest office of state; then next year they had beaten him by taking under their protection the lukewarm democrat, Cicero the orator, who had shown his gratitude by coming out strongly for the Senate and the capitalists. They had thereon again impeached Catalina on a trumped-up charge of murderous acts during the far-off bloody days of Sulla, a trick to waken popular feeling against him which miscarried. Now he meant to stand once more for the consulship, and everyone felt that the elections were to be a decisive event. The revolutionary movement, which had fluctuated through the last sixty years, shifting from mere desperation of rancour to vague liberalism, had at last reached maturity; the ideas and emotions on which it rested were becoming distinct and coherently compacted.

3

Catalina was more silent than usual as he walked home that afternoon among his followers. He had no great distance to go, for his house was in the Cermalus district, at the western foot of the Palatine. He felt irked by the need to move about with a bodyguard; but it would have been foolish and impolitic to walk alone. So many other popular leaders had been assassinated; and a retinue was necessary as part of political propaganda, it impressed the populace, without it no man could claim to be a leader of a faction.

As he passed out of the Forum down the Vicus Tuscus, he nodded his head to the knots of people who cheered him, or gazed with negligent scorn at the glowering faces of the tradesmen or middle-class burgesses, with whom he now had the name of a ravening brigand. Here stood the shops of well-to-do drapers and perfumers, men with whom he was particularly unpopular. Their fear was pleasant; Rome would soon be his, and they knew it; yet he was discontented.

The leering stone face of the god Vertumnus caught his eye, and he bowed his head mockingly. Vertumnus ruled the changing seasons and the obscure chances of birth, the twirl of the wheel; in him the year flowered and became barren and again put forth branches of promise. What was the meaning of that leer, its salacious benediction? Shaking such questions out of his head, Catalina decided that he was depressed only because he had been fighting with words, and words were nothing unless they became acts. Always he felt uplifted in speaking of the wrongs of the Roman People, and miserable afterwards. Surely it was because that fluid power which he drew out of the masses dripped away as soon as the echoes of the words died? Inaction sieved his mind; but action would soon be coming. He would not have to wait long, he would be elected consul this year, and then he would feel no aftermath of bitter vagueness.

He turned and spoke to his nearest companion, Quintus Curius, a tall, ungainly man with hair which though closely cropped lay in short curls over his head. Curius, who came of good family but had been ejected from the Senate by a censor, was an incurable gambler and good-natured butt, who usually had jokes to tell; he had attached himself to Catalina with a doglike devotion, and shed tears when he listened to one of the rebel-speeches such as this afternoon’s.

“They would have followed you anywhere—over the edge of a cliff if you said it led to the Blessed Land.”

Catalina smiled; he had an affection for Curius, though generally weak people irritated him. “Five more months till the elections. Then we’ll see more than a scuffle in a corner of the Forum.”

“Will you make me rich?” asked Curius with a naïve earnestness of greed that made Catalina laugh.

“You’ll have to work for it.”

“Of course. Aren’t I always ready to work? But I need money—more than the others do.”

“I’ll pass a law that men must gamble only with acorns or their wives.”

“It’s not dice I’m thinking of,” replied Curius importantly. “I could give up dice any day I chose. But why should I give them up when I’m so poor? No, I’ve a better use for money. I’m really a most careful man.”

“Go and tell that tale to old Simon the moneylender,” jeered Volturcius, a hair-haired burly fellow, thrusting his way between the two men. “He’s always ready to lay out money on a likely business-proposition. Say you’ll borrow at ninety-nine per cent interest on the certainty of looting his coffers before the end of the year.”

Catalina hesitated. He liked brutal types such as Volturcius, who had joined him at Crotona in the south; and in his angrier moods felt that there was no need for complicated policies. Plunder and proscription would be the easiest of taxation-methods. Why shouldn’t the hard-living ruffians of the world take charge of things and harry the capitalists for a change? But he was ashamed of these hatreds; they conflicted with his unsubmerged sense of Rome as the fated mistress of the earth. His deepest emotion was rage at the waste and corruption which he saw on all sides, at the perversion of everything that should be fine and tempered and graciously powerful. He had a soldier’s love of violent and ambitious gesture; but he felt at the same time a heart-rending conviction that the simple people had a right to their happiness and peace; and he tried to reconcile these attitudes by finding a way to eliminate the financial methods that were throttling the world, and yet to consolidate the system of empire which Rome had confusedly created. He was equally joyous and disgusted at Rome’s achievement, and in his moments of despair he longed for the undiluted impulses of destruction and debauch.

“We’ll find work for you also,” he said to Volturcius, “and I’ll see that it’s work where you won’t have to be too tender to the feelings of moneylenders.”

“Make an ugly face and griping fist a capital crime,” chuckled Volturcius, “and I’ll raise the government more money in a week than the tax-collectors could grind out of the peasants in a lifetime.”

4

There was a shout of “Make way there!” and a train of lictors was seen approaching preceded by a fat-checked crier. In single file came twelve of the gowned officers bearing on their left shoulders the bundles of rods, tied with a red strap, which marked the magisterial power to inflict punishment; within the city-bounds the axes were discarded, since only the people assembled in army-formation had power to vote for death.

Catalina paled. He was not afraid of any man, least of all of the consul Cicero, but he had hated him with an uncontrollable and exasperated intensity. The man represented so much that Catalina abominated; he was on the surface so industriously harmless, a man of words and legalities, smugly worming his way up in the world, growing daily more assured that the world was divinely constituted because it conspired to further his career. He had once hovered about the popular party, being a “new man” without influential backing or ancestral name; he had offered his services to Catalina during the proceedings for Malversation after the return from Africa, and he had tried to link himself with Catalina in the elections. Then, finding that the conservatives were sorely pressed, he had seen his chance; he had been accepted as a stop-gap; bribe-money and all the pressure that a system of client-dependence produced had been offered on his behalf; and he had been the chief means of beating Catalina.

Catalina saw in him the whole dishonour of the commercialised society which he meant to destroy. It was after considering such types that he felt whole-heartedly the wish to loose Volturcius and the wolf-pack on the monopolists who were remorselessly bleeding the world, aided by men like Cicero who knew better. In nothing else was Catalina so much a soldier as in his worship of honour as the sole touchstone of virtue; everything else could be forgiven but treachery; and Cicero, with his glib conversions, his casuistry of explanations, represented the involved lie that was worst of all, winding its platitudinous disguise through society.

Catalina felt a physical revulsion, a weakness of nausea, at the nearness to the man. But he showed nothing. With a dark smile he signed to his companion, and they stood aside in a private portico to let the consul and his train go past. But as the procession drew near, Cicero, who had been talking volubly with some friends, spoke to the nearest lictor, who, as head-officer, signalled to the others to halt. Catalina stood tautly, waiting.

Cicero was now in his forty-third year; his squarish face with prominent, rawly clear-cut features, showed a mixture of over-sensibility and eager assertiveness; the jaw was strong; and there was a coarseness about the nose that was belied by the sensitive modelling of the cheeks and the somewhat wilful mouth, the nervously straining eyes. He stood confidently looking Catalina over and folding his gown to make the broad purple stripe more apparent; but there was a tension of the brows that declared the air of confidence to be painfully achieved; he would have liked to hasten past, but could not.

“So here is my friend Catalina,” he said. “Returned from his canvassing in the south.” He smiled as if only politeness restrained him from a burst of laughter. Catalina said nothing, and Cicero went on smoothly, “I have heard that the burgesses of Puteoli and Neapolis were disagreeably hard to impress, but that the Cimmerians of Lake Avernus and the shepherds of Appulia have promised their full voting-power.”

Catalina continued silent. The jest was crude but not without its sting. The Cimmerians were a fabulous extinct race who had once lived in caverns, hell-mouths, of the volcanic district of Vesuvius; and the shepherds were not citizens though full of unrest.

“My business is not with the dead but those condemned unjustly to death,” Catalina at last replied with slow emphasis, “and I am concerned with the shepherds only in so far as I don’t mean to see any more free farmers eaten up by cattle. That is a kind of circus-show staged long enough by your friends for their private amusement.”

“But votes, my dear fellow,” said Cicero blandly. “Where are your votes coming from if the Cimmerians have turned you down?”

Nothing more was said. The two men stood looking at one another, each with a contemptuous half-smile measuring his opponent. Then Cicero gave the word to his head-lictor, and the procession moved on. A small crowd had gathered to witness the encounter, and there was an uproar of hoots and cheers. Catalina shrugged his shoulders.

“O what wouldn’t I give to drop him down a sewer in a sack full of hungry rats,” murmured Volturcius.

“We’ll discredit him before his buyers,” replied Catalina. “Their sneers will hurt more than anything we can do.”

But he was troubled. Was he fighting a losing battle? Was injustice too strongly entrenched? Did he have no backing except ghosts and criminals?

5

Cicero was troubled too. He felt that his jest had been puerile, that it condemned his own behaviour more than Catalina’s. What greater power could a man have behind him than the spirits of the outraged dead and the living who sweated and suffered in a lot beyond alleviation? But he pulled himself together; such thoughts were weakness, they were a temptation in the path of a serious statesman; the need of civic stability overrode all minor questions of equity.

His companions were joking over the followers of Catalina.

“A set of penniless scoundrels. They look as if they’d gnaw the flesh off a crucified slave.”

One of the men guffawed. “That reminds me. You know Suffeius, how mad he is on fishponds. Well, he heard that one of his slaves had died. So he gave the usual order to have him tipped into the pond to feed the bearded mullet. Then he found out that the man died of poisoning from a spider-bite, and he grew scared that he’d inoculate the fish. So he had all the doctors along to give him antidotes for spider-bite, and he poured a dozen phials of medicine into the pond.”

“And what good did that do?”

“The medicines killed the fish. They were found floating with their white bellies uppermost like a pack of women next morning. So he means to feed his mullet with live slaves in the future.”

“It’s as well then that the market-price of slaves is falling with the supplies sent in from the Armenian War.”

Cicero laughed uncomfortably. Then, as he looked round to acknowledge the plaudits of a group of shopkeepers, his glance lighted on a beggar crouching against the wall. He saw the man’s yellow hunted eyes, his hare-lip lifted in a frightened grin, his matted hair, his chipped and gnarled crutch of wood polished by long handling, the torn and muddy cloak under which he shivered. There were hordes of men and women starving in Rome; the countryside was filled with farmers ejected from their smallholdings; tradesmen and factory-owners were crying out that their credit was exhausted; and men like Suffeius gave orders for all the broken meats of a dinner, enough to feed hundreds of these beggars, to be thrown into mullet ponds. That was certainly wrong; but Catalina was wrong too. There must be a way of achieving a reasonable state by means of good will. He, Cicero, would find the way; that was his destiny; that was the purpose, gradually clarifying, that had brought him from the small Volscian town of Arpinum and given him strength to rise in the world despite the snubs and coldness of the nobles at Rome. Now was his chance. He would lead the way to prosperity; there was room for everyone in the state.

But Catalina must be beaten first. The man’s arrogant rebelliousness was the worst expression of the social cancer, not its cure. To rouse people with unrealisable hopes was more cruel than to deny them everything.

6

At home Orestilla was waiting for Catalina. The house had been owned by his family for centuries, and was of the older type, rebuilt in a few necessary places but lacking the conveniences and comforts of the up-to-date houses of the upper-classes. Its hall and inner-court, to which a twisting narrow porch had been added, had the roof-opening and the rain-tank underneath; the furniture was heavy and stained; and a loom stood ready at one side. The nuptial couch of the family was fixed opposite; and in the niches of the further corner arose the cracked wooden shrine of household-gods and a few simply-cast busts, hung with smoke-grimed wax-masks and inscribed beneath with the ancestral names. A family-tree had been once traced on the wall, joining the busts and mentioning other male members of the Sergei; but it had been long discontinued and was almost indecipherable with the fumes and damp of age. Nearby in a small terra-cotta shrine stood a silver battle-standard.

Bidding a slave fetch some wine, Catalina left his followers sprawling about a large oaken table, and passed through into the inner-chambers. The lamps were lighted in the ill-ventilated passages; but as he went to raise the curtain of the bedroom it was parted from the other side and Orestilla took him in her arms. He kissed her warmly and then held her with his hands on her shoulders, looking into her face. She was almost as tall as himself, though many years younger; her oval face had an olivine tinge, and her slanting eyes showed his own shade of dark blue; her brown hair was braided across the forehead without ornament, and she carried herself lightly.

“You can’t stay in, not on the first night after your return?”

“Not on the first night after my return,” he repeated gently. “I must meet the others at the house of Cassius. How is the child?”

“Asleep.” She pointed to the room beyond. He moved across, lifted the curtain, and looked in; he could see nothing but the bed in which the child lay, but he listened to the quiet breathing a moment, and then returned to Orestilla. She watched his movements. She knew that he had never recovered wholly from the shock of his son’s death in the months before their marriage. A second wife, she had hoped so deeply to conceive a son for him in place of the lost boy; but she had borne a daughter, now just over the first year. She sighed. Nowadays she saw very little of her husband; but it could not be helped, she would not have it otherwise.

He came towards her and spoke tenderly. “There aren’t many music-parties and dances and trips to the seaside for you as things are going, my dear.”

She smiled. “It’s you I want. Let the rest go.”

“Who would have thought to hear such words from Orestilla? Didn’t the gossips once call you the most shameless dancer at Baiæ? Weren’t you supposed to wear dresses bright as glass and to be unable to refuse anyone as soon as the flutes began? What has happened to the wicked Orestilla?”

“She’s become the accomplice of that villain Catalina who wants to cut the throats of orphans to steal their money and who owns a secret army of ten thousand gladiators.”

They stood smiling at one another, drawn out of the world into an intimacy of contentment. “We’re growing tamed, Orestilla,” he said at length, his face darkening, as the thought of the world returned. “Life’s beating us.

“Liar,” she replied gaily. “You’re tired. Life will never beat us. Go off to Cassius and hear all the news. I’ve some things to tell you afterwards. And if ever you talk about being beaten, I’ll leave you for the first man that whistles cheerfully through his teeth, which is a trick that you know I detest more than anything else; but a woman must have her pride.”

“I would be beaten then,” he murmured.

“You’ll never be beaten,” she cried passionately, dropping all jest. “I could never leave you. You are mine, and we’re in this together, and there’s no failing for you and me. Why, I’d strangle with my own hands any woman that came between us.”

She raised her outstretched fingers up towards him and then relaxed once more. When she smiled her long lips turned upwards with a curl that repeated the slant of her eyes.

Catalina made no reply; protestations were unnecessary, for he knew that Orestilla had spoken, not out of threat, but to state her poignant sense of possession, the certainty with which he in turn desired her. Her passion awoke his strength. He took her in his arms. “Don’t wait up for me,” he said. “I’m sure to be late.”

“You’ll have linkboys, and you’ll bring Curius and the others back with you? I’ll see that beds are ready for them all. You know that the streets aren’t safe in the dark for anyone, and least of all for you.”

He wanted to say that he wasn’t frightened of any ambush, that he couldn’t bear being caged in with these continual precautions; but he knew that she had spoken wisely and that such an outcry from him would be mere ungrateful perversity. So he nodded a reassurance, kissed her again, and went, striding vigorously into the front reception-room and chafing the men loudly.

She listened, pleased at this return of energy. The sound of the departing men died away, but she still stood in the middle of the room with her hand clutched over her left breast. Then to her annoyance she found herself crying. “Silly, silly,” she muttered, brushing the tears away; but they still fell. What did she want? Not that things should be different. She pressed fiercely at her breast, and the tears ceased. Primly compressing her lips, she went to rest on the couch and wait until his return. One thing she would never be able to tell him: the slander among others started by his enemies that he had poisoned his son because she had refused to be the stepmother of a grown lad. That would hurt him too much. She had wormed it out of the scandal-mongering Valeria, but she must see that it never reached his ears.

7

Lucius Cassius Longinus was unmarried. He was a fat jovial man with a thin voice, bloodthirsty tastes, and a mistress, Chelidon, who looked and talked like a very young girl though now in the late thirties, having passed through the hands of various rich owners and ending discreditably with the hard-up Cassius. She had a taste for intrigue and had once held a courted position as the mistress of the praetor Verres who had later been ruined by Cicero in the powerful speeches that exposed indelibly the evils of the Republican administration of the empire. In those days there had been an enthusiastic middle-class liberal movement and Cicero had come to the front through its sponsorship; but once the middle-class had gained their objective and removed the galling disabilities laid on them by the reactionary dictator Sulla, they had lost interest in reform, and a revolutionary agitation proper had begun. There had almost been an outbreak in the year of Catalina’s return from Africa; for the oligarchs had been scared to find that two popular-minded consuls had carried the elections. In dismay, they had quashed the elections and disqualified the consuls at rigged trials for bribery. Since every candidate was compelled to make advances and overtures to the electors, the stringent regulations against undue striving for votes could always be applied by the party that controlled the law courts, and trials for bribery were only tests of political strength.

The popular party had been infuriated by this disqualification of its consuls, for it knew that the now thoroughly-alarmed Senate would fight hard against the chance of such another election. There was an abortive conspiracy which fell through from lack of concentration; for there was still an admixture of liberals, and the unscrupulous capitalist Crassus hoped to use the coup to further his military ambitions and outshine his rival Pompeius. But the discordant elements had now dropped away, and the party of revolt consisted of men uniformly desperate, determined and uncompromising. Beside the straight-out demagogues, whose natural centre was the Corporation of Tribunes and the district-associations, the leaders were men who for personal reasons of debt, resentment and disillusion saw no hope for themselves or the state except by the overthrow of the present closed system that kept the government in the grasp of a small ruling class and invited peculation and oppression by the capitalists. Several, like Catalina, were patricians; others came from upper-class plebeian families, drawn by misfortune, generous emotion, desire for loot, or intellectual despair.

When Catalina entered the dining-room, the others were already assembled. Fat Cassius with his light ruffled hair and raised eyebrows. His thin-limbed Chelidon who gave herself a doll-like appearance by crudely using rouge to paint two large spots on her cheeks and to lend her lips a shamelessly perfect curve without regard for their actual shape. Gaius Cethegus, a small, sharp-faced man with wild eyes and hair that fell down over his ears, and quick jerky movements. Publius Lentulus Sura, a slow-voiced elderly man with large features and small ferret-eyes, who had already once attained consular rank but had been thrown out of the Senate by the censors; he had, however, obtained readmission by standing a second time for the prætorship. Autrotinus, one of the disqualified consuls of two years back, intelligent-looking, grey-eyed, with a voice which in moments of excitement boomed surprisingly. Lucius Statilius and Gabinius Capito, ruined spendthrifts but men of ability. Two of the tribunes, Labienus and Rullus: the first a young man of business-class parents, who had revolted against the ledger; the second a somewhat ponderous theorist who had studied carefully all the land-laws and reformatory suggestions put forward during the last century.

The room showed a minglement of luxury and make-shift. Silver and earthenware stood side by side. There was a costly Bithynian hanging on one wall and on the other a humorous and coarsely painted fresco showing a disorderly Banquet of the Gods. A cheap mosaic covered the floor but the cushions on the couches were of the finest dyed silk, and a beaker studded with rubies stood on a scratched table of maple wood.

There was a murmur of pleasure at Catalina’s entry, and Cassius rose to show him to the seat of honour at the foot of the middle-couch, himself taking the next place on the third couch. Chelidon was not reclining at the table but hovering in the background under pretence of helplessly doing her best to make the slaves attend to the services.

“My usual apologies for a mediocre dinner,” shrilled Cassius. “I meant to have something different for a change; but when the buyer reported a cheap hog, I couldn’t resist. So it’s pig’s flesh once more, with some oysters thrown in, and a truffle-sauce to ransom me from your bad tempers.”

The talk turned chiefly on the two political episodes that had occurred during the months of Catalina’s absence. He had received reports, but everyone was anxious to re-tell the stories and express his point of view about them.

Rullus had introduced the comprehensive land-bill that he had been working on for the last year. It aimed at introducing order at last into the executive of the empire and at producing a better distribution of wealth. Ten Commissioners were to take charge of all public lands and territories gained in war, and out of the funds reorganise the whole empire economically.

“Everyone knew,” commented Rullus, “that once there was a proper organisation of the Treasury, the state would have to take over full management of the provinces, and then there’d be an end of the policy of handing over government-works to private enterprise, and all the miserable exploitation that it produces.”

Catalina lay on the couch with his eyes closed. It was good to be back among these known faces and voices; he had not realised how wearying had been that jogging across the hills of the south. Tale after tale of misery. But now he was back among men whom he knew and trusted; scoundrels though some of them were in their way, they had a common purpose that purged them and left nothing but the brotherly compact. He luxuriated in the sense of ease, eating the cold egg stuffed with pepper and anchovies. These were his friends. Nothing was worthwhile in life but comradeship. Here was the only safety.

Rullus went on with his tale. Cicero had set to work. He had used every specious plea of advocacy to discredit the Bill; he had badly upset all the shopkeepers, employers and land-owners, and even gained over some of the lower populace by appealing basely to their disinclination to leave Rome and its pleasures for an isolated farm-life.

“Don’t blame them,” wheezed Cassius.

“He said that I’d called them the bilge of the ship of state and wanted to pump them out.”

“Yes,” said Labienus, “and he drew a scare-picture of the Bill as a screen for Cæsar and Crassus. He said that Crassus aimed to grab a generalship on the excuse of bringing Egypt into the empire. A typical bit of dope. He asserted that the Board would decide on the problem of Egypt’s position, while by a slip he admitted that long ago the Senate declared the country to be correctly willed to the Roman people by the King.”

“Well, he told the truth about Crassus,” remarked Catalina. “It would be very handy if he could be got rid of by an Egyptian commission. He’d detach a fair-sized piece of the opposition, and he’d serve as a balance to Pompeius.”

There was a pause. Pompeius was the chief worry of these schemers. Though he had been the main instrument in finalising the liberal reaction of some eight years ago, he had acted only because he needed support in his ambitious need to extort from the Senate approval for his illegal candidature as consul. He had no sympathy with any reforms except of the most amorphously genteel kind. Now he was in the East after the easy but spectacular jobs of clearing the pirates out of the Mediterranean and crushing the Armenian King that Lucullus had broken. But he had a large army; he had all the power that accrues to apparently effortless good fortune; the middle classes backed him; his soldiers would be loyally devoted to the handsome and easy-mannered aristocrat who could alone provide for their pay and future. Yes, Pompeius was the man who might smash all the plans so painfully hammered out at Rome.

“Crassus is out of things now,” said Labienus, draining his wine-cup.

Catalina waited, hoping that Labienus would make some more comments on Cæsar; for Labienus was working in close concert with Cæsar, and Catalina particularly wanted to know exactly where Cæsar stood.

“That was to be expected. We don’t need him. The contrary.”

Labienus did not reply. Rullus went on in an aggrieved tone, “Cicero pretended that I was bringing in the bill only to help that mule of a father-in-law of mine to settle the title of some lands at Casinum that he bought cheap from Sulla. I know the clause settling titles would please the man, but I had to insert it as a first step to clearing up the muddle of land-titles everywhere. There are some of those estates my father-in-law would like to sell, but I can assure you I was looking forward to beating him down to the lowest price. If I had any motive it was certainly that. I hate the old skinflint.”

“How I loathe these talkers like Cicero,” burst out Catalina, “who think they’ve demolished a real effort to grapple with things if they can make a little dirty remark about the man who’s putting the effort forward. But we can’t expect Cicero to look beyond the corrupt motive. Everyone knows that he’s made a bargain with his colleague Antonius by selling him the province of Macedonia for a share of the spoils. He’d soon defend that act on the plea of high-minded expediency. Well, there’s one thing. After having this Bill turned down the Senate can’t moan if matters come to a downright clash.”

“The sooner the better,” said Cethegus.

8

Out of the void, for no reason, a lightning-stroke of horror caught Catalina. He lay, back hoping that the others would not notice; he felt sick; he would retch on the floor. But his emotion had nothing to do with the roasted pork or the quince-sauce. It was a nightmare, and yet he was awake. He was damp, burning; hands were kneading downwards on the top of his skull. Out of the black scurrying anguish he heard a voice. It was Orestilla saying that she would leave him.

At once the nightmare-sense passed, leaving him weak but collected. He moved his hand over his brow, opened his eyes wide, as if throwing off a moment of drowsiness, and toyed with the meat on his plate. He wasn’t jealous, it was impossible. His emotion had been generated by weeks of lonely brooding on the despair of others, pressing back the despair that his inability to help awoke in him; now the emotion had taken its revenge, flooding outwards in one burst. But the voice of Orestilla remained. Why? He had never been jealous of her. During all his long absences he had never thought of her once with suspicion. Why should he doubt her now when he had so shortly before witnessed her outcry of passion? But he remembered. She had lived wildly in her time, as he had, and he had never grudged her that. Retrospective jealousy of that type he despised as the weakest form of madness. She had had her lovers, and a husband who had died after six months of a burst blood-vessel; she had danced the night out and then dived from the concrete piers of a villa at Baiæ into the blue waters of dawn, giving herself to the winner of the race. Why not? Yet she had given it all up for him. How could she do that? She must feel longings for the old life; and he left her alone to fret, he gave so little in return. He wanted to rise and rush home, but forced himself to listen, drinking heavily of the red wine.

Rullus had dropped the Bill; it would have been vetoed, and the time was not ripe for a direct constitutional struggle. While the conservatives could rely on sneaking one of their nominees among the ten tribunes, there was no hope for the popular party unless they had at least one of their men as consul. Otherwise the Senate could fall back on voting an Ultimate Decree, a declaration that suspended the constitution and enabled the magistrate to treat as public enemies any citizens considered malcontent, disregarding the normal right of appeal. This power was the most fiercely contested of all senatorial privilege; for it meant that in the last resort the oligarchs could destroy any attempt at reform by announcing that it represented a conspiracy to overthrow the state.

“Let them try it again,” said Cethegus. “We’ll show them that a sword has two edges.”

“But I think they’ve had their lesson,” said Autrotinus sagely. “Labienus has given them something to meditate on.”

Labienus gave his account of the impeachment of Rabirius. Catalina summoned his interest at last, for he knew that Cæsar had been behind the impeachment and he was anxious to understand the workings of Cæsar’s mind. He did not share the common opinion that Cæsar was a brilliant but feather-brained libertine who was in politics only for adventure and money. Cæsar was openly on the popular side, but he succeeded in keeping free from any particular group; he worked with the proletarian leader but was also to be found arguing in the salon of Servilia, the centre of the milder liberals; he supported the radical candidates but also acted as chief emissary for Crassus who had no genuine ideas of reform; he remained, moreover, on friendly terms with Pompeius despite these varied activities.

Labienus did not mention Cæsar as the instigator of the impeachment, but everyone present knew the facts. “Somebody at the Corporation remarked that there was an old fellow Rabirius who used to go round boasting that he’d thrown the tile that killed Saturninus. At any rate he’d joined in. I had an uncle killed on that day.”

Saturninus has been a tribune thirty-seven years before, and the Senate had ended his dangerous programme by voting for the Ultimate Decree—Marius, the consul on the popular ticket, who should have stood firm, losing his nerve at the last moment. Saturninus and his friends had been stoned to death after surrendering on a guarantee of safety.

“It struck me that the blow would be all the more impressive if instead of the usual prosecution for breach of peace I accused the man under the old law of treason that hadn’t been put into action for centuries.”

Labienus dropped his voice for effect, and Chelidon’s piping tones were heard unexpectedly loud. “I just vomit every morning.” She had sidled up for a moment to sit on the end of the first couch beside Cethegus, a wine-cup in hand.

“Not before company,” giggled Cassius.

“I was telling how I managed to keep my figure,” she answered indignantly. “I don’t care who knows it or counts my bones for me. I eat a little and drink a lot and vomit between times.”

Cassius waved her out of the conversation and Labienus continued. “It meant a cross erected in the Field of Mars with hangman standing by and swinging a scourge, and an automatic condemnation followed by an appeal to the people. You see the point. Though the condemnation meant nothing till ratified by the appeal, the moral effect was first-rate.”

Catalina nodded. He saw Cæsar’s quick brain in the choice, a fine instance of using ceremony to underline the emotional intention. Without a doubt there was more in Cæsar than mere mercenary aptitude, and it made Catalina uneasy that he could not pin the man down. He tried to maintain his attention, but found his mind slipping continuously. He wanted only to rush back to Orestilla. More and more he was overcome with the belief that he would find her in bed with another man, that she would have crept out to a tryst as soon as his back was turned. He did not believe his fears, but could not control them. Space was populated with images of Orestilla twining through the embraces of other men, evading his clumsy efforts to grasp her. Always she escaped, and he held the man instead, and it was Orestilla he wanted. Somehow happiness had been offered him, and he had put it by, cruelly, blindly, all to no end. Now he could never reach it; the world was fouled; the world was between him and his hope. Every time he found his emotion overpowering him, he drank.

Phrases reached his mind. Cicero had quashed. Then Labienus had as tribune exacted fines from Rabirius, increased them, necessitated an appeal after all. “Cicero puffed out his chest and talked about the necessity for a strong and harmonious government and how that could only be brought about by supporting everyone who had sufficient money to see the merits of keeping things as they are.” But the prætor Metellus Celer had dissolved the assembly by a trick after the voting had begun.

“It wasn’t worth while staging the whole business over again,” said Labienus with a toss of his hand. “The Senate had learned what to expect.”

It was now Catalina’s turn to talk, and he found it easier to quell his emotion. He described the conditions in the south, how the town-councillors had done their best to keep him out, and how he had nevertheless found support everywhere. No square mile but had its tale of misery and injustice, even in rich Campania; he had made valuable contacts. The talk turned on the plan of action for the year. Catalina was continuing with his canvass outside Rome, and the others were to keep the wrath of the city-mob awake.

“I’ve been thinking hard,” said Catalina. “It came to me as I was talking to the farmers. What is needed is a simplification first. Later on we can thresh out the system that’s needed to supplant the present one.”

“How are you going to simplify?” asked Autrotinus.

“I think the thing is to concentrate on the problem of debts. Raise the old cry of debt-abolition. Nothing hits the financiers more strongly, nothing appeals better to the suffering classes. It’s the first and necessary step. Everyone can understand it without argument. It means the same thing to the peasant who can’t understand why he’s thrown out of his father’s cottage, and to the financier who’s got a strangle-hold on hundreds of farms and workshops and municipalities.”

“You’re right,” said Lentulus, speaking for the first time and drowsily nodding his large head. “Debt-abolition appeals equally to me and the small shopkeeper who’s ground down by a mortgage. It certainly appeals to me, and that’s my chief concern.”

“But remember,” put in Rullus, “there was a remission of two-thirds of debts about twenty years ago, by a substitution of brass for the gold standard. Yet it didn’t solve things.”

“Because there was nothing else to follow up the remission. Things at once fell into a mess again, and the usurers were better off than ever. That’s where you and the theorists come in.”

“If you come out beforehand like this,” boomed Autrotinus, with furrowed brows, “it precipitates things.. There’ll be no drawing back, no half-measures. The capitalists will mass to a man to block you and break you.”

“That’s what I want.”

Cethegus rubbed his hands. “Life will soon be worth living.”

The argument went on. Finally all agreed that Catalina’s notion was the best plan of action. It was risky and novel; for elections were run on a personal basis, the magistrate was nothing in theory but the mouthpiece of an unalterable constitution, and however generally known were the views of a candidate he did not advance a programme of legislation as an appeal to the electors. Such a method would appear suspiciously like bribery and corruption to the jurists.

Rullus and Labienus undertook to see that Catalina’s proposition was brought before the people on every possible occasion; and arrangements were made to ask the heads of the district associations to ensure that the propaganda was spread.

9

Cassius yawned. “That’s enough business for one night, isn’t it? How are we going to fill in the time till the elections if you settle everything now? I haven’t wasted any money on acrobats or comedians or trumpeters. I’ve got some dancing-girls. I don’t mind telling you I hired them cheap from a dealer who’d picked them up as a bargain at the sale-of-effects of a Cilician captain that died of the plague. They were virgins when kidnapped and that was only six months ago. So they’re comparatively brand-new and can only speak their eastern lingo. Hey, send in the girls,” he called to Chelidon.

The girls appeared, a troupe of seven, slim and black-haired, bright with unguents and dressed in muslins clasped about the ankles. With them came two eunuch flute-players who struck up a dance-tune, and the girls danced, clashing the silver trinkets at their wrists and uttering throaty animal-sounds. More wine was poured. The girls swayed and twisted, clashed their hands above their heads, bent down swiftly and clashed their hands between their legs. Their slender brown legs and arms moved urgently in time to the flutes, and their slender bodies curved and bent and grew straight again, rebounding at the shock of the music, stalked flowers in a wind of delirium. They had long eyelashes.

Catalina lay unable to rise. A lethargy had gripped him. When the conversation was continuing and he had felt bound by duty, he had been torn by the desire to rise and run, but now his energy was gone. He feared to return home. What if he should discover Orestilla to be false? The thought was unconvincing, futile, but it excoriated him. He would not know what to say to her; she was unreal; he had taken away her old life and given her nothing in return. This thought conflicted with the unreasoning fear that she had never left her old life, that she was carrying it on secretively. He knew that the contradiction was madness, and yet another part of him hoped that she was being unfaithful; for he would then be freed from a responsibility towards her which he could not comprehend and which tormented him.

At last, as his mind lapsed into blankness, he rose without effort and made his farewells to Cassius, standing with his hand on the panelled back of the couch. He felt that he must go before the dancing stopped and the girls came for wine and caresses: not because he lacked the ease of gesture to slap a girl pleasantly and send her off elsewhere without appearing to condemn boorishly the enjoyment of the others. But he felt that he was being held up on the moving screen of noise like a plant on a trellis, and that when the supports suddenly withdrew he would fall nerveless to the ground.

“Don’t they amuse you?” asked Cassius, hurt.

Unexpectedly Catalina was smitten with an exultation in the dancing shapes. They were elemental forms of energy unloosed upon man’s fearful life; they were the virgins of the storm invading these walls and roof that pleaded feebly for security and comfort. The lithe boyish figures were forms of pitiless fury, obeying nothing but the impulse of self-contained sounds, outside the plaints and reasons of the mind; they were the unreasoning energy that he wished to evoke, the power that was greater than all the categories of Cicero or Rullus, the power that recognised nothing except its own need of delight and discipline. He trembled at the recognition of his craving. Bodies dancing and the music mirroring the dancers were one; that was how everything should be.

Cassius looked up to find why he did not answer, and was surprised at the absorbed intensity of his eyes. “Pick whichever you like,” he said; then in a moment of expansive admiration, “you can commandeer the whole lot, fourteen legs strong, if you feel up to it, and I’ll risk a riot from the others. What’s a friend if he can’t do a little thing like that once in a while?”

Catalina’s mind cleared. He pressed the arm of Cassius. “You’re a good fellow, and I like your dancing-girls, but it’s time I went.”

He went out, followed by Rullus and Autrotinus. The five other guests had, however, no intention of going yet. Cassius called for more wine, and they all began talking. The flutes still played, and the girls tirelessly danced, but Cassius beckoned them over and bid them refresh themselves.

“It makes me hot seeing you dance with clothes on,” he said, “particularly when I can see through them. Come on. Strip.” As the girls did not understand, he tore the dress off the nearest one. The girls squealed with laughter. They drank greedily, the wine ran down the corners of their big mouths, zigzagging off their chins and down their breasts until it collected in little pools on the floor. Then they clustered about the couches.

The girl whose dress had been torn snuggled down beside Cassius, but Chelidon darted forward and wriggled in between the pair, taking the girl in her arms and kissing her fiercely. The girl screamed. Chelidon had half-bitten through her lip.

“That’ll teach her,” said Chelidon drunkenly, brushing her hair back.

“You cursed fool,” cried Cassius in his squeaky voice. “I guaranteed to return them undamaged. That trick of yours will cost me more than I’m worth.”

“I’ll damage the whole bunch if you don’t shut up,” she retorted. “Why didn’t you behave yourself?”

The girls had cowered away after this exhibition. The one with the bitten lip lay moaning on the floor, rocking to and fro, her legs doubled up and her face screwed into helpless terror as she tried to staunch the blood with her hand.

“What a fool,” groaned Cassius. “Money thrown away.”

“Keep on playing,” said Chelidon to the gaping flutists. “Nobody’s bitten you, have they? Earn your price.” She turned to Cassius. “Here. Drink and stop your noise.” She held a flagon to his lips and poured the wine down his throat. Protesting weakly, he lapped away, pawing in the air and staring at her with bulging eyes. Then he lay back, gasping.

“Money thrown away.”

Chelidon rose and threw off her shift. “Now I’ll dance for you all and show you something worth seeing.” But before she had done more than whirl her arms about and shake her flanks for a few beats, she collapsed on the couch where Cethegus lay. He kissed her. The rouge on her pallid face had streaked; her yellow hair lay damply against her cheeks and shoulders; she had the unformed breasts of a young girl.

The flutes shrilled on, and two of the girls danced. The one with the bitten lip moaned on the floor; the other four drank with the guests. Cassius snored.

“I thought I’d settle him that way,” said Chelidon. “I’ve tried it before. He’s a nuisance.”

10

All his way home Catalina had to restrain himself from running ahead. He compelled his limbs to move slowly to walk at the pace of the others; he spoke in a voice which sounded to him withdrawn and artificial. Then the house was reached.

He left his followers without a word. Tremblingly he passed through porch, hall, side-room, corridor; lifted the curtain; entered. His nostrils twitched, and his hands. There was a hot rank smell of blood somewhere. His eyes were heavy, dimmed with a mist in which darted gnats of fire; his forehead felt a band slowly twisted tighter. He had forgotten what he desired, forgotten Orestilla’s existence; he was transported into an ecstasy of pain, and yearned for something to crush, to kill, something warm, yielding, terrified and trapped. That would free him from his own trap of pain.

Orestilla was resting quietly on the couch, her face shaded from the light. She sat up, looking at him with a pleasure that changed into questioning fear.

“Are you ill?”

He stood swaying, caught in the swirl of his emotion as in an upward current of air, twirled as he had seen dust and leaves in the corners of a wall. Then the obsession which had come over him at the dinner-table faded as rapidly as it had been born. It faded and left only a vague oppression of shame; he could not recall his suspicions, so utterly insubstantial were they made by the presence of Orestilla.

She stared at him with dilating eyes in which fear strove with tender concern. “Are you ill?” she repeated.

He wanted to say that he was ill. It was the only possible excuse, and it was true, but he hated to confess physical weakness. He was never ill; he could endure hardships that left young men broken, and still be eager for more; he could sleep in the snow, in the rain, on horseback, and wake without aches; his wrist never tired though he fenced with twenty men and outpointed them one after another, it was as steady at the end. He was never ill. Yet he must agree with her. But his tongue would not stir, it lolled in his mouth. He drew nearer. O please let her not be afraid. He would die rather than hurt her; he had taken all and given nothing.

He saw the fear in her eyes conquered by the pity. He wanted to weep for joy. Her trust gave him back the use of his senses.

“Yes, I am feeling ill,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve over-strained myself more than I guessed.”

She rose at once and drew him to the couch. “I knew that you ought to have stayed at home tonight.” She loosened his clothes, pressed his forehead with her cool palm, moved the lamp where it would not shine in his eyes, rustled about the room. So ready and patient. He lay trying to understand his actions. He had never been jealous of her before; he would never be jealous again. That was all he knew, but he could not understand why he had been jealous to-night. It didn’t matter; it had made him realise something more about her. She was his rightful mate, a soldier’s wife. He would be true to his cause, as she was true to him.

She bent over him. “Shall I get you a cooling draught?”

“I am better now,” he said. “I need only rest. Please don’t worry. I’m ashamed to have upset you. I beg you to put it out of your mind.”

She made no reply, but again laid her cool palm over his eyes.

11

Curius had not accompanied Catalina to the dinner. He had gone to see his mistress Fulvia, and found her still as rude as ever. Born of good family, she was a woman in the early thirties; but her full-fleshed face skilfully preserved its contours; at first glance she seemed younger by years than she was, but a second glance detected a slight puffiness under the eyes, a slight heaviness under the chin, an over-ripeness of the lips that was not all discontentedly alluring pout. Her bronze hair was arranged in a fringe with side-ringlets, and she wore earrings of pearl set in silver; sandals of leather suppled in olive-oil were on her feet, and her dress was of frail banded half silk.

Curius walked up and down the room disconsolately. Fulvia picked up her polished silver mirror and studied her face. She had had her eyebrows thinned by plucking that morning, and was pleased with the effect; the narrowed line accentuated the curves, persuading her that the lineaments were intact.

“I think you’re rather a bore,” she said, sighing and slipping the gown from one shoulder. She liked her shoulders; they looked so warmly plump, so smoothly golden in the lamplight. She strained to lay her cheek against the shoulder she had bared, to kiss it sideways. “A bore,” she repeated. The mirror slid from her hand down the side of the couch and thudded on the thick woollen carpet of white picked with blue flowers.

Curius halted to stare at her and bite his fingernails. His long face and dropping jaw, his heavy eyes, were permeated with self-pitiful reproach.

“Anything but that, Fulvia,” he protested bitterly. “I know I’ve ruined myself for you, and so you have the right to taunt me. But you might at least taunt me generously.”

“I’m too bored to say anything but the truth.”

What a lie. She wasn’t bored at all. She loved watching the sad droop of his mouth and the steadfast misery of his eyes, listening to the appealing whine of his voice. She wasn’t bored with him or with life. In an hour’s time someone else would be led by the old woman Nais up to the backdoor; Curius would be gone then, and she would be entirely convinced that her youth was safe yet. The kisses of Flavius would be a better mirror than the silver plate on the carpet; they would leave no shadow of doubt, telling the silver that it lied when it suggested a faint set of wrinkles at the corners of the lips and eyes, a faint sagging of the throat. Meanwhile there was Curius; the same old nonsense, but amusing, flattering.

“Why are you bored?” He set off striding again, speaking vehemently. “I’m not bored to be here with you. I live for these moments. Why are you different? What injustice there is in the world. How can it be that I want you when you don’t want me? It isn’t fair. It’s wretched, it’s shameful, and the shame’s mine, mine.”

He stopped and beat his breast. Then he hurried across to the couch and took her angrily in his arms. She was agreeably surprised; she had expected him to go on talking till he was turned out. But she didn’t want her hair disarranged.

“Listen,” he said. “I accept the shame. I love it, as long as I gain you as well. I want you, only you. I don’t care what comes with you. You think I’m sucked dry.” He laughed bitterly. “So I am, for the moment. But it won’t last for long. I’ll soon have money again, more than I ever had. Then, if you’ll lie on the floor, I’ll cover you all over with rubies and green smaragdi.”

“You know I wouldn’t lie on the floor, not even for that.” She scrutinised him sharply and then dropped her eyelids with deliberate languor. “But you’ve said all that before. I suppose you want me to lend you a few sesterces to lose at gambling.”

“No, no. I’ve given up gambling.” The bitterness returned to his voice. “I had to give it up.”

She smiled. “Poor Curius, he can’t play any more little games.”

“You know I played only to win money for you. And I didn’t always lose. When I won, you talked differently.”

“What makes you so sure that you’d win if I lent you a few hundred sesterces? I can’t afford it of course. I’d have to pawn something. Myself, perhaps.”

“Don’t.” He shuddered.

She opened her eyes wide and looked him full in the face. “I have to live, you know. I have to put food inside this body of mine that you expect to find warm when it suits you, and I have to look after it in so many ways.” She spoke dreamily, playing with the curls on his head. “You wouldn’t like me to waste away till the bones stuck out, would you? If you really loved me, you’d like me to take another lover now that you’re penniless.”

“I’d like to see you rot first!” He sprang to his feet. She had saved her hair from disarrangement.

“Where are those riches of yours coming from then?”

“I can’t tell you, yet.” He stammered. “Catalina will see to it.”

She shrugged. “I might have guessed you were living in a cloudland. Catalina’s on the edge of ruin himself with all his debts.”

Curius sullenly controlled himself. “You’ll see—“

A dark-brown servant girl entered. “Mistress, you told me to let you know when it was time to obey the doctor’s orders and rest.”

Curius gnawed his nails again. He knew that the girl had been instructed to break the conversation with this lie, but he did not dare to say anything. Fulvia watched him from under her lashes. Could there be anything in these promises and threats of his? Suddenly she felt a qualm of conscience, a fear that he would discover about Flavius, a curiosity that weakened her. She had had no intention of making him a loan; she had been merely teasing him; but she now felt that she must offer some money.

“Bring my purse,” she said to the girl. She counted out some coins slowly. “There’s two hundred and fifty sesterces. Take them,” she told Curius.

“I can’t.” He was deterred by her rough tones. But he wanted the money; a love-gift, perhaps it would turn his luck. “I can’t.”

“Take it.” She spoke scornfully. The more she degraded him, the safer she would feel; she must not let him think that she was placating him. But he was robbing her; how could he now blame her for selling kisses to Flavius? If he took the money, he would break whatever bond there was between them; she would be able to turn him away; she was utterly sick of him.

Curius could not tear his eyes from the coins. Gulping, he reached forward and caught them up. “I’ll pay it back—a hundredfold,” he mumbled, and dashed from the room.

12

Catalina lay in the darkness with Orestilla at his side, dreaming in the recollected warmth of her body. Lithe dancing figures glazed the wall of darkness with flame. The release of energy was pitiless; it created suffering, and yet it offered the only way out of suffering. Was he nothing but a figure scrawled on the storm? Did he offer nothing but fury followed by exhaustion? This was not personal ambition, this need to be in the centre of the dancing figures. Useless to call it good or bad. It was his deepest self, the voice of his birth-genius. He must obey it.

The shapes flickered and died down. He was glad to be alone in the darkness with nothing except the nakedly warm body of Orestilla.

II - CÆSAR AS CHIEF PRIEST

I

Spring. The sound and colour of spring in the air. A new life and meaning had descended on the Roman state. The civic year now began on the first of January and spring was calendared as from sometime in February, but the real New Year began still with March. The rejoicings of midwinter were over, the feastings before the store-cupboards in thanksgiving of past plenty and trustful pledge of the future; and the rites of purifying placation had followed. Halfway through February the Lupercal Brethren had mustered at the cave under the Palatine, where the twins of Rome’s foundation had been cast by the birth-flood under the shadow of a fig tree to be suckled by a wolf-bitch; goats and a dog had been sacrificed; two of the Lupercals had been anointed on the brow with the blood and told to laugh, and then they had run naked through the streets round the Palatine, striking at the women with strips of hide cut from the victim. The women who longed for children thrust out their bodies to the blow, and rubbed the bruises tenderly; they would show the spot to their husbands piously that evening, and hope. The processions of the terminal stones had threaded the countryside, and horse-races had been run in the Field of Mars. Swallows had been hailed as first fledglings from the nest of awakened earth; and now March had arrived.

The first of March. In the Chapel of Vesta at the eastern end of the Forum the Vestals had renewed the sacred fire; fresh laurels had been fixed on the Regia, the chief offices of the state-religion nearby, once part of the king’s house, and on the houses of the Flamens. Wives visited the Temple of Iuno Lucina on the Esqueline Hill, and made their vows; they received presents from their husbands and entertained their slaves. The earth was awakening. Mars, the spirit of new vigours, had burst the womb of waiting and was stirring in his cradle, a baby strong enough to strangle serpents; in a moment he would arise a full-grown youth, lover of the earth-goddess in whose lap he had been cradled.

Wake, Mars, Father of the Roman People, who begot on the Virgin the fated twins, the masculine compact of battle-friendship and brother-rivalry that turns to hatred in the hour of achievement. You are the sinews and the shout of power. You are the awakening sap, the aroused blood; and you are nearer to this race than the Iuppiter who is the Sky and who stands contracted to a terra-cotta image in the little shrine on the Capitol over which the towering temple is built. To Iuppiter the Romans swear their oath; to Iuppiter they drive their chariots of triumph; but it is you, Mars, that give them the power which swears unbreakably and triumphs always. In the wild forest-lands you hide, Mars, the spirit of danger and dark noises, and there you are called Silvanus. You bring floods and pestilence and wolves if you are not rightly placated; you bring the marching enemies because you shake your beloved people with trials and terrors; you are jealous and will give them no rest; you will pardon no flaw in the sacrifice, no slip in the working of the law. But you are the courage and the passion that makes these men greater than the plagues and the wolves and the enemies that you send. Ho, Father Mars, you love these farmers and warriors.

For it is all one, Mars, the farming and the fighting. The hosts of red-rust that gnaw at the wheat and the marauding raiders with blood-stained faces are one to you. Your warrior-priests are bringing the earth to harvest, and a man’s courage has the same end, whatever it endure. It looks to the future; it plans for full bellies in the winter and the seeds of last year miraculously reborn in the body of mother-earth; it fights off the enemies, the gnats and spearmen of death. It looks to the future.

To-day, on the first moon of the New Year, the shield of war fell from heaven; and that it might not be stolen eleven others were made like it, and twelve priests were appointed to have charge of the twelve shields. These for the Palatine, and then another twelve for the northern hills, one band for Mars of the City, one for Mars of War; and all the priests must have father and mother living so that the chain of life be ritually unbroken. These Salian Priests, patricians all, now don their embroidered tunics, swords and brazen breast-plates, their gowns with scarlet stripes and purple hem, their round helmets with point on top and straps tied under the chin. They take the holy shields shaped as two circles joined with an oval centrepiece to leave the arms swinging-space when the shields are strapped on the back, and they dance, beating the shields with a spear-shaft like a double drumstick. Trumpeters go before them, and the priests clang the shields and chant. The leader dances ahead and gives the others the triple beat, and they all dance, stamping the earth and calling upon Mars.

Strike the earth, Salians. Clang out your dance. Scare the monsters and evils that would gnaw away the new life and leave nothing but faceless rock and sterile bone. Scare the shadow-spirits that slink among the trees, turning to wolves and men that murder and to pests that rot. The thunder of your worship is more than a spear in the heart of the stranger, it is the sound of spring bursting in cataracts of greenery and blossom-foam across the barren fields of winter, it is flesh forming on the skeleton, it is the voiceless roar of power breaking into form and fertility. Stamp that the grass may sprout under your feet and that the fruits of the New Year may grow where your spears have stirred the air with a clang-flower.

In the evenings there will be feasts and jollity at the station-shrines where you rest. Next day the rites go on; for the Year must be charmed back into its wonted course, the power of the Roman People must once more fill its old channels. Long ago the Salian Hymns could be heard almost to the limits of the Roman Fields; now they must carry across wide seas and over many mountains; for the Romans have conquered the earth. But the hymns are still sung. Mars is still watching over his chosen people.

His voice speaks. The arduous return of the Year must still be charmed with power and forethought. Build for the future, Romans.

2

Late in the last year the old Chief Priest Metellus had died, and Labienus had passed a law abrogating Sulla’s provisions for the election of a successor. Sulla had re-instated the ancient method of nomination by the Corporation of Priests, heritage from the days of the kings which lingered on in that most conservative of all areas, religion. Labienus had brought back the method, first tried some fifty years earlier, of election by the majority out of seventeen of the thirty-five tribes; the seventeen were chosen by lot, a typical Roman compromise, since it was felt impious to open the sacred offices to outright candidature before the full people.

No one had seen Cæsar’s hand at first in the act of Labienus, but now Cæsar came openly forward as candidate for the primacy.

The position of Chief Priest no longer enjoyed the great power which had made it the centre of the state 300 years before. Then the laws had not been published; the prætor-ship, necessitating the growth of a system of equity through its dealings with foreigners who could not partake of the cumbrous and sacred Roman Law, was as yet in its infancy; the chief priest was repository and formulator of the law. Only he knew the days on which business could be carried on, or the words which would make binding any transaction in law or commerce or the intricate family-matters of marriage and adoption. He continued the kingly function in all that pertained to the law and government of religion; and since he was nominated unlike the secular officers, the hierarchy of the law-givers was undisturbed. Through the centuries the secular world had gradually wrested away the mystery and prerogative of the priesthood; but there still remained a close connection between the exercise of law and religion, and the great families which produced the priests and jurists tended to keep the two areas merged. The chief priest still stood at the centre of a great power, the emotion and fact of Rome.

And now a man in the late thirties, a demagogue, an atheist, a follower of the new astronomy, a politician who had held no office higher than the Office of Works, was standing for the position. The conservatives writhed with indignation. It was preposterous, unthinkable. The atheism of an Epicurean philosophy might be passed. Had not the great pontiff and jurist Scaevola said that there were three religions, those of the priest, the poet and the statesman, and that the last must be preserved whether credited or not? Tolerant scepticism was no longer impossible for the chief priest; and the religion of Rome had no concern with an after-life, no dogmas of salvation. It cursed the man who endangered the commonweal by breaking his compact with the gods, by failing to observe the divine law; but otherwise it laid down no rule. Hell was the exclusion from the sacraments of the community declared against such an offender. The spirits of the dead were merely part of the potencies of earth, fertilising or miasmatic according as the peace of the gods was kept dutifully or rashly broken. But demagogy and dabbling in sciences that refused to abide by the old interpretation of things were in themselves a defiance, a blasphemy.

Cæsar was determined. He knew the hatred with which the extreme conservatives held him, and specific rumours had reached his ears. When next an Ultimate Decree was made, he was to be one of the first to perish; and the conservatives were only waiting for a false step from the radicals. But, he told himself, they would not be so ready to slaughter the chief officer of the state-religion. He would have to commit some grave indiscretion before they would dare that. Besides, the office would be a signal step in his political career; it would keep his threatening creditors once more at bay; and (deepest motive of all, scarcely recognised by himself) it would set him on a throne. That was the real safety he felt in the position. A throne almost without power, a delegated and obscured throne, but nevertheless a throne surrounded by something of Rome’s original pieties, her virgin meaning. If he became chief priest, he would no longer appear a haphazard adventurer; he would convince the world that he had a steadfast goal; he would convince himself.

3

The election-day for the priesthood was coming near, and Catalina agreed to meet Cæsar in the house of Labienus to discuss what measures could be taken. It would be a great victory for the radicals if Cæsar were elected; but Catalina desired the meeting mainly that he might find out what lay in Cæsar’s mind.

The house of Labienus was small, modern, and tastefully furnished. There was no show of useless but expensive objects of art, but everything was of the best materials and workmanship. The attendants were carefully drilled, obeying clipped phrases of command like soldiers. There was a feeling of coolness and efficiency. This was the first time that Catalina had entered the young man’s house, and he felt a new respect for him. Labienus sensed the change of attitude.

“I like to have everything under my hand,” he said airily. “But I don’t think I’ll ever settle down in Rome. I’ll build my own city someday. I’ll give each man his daily job, and regulate his cups of wine and the times he beds his wife. I can’t live without method, and it annoys me to see other people muddling.”

Catalina did not altogether like these ideas. Labienus might have rebelled against the business-world of his parents that reduced the turmoil of human happiness and despair to a neat series of financial entries, but he was putting things in their place with the same disregard and harshness. Was this the only spirit that could wipe out the old world of privately scheming cruelties, or was it merely a hidden derivation from it? Was Catalina’s need to clean up a befouled earth nothing but a confused reaction of disgust? Was the unsentimental and calculating unconcern of Labienus the true corrective? Where did Cæsar stand?

“When I settle down,” went on Labienus, waving his hand lightly as if his carefully ordered household were a mere camp-existence, “I’ll build up an estate that’s self-sufficient.” He spoke with an air of finality which showed him unable to conceive a failure in his plan. When he settled down, he would have money and power behind him. “Not a mere country slave-establishment, but a walled city. Then I’ll be happy.”

Catalina felt easier. Despite the disclaimer of Labienus this was only a variation of the impulse that made the capitalists build their huge slave-run estates and bounded domains. Let Labienus nurse his dream. When once Catalina had grasped control of things, both Labienus and the capitalists would find their schemes thwarted. He was going to break down all such walls, and he was sure that Cæsar would agree. There was something right about the ruthless efficiency for which Labienus stood, but the man made it trivial.

Cæsar entered. He seemed slight next to Catalina, though he was well-built and supple. His keen blue eyes glanced from man to man, and his large intelligently-poised head increased the effect of lightness, carrying all attention from his limbs and making others aware only of his finely eager face, his penetrating eyes, the contractions about his sensuously but delicately modelled lips. His manner was completely assured, and yet there was felt a reserve of impetuous energy, a sympathetic candour which was apt to excite others and snatch them up into flurried partisanships while he himself remained calm and watchful.

“Labienus will have told you of our city-campaign,” he said with a deprecating smile. “We haven’t done so badly, considering what we had to fight. I was sorry the Bill of Rullus was bludgeoned. The most sensible and far-seeing piece of legislation since Gaius Gracchus.”

“Therefore indeed impracticable. We can’t expect this pack of leeches to drop off their victims so easily.” Catalina spoke more angrily than he had meant, but his wish to carry Cæsar along made him over-emphatic. That irritated him, made him feel that he was acting with feeble boisterousness and doing the reverse of what he hoped.

Cæsar laughed. “A pinch of salt soon makes the leeches curl up. But there’s so many leeches, and our supply of salt is limited as yet. Which reminds me that there have been some complaints about the monopoly of the salt-works outside Ostia. A point to remember in canvassing.”

“The system must break down of its own accord,” said Labienus with a half-sneer. “That’s the logic of it all. We think we’re breaking it up, but we aren’t. It’s breaking of its own deadly weakness. We only follow in the rear of events and give names to them.”

“That isn’t true,” said Catalina fiercely. “We also are part of the events, and what we do as our part matters enormously.”

Labienus grimaced. “I’ll leave that to you. I’m content to take what comes my way and organise it so that it doesn’t affect my sense of logic. That’s the trouble with us men. We can’t tell the difference between our hurt feelings and the meaning of things. So we try to do too much, and blame life because everything goes wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter if things do seem to go wrong,” replied Catalina, fighting against a sense of brain-pressure, “if we’ve done our best to give our meaning to them.” He found it intensely difficult to find and express his ideas, so strong was his wish to compel Cæsar into agreement; and his words missed more than half of what he wanted to say. “No man with thoughts above the level of a louse could sit peacefully aside amid such values as those of this society of ours. He’d prefer to smash everything first, including himself. He couldn’t fail. His meaning would hand itself on. Otherwise there’s nothing but darkness, and the dream of justice is the foulest trick ever played on mankind.”

Cæsar had been looking on with an intent smile from man to man. “Come now,” he said. “There’s a middle course where you both meet, however much your words may quarrel. Action’s the solution, my good friends. Now when it comes to action, you both agree quickly enough; so the only moral I can draw is that there’s something wrong with words.”

His air of conciliatory frankness appeased the debaters, but Catalina could not suppress his disappointment. He wasn’t satisfied with what he had said; it sounded crude and bombastic; and yet he would have liked Cæsar to make a different response. Surely action had no existence apart from the meaning one gave it? But he did not feel that he could complain. Cæsar went on talking with the most pleasant openness, detailing his hopes for the priesthood, disguising nothing of his personal ambition and yet deferring to Catalina as to a man whose revolutionary rank could not be overtopped. Insensibly Catalina felt himself mollified by the man’s charm, ashamed of his outburst, increasingly friendly. He wanted nothing so much as to make Cæsar his entire ally; yet he knew that he had failed to do so in the sparring-match with Labienus.

“What mainly creates our weakness as a party,” he said, “is our lack of union. Labienus ought surely to agree with me there.”

“I do indeed,” said Labienus. “It’s our lack of organisation that beats us every time. The conservatives don’t need organisation. A moneyed class acts as by sheer coherence of panic once their money-chests are threatened. Moreover the Senate is virtually a club for barring all reforms and sheltering the depredations of the financiers.”

“You’ve put your finger on a serious point,” said Cæsar to Catalina in tones of thankful gravity, and Catalina warmed at having been able to extort complete agreement from him for once, even on a mere technical matter. Cæsar resumed. “The Senate has the strategic position. The result is that as soon as the underdogs try to organise, the Senate declares such unions inimical to the welfare of the state and demolishes them.”

“So much effort is wasted,” said Catalina, speaking with more ease this time as he felt the emotion gathering force within him. “Who can doubt that if the opposition to the present state of things could be collected in any usable shape it would carry everything before it? But how can we expect the wretched creatures who have been crushed out of all hope to make an effective show when even we leaders are all at cross purposes in Rome? There’s too much suspicion, too much fear. Every man fights for himself. I don’t believe they want to do it, but they feel they can’t trust the others. So our party can always be split. Servilia’s liberals can’t bear the proletariat; the tribunes quarrel; the intellectuals call Cethegus and his group a set of opportunists; thinkers like Rullus are cold-shouldered; clever fellows like Labienus here rather despise all the groups; Crassus dodges in and out again; one man gives his support to the franchise for the Transpadane Gauls but runs off as soon as there’s a mention of reforming the Asian taxes. And so on.”

The sweat started from Catalina’s brow. He felt that it was now or never if he were to gain Cæsar. Cæsar nodded slowly and weightily. Catalina found his tongue speaking words that astonished himself more than the others. The effort to grip Cæsar had dredged up his own deepest unsuspected thoughts.

“The people have better sense that we have, Cæsar. They trust you and they love you, and me too they trust and love. I’d die a thousand deaths rather than let them down on the smallest thing, and I know that you would do the same. I tell you that we’ll never succeed unless we have the same trust and love in our hearts that the people have.”

He spoke passionately. Even Labienus was silenced; he compressed his lips and eyes, determined not to be affected. There was no denying that the fellow could talk well. But Labienus was worried; he looked sideways at Cæsar.

Cæsar flushed, and Catalina felt that he had won him.

There was silence for a moment. Then Cæsar spoke after a deep indrawn breath. “There’s a great truth somewhere in what you say, Catalina,” he answered warmly and yet quietly as if in turn finding his words with effort. “But I won’t pretend that I understand it altogether. I’ll tell you something that you may not believe about me. I learn very slowly. I’m only a beginner. I feel an infinite humility before certain great things, Catalina. I felt it before your words just now, but I want to have time to understand them thoroughly. However, you can count on me to the last ounce in your fight for the consulship, and I know I can count on you in this present fight of mine.”

Catalina felt that he had at last brought Cæsar out into the open, though there was still the elusive element to be combated; but he was contented to have come so much nearer the man.

Labienus licked his dry lips. He knew Cæsar well and believed that he knew every cranny of his intentions. But for once he wasn’t quite sure if Cæsar was really carried away or working on Catalina’s emotions. Being proud of an amoral intellect, he decided that Cæsar was playing a game as usual. When that was decided, he felt the tension pass. Safe once more, he grew amiably resentful at Catalina for having taken such a high-pitched strain before friends.

But he was not altogether right. Cæsar was stirred by Catalina’s speech. For the first time for years he had felt himself invaded and dominated by another’s personality, and he was not certain if he liked the experience. But he knew that he respected Catalina, and he meant what he said. He would fight sincerely on Catalina’s side in the forthcoming elections, even if it meant that his own personality was to be swamped. Catalina seemed to have grown older, bitterer and yet more mellowed, during his last absence. Cæsar was disquieted, and yet generously stirred.

4

On the way back from the house of Labienus, Catalina remembered that the day was the first of March. Orestilla would perhaps be wondering whether he’d forget a present for her. Passing through the Forum, he turned into the arcades and sought out the shop of Titinnius, the largest jeweller in Rome. When the attendants saw him enter, they hurriedly whispered together and flurried about. One of them came forward bowing profusely, a second darted out of the shop to warn the master, the others bent over their tasks, cautiously staring. Catalina enjoyed the de-moralisation; these shopkeepers looked on him so decidedly as a brigand that they expected him to put a sword to their throats and demand their goods gratis. He disregarded the attentions of the assistant, and waited for the arrival of Titinnius.

Titinnius was a Greek: of the island of Cos, he said, but his enemies declared that some sailor from farther east had passed across his mother’s bed nine months before his arrival there. He was thin, hook-nosed, swarthy, with a lock of black hair greasily falling over his brow; and while talking he scratched behind his ear with his little finger. His manner was sycophantic, his eyes were coldly observant, as he approached Catalina bowing.

“It is some time since my humble shop had the honour,” he began, then with an abrupt change of tone, clapping his hands, “Here now, Xanthos, bring a chair at once!” His voice resumed its softness. “What would the gentleman like to see? I have only yesterday obtained some fine murrhine vases, the most variously coloured that I’ve ever seen, and a beautiful alabastron with carved sphinx-head that was dug up in Egypt. We can’t turn out things quite the same nowadays, though I’m the last man to deprecate what our craftsmen can do. But every age produces something that can’t be duplicated. Perhaps you would like to see some ivory-draughtsmen, still shining with the master’s graver? A unique set, I assure you, though you don’t need my assurances. I shouldn’t dream of trying to impose on someone whose taste is far better than my own—”

“You needn’t talk so much, Titinnius,” replied Catalina. “The days of my extravagances are now long past, and you know very well that you could impose on me fast enough if I gave you the chance. Keep that kind of flattery for those that know even less than I do about murrha and ivories. I want a present for my wife. Something good but not too high-priced.”

Titinnius signed to an assistant, and the man brought forward a tray of ornaments, Catalina idly turned over the earrings, brooches, bangles, and rings. Titinnius eyed him with narrowed lids. More trays were brought. Catalina looked with distracted interest at the knick-knacks. Such ingenuity and care had been bestowed on them, and to what end? Which was wiser, the outcry against all such things that awoke among the mad-eyed prophets of the people and the wealthy advocates of the simple life, or the lustful competition for fripperies? He had a disdain for all externals, and yet he admired the culture expressed in the ingenuity and taste of luxurious objects. There was the same difficulty of choice here as in all other matters. Was he fighting to destroy the commercialism represented by the multiplication and refinement of objects, or to make the objects so numerous and cheap as to be common property? It was easier to say: Down with the enervating additions, let us strip life to its bare needs, the water and fruits that slake appetite healthily. Yet what was the other side, the need to create, to refine, which seemed doomed to end in irritating and useless complications?

Titinnius grew anxious. Of what was the man thinking, this foe to all vested interests? Why didn’t he choose something and go? He, Titinnius, was spending more time and trouble over him than he would give one of the spend-thrifts come to waste tens of thousands on gaudy jewellery that outraged the taste of its seller. For Titinnius had a passion for antique gems and sculpture; he owned a private collection to which he admitted nothing but articles of the chastest and purest work, and he hated his Roman clients. Particularly he hated this man who couldn’t even abide by the national lust for acquisitiveness. He was happy to-day; he had bought at a low price a scarab-shaped seal of black jasper engraved with a naked woman kneeling with a pitcher at a fountain, signed by Semon; 450 years old at the very least. He felt profoundly superior as Catalina trifled with the ornaments; what could this political schemer know about the delicacies of craft that became a spiritual value to the meditating eye, the charms of the archaic where a technical crudity was irradiated with greater expressive virtue than any elaborate piece of virtuoso-slickness?

“I have here,” he said, “something that I am sure will please you. Quite novel and interesting. A silver mirror, as you see; but the reflection is taken in some inlaid glass backed with a coating of tin. Made in Sidon. Very rare.” He hoped to trap Catalina into the purchase of something freakish, like this mirror with its leaf-pattern or a carved onyx-cup plastered with cheap gems, cornelian pretending to be sardonyx.

But Catalina wearied of the display. He picked at random a silver ring set with a single pearl. “I’ll take this.”

“It’s a period-piece,” said Titinnius, to cover his disappointment. “An agent of mine found it at Naucratis. It was on the wrong tray. You’ll see the marking inside there, on the left.”

“I want it,” said Catalina. “What’s the price?”

Titinnius paused ; he would prove the man to be a fool by asking him an excessive price; then if the price was paid the man had no sense of values. “For you, seventy-five hundred sesterces,” he said with an air of sacrifice.

Catalina smiled. “You’re cheating me. But I like the ring. I’ll give you twenty.”

Titinnius insisted that he could not part with the ring under the quoted price; it was irreplaceable, a collector’s piece. He felt that unless he got his price he would lose his grip, he would feel beaten by these swine of Romans; and the ring was genuinely good even if not worth quite seventy-five. The pearl was very small; still, what was price? An individual work of art was priceless. He argued with conviction, spreading out his hands, opening his eyes wide, pleading for the ring.

“Very well,” said Catalina, angry at the dealer’s persistence and angry at his own surrender. He felt contaminated by this haggling. He wouldn’t have minded giving twice the price to the man who had made the ring, working out its proportions, handling the tools, chiselling that faint bead-line round the pearl, or even to the man who had dived into shark-waters for the pearl-oyster; but he objected to paying the money to this oily creature who had merely passed the ring on. However, he couldn’t stand there arguing for ever; there was nothing else on the trays that he liked.

“Bring me a tablet,” he said, “and I’ll make you an order for payment in three months’ time.” Titinnius started; he knew that Catalina had mortgaged his property; but the victory in making him accept the high price was worth even more than the actual money, and the man had great power and must not be annoyed beyond a point. “Three months,” repeated Catalina sardonically. Titinnius reflected; the bill would come due before the elections, Catalina would not dare to default.

He clapped his hands. “A tablet. Didn’t you hear?” he shouted angrily at the nearest assistant.

5

The girls were sitting, wreathed with flowers and leaves, at the farther end of the Atrium, playing games and singing; one of them plucked at a lute; others were tossing for nuts; on a round table stood some poppyseed-cakes and watered wine. Orestilla was sitting with them, listening with an amused smile to their chatter. She rose at Catalina’s entry, and with a fleeting gesture of salutation preceded him swiftly into the private room at the side. The girls hushed as he passed, and then withdrew with backward glances at his followers through their dropping wreaths and untidied hair.

Catalina held the ring in the palm of his hand. He felt slightly foolish. Would Orestilla really expect him to remember such frivolous exchanges? He suddenly feared that she would think he was trying to bind her with gifts. He overcame these doubts and held out the ring to her.

She uttered a little cry of pleasure that stabbed him to the heart with remorse. It was not right that her happiness should be so dependent on his random acts; he had not thought to find her so delighted; he was ashamed, like a man publicly congratulated for another man’s deed. It had only been a chance-impulse, a wish to keep alive old customs, not a way of honouring their love. Their marriage needed no such weak memorials.

Orestilla raised her glowing face; she pouted for a kiss like a child. He was embarrassed, but kissed her, and hastened on to tell her of his interview with Cæsar. She nursed the ring in her hand, waiting for him to finish, so that she could thank him; and he felt that he must talk on and on, to prevent her ever speaking those thanks.

She took his hand and made him push the ring down over her finger. He stopped his outpouring of words and looked at her tenderly. Something of what he had felt on the night of the dinner returned to him, but like an echo, hollow and smudged; he forced it easily out of mind. Holding her lax hand, he resumed his narrative.

6

The district-associations had a religious origin. Where properties impinged, it was usual for shrines to the Lares Compitales, the spirits of the meeting-place, to be set up; and since these shrines formed a common ground of association for the families of the adjoining properties who shared the worship, they became social centres of religion and festivity. More, since the slaves partook in the rites as members of the families, the Lares Compitales became particularly the protecting deities of the slaves and freed-men, and in the city the Compitalicia or district-associations had drifted into proletarian bodies, taking over the power once owned by the noble brotherhoods of the Clans. They still kept ostensibly their religious basis, and this was expressed by the dinners and jollifications held throughout the year according to the extent of subscriptions; there were officials who attended to the meetings, the necessary ritual and catering; and these officials proved handy to the politicians as the representatives of the city-workers. Bribery could be paid or influence brought to bear through them with a minimum of trouble, and the bosses of the street-clubs were growing in political importance.

Of late years, with the advent of the revolutionary party, the Senate would have liked to suppress these associations as well as the trade-guilds which also had a religious sanctification; but though many efforts had been made to curtail the activity of the bosses, the religious core of the societies had saved them from abolition.

Nacca, the boss of the district in the north-eastern corner of the Argiletum behind the Forum, was a good specimen: florid, plump, bustling, talkative, a noisy bargainer and proletarian patriot; no one had ever seen him more than a little drunk, and no one had ever seen him sober. He was a widower. The initiates said that some boozers were man-made boozers but others were born boozers and that was Nacca’s kind; that his mother took after him, and that he had tippled at the nipple. Among his roll call there was an unusually large number of sturdy fellows well-schooled in the sense of their wrongs and reliable in a brawl. Nacca was devoted to Catalina, and had supplied him with a contribution of capable shouters and rioters many times during the last year.

Cæsar and Catalina had completed their plans. All the district-associations were to be roused into pulsating energy; demonstrations were to be made where possible; picked men were to canvass the shopkeepers, frightening and cajoling; others were to speak in the taverns, brothels, baths, barber-shops, everywhere that their words might have effect and gain another voter; messengers were sent to rouse the neighbouring townships.

Cæsar was beloved of the people only less than Catalina, and could have stirred the patriot-bosses himself, but with Catalina’s aid he was doubly sure of an enthusiastic response. Catalina also had the advantage of having collected round him an extensive band of upper-class youths whom eagerness for adventure and revolt against the parental world of injustice had made zealously his; Cethegus and Cassius had a group of shady fellows who knew all the back-lanes of the miry political quarters; and all this organisation Catalina put at Cæsar’s disposal. His lads were scattered about Rome to see that orders were carried out.

To Nacca’s meeting-house went Publius Clodius, a youth of the Claudian family. No family had a more magnificent name, but the Claudians had fallen on difficult days. Clodius had first scrambled for a living by enlistment under relatives-by-marriage in the East. There he had early found his talent for rousing disaffection; he had embroiled himself with his brother-in-law, Lucullus, changed over to another brother-in-law, Marcius Rex, in Syria, been given charge of a naval detachment, and been captured by pirates. Then he had tried to organise a race-fight at Antioch, and had been ejected. Back at Rome, he had seen his family-name to be most likely of use among the conservatives, and made an effort for fame in the courts by taking over the first impeachment of Catalina; but finding his sympathies to lie more with the accused, he had done his best to mismanage the case and gain an acquittal. Since then he had hung about the popular party, never quite finding an outlet for his abundant energies. Attracted by Catalina, he found himself also shadowed by his greater passion, and had taken to spending his time drinking and wenching in the lower quarters.

Nacca, seated in an armchair, slapped his thigh to express his pleasure at the appearance of Clodius. Over a flask of wine Clodius detailed his instructions. As Nacca’s men were the most effectively riotous, a contingent was to assemble outside the Senate House at the session scheduled for the fifth, and add the accompaniment of howls and skirmishes to the debate.

“That will depress Cicero and Catulus from thinking too hard about dirty tricks to spoil the elections.”

“The men will make enough noise to wake Romulus out of his black tomb,” Nacca promised.

“But no fighting, except where necessary for defence.”

“That’s understood. Did you ever hear of a fight that wasn’t solely for the purpose of defence? The man that hits first hits to escape being hit, and the other fellow hits because he’s been hit, and so everyone’s satisfied. I’ll make a special note. Only fighting where necessary.”

Nacca had risen and joined Clodius at the long table that ran down the middle of the hall, flanked with benches. A heavy-timbered roof was dark with the smoke of rush-lights and draped with cobwebs; and dribbled oil had streaked the once whitewashed walls. A daily sprinkling from a skin waterbag and a vigorous sweeping with a reed broom cleansed the floors but left a seam of dirt along the walls a few inches up. At the back was a scullery and cook-house with two bunks where the slave-attendants slept; facing the main door was a shrine that held the statues of two youths holding drinking-horns and festooned with spring-flowers; a side-door led to the small house of Nacca, the curator.

This door opened, and a young girl of about thirteen entered. She was bonily built but had a rosily smooth complexion, hair of pale yellow, and lips parted with a faintly mischievous appeal as if she had just done something forbidden and begged not to be given away. She was Nacca’s daughter, Flaviola, “the pupil of his eye or little sparrow,” as he called her. She had met Clodius before, and leaned without shyness against her father, laying her head back on his shoulder.

“She’s growing up fast,” said Clodius. “Why, her bones are getting too big for her body.”

“They’re not,” said the girl apprehensively. She blushed. “You horrid thing. I’ll eat all the time to catch them up, even it makes me as fat as an apple.”

Clodius shook his finger at her and turned to Nacca. “You’ll be marrying her off soon, I suppose?”

“Not for a year or so yet. That is, if I ever do. But I’ll have to find somebody good enough first.” He addressed the girl. “You’re not a little sucking-pig to be led off to market with a ring in your nose, are you?” He took her nose between his two fingers and pretended to twist it off. “Do you want to leave your old father, eh, and set up home with some hulking young fellow who’ll give you no peace?”

“I wouldn’t ever leave you, father,” she said, “not for ten husbands.” She clasped him round the neck, but over his shoulder she stared at Clodius with her parted lips and gleaming eyes, and he could not tell if she were smiling at him or at her father or at nothing but the reflection of herself in his eyes.

“Some more wine,” he asked, clinking the empty flask.

Nacca disengaged Flaviola’s arms. “Go and sweep the stairs and make the beds and cook the lentils and dust the tables and grind the knives and set out the dishes.”

“But I’ve done all that.”

“You’re far too keen on work, my darling. Someday you’ll show as much interest in dodging it. You’re always bothering me for something to do. I’ll buy you a sack of peas and make you count them.”

“I can read now,” said the girl to Clodius.

“And what can you read?”

“Anything. All those things written on the walls.”

Nacca spoke proudly. “She wheedled old Dionysius, the copyist, to teach her the letters. Much good may they do her.”

“Well, if those scribblings are her books,” said Clodius, looking at the defaced walls, “I’m afraid she’ll spell nothing but fornication and politics.”

“What else is there in life?” remonstrated Nacca. “Read us out something.”

The girl ran up to the wall and moved her finger along a line. “Vote for Scaurus Good Man and True.” She looked back for applause. Then she picked out another line haltingly. “Vote for Plautius and See Fine Shows.” Then she read a third epigraph. “Mallia’s a filthy trollop, next time I catch her I’ll give her a wallop.” She read this out with a further line of gutter-threats, as gravely and academically as the others.

Some men came in, and the talk turned to politics. Clodius drank again and again, and the wine rose to his head. When he grew drunk, he felt an utter loathing for the state into which Rome had sunk, and he wished only to rouse others to tear down and ravage. He wanted flames and a great wind and himself in the midst of it all. This side of him reached out to the similar side of Catalina, and for that reason the two men were fascinated by each other, but distrustfully, fearfully.

“How much longer are you going to stand it?” he demanded, glaring round. “Don’t you ever have any thoughts beyond your miserable tread-wheel? By Hercules, haven’t you ever dreamed of the gorgeous foods that there are in the world, foods that you’ll never taste—and the milky women who’ll never stab you with their costly teats? Why don’t you drown yourselves or break into the houses where you hear the tinklings of the dances that you’ll never be asked to join?”

The men looked furtively round, licked their lips, scratched themselves, eager and afraid at such talk; but one large impassive fellow answered. “I’d as soon be drunk on fennel-wine as Falernian, and there’s a girl in the lupanar round the corner that knows her trade as well as the best-born lady of them all.”

“So you’re satisfied to sweat all your life while others steal the earth?”

“I didn’t say that. You won’t find me backward when the time comes. But that’s because I like a good fight.”

Another man spoke. “Catalina will change things. He’s going to see that everyone gets a fair deal. We don’t ask more than that.”

The others nodded, and the man went on. “Everyone can’t be rich, but everyone can have a fair deal. That’s what we want. Catalina is going to see about it.”

Clodius spread out his hands. “You’re fools, I tell you. How do you think you’re going to get a fair deal while there’s a mob of usurers running the world and stealing everything that’s worth having?”

“I don’t know,” said the man doggedly. “But we leave that to Catalina. He’s going to get everyone a fair deal.”

Clodius sat back moodily. The others forgot him, and the talk drifted into a discussion of horse-racing and gladiators. The men quoted the names of winners for years back, and noisily argued on behalf of their favourites. Flaviola had sunk back against the wall listening to Clodius with open mouth and bright eyes. Looking up, he noted her and smiled. She darted through the door, out of the room.

7

Cæsar’s candidature threw Servilia’s salon into commotion. The question was thrashed out at great length, and most of the theorists decided that it was a foolish manoeuvre and that the moment was not ripe. Servilia, was sister of the noble Drusus who had been murdered by the conservatives for championing the cause of the Italian franchise, and half-sister of Cato the reactionary. She had first been married to a popular leader Brutus, who had been put to death by Pompeius acting for the Senate. She was now married to Iunius Silanus who, though less of a rebel than Brutus, inclined to an aristocratic compromise; he was ready like many of his class to favour the workers and farmers against the business-class, if only a proper respect was shown for his standing and intentions, and if he was allowed his own leisurely and magnanimous pace.

Servilia’s reception-room was a large room opening out on to a garden, lined with stone from the Alban Hills and furnished elegantly without the mass of antiques, often fraudulent imitations, which the newly-rich liked to pile about their houses. A mosaic of geometrical pattern covered the floor, except where the Veronese woollen carpets were laid. Servilia patronised home-industries, and the couches, tables and chairs were made by joiners at Puteoli out of wood cut on the Ligurian Alps and shipped from Genua. She liked to point out how beautifully veined the wood was, equal to cedar for cabinet-work. Why ransack the forests of Lebanon or Atlas? Fruits were served in the wooden bowls from Nuceria, and she had found an Etruscan pottery that sent her specially designed plates, bowls, and cups.

The room was filled with earnest talkers conversing the subject of Cæsar’s candidature from every abstract angle, bewailing or enjoying the lapse of religion. A pale young man with rouged cheeks, Curio, was walking about, spoiling the serious talk with flippant interjections. He was now ironically praising Cato, to Servilia’s smiling annoyance, for she disliked irony.

Curio, who had once been under Cicero’s tutorship, went on, “I’m serious. I look on Cato as the sole stylist of this disgracefully slipshod era of ours. Cicero’s rhetoric is only too—too representative, I fear. Those insidious perorations. Those trumpets of triteness. He positively stirs the blood like a fat woman turning naked somersaults.”

As Cæsar entered the room, the talk died abruptly away. He was aware what the lull confessed, but showed no signs of his knowledge and smilingly greeted the various drawing-room-politicians. He knew that they suspected him of impure motives, and was content to retort with considering them fatuous well-intentioned talkers who would rally to the conservatives at the first real threat of revolutionary action. But it suited him to use the salon as a screen for his work among the people; he could always retreat to it and appeal to the connection as a proof that his work was nothing but the expression of a mild liberalism. He had as yet no real power, and knew it; he did not mean to destroy himself by delusions on that score. Let the authorities rate him as a libertine dabbler in culture and politics whose occasional acts of outright demagogy were merely the result of a foolhardy lack of wits, not part of design.

He moved nearer to Servilia. She lowered her lids faintly at the assured salutation, and he joined in the discussion, edging so as to separate her from the others. Silanus had tactfully introduced a new theme, and the company seized on it to cover their guilty consciences. What was the proper international attitude to take to Iudæa? Which of the two prince-brothers should be supported, and how far would Rome be justified in interference?

The speakers became eloquent and heated. The exact wording and interpretation of the Law of Nations as laid down by the responses of the leading jurisconsults were examined and debated. Cæsar did his part, judiciously analysing the extent to which alliances involved the Roman People and their deputy, the governor or general, in the politics of nations outside the fence of the empire. But all the while his brain was saying: Pompeius is the man on the spot, the man with power; whatever he does will become law in the end; whatever he decides about Iudæa will be the fate of Iudæa.

Cæsar felt despair steal over him as he talked. He was playing a very small role, staking his whole career on an outworn title amid a crowd of talkers and intriguers. Pompeius was deciding the fate of Iudæa, marching on the confines of Parthia, reconstructing the rescued provinces of Asia, haughtily making kings wait in his ante-chamber.

He succeeded at last in detaching Servilia and turned to her as if continuing the last point he had made. “When can I see you alone?”

“Not to-day,” she replied. “Things are too crowded.” She looked lightly round to give the impression to all the curious eyes and ears environing her that she and Cæsar were engaged in an unimportant impersonal discussion. But she knew that no one was deceived, except Silanus, who had cornered a small, nervous man and was now showing him precisely where he was incorrect in all his opinions; and she felt proud of the knowledge in a way. Not that she wanted to flaunt anything; she believed entirely in the proprieties; but her sense of careful management pleased her. The talkers might suspect what they liked, but they would never be able to prove anything.

Cæsar pressed her with gentle insistence, but was hardly interested. Yet she was a fine-looking woman, long-limbed and clear-featured, and shrewd. He had been overjoyed with life on the first day when she had lain beside him; but she meant nothing. What did possess meaning then? His mind darkened, and he felt even smaller than before, utterly dwarfed beside the giant and distant form of Pompeius. Even Cicero, the arch-babbler, seemed a figure of domination beside the master of the salon, the competent adulterer, the cold fermenter of sedition. Above all his mind turned enviously to Catalina. His ambition felt tainted beside the man’s self-dedication.

Yet he talked on warmly and smoothly to Servilia; and she, cool woman of the world, had to use all her control not to flush and betray herself to the busy spies of the salon.

“To-morrow,” she said, and left him.

Cæsar was left with his personal victory, his tiny personal victory; he had forced her to make an assignation. Poor satisfaction in the face of a world of heady and magnificent adventures. Yet skill was needed to win and usurp a woman like Servilia. Perhaps his patience would woo and win the world as thoroughly. Did he love her? He savoured the words and wondered at them. Of course he loved her, as he loved his wife Pompeia; she had pleasurable long limbs and cool, rustling hair.

But there had been something different in the days of his youth when he had defied Sulla for love of Cornelia, daughter of the rebel Cinna, and had been harried on the hills by a band of soldiers instructed to murder him at sight. Cornelia had been thinner, though her hair was golden and she lisped; and when she bade him put his hand under her shapely left breast and listen to the heart that beat so loudly for love of him, he had felt something that no Servilia could arouse. But Cornelia was dead, and he was a politician. Perhaps he was grown cold, perhaps he was more sane. Was he able to will more nowadays, or less? That was all that mattered. Doubtless he would have tired of Cornelia’s lisp, for which he had been ready to die; and she would have been double-chinned by now. There was greater safety in the cool rustling hair that hid his face against Servilia’s, and in arguments on politics while she drew on her shift that fell halfway down her heavy, graceful thighs.

“Where on earth can I find a drink in this over-well-run establishment?” said Curio, approaching to ask him the question pointedly as if complaining to the host.

Cæsar talked to the lad, who amused him and who had much of intelligent comment to make on art-matters despite his affectations. But he was thinking: Why did Catalina remind him of Cornelia? Cornelia had cared for nothing but him. She had tied her long hair of plaited gold round her throat and asked him to strangle her with it if her death would help him. Trust and love the people. Yes, but how, Catalina?

8

Cicero was not feeling satisfied with things. Ever since he had accosted Catalina in the street he had been disturbed. The first two months of his consulship had been so successful; his fear that he was being sucked under by the conservatives had been overcome by the certainty that he was acting brilliantly; he had convinced himself that he was playing a lone hand against all extremists, following no dictation save that of the inner voice. When he told the assembly that he meant to show himself a Popular Consul in the broadest, best, and least schismatic sense of the term, he had been altogether sincere. The gibes of the tribunes, their refusal to take him into their confidence, had given him a good conscience in stamping out the proposals of Rullus. The impeachment of Rabirius he had at once seen as a mere act of provocation, a disgraceful and unnecessary bit of seditious demagogy; he had opposed with a fury that confirmed his emotion of power and worth. At last he was acting the part of his dreams. The nobility might be trained to lead an army; it took the novice Cicero, with his nice perceptions, to become a leader who could unravel the difficult social threads of the age and give the sign-word to all citizens of good will.

The proposal to enfranchise the sons of those whom Sulla had proscribed had not been so obviously prejudicial to law and order; but he soon worked himself up to feeling that even if the proposal itself were innocuous, it was put forward by the radicals only to curry favour and cause disaffection. He, therefore, opposed it on the plea that Sulla’s arrangements were now the keystone of the state and that an apparent minor injustice must be tolerated in the name of social coherence. He deafened himself to the reply that almost everything central to Sulla’s system had long been removed and that there was thus little point in clinging to an inessential piece of injustice; for the proposal was vitiated by the men who were pressing it. Then Catalina had appeared once more.

The man’s saturnine face had spoiled Cicero’s dream. But why? Cicero asked himself. It should have made him all the more certain that he was pursuing the right path in opposing these rebel-moves. Gradually his emotions clarified. What he hated in Catalina, he felt, was what he hated in all these arrogant nobles, whatever their side. Domitius, a great cattle-owner, who had only one plan for saving the state—the flogging of all disaffected persons —and Catalina were brothers under their political masks. The saturnine scorn that lowered from Catalina’s face affected Cicero in the same way as the whisperings among the extreme aristocratic party, their tolerant but cold politeness.

For Cicero, despite his efforts to express in action the great aspirations that swelled his spirit so unendurably at times, desired warmth of feeling above all things; and he knew, while hating Catalina for his aloof contemptuousness of manner, that he envied him the tumultuous enthusiasm which he could awaken. Not only the poorer people but the youth of the upper classes, sons of both capitalists and aristocrats, were attracted by the man. That was wrong, vilely wrong. It was to Cicero, the man of good will, that they should be thronging.

He rose. He would call on his friend Atticus. Atticus, though a business-man who had repudiated all efforts to jostle in the honours-scramble, had a flair for guessing the course of events; his simple tastes and good humour marked him, Cicero felt, as a man of absolute humanity whose opinions could not be gainsaid. And Atticus believed in him. Cicero would soon find that a conversation with the man restored his lost sense of values. Then he remembered the cursed lictors; a consul couldn’t go sneaking through the streets. He would have to summon Atticus; but that made the meeting so portentous; there was really nothing he wanted to talk about, he wanted to be reassured.

He looked at the book-rolls stacked on the shelves. He hadn’t touched one of them since he became consul. What a fool he was. Only in books was there peace and satisfaction. He didn’t have a moment to himself now. Why hadn’t he stuck to his career as a lawyer? He must see Atticus. Atticus would make him feel once more that he was doing good work, necessary work, as consul.

He sighed. He didn’t care how much the effort took out of him if he were only sure that he was doing good. He deliberately recalled the face of Catalina. Yes, the man was bent on evil. Who could suppress him but Cicero? The other consul, Gaius Antonius, was a weak venal creature, put up by the other side as an appendage to Catalina; only Cicero’s firm astuteness had made him harmless. There would be much to do if Catalina were to be beaten again at the next elections.

Cicero felt his courage return. How could he be weakening? He had before him a task unique in the annals of Rome. He would set an example of selfless patriotism that would endure for ever. His triumph over sedition would be so glorious, his pointing of the object-lesson, his demonstration of the need for harmony between the moneyed and executive classes for the good of the state, would be so emphatic, that his consulship would remain as a rallying-ground for all future efforts of good will. It would serve as the criterion of civic virtue.

He was so suffused with happiness that he did not notice Terentia enter. Tall, raw-boned, hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, with a lower lip that curled, dropped and rebounded as she talked, she was not easy to ignore.

“I hear that Catalina’s back,” she remarked acidly.

“Yes, yes, my dear,” replied Cicero, startled. “He’s back from Neapolis.”

“I know where he’s been as well as you do,” she snapped.

“Of course you do. I was merely agreeing with what you said.”

“You might be intelligent about it at the same time. I said Catalina was back.”

“Yes, I know he is.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?” She stared at him accusingly.

“You know perfectly well that nothing can be done at the moment. I’m taking my measures.”

“He’ll have us all murdered while you sit there sleeping with your two eyes open, or perhaps I ought to say dreaming. What were you thinking of? Clodia, I suppose, or Mucia—the one’s as bad as the other.”

“I was thinking over my speech for the Senate to-morrow.”

“Then I hope you’ll do something instead of merely talking.”

“I tell you I’m taking my measures.” He spoke louder. Terentia had a violent hatred of Catalina, as befitted a woman who had been dowered with some tenement-properties; but her emotion was accentuated by the fact that Catalina had been accused many years previously of attempting the seduction of her half-sister, Fabia, an hysterical girl who had been enrolled among the Vestal Virgins. The year had been one in which many frightful omens had been reported, rumblings in the earth, fire from the sky, and beasts speaking; men were scared of social upheavals; and the soothsayers were kept at work analysing the meaning of the heavenly warnings. An investigation had been made into the behaviour of the Vestals, for unchastity on the part of these virgins was a state-calamity; and several of the girls, in terror at the penalties for a lapse, had accused some men of ravishing them. Fabia had accused Catalina, then much younger, because he had stopped her litter with some drunken companions and laughed at her. He had been defended by the glibly theatrical orator Hortensius and acquitted; but Terentia had remained convinced of his guilt, and had exerted all her influence to sever Cicero from any relations with Catalina in the elections of the preceding year and to make him join the respectable party.

“What do you mean by taking measures?” asked Terentia, with hands folded over her belly.

Cicero cleared his throat noisily as he did when annoyed. He disliked being rude to Terentia, who was of a far better family than himself and who had brought a convenient dowry; but this cross-examination was too much for the dignity of a Roman consul destined to be a beacon for posterity.

“I let you poke your nose more into public affairs,” he retorted in the loud voice used for addressing the law courts, “than you let me poke mine into the way you run the house. I tell you that I’m taking my measures, and now you can get out and leave me alone. There’s an important meeting of the Senate to-morrow.”

Terentia retired bleakly and silently as she always did when she had goaded him into raising his voice to that pitch. Cicero set feverishly to work. Where were those reports, and the memoranda from the quæstors, and the confidential note from Sestius, and the copies of the decrees that he wanted to verify? He huddled all the papers together on the table, and then smiled to himself. At least he had quickly hedged Terentia off the subject of Clodia and Mucia, not that he visited the women except for purely public reasons. Clodia was married to Metellus Celer, the city prætor, and Mucia, the half-sister of Metellus, was married to Pompeius. They were intelligent or at least distinguished women with whom it was necessary to keep friendly; but he could not deny that it was a pleasant necessity. Clodia was particularly gracious, and her blood was far more noble than that of the bull-roaring Domitius, who had been affected by his cattle-herds into taurine resemblances of neck, brow and voice. What cutting jests could be made of that if only Domitius were on the other side. But women saw deeper than men, sometimes. At all events the Claudian woman had paid him the homage of a lingering smile, and he could offset that against the condescending snubs of her menfolk.

He heard inquiring voices in the reception-room. The consul could not expect to be left alone for long, even when he had made arrangements for a quiet hour. Uttering a sigh of relief, he once more shuffled the papers with a professional air of rapid rearrangement and perusal, and settled down to be surprised by the new-arrivals in a posture of deep study. For he was indeed studying the general welfare, and did not wish to do himself an injustice.

9

The senators for the most part looked very pleased with themselves as they entered the Curia, talking at ease and filing along the tiered stone benches until they found their usual places. February was the month set apart for the reception of embassies and delegations from the provinces or allied kingdoms; and there was always a good outlay of money made by the petitioners. Otherwise they soon discovered that their case was going to be crowded out by the amount of business before the House or that, if it ever came up for consideration, it was treated roughly as a lesson to ill-mannered outsiders who didn’t know that a senator’s time was money and should be reckoned as such.

The weather still had a nip in it, and the senators stood about in their purple-edged gowns, with leathern thongs wound round their legs, swinging their arms or stamping their red-shod and crescent-buckled feet as they talked. All except a few obstinate sticklers for a hardy living were accompanied by slaves who laid skins or rugs on the seats and who were told to sit there and remove the first chills of the stone beneath. The senators discoursed about their plans for outbuilding their neighbours, stocking a new pond, or clamping a new portico with Corinthian columns of marble on a red-tiled stuccoed house; or they complained that their wives were ruining them, and rattled off a list of the last purchases in jewels and rare perfumes; or they boasted about the height, width, and number of rooms, statues, paintings, and heating-pipes in their villas; or they compared notes about the rumours from the provinces and the effect on the money-rates. Reports from the East were daily more encouraging; Pompeius had cleared away for ever the likelihood of another rebellion in Asia; and the senators discussed with awe the terrible moment more than a decade ago when the irruption of Mithridates had reduced the stock-values of the rich Asian Company to zero. That disaster would never be repeated now; the state was in for an era of unparalleled prosperity; nothing was required except a strong hand with this set of bankrupt politicians who wouldn’t do the decent thing and obliterate themselves with the other misfits.

Cato, strongly-built, fair-haired and sour-faced, entered without a glance to right or left, and, taking his seat without any rug or cushion, continued working through some statistical memoranda. The other diehards appeared and sat near him. Domitius, red-faced and red-haired. Lucullus, the great general, already showing signs of bloated high-living on his handsome heavy face. Bibulous, lean, with a twitch in his face when he grew excited. Favonius, dressed severely like Cato, constraining his features into the same scowl of independence, but looking round to see that he was observed and then scowling more cantankerously.

Crassus, round-faced with bags under his eyes, came in hurriedly, and bustled to his seat, nodding with anxious affability to the many gratulations; he was at once joined by others, men of his own millionaire class with a sprinkling of flatterers who owed him money. Then the house quickly filled. The two aristocratic candidates for the priesthood appeared: Catulus grey-haired and sharp-eyed, and Servilius who had subdued the Isaurian freebooters. Then Hortensius, genial and stately, and the elder Curio, men who thought only of the main chance and the support of their class, but otherwise cultured and ready enough to pander to the people paternally. Cæsar entered quietly and sat on the bench behind Crassus within speaking distance; Catalina, unnoticed in the press, had taken his place nearer the door, joined by a few adherents.

Now came Metellus Celer and other magistrates with their attendants, among them Lentulus strolling with an air of dosing disdain for the world; then five of the tribunes who, without any insignia, were sacrosanct by the oath of the plebs to avenge any harm or insult done to them, whereas the other magistracies, still by a legal fiction considered patrician though open to the plebs, were sacrosanct by their augural powers, their mystical assumption of the continuity of the race. Labienus was there, carefully barbered and brisk as ever. Then came Cicero, erect, preceded by crier and twelve lictors.

The attendants had fixed the chairs of their masters on the dais facing the door, the consul’s higher than the others, since he was presiding magistrate. Consul and prætor and aedile had folding backless chairs with curving legs of carved ivory, the seats of leather with a fringe of gold; quæstors had a chair with four straight legs; the tribunes had a bench. When the sacrifices had been made at the altar before the dais, the entrails were inspected and the proceedings declared augurally valid.

Cicero rose to open the business of the House. The Senate though it had grasped the main power of the state during the period of expansion, was in fact a body without legislative power of any kind; it was merely a consultative body summoned by one of the higher magistrates and empowered by him to express opinions on the subject which he propounded. But since it was the sole permanent organisation in the state, it had gained power of the purse and had intruded its fingers into almost every sphere of government, particularly that of provincial appointments and arrangements, the most lucrative of all. More, though each senator was asked to give his opinion on a specific subject, he could go on to talk about anything he liked, and nothing short of bodily removal could make him stop talking if he wished to go on.

The business before the House to-day was of no importance. None of the senators listened attentively as Cicero detailed the conditions of the Province of Further Gaul and the signs of unrest among the Allobroges. None except Cato, and Favonius, who zealously took notes in abbreviated long-hand.

The debate dragged on. All were waiting for the introduction of the theme uppermost in their minds, the election of the primate. A motion was proposed and carried without a division. Then Cicero raised the question of the form of the elections. What did the House think of the late rejection of Sulla’s settlement of the matter? Torquatus, a consular, was the man to whom Cicero directed the first request for advice in the set form:

“Speak, Lucius Manlius.”

Torquatus at once proposed that Sulla’s method of nomination should be reintroduced as the sole authentic method, consecrated by immemorial custom. Any other method amounted to blasphemy.

This was the signal for an outbreak of violent oratory from the group round Cato. All the senators knew that the motion was doomed, that Labienus would rise and veto it as soon as it should be put formally by the consul, but they enjoyed the uncompromising speeches of the diehards, they panted and cheered, feeling that they were driving Cæsar into a corner and routing his chances.

Cæsar had leaned forward to chat with Crassus. At that moment the crowd which had gathered outside the Curia began to cry out. “Vote for Cæsar. We want Cæsar.” There was skirmish with attendants and some conservative supporters who were waiting for their friends in the porch; groans and screams were heard.

“I move,” said Cato, rising out of turn in the middle of a speech by Domitius and disregarding the motion of Torquatus before the House, “that the man who has brought along this pack of hooligans be sent outside to quiet them.”

All eyes turned to Cæsar, who took no notice. Finishing his remarks to Crassus, he sat back and looked attentively at Cicero, who ignored Cato’s invalid motion. When Domitius sat down, glaring round and mopping his brow with the corner of his toga, Cato’s turn came. He rose and fulminated against the demagogues who tried to intimidate the sittings of the Senate. He demanded that such members should be expelled with every possible mark of ignominy. Cæsar sat nonchalantly listening, drawing his fashionable loose-girt toga about him. Cato had no power to carry such a motion; a tribune would instantly veto it; only a censor could deal so high-handedly with the status of citizens.

The shouts increased. The more timid senators were already whispering together and exchanging glances; their glee had ceased and they wanted the session to end. The oratory which had sounded so threatening seemed the expression of impotence when countered by the howls from outside. But Cato enjoyed the situation; he hoped that the mob would burst in and murder him while he was raising his voice against iniquity; with his dying breath he would shame them. Cicero sat stolidly presidential. He too was tired and bored. He had no fears of the mob’s fury, but he hated to hear them crying for Cæsar and Catalina. He felt that he was being cheated, that the lungs which should be extolling his name were poisoned by the names of his enemies; he was saviour of the state, and no one knew it, least of all the contumelious group about Cato who loathed him in a way even more than Cæsar and Catalina. For the latter were aristocrats, even if their fellows called them renegades; they had prouder blood than most of their critics. But Cicero the conservatives disliked as an upstart, an intruder. They would be pleased to slay Catalina, but they would involuntarily admire him, even love him, as he died. Cicero they would laugh at behind his back, living or dead. That was insufferable, and yet he would do his duty.

At last Cato finished, and Cicero hurried through the other names. The senators were mostly content with a mere sign of assent; Catalina and Cæsar spoke only a careless negation. Then Cicero put the motion of Torquatus; it was carried by a large majority. At once Labienus rose and vetoed it; three other tribunes did the same, to give the veto greater moral weight, for one voice was sufficient to destroy the motion’s legality. The motion was now a mere Authority of the Senate, no Decree: inscribed on the records, but with no binding force.

As the senators passed out of the building, they were greeted by howls and hoots from the crowd. A huge roar declared the exit of Catalina; and the remaining senators blenched and gathered for protection in a huddled mass, waiting for the lictors of the consul and praetors to clear a way. As Cæsar was moving along his tier, he found that Catulus was leaning towards him. Politely, as to an older man, Cæsar inclined his head.

“I heard a rumour that you were thinking of standing for the position of chief priest,” said Catulus in his contemptuous suave voice. Cæsar inclined his head again.

“Don’t bother, my good young man,” went on Catulus. “Why didn’t you tell me before that your debts were driving you out of your wits? If you come round to see me, I will give you a blank bill of endorsement to clear you.”

Cæsar was not prepared for this frankly insolent offer of bribery, which had been made loud enough for those around to hear. He paled, his eyes flashed, and he looked Catulus full in the face.

“Listen,” he said, and pointed towards the door. The voices were still clamouring. “When your money can buy that, Catulus,” he continued, “I shall be ready to consider your offer.”

He walked out. The crowd hailed him tumultuously. He raised his arm and then with a smile passed through the opening ranks, followed by a guard of friends.

Catulus wryly watched him go. Then he stroked his face. “It’s a pity,” he said. “Once I thought that young man had something in him. His brain is going. He seemed to imagine it was himself and not the shows he gave that the mob applauded.”

10

Cicero had approached Domitius, who, seeing him come, turned rudely to address Bibulus. Cicero did not know whether to retreat or to go on advancing. He had nothing to say to Domitius, and now he felt that he had only approached in order to be snubbed. Why did he tolerate this behaviour? But his movements would have been observed, and it would never do to have people saying that he had been rebuffed. He continued his progress and stood beside Domitius.

“O yes,” said Domitius, looking up. “Things might have gone better.” He returned to his conversation; then looking up once more at Cicero, he remarked, “There ought to be soldiers to chase that mob away.”

“And on whose warrant would you introduce them?” asked Cicero coldly.

“What’s the use of arguing about law when you’re dealing with a lawless mob?”

Cicero felt the rancour of the populace swell in his breast. How dare this protruding-eyed, overfed creature talk like this? The men outside were Roman citizens, even if erring ones; legally they had as much right to their existence as any other citizen rich or nobly-born; he would never be a party to military oppression.

“Since you are so ready to suggest personal initiative in the matter,” he said, “why don’t you produce a herd of your bulls from Appulia, and send them in to clear the Forum?”

“Good idea,” said Domitius shortly, glancing at him and then returning to Bibulus, who sniffed. Cicero controlled his tongue; he was never at a loss for sarcasms, but he felt his resentment overpowering him; he must bide his time, he would have all these men kneeling to him yet. That would be a better solace than the choicest of barbed witticisms. With a curt farewell he signed to the head-lictor, and, at the head of a chattering group of senators, passed out through the door of the Curia and descended the outer steps.

The burst of shouts and catcalls did not make him feel any more charitably-minded.

11

Catulus had hit hard. Cæsar knew that his debts had grown overwhelming, chiefly through expenditure on shows, and he guessed that his creditors had been given the word to press for full settlement. He would be adjudged bankrupt and forced out of the country; nothing could save him but success in the elections. For the usurers would wait then; they would know that he was sure of further advancement, and they would not be able to resist his request for increased loans to meet the interest. Greed would beat their wish to ruin him, since each man would fear that another would make the loan if he refused; they knew one another.

He made one more effort and raised what he could. Crassus handed over some thousands, but with a covert unwillingness; he was growing frightened, but did not like yet to abandon Cæsar altogether. Cæsar saw that if he failed, Crassus would turn on him, if not openly, at least to the extent of countenancing the foreclosures. The financiers would not attack a man whom Crassus protected, but the protection could be withdrawn by nothing more than the lifting of an eyebrow.

And the insult from Catulus rankled deeply. If Cæsar had been determined before, he was now possessed. Catalina had laid at his disposal all connections and emissaries, and was pleased at the chance of testing out these communications. Cæsar watched intently. Messengers were riding on all sides, and, daring the law that forbade assemblies save under presidency of a magistrate, men addressed crowds at the street corners. All Catalina’s lieutenants were hurrying about, pulling what strings they could. The salons were drowned in talk.

Cassius went round grumbling shrilly, asking his colleagues what had happened on the night of the dinner party. “I know Chelidon was unfaithful with someone. Tell me who it was. I don’t want revenge or anything dull like that. I want to apologise to him.”

Everyone disclaimed any knowledge. “That’s right,” he said. “Stick together. I don’t expect anyone to admit such a thing. The woman has more bones than she knows what to do with.”

He was complaining to Cethegus, who listened with a sly grin. “You drink too much,” said Cethegus. “A woman expects a man to be something more than a cask for making vinegar out of good wine.”

They entered the house of Sempronia, wife of Decemus Brutus who was abroad. She was an accomplished reckless woman who was badly in debt; she sided with the rebels because she wished to escape her creditors and was ready for any thrill, but her support was of value as she had influence with a number of senators and their wives.

She was sitting before the loom in the Atrium, busily weaving. The clay-weights clattered; the crossbeams groaned and rattled; and the weft moved across the warp as she shifted the wooden comb. No one would have guessed that till this morning the looms had not been used for years. She was dressed in a long voluminous stola, her brown tresses plainly filleted. Her face was strong and freshly-complexioned, with high cheekbones, large steady eyes, small nose and straight swelling mouth.

Cethegus stared. Last time he had seen her she had been dancing with a scarlet spangled scarf round her loins; she was a woman of strange whims. She received the two men with solemn courtesy and led them into a sideroom, bidding the girls stop the weaving while the visitors remained, as the noise was disturbing. The girls, who had hurt their hands at the unusual work, quickly desisted and sat complaining about their stiff backs.

Cethegus explained the reason of his visit, and Sempronia in a few simple words promised to do her best. She sat up straight in her chair, acting the part of a grave matron. She offered no wine, as if she were living hundreds of years back when the husbands kept the keys of the wine-store and beat almost to death the wife whose breath smelt vinously. Though both the men knew her well, they did not feel able to laugh at her pretence, so thoroughly she carried it through. Cassius made a few jokes, which fell entirely flat; she turned an uncomprehending face to him and continued discussing the political situation.

The men rose. She lifted the curtain and let Cassius into the passage first; then as Cethegus approached, she dropped the curtain, clasped him in her arms, and kissed him savagely. Her body shook, seemed to be collapsing tremulously, opening and enclosing him. Then she let him go, lifted the curtain again, and pushed him through the doorway.

Unprepared, he had been too dazed to resist. Following the visitors into the hall, Sempronia was once more the low-voiced matron. She reprimanded one of the girls for tittering. She stood modestly straight-backed, the stola falling in chaste folds over her feet; there was no flush on her cheeks, no remembrance in her eyes.

Cethegus felt himself heated and flustered. He stammered, objecting strongly to this game of hers. Never had he felt so foolish and ill at ease. Damn the woman.

When the men had gone, Sempronia resumed her seat on the stool before the loom and continued weaving. The looms rang and clattered; the leash-rods ran across the stirring warp; and the pattern grew more distinct. She was the wife of a Roman in the days of Coriolanus, waiting to receive home her warrior-spouse and training her sons to be impassively courageous.

12

The elections took place on the 15th, the Ides of March. The conservatives, though outraged at Cæsar’s effrontery, did not look on it as politically worse than a bad joke. Both Servilius and Catulus were suitable men, but Catulus was the favourite, exactly the right type; thoroughly experienced and seasoned, he had passed through a long life of public service, never found wanting, rigorously filling the positions to which his name had served as sufficient passport. His word had even produced a proverb: It’s true, Catulus said so. No one could find a single point to blame in his career; he had swerved neither to one side nor the other, seeing his duty to be the maintenance of things as they were, giving his best and taking what he considered his due. He expected other to do their duty likewise—the populace to obey and to labour, and to die if their efforts failed, as he would have died if the enemy had broken the ranks of a legion that he commanded. Who could be a more fitting head of the state-religion?

Against this record what had Cæsar done? Romantically defied Sulla, prosecuted some conservative leaders unsuccessfully, won a civic crown at the siege of Mitylene for saving a soldier’s life, and had a brush with pirates when he was supposed to be studying rhetoric at Rhodes. He had been quæstor and ædile, and had ruined himself by an outrageous bid for popularity while at the office of works; he had read all the Greek books on the art of the theatre and on architecture, and had certainly produced excellent shows, but that was his sole solid achievement. For the rest he had merely made claptrap attempts to impress the populace, regilding and setting up on the Capitol the trophies of Marius, his uncle by marriage, that Sulla had removed; and he had given a speech at the funeral of his aunt in which he claimed to be descended from King Ancus Martius and from Æneas and the goddess Venus. Feeble stuff, feeble trials to sow sedition among the Marian veterans. And he had only kept his head above water by doing all the dirty work of Crassus.

Last year he had made some headway while presiding at the courts and allowing prosecutions of the men who had got blood-money from Sulla. He had argued that the amnesties were set aside by Sulla’s later reformation of the criminal code. He had protected Catalina from the assaults of Cicero and his rich friend Lucceius. But he was too erratic to be a danger; he lacked the set ferocity of Catalina; this time he would find that he had overestimated himself.

On the 15th the city was in a hubbub. The date had been chosen partly because it was the festival of Anna Perenna and most of the poorer classes would want to hasten into the open fields; but the bosses had worked to check the holiday-eagerness and make the voters promise an attendance at the election-booths first. Cato urged Cicero to quash the whole proceedings on the grounds that a law passed by a tribune lacked augural virtue and therefore could not act in the area of religion; but Cicero thought this a risky step in view of the improbability of Cæsar’s success.

Cæsar did not leave home till he was told that the tribes had been selected; he wished to arrive at the right moment to make his appearance most felt. At the door he turned to his mother Aurelia, a tall, austere woman with piercing eyes, long straight nose and small, determined chin.

“Either I shall return chief priest,” he said, “or not at all.”

If he failed, he meant to walk straight out of Rome, leaving orders for the servants to follow with what necessaries they could collect. He would hire a horse at the gates and ride south for Brundusium, exiled. To go at once would be the least humiliation.

Aurelia made no sign. She embraced him calmly and told him that she had made all her arrangements for the removal to the pontiff’s house beside the Regia.

Cæsar was elected by a large majority.

13

Anna Perenna was goddess of the ring of the year, the returning warmth. She held life in her grip. The rhythmic throes of childbirth, the pulsation of the heart, the heaving flanks of marriage, the circling sun and moon, these things could not be escaped, except in the dark stillness of death. They were the ring of encompassing life, marked by the first full moon of the New Year; they were the prison of the body which is the universe, the net of summer and winter cast over the childing earth. On Anna’s day the people knew that it was time to enjoy themselves, for spring was creeping over the earth as a glow tingles over the body of a kissed girl. That was all that you need know of Anna.

Her grove was in the Field of Mars, near the riverside. Some of the feasters lay in the open; others were more ceremonious, and collected leaf and twig to build huts of greenery, and laid their cloaks or shifts over them. That also was an excuse for lying naked within, if excuses were wanted. The huts were the dwellings of rebirth, the awakened spring; and green tunnels purified. The feasters drank from the flagons that they had brought along. Showmen had set up tents; vendors wandered round, talking incessantly with coaxing implacable voices; everything worth buying could be bought if you had a few coppers—wine and honey and bread and glass-necklaces.

Pairing off as part of the ritual required by easy-hearted Anna, the people lay about, drinking, kissing, telling stories and singing songs. Poverty was forgotten, and all the miseries of a hand-to-mouth existence. Man and woman, boy and girl, they all sang obscene songs, and laughed; for Anna demanded the simple facts of life, and what was simpler than an obscene joke, what else made life so tolerable? Anna was a kind goddess, after all, even if the ring of the year revolved remorselessly and sooner or later tightened like a noose round the throat, To-day she demanded no other sacrifices than wine in the belly and a wedding song on the lips.

The couples dug and scrambled in branpies for the little spoons. For every spoon you would live a year. The girls pulled the meadowflowers and wove them into garlands and sang:

O Anna give me as many lovers

as flowers here are bright.

And the boys answered:

I’ll be as many lovers to you,

all in a single night.

Perhaps Anna had asked bloodier things once; there were still sacrifices deeper among the trees; but nowadays all she wanted from the people were a man and a woman sprawled in the grass, trickling wine over their faces and whispering gay remarks about life and death and the main thing that happens between times. Thus the earth was fertilised with the spilth of love and laughter, and the crops would be richer. A tipsy crowd would reel homewards through the dusk.

14

Cæsar was received into the pontifical corporation; the keys of the Regia were his; and he moved into the house at the head of the Sacred Way. He felt that he had gained something concrete; the priestly offices were for life, unlike the magistracies. A first step, to what? He hardly dared to ask.

Under his control were the Flamens and the Vestals. The Flamens were patricians chosen to superintend the worship of twelve ancient deities; the Vestals tended the shrine of Vesta, the goddess who had no image and was flame in its purity, its restorative warmth, its procreative virtue, its redemption from darkness, its necessity to all civilising crafts and economies. Once the king’s sons and daughters had been acolytes of religious service; and to the chief priest, as substitute for the king, belonged control of these substitutes for the royal household.

Cæsar entered the Regia. He stood in meditation before the shrines. The shrine to Mars in which the sacred spears were kept and beside which grew two myrtle trees. The shrine of Iuppiter, the sky-father. The shrine of Ianus, god of the infinite duality of life that expressed itself in the nature of doors, the coming and the going of men, birth and death, orgasm and completion, the isolated seed that suddenly stirred as part of fecund earth, the dome of the sky, the pelvic arch, the moment of war and peace. The shrine of Ops, mother of plenty, in which stood a brazen bowl and an ivory-hafted knife.

Cæsar inspected the offices, and gave his first orders. Then he walked to the round shaped chapel of Vesta close by with its pillars and flat conical top. The Vestals, clad in white gowns, bands across their heads with falling fillets, stood respectfully in the front room to welcome him. Cæsar passed over the threshold where no man except the chief priest might pass; he entered the chapel of female life, the goddess without shape or dimension; and the eldest Vestal, the abbess, spoke the words of submission and praise. Cæsar bade the Vestals obey the abbess and tend the flame. He looked with interest at the girls. The abbess was a stout woman in the forties; most of the Vestals were plain, of uncertain age; but two were beautiful, one fragilely exquisite, the other robustly and dewily youthful. How could this last girl bear the life?

He spoke sternly. If a Vestal let out the eternal fire, the law bade her be stripped and scourged by him in the dark, with a screen between. Thereafter he rekindled the flame by rubbing two pieces of wood together. If a Vestal were unchaste, the law bade her be stripped, scourged, dressed as a corpse, placed in a closed bier, and carried out amid wailings to the Infamous Field outside the Colline Gate. There he, praying under his breath, opened the bier, drew out the girl, and set her on the steps of the ladder leading down into the tomb where had been laid a couch, a lamp, and a table with a little food. Then the common hangman thrust her down and drew up the ladder, and the earth was stamped over the opening.

Cæsar caught the girl with the warm melting eyes and the wetly red lips staring at him. She seemed to be mocking, asking him if he would take her at the price of having to condemn her to such a cruel end. He subdued himself and looked at her serenely. In the Vestals was contained the mother-energy of earth, their chastity kept it untouched. They were not meant to be coldly chaste; in their bodies should burn all the fires of mating earth and sky, all the mad fermentations of harvest and marriage-nights; and they should hold the richness fast. They were the jars in which the grape-juices of the seasons became wine. Woe unto him that cracked the jars. They were the power of safety threading the wild outbreaks of life, the will that comprehended energy, sanctified it, gave it direction and continuity. Rightly did this girl bloom with flames of sweetness.

He looked at her serenely.

Then he dismissed the Vestals to their dormitory-cells, and after a few words with the abbess passed through into the innermost shrine, the holiest spot in Rome, the centre of Roman virtue. No one save the Vestals and the Chief Priest, their spiritual Father, might enter here. Here, seat of the goddess who had no image, was kept the blood of the October Horse and the ashes of the unborn calves burned with the womb of the mother-cow at the Festival of Pregnancy. The blood of the harvest-horse was mingled with the cakes of spelt and salt that the Vestals pounded and baked in the spring, to bind the past and present seasons, to preserve intact the mystery of impregnation and germination, and to save the world from the curse of barrenness, the curse that all effort and forethought essayed to avert.

But Cæsar was thinking of only one thing. Here in the store-cupboard of the state’s fertility, of the blessed food that gave the corporate body its yearly renewal, there was placed the Fated Pledges of Empire, the holy relics that established the permanency of Roman power. No one knew what those relics were. Antiquarians said that they included the image of Pallas which had saved Troy till stolen away; others said that they were the Samothracian Gods of Dardanus brought from Troy by the driven Æneas.

Cæsar was entirely sceptical about such stories, but he reverenced the relics that were consecrated with the faith of Romans in the destiny of Rome. That was the only truth. He looked at the receptacle of fate. It was nothing but a small earthen jar closely sealed; beside it stood another exactly similar but empty. Without curiosity as to the contents, he took up the sealed jar between his two hands and weighed it gently. If he should slip and fall now, the sign of empire would be broken in his fall. He held the jar aloft and pressed it against his brow. Between his two hands he held the Fated Pledge of Empire. All his past life had prepared for this moment; all his future life must remember this moment.

Reverently he replaced the earthen jar.

15

On the 17th Catalina set out for Etruria. He had sent his baggage ahead and was riding on horseback; for though the traffic problem of Rome was fast becoming worse, there was as yet no wholesale prohibition of vehicles and horses. It was the day of the Liberalia, when boys were admitted to the plain toga of manhood. Old women, crowned with ivy, were sitting at the street corners selling cakes of oil and honey to the passers. Each vendor had a small portable altar to which she made a tiny offering and prayer for each buyer.

Catalina stopped. He did not want the cake, but could not bear to pass these tokens of a plentiful year.

“Eat to-day and eat all the year,” quavered the old woman. “Honey for the sweets of life, and oil for the vigour that keeps your wife smiling on you. A year of honey and oil if you buy them to-day.”

Holding the horse’s bridle, Catalina bought a cake. The old woman viewed him kindly, and then recognised him.

“And a year of great things for you, master Catalina. When the people cry loud enough, the gods hear. Or perhaps it’s enough as long as you hear them.”

Noting some hungry-eyed children, Catalina dropped a handful of coins on the tray and bade her feed them. He rode off with the old woman’s blessings and the shouts of the children in his ears. How easy life would be if he could solve all human misery by opening his hands.

III - CATALINA IN ETRURIA

I

Catalina had left Ferentinum and its statued streets, and was riding along the road to Volsinii. The great Volsinian Lake filling the round space of an extinct crater, stretched broadly across the left side, flashing as the sunbeams skipped on the waters. Deep woodlands bordered the shores, paling with olive-patches or striped with vineyards, and the small islands showed bright clumps of knotted green, anchored now, though the peasant told of days when they had blown about like rafts, changing to circles and triangles but never to squares. The road ran along the side of the quickly ascending slopes scarred with cliffs of basalt and disappearing into dark terraces of forest.

Catalina was gripped in a mood that fluttered between rage and depression. Although he had travelled only a little over fifty miles from Rome, he had encountered everywhere signs of the conditions that exasperated him to the depths. Neat modern villas were being raised on all the most pleasant plots of the ground nearer Rome, particularly along the river banks or where the hillsides provided a sheltered nook; but the surrounding fields were rapidly going out of cultivation. These were the fields that three-quarters of a century ago had touched the conscience of Tiberius Gracchus, making him wonder what was the destiny of Rome that conquered the world and evicted her own citizens from their farm lands. Tiberius and his brother Gaius had started the revolutionary movement with eloquence and integrity, and they had been murdered by the conservatives; and now things were worse. There might be more villas in the beauty-spots; a few colonies might show a small but well-organised band of successful tradesmen and dealers who knew how to turn the misfortunes of others to account; but the country itself was sinking into desolation. Where once there had been acres of ploughland, golden at harvest-time, there were rough pasture-fields, and even much of the pasture was running dangerously wild. Marsh and scrub were widening their area; frog and snake and rat were ousting mankind. The free men were starving, and the cattle were herded by slaves.

Catalina had seen the same process in the south; he had heard men talking endlessly of the perils of falling birth-rate and lack of recruits for the army; but the sight of this devastation had wound coils about his heart. There was something in the Etruscan countryside that plucked deeply at his loyalties.

Here was Etruria, land of the proud voluptuaries who had given Rome so much. Here about him lay the towns that had been mighty before Rome was a hamlet of shepherd’s huts. These were the wolf dugs that had fed the infant-city with vigour and created in her the hunger and courage which had carried her sons so far. This had once been a rich and prospering land, and now it was decaying like a rotten log. Its ancient cities were despised, built over or tenanted by the spider. Where the big land-owners had not partitioned the ground for vast estates, it was drifting into a morass of sterility. On the uplands things were bad enough, but down towards the coast the marsh and its exhalations were crawling over the fields no longer redeemed by man’s labour; the boar was rooting where corn should be swaying healthfully in the breeze; the wolf was slouching down the hill. Rome had broken this ancient civilisation, robbed it, and given what in return? A pack of boors, business-men, gluttons, cowardly braggarts who stole and defaced and grinned together. No wonder the land was becoming a fetid swamp, fit place for money-leeches.

The sense of ancient desolated glories oppressed Catalina; it made his own plans seem small and hopeless; it mocked his dreams. How could he or any other man possibly make a worthy empire out of Rome? He trod ground consecrated by heroic efforts, and the efforts were dust; nothing more. Forgotten, uncared for, a museum for bored antiquaries. Perhaps it were better for Rome to be dust with the kings who had built her massive walls of tufa cut in oblongs and fitted cunningly without cement, the kings who had driven huge gangs of workmen to hew and construct the great sewer-conduits. What was he doing with his dream of an enduring social structure? The Etruscan kings could not command such a thing; they were dust, and forgotten; and he was beating his fist upon the mighty walls of their achievement that guarded ungrateful Rome. His fist would bleed.

He had not travelled into Etruria since the days when he had fought as a thoughtless young noble in Sulla’s army. Then he had been too upborne on the glamour of Sulla’s powerful and swift generalship to notice things; he had ridden along this very road with a gay heart and a song on his lips. Now he saw Sulla with his blotched face and steel-blue eyes differently. That mulberry-face besmeared with flour (as the Athenian comedian had described it) drew Catalina’s unwilling respect; but he hated the results of the man’s work. It had been done cynically, but with consummate thoroughness; Sulla knew that he was giving power to a party that was either vile or inefficient, but he saw no other method. And he had loved Rome in his way. He had wanted to draw up a fool-proof scoundrel-proof constitution, a toil of energetic despair; but there was love of Rome in it. He had wanted to tie Rome to the memory of her past greatness; and Catalina had felt the strength of that hope, and shared it in his minor lieutenancy, unregarded of Sulla. And now that constitution was used by the very financial interests that Sulla had most hated.

For the hope had been valueless. Now Catalina had set himself something beyond the reach even of a Sulla. He meant to break everything down, to fulfil every aspiration of the revolutionaries, and yet to build out of it all a Rome that would have the enduring virtue of Sulla’s conception. What Sulla had seen as an abstract hope, he would make a living force. His misery was that he did not know how this could be brought about, and he tried to beat down his moments of despair by crying that he must trust to the inspiration of action. If he believed strongly enough in his purpose, he would bring the new impulse of government to its actualisation. But first the vitiated constitution must lie in ruins. How could he see clearly now, when the need of destruction blocked the horizon? He must destroy, and be content with destruction for the present.

But something in him leaped too gladly at that solution. He was afraid of the rage that twisted his hands. Was he a liar, deceiving himself because he only wanted to crush blindly?

Yet go ahead he must. There was no turning back. The present state was doomed. Even if nothing were to come of his hopes, he would at least be doing the work of fate in fulfilling the doom of Rome. That was a worthy enough end. He would tear down everything and die with the state that bred sons of a quality too fine for its crude uses. That would be something. Smash the world.

2

He was travelling with half a dozen men, including Volturcius, and a score of slaves. A thought struck him and he called to one Furius, who knew the country well.

“Somewhere near here,” he said, “must lie Voltumna’s Precinct. Is that not so?”

“Yes,” said Furius. “I think you’re right, but it’s not inhabited nowadays. I don’t know exactly where it is.”

Catalina was determined to find it. It was the hallowed ground where the Confederacy of Etruscan Princes used to meet; once it had been bright with fairs and festivals, the source of the civic and religious polity of the race; and now it was meaningless, deserted. His sceptical mood longed for the sight of its scorned temple. Perhaps if he looked on it, it would confirm his despair or arouse him to a contempt for the past. Either emotion might serve to knot his resolution.

Anyhow, he was determined to see the place. Despite the protests of the others, he turned off along a road on the right which Furius reluctantly agreed would probably lead to the Precinct.

The road, after the first turning, developed into a muddy lane, and then began to climb steeply. The horses were pawing up rocky inclines one moment, and then stamping knee-deep through pools where the clay was still wet with the spring-rains. On a hilltop the Precinct must have lain so that the princes and priests could look down on the populous plain dotted with their glistening cities, the plain that was now festering and running wild. The great goddess Voltumna had lost her power, and her people were scattered. No longer did the ploughman of her plain pause at the end of his furrow to wipe the sweat from his brow and to gaze up at her sun-lit temple-top. No longer did the sailor, come home from a piratical cruise in his sharp-nosed craft with the sleepless eye painted on the prow, glance towards her hill with a prayer of thanksgiving. Her consort Vortumnus had been carried off to Rome, and she was only a name.

Catalina was determined to find the shrine or whatever remained of it.

The cavalcade, cursing his mulishness under their breath, reached a sudden turn high on the slopes, and halted for a rest. Already the view had widened greatly. The lake gleamed flatly below, and the roofs of Volsinii could be glimpsed to the north. The white cliffs of the two islets showed in the waters of the lake, the reflections stirring like the limbs of swimmers; and beyond rose two snow-peaks against the hazy blue sky. Ravines criss-crossed with varying greens, merging towards the dark mountains where Umbria lay. Most impressive of all, the Appenines threw their dim bulk along the sky-line, enclosing this ancient kingdom, while southwards the Ciminian Mount, with its three crags, huddled nearer a mass of thickets.

There was space, and a width of light, and a feeling of the slow wings of power that stirred with the breathing of the poised body. Catalina waited for the eagle-cry, the god-voice, the raised fist that would clench this vagueness of power into some realised meaning. As never before, he felt the earth as a presence, an offering virtue, a property.

The earth lay beneath him, it was his to take, and he could not take it. How did man make his bridal with the earth? There was no other problem but that. Every vale and hill beneath him, every tree, every gleam of water and leaf, every essence and colour of the soil, was there to be owned and used and enjoyed; the earth put forth its veils and nakedness of beauty and richness; and there was no other torment but the inability to take that gift. That was man’s torment. Marvellously, passionately, fearfully, he built and fought and planned; he devised objects and machines and gratifications splendid and subtle; and yet he missed the only thing that his heart wanted, and he was unhappy.

Here on the height the gazer saw the world spread out like a bride for his embrace, and the wind thrilled in his hair with spousal promise; but when he climbed down into the valley and the plain, he forgot the vision. He saw only the details, the distracting and unconnected moments. He became busied, and forgot.

“I shall not forget,” said Catalina.

3

Shouts. The horses plunged. Men were everywhere, ragged bearded men with dark eyes of flame, men screaming and shaking peasant-weapons, scythes and bill-hooks. Catalina swiftly took in the situation. Robbers. They had darted out of the undergrowth and were furiously attacking the rear of the train where the slaves had drawn swords in defence of the baggage-animals. It was difficult to turn the horses in the narrow and treacherous path, but Catalina tugged at the bridle. His horse reared in the air, pawing, but swung round.

As he leaned forward, a man dropped from a branch above, landing on the horse’s rump and grasping him round the throat. A first swipe with a dagger missed; the man had miscalculated as he dropped. Catalina felt him fumbling to bring the dagger again into play. He jabbed his elbow backwards with all his strength, and caught the man under the ribs, winding him; at the same time he ducked and twisted, holding fast to the shortened bridle. The horse reared again, and the man fell gasping to the ground, his face trampled by the horse of Volturcius who was close behind, swinging to the rescue. The man gave a small yelp of pain. Catalina saved himself from slipping by catching at the horse’s mane.

Everywhere the screams and flashing clangour.

With a whoop of encouragement, Volturcius clattered past, sitting low and kicking at his horse’s flanks, drawn sword in hand. The other horsemen had also succeeded in turning, and, urging on their horses, they came shouting down. The robbers found themselves driven back. Sullenly fighting, they retreated. Catalina’s slaves were all picked men, mostly ex-gladiators skilled at sword work, and the charge of the horsemen completed the collapse of the ambush. Throwing down their unwieldy weapons and leaving four wounded, the robbers ran, scrambling up the hillside where they saw a branch at which they could leap out of the sunken path, or slithering down the slope and disappearing among the bushes amid a rattle of dislodged stones.

Catalina saw one of the men running straight down the path, too terrified to swerve. He kicked his horse’s ribs and galloped past the baggage-train, drawn onwards by this human quarry. The man doubled and dodged on the track, but could not slacken speed or collect his wits sufficiently to climb or hurl himself over the brambled embankment. He could do nothing but run straight on, panting loudly.

Catalina had no feeling but the joy of the chase. These men had tried to corner and kill, now they were being cornered and killed in return. That was his emotion; and the rush of wind, the galloping of the horse between his pressed knees, the hurrying terror of the man ahead, the cries of the winning party—all burned under his brow. He wanted to kill the man. He shouted an incoherent battle-cry, and his fingers tightened warmly about the moulded hilt. Ah, for the flash of steel, the whistle of the turning blade, the shock of the cloven helpless flesh!

The pursued man reached the corner and turned, staggering. With a great effort he threw himself further to the right, through a thorn bush, and, scratched, rolled out on the slope beyond. Catalina reined in his horse, almost pulling it over and dropping his sword; then he slid from his seat, and, without waiting to pick the sword up, drew his dagger and pushed through the hedge. The man was still dazedly, slowly rolling over. Catalina threw himself upon him and stabbed him in the neck under the ear. The dagger went easily through and found the clay on the other side; blood spurted up the grooved blade.

Before Catalina could rise, he saw three men advancing round a wild fig tree on the left; one had a knotted club, the second swung an axe, and the third had a pitchfork. Catalina wrenched at the dagger, angry at himself for having left the sword. But he heard a shout on the other side of the hedge, and Volturcius broke through, brandished his sword, and without a pause charged at the three men. Their courage failed, and, turning, they ran leaping from rock to rock, sliding down the face of lichened boulders, quickly lost in the valley-depths.

Catalina looked up at Volturcius with a smile of thanks, nodded his head faintly as if recording something on his mind, but said nothing.

Volturcius wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry they ran away. That fellow with the axe had a promising glint in his eye, but he was only a wood-chopper after all.”

Catalina turned over the man whom he had stabbed. The poor wretch was emaciated, the skin was drawn across his face; his eyes stared glassily in deepset darkened hollows; his broken yellowed teeth shone from his open mouth, caked with blood, the bones of his shoulders stuck out thinly. Catalina shuddered.

“Starved,” commented Volturcius, cleaning his sword on a patch of grass. “A herd of starving villagers. I’m told the country’s full of them. No wonder they put up such a feeble show. Well, they should have had better sense. Let’s hope they pick on travellers with litters and womenfolk next time.”

Catalina could not take his eyes from the shrunken face of the man whom he had killed. The man had been starving. He had fought only for the privilege of living, which had been taken from him; probably he had wife and children as starved, as fleshless and miserable. He had hoped to take something back to them to-day, and now he himself would not return. The woman and her brood would die too, perhaps cursing him for a runaway. There would be so much misery the less on a cumbered earth. Pain and hope, sweetness of mating hours and cruelty of the hours of deprivation, it all went to feed the grass on which the cattle fed. Dead, these people might manure the grass; living, they were useless, pitiably embraced.

Rage at the exhaustless waste of life, bitter repudiation of pity and the wrung heart-strings, sympathy for effort lost in a brutal wilderness. Catalina shuddered. He, well-fed, had turned on this starving wretch and snapped innumerable threads of life without a thought, with joy at the spurting blood. This was the careless savagery of good conscience against which he cried so loudly in others. Yet he tolerated it in himself. He had never before felt repugnance at the soldier’s need to take life. If this man had had an ounce of fight in him, he would not have thought twice about having killed him; but the slaughter of a man on the edge of starvation tortured him. What right had he to set up as the saviour of the state when he took such deeds on himself in rashness and glorying blood-lust?

“Come,” he said to Volturcius, and they climbed back into the path; but he could not lose the staring jaw-dropped face.

“Do we still seek Voltumna?” asked Volturcius, worried at Catalina’s preoccupation. The slaves had cut the throats of the wounded robbers and laid out the bodies in a row along the path; one of the slaves was cut in the thigh, and Furius had a slash across the forearm, which was being bandaged.

“No,” answered Catalina. “We go straight on to Volsinii.” He could not understand his former interest in the past, his mood of elegiac meditation over the crumbled kings of Etruria. Nothing existed but the present. Etruria was crammed with starving peasants; their deep-sunk eyes surrounded him, glassily beseeching, accusing; their hands were uplifted, and he had nothing to give. Let fools and faint-hearts bedevil themselves with the luxury of final questions and soul-searching doubts; action was the need, action went deeper than any philosophy. The madness must be taken from those staring eyes, the hands of the miserable world must be filled. What was there to doubt? An empty stomach cannot be questioned. There was work to do.

A heaviness fell from his shoulders. Though he was tormented by the unforgotten face of the starving man, he felt easier; for he knew that henceforth he would never look back, never allow the paltry question of his own spiritual loss or gain, the analysis of his emotional currents, to obtrude upon the work that he had given his hands and his mind.

They reached the main road once more. The shores of the lake neared. Once, the tale went, the waters had portentously changed to blood. Where was the miracle in that? Blood was flowing everywhere on the earth, choking the conduits of life, dripping from the crannies of the flesh, draining men and women, and returning in the pestilence that brooded over the face of these sunny waters. At nightfall the smell of rot would creep forth.

The riders could see the wildfowl rising and swooping down among the reeds, and a fishing-party embarked in a barge from a villa opposite. Olive-groves and vineyards came in view, with occasional slaves tending them. The riders entered the deep amphitheatre of the lake and saw Volsinii on its crag, its roofs and towers glittering over the caverned cliffs, the sweeping lines and tumbling clumps of greenery. The sun twinkled on the rippling waters, flashed on the pointed dark-green olive-leaves or turned the trees into grey, shining masses as the breeze lifted the underside of the leaves.

This was a plenteous world, but Catalina was not deceived. He would never be deceived again. The plenty was fenced about by the greedy cunning and violence of the few, and outside the fence roamed the staring men who dared not return to their wives and children.

“There will be good wine in Volsinii,” said Volturcius, chuckling and polishing his sword. “These lakes may plague the summer-flesh, but they breed good red wines; and the girls of vineyard-country are early taught to say their prayers to Venus, for if they don’t someone else speaks up for them.”

4

The officials in the towns, mostly municipalities settled by the Romans on the site of the conquered Etruscan cities, were not over-friendly to Catalina; they more than suspected his mission, though they did not like to be downright rude to a senator who might be consul within a few months. But they did their best to interfere, delay, provide incorrect facts, and depress. Catalina, however, was not without private informations, and knew where to find the disaffected persons who could be of value. There still remained land-owners who clung to their holdings, and many of the better-conditioned farmers sympathised with the dispossessed men and were ready to support any policy that aimed at re-settling the land.

The officials had a different point of view. “Nothing will keep these lazy scoundrels anywhere where there’s work,” the chief magistrate of Volsinii told Catalina, reluctantly offering the hospitality of his household and relieved to find that rooms had been engaged at an inn. “They deliberately mortgage their ground, and then object because it’s mortgaged. They want to get off to Rome, most of them; or if they don’t, they expect theatres and circuses to be run up within walking distance, and a system of perpetual financing by the authorities to keep them solvent. They dislike the land, and yet when they lose it through slackness they moan as if they’d been unfairly treated.”

He puffed, his short upper lip curling higher, his small angry eyes popping out from under his brows. “Why, I was examining the affairs of a rascal only this morning. He had the impertinence to say that if the state could make corn-distributions at Rome it could guarantee him a price about three times above the market and enable him to stay alive.”

He was indignant. It was necessary for this particular farmer to sell his property. The magistrate had arranged for a shadow-buyer to snap it up cheap; joined to the neighbouring olive-plantation, on which he had an option, it would make a tempting dowry for his daughter; he would be able to win over the wavering banker who wanted that addition to his estate and who was looking round for a bride for his consumptive son. The match would be a definite rise in the world. What was this meddlesome schemer from Rome after?

Catalina had heard it all before. He excused himself and returned to the inn, where three influential farmers were waiting for him with their story. The usurers took advantage of a bad year, kept on assuring the borrower that he needn’t worry about repayment of the capital, and lent him back the interest to buy slaves or seed, until suddenly he found that he had no means of meeting the accumulated demands. Then the usurers became less friendly in their attitude; they lent at higher interest, they screwed everything out of the borrower, and when he was fully bled they turned him out of house and home, and sold the property at a high price to some fool from the city. What chance had the free farmers while the state flooded the market with the tithes of corn and vegetables from Sicilia and Africa? It was all very well to advise specialisation, but the farmers who had tried it made mistakes; one such mistake spoiled everything. Only the big slave-establishments, with skilled slaves from the East, could specialise safely. Most of the land was now pasture, left to drain and weed itself, and smaller holdings were wrecked by the nettles and overflowing water.

Catalina listened with a frown. How could a few laws enacted in a single consulship remedy these endless oppressions and misfortunes? Probably the next consul would repeal them. The law of Rullus, with its Ten Commissioners, was a movement in the right direction; but it had been quashed. And in any event the conservatives had such powers of obstruction. Had not the Gracchi set up Commissions with powers almost as great as those proposed by Rullus, and yet the Commissions had miscarried and their work had been nullified. There must be a continuous power and responsibility which could look to the future.

Without formulating his emotions beyond that point he sounded the farmers and other disaffected citizens whom he met. He talked in terms of his approaching consulship, but his promises of reform were on such a large scale that he did not see how they could be fulfilled by a single year of office.

Some of the clearer-headed of his listeners felt this, but did not like to probe too far. They swore allegiance to him, convinced by his dark vehemence that he would do what could be done. Insensibly Catalina took the role, not of mere candidate, but of recruiting general; and the men felt the difference, and were heartened by it.

“We’re with you whatever you do,” they repeated, not quite sure what they meant by the oath, but resolved to carry it out. His pleas, his offers, and their responses, went deeper than any questions of votes.

Catalina did not want to ask himself at what he was driving, but once he saw Volturcius looking at him ponderingly. He lifted his brows, and Volturcius pursed his lips and slyly half-shut his eyes.

“We’re with you whatever you do,” he said softly, with lingering emphasis, and in the echo of those sly tones Catalina almost deciphered the meaning behind his own determination. He would go ahead whatever happened, and those who stood in his way would be trampled under—left with a hole beneath their ear like the starving man who had tried feebly to take what life had denied him. But it would be the deniers who’d lie there this time, not the starved.

“Do try some of this Statonian wine,” went on Volturcius. “It’s red as the mouth of my beloved, and pleasing as the breath between the teeth of her kisses. I refer to that little plump girl who lurks under the stairway, with the smear of fox-red in her hair and the glint of ripe grapes in her eyes.”

Catalina leaned back, afraid of his thoughts and yet warmed by them. Let the die be cast. What he wanted most of all was to feel that he was irrevocably pledged, that there was no turning back. He wanted to bind himself to these men, not to bind them to him; he wanted complete faith in his purpose; and that faith was coming now, closing him round, burning out everything from him except its need to give. He wanted to give this power which he felt within him; but to give it he must know it, and that was the pang, the difficulty, the increasing throe. When all was ready the giving would be joy in its purity. For that moment he lived.

5

That night he drank hard. It was seldom nowadays that he did so; and when he did drink, the wine had little effect on him. He drank this time to drown the impatience that swept over him, lying back in his chair and encouraging Volturcius and the others to talk or sing. He did not join in their jests, but drank continuously. On the floor before him, stretched on the reed-matting, he saw the body of the starved man whom he had stabbed in the throat. Death came so easily. It was better for such creatures to die. What was he doing with pity for them?

He drank, hoping to become elated or at least stupefied; but there was something hardened, contorted, in his brain that would not melt before the hottest fumes of wine. He noted the steadiness of his hand as he replaced the flagon of black-ware on the table, and was annoyed at this unrelaxing fibre within him. Why had he felt such pity for a starveling when he felt no pity for himself? Let this hardness be all then.

Volturcius also was drinking hard, but he was showing it. He sang and boasted, arguing with his friend Cornelius as to who had killed or wounded most of the robbers on the hillside. Cornelius was the son of a wholesale-dealer in pitch and resin, a coarse fellow with a flat nose and a scar on his left temple.

“I did better than you,” he said in his crowing voice. “I robbed the robbers.” He held up two rings and a few coins. “I looked over the corpses to see if they’d found any booty before they struck us.”

Volturcius jeered. “You’d milk a flea-bitch if you caught one.” He talked of the man who had jumped on the rump of Catalina’s horse. “I liked that man. He had more in him than the others that howled and ran. The horse’s hooves had stamped on his face.”

Furius kept lifting off the outer bandage wound round his arm to see the bloodstain on the linen beneath. “First blood shed in the war of freedom!” he said. “I’ll dedicate the cloth and hang it up in the shrine of Hercules.” Volturcius poured him out some wine, but he pushed it aside. “Didn’t I tell you that I wouldn’t touch any more stinking wine. It will stop my wound from healing.”

“Your wound,” sneered Volturcius. “My wench bites deeper than that when she suddenly wants to show how much she loves me.”

Furius drank. “Then here’s to your tigress. May she scratch your eyes out with her toe-nails.”

Volturcius boasted about his latest mistress, the inn-girl with the smear of red in her hair as if her head was bleeding.

“Bring her in,” said Catalina, sitting forward and filling his cup again.

Volturcius was surprised, but he clapped Catalina on the back and went out to fetch the girl. She sat dully on a bench with her legs hanging loosely before her, her hands in her lap.

“Are you frightened of us?” asked Catalina.

“O no, sir,” she said. “Not a bit. Hardly at all. I know him.” She pointed at Volturcius.

“Give her a drink.”

She drank and became more animated. “Though I’m a slave-girl, I have my feelings, sir, and I don’t like some of the work I’m given. My mother was a grand lady in the place where I was born. I wasn’t a slave always. I’d rather sit and talk with the guests this way, and I like those that aren’t above saying a word back to me. He said he didn’t mind as long as I gave him three-quarters of what I got, so please tell him less than you give me. It’s all the same to you, and it means a lot to me.”

The hardness clotted fierily within Catalina. What was he doing with pity for the world? The world was contented as long as it got its little sweaty coin of bribery and consolation. He would scrape out this pity from his vitals, if he scraped out everything else along with it. The lamp-flames burnt drunkenly into balls of furry yellow; a sob stuck in his throat like a crust of bread.

“How many are there of us?” he asked. “Seven.”

“Seven,” said the girl, counting them slowly with her finger. “A good seven too.”

“We’ll dice for her,” said Catalina, pointing to some dice on the table. “Unless Volturcius wants her all to himself.”

“I’m not a greedy man,” smirked Volturcius. “If I had a ham bone that didn’t grow any the less however many slices I took off it, wouldn’t I share it with my loving friends? So what’s the difference?”

The drunken company applauded. Volturcius smote himself on the chest as if he were a public benefactor. They diced. Catalina’s throw was third.

Then they sat round drinking once more, the girl sitting in the midst on the floor and telling them that if they’d only slit the innkeeper’s throat while he slept she’d show them where the money was kept.

“Behind something,” she said with a hiccup. “I won’t tell you what, but behind something.” She looked round, her eyes blurred with drink. “How many of you are there? Seven you said, didn’t you? I don’t care if there is seven of you, you ought to know better. I’m sure there’s more than seven. Somebody cheated.” She tried to count the figures, but grew confused. “Why doesn’t somebody love me? I’ve been working ever since I was tipped out of the cradle, and it’s time someone loved me.”

Furius had torn off the bandages, and the blood was running down his arm. “You see,” he moaned, “it won’t heal. It will never heal now. You’ve all murdered me.” He poured some wine on the wound. “I can’t wash it off. I’m washing it in the blood of Bacchus.”

Weariness caught Catalina in its sack, darkening his mind. He stopped in mid-sentence of a wrangling argument with Volturcius, lifting his hand irritably to cuff the whining girl. Where was he? The girl on the floor was a starved man with a dagger in his throat. The gloomy streaked walls of the room were like a prison. The brooding grip of his drunkenness fell away, and he was forced to think. He remembered what had happened as if he had been standing aside watching himself and the others. Distaste gushed over his mind brackishly. He must be mad, thinking that there was an escape that way. The wine left him tired, nothing more; the passage of the girl across his senses had been no more weighty than the shadow of a girl passing in the street. He did not feel sorry, but angry at something foolish, wasteful, weak.

He dropped his hand.

“Here, you wretch,” he said to the girl. “Get up and go to bed.”

She rose and put her arm round his neck. He shook her off, and she at once clasped Volturcius. “I don’t care who it is,” she whimpered, “as long as they love me and I don’t have to do any scrubbing of floors.”

Catalina felt for his wallet, and then paused. What was the use of a few coins? He had tried to get ease that way already, scattering coins among the poverty-stricken at Rome; the last time had been when he bought the honeycakes for the children. But money bought no release for his conscience. He denied himself the pleasure of filling the girl’s palm. Let her whine.

But she was laughing in the arms of Volturcius, looking up wide-eyed as he whispered to her. She deserved something for her laugh, even if she was drunk and would weep as soon as she sobered.

“Give her those spoils of yours, Cornelius,” he said.

“I won’t,” replied Cornelius. “I’ve better uses for it than dropping it into the belly of such as her. Let bean-fodder give her wind. That’s the food to puff her out into a better shape of womanhood.”

“You’ll give her what you took,” said Volturcius, “or I’ll stretch you out with the other corpses.”

Cornelius rose with a drawn ferocious look, but obeying a sign from Catalina he hooted with laughter and flung the coins and rings on the table. The rings rolled off on to the floor. “I don’t want them,” he said. “I only object to being ordered about by a man that thinks the thunder is his to wield, when all the praise belongs to a dish of cabbage-soup. But since you tell me to do it, I’ll do it gladly, and may the wench break her neck the next time she tries to kiss someone over her shoulder.”

The girl was beaming tipsily, searching for the rings under the table. She emerged. “I may be only a slave, but I like men that treat me respectful.” She picked up the bone-dice and rattled them.

“I’m going to bed,” said Catalina, and left the room.

The girl was still rattling the dice. The sound pursued him, growing louder as he climbed the stairs, swelling into the clatter of an avalanche, bringing the ramparts of the world down upon Volsinii, sapping the foundations of earth and sky, and burying all aspirations beneath a universal rubble of darkness. It was the blood beating in his head.

6

Catalina woke up next morning wondering. This was the first time that he had been unfaithful to Orestilla, and yet there had been moments of temptation before. Last night he had not been tempted, and he had succumbed, not from desire, but from a wish to tear something from his blood, this curse of pity. But he had torn nothing out, and he dismissed the episode from his mind, because it had so entirely miscarried. An act so devoid of meaning could not merit so involved a response as shame or remorse. It had merely told him more urgently than ever that he must go ahead with his task, and that all evasions would but deepen the sense of frustration.

Again, when that was settled, the emotion of lightness hovered over him with giddily luminous wings. In certainty of purpose there was happiness, and nowhere else. He must conquer, but not because he was outraged at the suffering about him and the misuse to which the oligarchy put their power; he must conquer because it was in him to fight and dominate.

What had he hoped last night? To extinguish the passion that drew him onwards, to taint it with shame, to seal it with yet greater strength? The motive did not matter. He loved Orestilla and would not be diverted from the passion that included that love. He winced at the thought of Orestilla, and then crushed the pain away. Faithfulness to her was bound up with faithfulness to his cause. At least he had proved that to himself.

He leaped out of bed and stood naked before the window-opening through which the sun thrust its early beams. On a pallet-bed at the side lay Volturcius, his face reddened, his mouth wide open as he breathed noisily. Catalina rubbed his chest and loins, rejoiced at the pleasant tingling of the blood under the skin, and delaying the moment when he would call for a ewer of water. Below, in the kitchen, he could hear footsteps and muffled voices. Volturcius opened his eyes, blinked, yawned, grunted, spat, and felt round for the flagon which he had brought upstairs with his usual drunkard’s providence. He filled his mouth, and gargled.

Catalina walked to the door and called, “Hey, boy there!”

7

They moved on to Clusium, and then to Arretium where a friend Gaius Flaminius Flamma had a villa near the Lower City. Flamma was interested in scientific farming; he experimented with the acclimatisation of plants and fruit-trees from Africa and the East, and reared pheasants for sale at Rome. He was doing very well; but, being a red-faced man with an enthusiasm for country-life, he mingled contempt for the methods of other farmers with sympathy for their mortgages and mishaps. Among farmers he quarrelled explosively and told the men that they were fools who couldn’t learn a plain lesson set before their eyes; but in all other company he championed the farmers and declared that they couldn’t be expected to succeed when they never had a breathing-space to consider the intelligent improvement of their holdings.

“It’s all very well for amateurs like me,” he said, “who started with some capital. I’d be in the ditch, too, otherwise. I wasted a lot of time and money over some balsam-trees that the frost killed.”

Around Arretium there had been much ground confiscated by Sulla and shared out among his veterans, and these men, settling down after many years of wandering and excitement, had been easy prey for the moneylenders despite Sulla’s efforts to make the land-gifts inalienable. Flamma told Catalina that things were even worse in the north towards Fæsulæ. The veterans of the conservative Sulla were joined now with the veterans on the radical Marius in a common detestation of the money-lords; all had alike lost land and hearth, and were uniting to demand protection from their creditors. The immense amount of debt-troubles was far beyond the capacity of the local magistrates or the prefects sent by the prætor from Rome to handle, and many of the magistrates were in collusion with the profiteers. In consequence things were rapidly returning to the state what the Twelve Tables and the further enactments on which the code of civic liberty was based had been supposed to abolish centuries ago. The creditors were employing rough-and-ready methods of fore-closure and distress-seizure. Not only were all goods and grounds impounded, but the debtors themselves were forced into the condition of serfs, either on a pretence of working off the debts or with frank declaration that they had forfeited the rights of citizenship.

Most of the men were too poor and wretched to resist or protest. The police-officials gave no help; it was almost impossible to catch one of the scanty and hurried prefects; and even if the debtors considered a journey to Rome with an appeal to tribunician protection, they were too filled with despair, too cowed to act. The few bolder ones had so far defied their creditors and escaped serfdom, but the weaker had submitted. The country was becoming overrun with sturdy beggars and brigands.

“The man you must meet,” said Flamma, “is Manlius. He’s organising opposition to the debt-collectors among the farmers round Fæsulæ. He’s the only man that’s really doing anything. I’ve sent some subscriptions along, with a message that I’ll show them how to specialise in pigeon-rearing or early greens if they want to make money. So far I’ve received no pupils, though the subscription was accepted. But Manlius is doing good work.”

He clapped Catalina on the back. “There’ll be an insurrection soon, and a deal of moneylenders will be strung up. I’d be glad to lend a hand, but I can’t leave the farm. I’m thinking of starting a snailyard on that bit of rocky hillock there. One keeps them inside a fence of thorn-branches on a covering of moss, and charges fancy-prices to you gourmets at Rome when they burrow down fat for the winter-sleep. There’s nothing I’d like better than to see the men striking out for their rights, but I can’t let my farm go to rack and ruin.”

Catalina rode about Arretium, meeting the farmers and trying to rouse them. He was spending much more time than was profitable from an electioneering point of view, since few of these broken-down men would tramp to Rome and vote. Election-tours aimed at conciliating the local magistrates and the handful of richer townsfolk who, if given inducement, would overcome their dislike of the business and travel to Rome to jostle with the city-mob and record their vote on election-day. But Catalina ignored these types except when they were mentioned to him by the farmers as sympathetic towards the debtor’s case; he felt that he was building and canvassing for something that went beyond mere elections, something that meant the union of the discontented and exploited classes for a totally new state of things.

Etruria, where the very soil testified to the locust-work of the destroyers, appealed to his depths; he meant to drain from it the last drop of emotion. He wrote to Rome and arranged for one of his friends, Septimius, a native of Camerinum, to set out for Picenum on the other side of the Appenines and to canvass there on his behalf. Cæsar had already agreed to write to the councillors of the towns in Cisalpine Gaul, where he had influence; and now Catalina asked him to see to all the canvassing in that province. There the mass of people did not have the right of voting, but there were many Roman settlers and tradesmen, or officials who had gained the franchise. Cæsar was popular there for the support which he had given during the censorship of Crassus to the project of enfranchising the whole province, and he had strengthened his position while travelling through the towns on the way to his proquæstorship in Spain.

To Etruria Catalina gave all his attention. He felt that from this rich soil, the most ravaged and suffering of Italy, there must spring the avenging force. It did not matter that he was gaining very few votes and alienating far more; he was awakening something greater. He was putting heart into broken men who had once been soldiers, and he was deepening the conviction in himself. Kings from Etruria had once conquered Rome; now perhaps a band of outcasts would conquer. He sought out all the deserted villages, the fields that had once rippled golden with corn, the lonely cottages with fallen roofs and weeds sprouting from the top of the fissured walls. He rode chiefly with no companions but Volturcius and Cornelius, drinking in the bare smoky taverns, and passing without harm the bands of fierce-eyed men whom they sometimes met. Now he did not try to convert. He merely left word in the taverns or farms where he stopped, “Remember that Catalina has been here.”

They would hear the name later. No need to bid them to be ready; they were as ready as despair could make them. “We have little to eat, and we are swelling,” they told him in complaining vague voices. They listlessly nodded and looked at him blankly out of red-rimmed eyes.

Ragged children stretched out their hands, and slatternly girls blew at their dirty hair to see who was riding past. Like a madman he rode, and the beat of the hooves repeated in his ears, “Remember, Catalina, that you have been here.”

8

His horse went lame; for hooves were not shod, and paved roads or rocky hills soon hurt them. Flamma told him to choose any horse from the stables, which he had floored with thick oak to harden the hooves; and Catalina chose a brown stallion. A messenger was sent to a friend of Flamma at Fæsulæ, and arrangements were made to meet Manlius. Catalina rode off with his friends and servants.

He loved the ravines and hillside-forests, the cliffs veined with silver of a waterfall, the wide vistas swerving towards the cold blue peaks of the Appenines; and Fæsulæ with its strong walls above the winding valley of the Arnus roused him to something of the emotion that Labienus had expressed. He would have liked to seize this town at the head of the veterans and to rule a valley-kingdom. Then there would be a chance for genuine, satisfying order, not of the interfering kind that Labienus had wanted, but an intimately just order as full of sweet earthiness as a new-mown field.

Gaius Manlius had served as a centurion under Sulla. A scarred, stumpy man with grey-black beard, smiling quickly and watchfully under heavy eyelids, a born fighter. He lived with a number of his followers, bankrupt soldier-farmers like himself, in his tumbled-down villa situated in a gully to the north-east of the town. Thither Catalina rode, since Manlius was not liked by the Fæsulan authorities.

Manlius welcomed him with bluff courtesy, and they sat drinking some rough-tasting wine, while the others conversed at the farther end of the room. The sky showed through where some tiles were missing in the roof, and the windows were open to the winds; some boards and stones lay ready to barricade them if a storm blew up. A cracked terra cotta stove stood in the centre of the room, fed from a pile of logs and brushwood. A battered nose-less statue of Venus was placed in a niche, converted into an hermaphroditic figure by a rude addition of red clay. Some embroidered eastern curtains, that had once glinted with myriad eyes of glass and were now thick with grease, hung over the door that led to the rear-apartments; a table and benches comprised the furnishings; the floor was caked with mud and strewn rushes; and someone had made a grass-bed in the corner most removed from the hole in the roof.

“I was comfortable here once,” said Manlius, noticing Catalina’s glance, “before my cows got pox and I borrowed money to buy some more.” He pointed to the Venus. “She’s all that’s left of the things I picked up round about Athens, and she doesn’t look quite as well as the day I yanked her out of a burning temple, but the lads must have their little joke. You should see my wife. Hey, pig-face!” he shouted.

A draggled bare-footed woman, still young, appeared at the door. “What do you want?” she asked in a flat voice, then recoiled as she saw Catalina and his men.

“Come and show yourself.”

She came forward, brushing back the hair that fell over her face; but when she had brushed her hair back, the loose gown dropped away from her breasts, and in retrieving the gown she let the hair once more fall over her eyes.

Manlius pulled her down into his lap. “Don’t worry about your looks,” he said. “You’re as good as another. You haven’t any hair on the soles of your feet. You look what you are—as if you’d mistaken the pig-trough for the bathroom. But, bless you, I don’t mind it. We haven’t any bathroom, and we killed the last pig a year ago before its cough got too bad. Look the gentleman in the eye and tell him that you once used to scent your armpits.”

“Let me go,” snarled the woman. “I’m not fit to be seen. Let me do my hair up.”

“No, when it’s down it hides your face,” said Manlius, and pulled it down, tearing out a bronze hair-catch. She beat at him, wrenched herself loose, and ran out of the room, tripping on her loosened skirt.

Manlius bellowed with laughter. “This sort of life doesn’t suit women,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry for her in a way. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get down to business. Have some more wine.”

Catalina found it easy to talk with him. Manlius agreed to round up as many men with votes as possible and march them off to Rome for the elections; but he protested that he had no faith in such things.

“We didn’t vote for Sulla. We did what he told us, and then he took the money from them that didn’t deserve it, and gave it to us that did.” He paused and wrinkled his brow. “If only a man like him could live for ever, the world would be a fit place to live in; but he went and died. I don’t blame him for it, but it was most unfortunate as things turned out. He’d cut the heart out of his best friend if he didn’t obey orders, but he loved us all and wouldn’t have let harm come to us. That’s the kind of man for me.”

His smiling screwed-up eyes measured Catalina insolently. “I’ve been hearing things about you, master Catalina,” he went on, tilting back his stool, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if I stuck by you.”

Catalina looked into his cup and then drained it. “There’ll be work found for you,” he answered slowly, staring back at Manlius. “I’m glad to hear that you loved Sulla. He was a man that did what he wanted to do. I’m going to do what I want to do, and I’m going to break down everything Sulla set up.”

“That goes with me,” replied Manlius. “It was Sulla and not his work that claimed my oath. Everything was going all right till he died. No matter what he’d made the law, the blood-suckers would have argued it round their way. I’m for the man that’s against the bloodsuckers. I don’t know and I don’t care what laws Sulla made. I care only for the man that’s going to draw a sword and give a shout loud enough to echo up and down Italy. Let’s hear you talk, master, and see how far your voice can carry. There’s more than me listening.”

9

As they were riding back to Fæsulæ, they passed a small shingle-roofed farm where the farmer had sown in the fields some early grain. Beyond the fields of tenderly waving green rose a hillock clustered with pinewoods and further hills of brush and rock. Out of the thickets burst a large-sized boar followed by several baying long-eared hounds, with smocked huntsmen hallooing after them; and round the slope rode some men on horseback, dressed in gay hunting-tunics and shaking spears. The boar crashed through a spindly wooden gate and plunged among the young corn, trampling it down and coming to a stop against a mud-plastered shed. It swung round, panting and stamping, and was instantly ringed by the baying hounds. A foot-huntsman pushed aside the splintered remains of the gate to let the horseman through.

A dog leaped for the boar’s throat and was hurled back with a deep gash in its side. With bristles erect along the spine, the snorting boar charged, stamped down the howling dog, tore at it with foaming tusks, and ripped it dead. Another dog leaped and caught the boar in the throat, but was shaken frenziedly off. One of the horsemen, who were circling the boar to prevent its escape, flung his spear and struck it in the chest; the spear dragged in the ground and opened a deep wound but did not hurt mortally. With a squealing snort of fury the boar tossed the spear into the air with its snout, turned, and charged at the horse with two dogs hanging at its throat. The horse shied and bolted, and the rider, losing control, clung to the mane; but one of the footmen ran up and flung a second spear which found the heart. The boar gave a coughing cry, pitched forwards, and rolled over, with a convulsive twitch of the hind-quarters. The hounds pounced quarrelling upon its corpse, and a huntsman with a whip lashed at them, yelling their names.

The man whose horse had bolted fell in a corner of the field. Picking himself up, he advanced towards the dead boar, shouting with rage at the huntsmen for not being able to keep the dogs off and threatening to dock them of their food if the carcass was spoiled.

The farmer, who had run out of his cottage, came near the group, his hands fumbling with timid anger. The whole of the corn in the field had been trodden flat; he would be ruined, he repeated, ruined. “O why did you do it?”

“Clear out or I’ll turn the dogs on you,” answered the man who had fallen, irritably, trying to brush the stains of green from his braided red tunic. Catalina dismounted and entered the field. He recognised the aggressor as Lucius Sænius, a senator who had property in the district.

Sænius admitted his greeting with a silent scowl, and the farmer appealed to Catalina. “I’ll be ruined. My only chance of meeting the interest on my mortgage is gone. Who’s going to pay me?”

“Shut your mouth,” replied Sænius, turning away.

“You had your sport,” said Catalina. “Why don’t you pay for it?”

“Pay him yourself;” said Sænius. “Why doesn’t he put up a better gate? I’ll sue him for the cost of a new tunic.”

He signed to the men who were busily cutting out the entrails of the boar and tossing the useless parts to the dogs, now leashed some paces away. One of the men fetched the main pole from the demolished gate, and this was laid across the gutted animal, sideways; the feet were tied together, and the ends of the pole placed on the shoulders of two of the men. The hunting-party moved off, hastened by the abuse of Sænius, whose horse had been caught and tied to the gate-post.

Catalina shrugged his shoulders. Why had he interfered when he had no power to make a gesture? Let the farmer be ruined, or let him fight the matter out in the courts if he had the persistence and courage; and if Sænius had too much influence, then let him curse his gods and die. He could at least murder Sænius first.

“I’ll be ruined, ruined,” moaned the farmer; then, turning on Catalina, he cried, “You saw him do it. Why didn’t you stop him? You heard him tell you to pay me. It’s you and the likes of you that milk the land dry—”

Catalina hit him across the face. “Keep a civil tongue in your head,” he answered, and strode away. As he rode past the cottage, he saw the farmer’s wife seated on the doorstep rocking herself and weeping. The tears ran thickly down her tanned, ruddy cheeks.

Catalina resisted the impulse to reach for his leathern wallet and throw her some money. He must not quieten his conscience that way. He must suffer, until his suffering compelled him into action that meant and achieved something. That was the only way out. He was glad he had hit the farmer. Perhaps it would make the man more resentful, more ready to fight against his despoilers.

10

Sometimes with Manlius and the others, sometimes alone with Volturcius and Cornelius, Catalina rode over the countryside. He went the whole length down the valley of the Arnus to Pisæ, near the coast, where he talked with the timber-merchants and the produce-dealers; and along the coast to the shipyards of Luna; or northwards into the gulleys to Pestoria. This was his land, wild and broken with forest and precipice, fertile to the tending hand, pocked with cliff-tombs and proud memories; here was suffering and injustice made manifest.

Manlius now treated him as a commanding-officer, refusing to consider the elections as anything more than a routine-event in the path of their campaign. He rallied the veterans and the bankrupt tradesmen and farmers; and it pleased Catalina to see Marian and Sullan farmers linked in a common aim. Surely that was a good omen for his success. Marius and Sulla had both been men-of-action forced into politics; Rome had split between their impact; now he, another man-of-action, was to reconcile the conflicting sides and to end the rule of jobbers and intriguers.

At last he could stay away from Rome no longer. Giving his orders to Manlius, he set off down the Cassian Way.

IV - THE TURMOIL

I

Late in February the trumpets had been lustrated. On the first of April festivals of Venus and Fortuna were held; decked with myrtle, the women of the lower classes crowded into the baths reserved for men, and for that day bathed there, embracing and ducking one another, or more seriously lay laving themselves, eyes closed, trying to imagine the water magical with the male sweat and seed. Three days later were the Rites of the Great Mother; the timbrels sounded and the easterner priests led out the litter of the Goddess, dancing, chanting a wild Phrygian hymn amid the clashing of brass.

On the Ides the pregnant cows were sacrificed, and the Vestals took the ashes of the womb. On the 19th the Games of Ceres began, supervised by the plebeian ædiles. This was the month of youth, and the goddess who was the earth in her sprouted life must be wooed. In the Great Circus, after the games, burning brands were tied to the tails of foxes, and the foxes were let loose to run in panic; the burning spirit of growth was sent to seethe the earth alive. On the 21st was the Shepherd’s Festival; for though there were now no herdsmen in Rome, except a few who called with early milk, the day was marked as Rome’s birthday, and tipsy worshippers leaped over bonfires kindled in the sacred enclosure on the Palatine; milk and warmed red wine were mixed and drunk from wooden bowls. The Vestals threw into the flames the cakes of salt and spelt mingled with the blood of the October Horse and the ashes of the cow’s womb, binding the seasons fertilely together. On the 23rd there was a blessing of the vine-crop, and the harlots put on their best clothes, for they said that this was their feast-day; and two days later a dog and a sheep were sacrificed to Red Rust. At the end of the month began the Games of Flora, continuing into May.

There were more contests in the Great Circus; hares and goats were let loose, for Flora wanted no bloodshed; and vetches, beans, and lupines were scattered among the people. Those who were hit with something harder did not shout insults at the scatterer, but rummaged eagerly about to find the medal, for on it would be represented something pleasing to Flora such as Leda kicking up her heels at Jove the swan-lover.

The year must be bound together by its procession of ritual, no matter what politics were quarrelling in the streets and councils of Rome. Though Greek deities and observances, and Greek tales of the divine pranks or explanations of the universe had intruded to complicate and disguise the original Roman code, the true religion persisted not so far beneath the surface. The breath of Mars was still stirring the depths, and soon he would appear afresh in other names, Apollo and Sol and Mithras, son-gods of light, preparing the way for Christ, while the suffering of a world would cry out on the Genius of Cæsar as its father-god. But little of that end to his scheming did the living Cæsar imagine.

2

Flora liked plays, and of all plays the mimes. Even nightfall did not stop her revelries. As yet there was no regular Theatre at Rome. The archaising puritan spirit, which saw in the sitting posture a dereliction of the masculine virtue of standing, had long resisted the efforts of town-planning ædiles to build stone theatres. The Roman Assembly stood still in fiction an army, and stout-hearts such as Cato spoke contemptuously of Greek Parliaments bickering on their bottoms like women. For plays therefore the ædiles had to erect wooden tiers of seats with platforms for the actors, mostly in the Forum.

Tragedy and Comedy were not very popular; but the Mimes were loudly applauded, and the Attelane Farces, from which the mimes had sprung, were still put on for Flora. The people, however, liked well-trained singers who could trill and run over a large compass of notes, so that while Tragedy as an art was dying, tragic excerpts (the more exciting songs in which the singer could palpitate and warble at pleasure) were often given, one person acting the part and another singing.

Marcus Antonius, Curio, Clodius, and a senator’s son named Aulus Fulvius, were sitting in the tiers of the show on the third day. They were all drunk, but Antonius the most. His big, smooth, handsome face shone, his blue eyes were slumborously bright with daredevilry, and his curly hair was ruffled. He had smuggled along a large flask of wine, at which he sucked greedily. Curio sat next, with his arm thrown round his friend’s brawny shoulders.

“Don’t make so much noise,” said Clodius. “You gurgle like Mucia’s lapdog.”

“I think I’ll climb on to the stage,” said Antonius, “and liven things up with a song.”

“Don’t,” said Fulvius, a thin, long-nosed youth with a small beard trimmed to a point. “You’ll only be thrown out.”

Antonius was preparing to rise, but Curio tightened the arm round his neck. “Don’t, my dear,” he said. “Not yet. I want to see the mime. After the disrobing you can do what you like, and we’ll all be thrown out together.”

“Anything to oblige,” said Antonius, and took another drink. “That’s a nice girl three rows below there. I like her teeth.”

A farce was being played. The farces were improvised one-act pieces performed by four set-characters speaking in doggerel verse. Pappus, the Farmer, was the farce of the day. Each actor was clownishly dressed up, masked, with red spots on the cheek and bald poll, according to the variations of each traditional character. Pappus, the loon, had been tricked into buying a farm; he knew nothing of farming and had hired Bucco, the glutton, and Maccus, the boob, to do the work. The audience were doubled up by roars of laughter as they watched the misadventures, which satirised the complaints of the colonists on the land. The trio of fools tried to milk a bull, who was represented by a huge red effigy towed on to the stage on wheels. They smacked and banged one another, turning somersaults and landing on their behinds with a clatter announced by cymbals and trumpets. They took a loaf of bread, crumbled it, sowed the crumbs, and wept when no corn appeared. Maccus shook an apple-tree and laid out Pappus and Bucco under a shower of apples, his last shake bringing down a girl and boy who fell on his head, flattening him. All the while Bucco was disappearing inside the farmhouse (painted on the backcloth) where he could be seen through a window eating away the stores; he grew visibly fatter while his comrades drooped. Then he complained of stomach-aches, and every time he belched or blurted the horns and trumpets blared. The others smacked him heartily under guise of helping him to relieve himself. The wise man, Dossus, who had sold the farm, kept turning up with fresh advices and jeers. He told Pappus to hatch some eggs and Pappus sat on them, bedaubing his shift. Still bedaubed, Pappus married a country-girl (acted by a mute) to bring some order into his affairs, and every time he left the house one of the other three men crept indoors; their heads, lying beside that of the wife, could be glimpsed through another window. Pappus, in despair of making wine out of his vines which were discovered to be ivy, took-up the suggestion of Dossus, and bought from him at a high price several casks, emptying them into the vats; he then found that he would have to sell back at a lower price. Sorrowfully the trio of fools danced, kicking one another, round the wine-vat, while the head of the wife was seen through the window beside the head of Dossus. As the farce ended the trio fell with a splash into the vat.

3

“Back in a moment,” said Antonius, who had finished his flask. He pushed along the row, followed by complaints about injured toes.

Clodius felt dull. He was thinking of Flaviola. The girl’s face stuck in his mind. She was a clever, appealing little thing. He would take her along a book to read.

“Do you know anyone who wants to buy a brand-new racing-gig?” asked Fulvius lugubriously. “I’ve got one on my hands and don’t know what to do with it.”

“I do hope that big, blundering boozer hasn’t lost himself,” said Curio, standing up and turning towards the entrance. “He’s got hair on his horns to-day. Warranted to cause trouble.”

The curtain was hoisted down, lying across the front of the stage, and the mime began. The actors, who here alone included women, were dressed realistically, without masks, and there was a simple backcloth. The mime was entitled The Beggar’s Fortune, and dealt with the lot of a man who after being pushed out of doors by his relatives, received news that a large sum had been left him by someone to whom he had done a good turn. Now all his relatives and neighbours courted him. The types were sharply drawn: a snuffling aunt, a tradesman-uncle, five young girl cousins all of the same size and dressed in prim schoolgirl fashion, who had before sneered at him, a rasping-voiced lawyer, a benevolent fraud of a doctor. They all offered him feasts and clothes and anything else he wanted. He took great pleasure in humiliating them in turn, seduced all the cousins, and made the aunt stand at the foot of the bed holding a lamp. He borrowed money from them all, and made them run messages or draw on his shoes. Every while his friend who had brought the letter about the fortune, put his head round the backcloth and sang to a musical accompaniment:

How go the food and the women?

You’d better snatch them all,

for from what I hear from Iuppiter

the sky is going to fall.

And the impostor, executing a trickily insolent dance, replied:

I’ve won the wine and the women,

the beggar’s come into his own,

so go and tell your Iuppiter

to leave things well alone.

Then he continued with his little dance of triumph till one of his victims reappeared. At last, however, the lawyer became suspicious and found that the fortune was non-existent. They all turned on the liars and pelted them off the stage. The music stopped. The play was ended; but the beggar put his head round the eaves and sang:

The world must dance to the beggar’s tune,

for, sirs, the sky is falling soon.

The characters all started dancing madly to an increasingly demented beat. The women skipped to the front, the five cousins and the aunt, while behind there appeared a ballet of girls all dressed like the cousins. At every climax of the music there was a terrific trumpet-blast and the girls discarded one of their garments, until there was no more to discard. At each blast the aunt gesticulated in horror and then herself slipped out of a garment.

The crowd stamped and joined in the song. “The world must dance to the beggar’s tune.”

Antonius had returned a short while before the finale with a flask hugged under his shift. Now he became enormously excited, rose in his seat, clapped his hands, and roared the words out of tune.

“Sit down, can’t you?” said Fulvius, tearing his nails.

“He’s enjoying himself,” replied Curio. “Why shouldn’t he, poor fellow?”

Antonius gave a leap, lost his clutch on the flask, and, in an effort to catch it, collapsed forward, landing sprawled on the people in the lower tiers, drunkenly making no attempt to break his fall. There were howls of indignation and pain. An old woman’s arm was broken and a man had his front teeth knocked out. Antonius slid onwards, kicking and twisting and laughing loudly as the others struck at him.

“Hey, someone’s tickling me,” he shouted.

He reached the third tier, pushed on by the people who were stampeding and trying to escape his legs and arms. There he found himself looking into the scared face of the woman whom he had noticed earlier. “Hullo, dearest,” he said, “I like your teeth. Bite me.” He grasped her tightly round the shoulders, then with a violent twist dragged himself round, crushing the man who was seated at her side.

The attendants rushed to the spot and tried to haul him out, but he sat on the squirming man and refused to let the woman go. They tried to untwine his arms, but he was far too strong for them. “Go on, pull harder,” he grinned.

“Carry them both out,” suggested Curio, who had come down to see fair play.

“Splendid,” shouted Antonius, and rising with his arms still about the woman he allowed the attendants to propel him along the gangway towards the door.

The breathless man on whom he had been seated struggled to his feet. “Stop him,” he cried in a stifled voice, and scrambled past the blaspheming spectators. “That’s my wife.”

“Then don’t blame me,” said Curio, tripping him up. The man fell headlong forwards down the gangway and was seized by two more attendants who had hurried up. “He’s dangerous,” Curio explained. “ Mad-dog bite.”

The puzzled attendants flung the man to the floor and knelt on his back, awaiting further evidence, but Curio had withdrawn.

4

Fulvius and Clodius slipped out after Curio, and followed Antonius into the tavern next door where they had been drinking before the visit to the stage. Antonius, who was carrying the woman in his arms, sat down and settled her on his lap.

“What happened to my husband?” cried the woman, breathing deeply to show that she hadn’t had enough breath to ask before. “You held me so tight. O, what will he think of me?”

“Don’t bother,” said Curio entering. “He told me that he feels a little indisposed, but doesn’t want to spoil anyone’s fun. He’s gone home, or he’ll go shortly, I’m sure.”

“Truly?” asked the woman, a small, plump and neatly dressed tradesman’s wife with a large smile that had first attracted Antonius. Antonius kissed her. “I really must go,” she went on weakly.

Antonius patted her. “We’ll see you home before dusk or morning or some such time, my darling. I wouldn’t like to cause trouble between you and your husband. In fact, let me know if he forgets his manners, and I’ll come and trample on him for you.”

The woman began smoothing her dress, looking at her handsome captor under long lashes. It was no use making a fuss now, and these men were obviously rich and distinguished. They’d think she didn’t know how to behave herself in high-class society. Perhaps this was the way they treated all their women-friends. She accepted a drink, and nestled against the broad shoulders of Antonius. He was wonderfully handsome and strong, he could eat her husband up and still feel hungry.

“Hell and Furies,” said Fulvius, “I’ve left my best cloak on the bench. I laid it down inside out so as not to hurt it and to save my toga from being soiled. Well, it will be stolen by now, and I’m not going back to face that crowd. It’s all the fault of Antonius. I told him not to stand up.”

Quintus Curius put his head round the door. “I thought I saw some friends come in,” he said, and entered the room, hurt that no one took any notice. He looked round challengingly, somewhat drunk and therefore courageous. “I’ll toss you all for any stake you like, if someone will lend me the necessary sum as a start.”

“Toss off some wine,” said Antonius. “Dicing’s foolish. When a man has money he ought to spend it on wine, and when he hasn’t any money he can’t dice. Consequently dicing should be abolished. Have you met my wife? I only met her five minutes ago myself.”

“I’m not your wife,” said the woman, feeling that he was laughing at her.

“Well then, have it your own way,” replied Antonius. “Hey, Curius, have you met my whore?”

“O, how could you!” cried the woman, putting her fingers to her ears. “I never saw you till five minutes ago.”

Antonius choked with laughter. “Don’t make me laugh when I’m drinking.” The woman tried to escape his arm, but failed. She lay back panting. “Don’t mind a little joke,” he went on cajolingly. “Curius is the dirtiest-minded fellow in Rome. I only said what I did to make him stop from thinking something worse.”

The woman gave it up. If these were high-class manners, she preferred being a grocer’s wife. O, what would she say when she got home? That she’d lost her way in the crowd? Of course. She felt easier after having thought of an excuse. Certainly this rude young man was very attractive, no grocer had such arms. If only he hadn’t brought the others along.

“I’ll scream …”

“Then I’ll sing, and they’ll think it’s a duet.”

“They won’t,” insisted Curio. He addressed the woman. “His voice would drown fifty of yours. We implore you not to scream, for one song from him will deafen us for a week.”

“You didn’t see my cloak anywhere?” Fulvius asked Curius hopefully. “It’s orange-coloured.”

Clodius sat glumly aside. Curius, deciding that he was the only serious man present, approached and tapped him on the shoulder. “Could you oblige me with a loan? I know how I can double it by to-morrow morning. It doesn’t matter how small. What I want is a start.”

Clodius pulled out a small purse from the sleeve-fold of his gown. “Take half.”

Curius opened the purse and turned sideways away. There were 30 silver denarii. He wondered if Clodius knew exactly how many there were. Pretending to count with difficulty, he extracted 16 and handed the purse back. A margin of one might surely be a genuine error. So might even two be; but he had surrendered the purse, he couldn’t ask for it again. Yet that seventeenth denarius might be the very one that would have turned his luck.

“Thanks,” he said. “I won’t forget this.” Neither he would; Clodius was a magnificent fellow, he would be repaid in ten times the weight in gold. When Curius found his luck turn, as of course it must soon, he would buy Clodius a perfect dinner. Tears dimmed his eyes, and pressing the hand of Clodius in which he had placed the purse, he left the room.

Curio was acting the part of the beggar in the mime, leaping about and singing, “The beggar’s come into his own.” He took out of the bosom-fold of his gown a small silver box of rouge and sat down beside the woman. “Allow me to show yourself how to make the best of yourself.”

He rubbed some rouge carefully over her cheeks. “Towards the nose to make the face narrow,” he explained. “That’s what you need. Now open your mouth. Now close it. There.” He stepped back, admiring, with the daintily out-thrust hand of a rapt artist. “Just the tiniest curve up at the corners. Tell that vulgar fellow to keep still. Now let me put a touch on your shoulder-blades and knee-caps. Wherever there’s a dimple, rouge is the correct evening-wear.”

The woman giggled. They were certainly high-class, these young men, though rather bewildering at first. Everything was all right, for she’d lost herself in a crowd, such a crowd. She drank some more wine, gingerly, afraid that she would mar the touches at the corners of her lips. She wanted to look her best. But Antonius, pushing her head back, gave her a long kiss that took all the breath out of her surprised body and most definitely smudged the art lavished by Curio on the corners of her lips.

“Curse it all,” said Fulvius. “I’ve just remembered that I should have gone to Lanuvium to-day. That damned father of mine will trumpet at me like an elephant with the toothache.”

5

Silanus decided to stand for the consulship. He did not concern himself with wide-spread electioneering, since he felt he could count on the middle class who always swayed the elections if they turned up to vote. For the votes were not counted on any system of one vote for one man; the voters were divided into almost two hundred classes according to property-evaluations, and a class at the top, numerically very small, carried as much weight as a class at the bottom, where there was a huge mass of voters. The proletarians were all packed into a single class; and the question was complicated by the further division into tribes. One of the unceasing matters of dispute was the allocation of the freedmen. The conservatives tried to limit them to the four city-tribes or even to a single tribe; the democrats wished to spread them over the whole thirty-five. It was thus to the advantage of the popular party to make the elections as rowdy as possible, thereby frightening away the propertied voters and enabling proletarians or even slaves to register votes where they had no right.

Servilia sent a note to Cæsar, and he was invited to the first meeting of the supporters of Silanus. Pledged to Catalina, he could not support Silanus, but decided to make his apologies in person. In the salon he found a smaller group than usual, the more experienced and capable of the liberals, and he at once explained to Silanus that he had given his promise to Catalina in return for help in the pontifical elections. But he had learned that men rate higher a courteous refusal than a rudely-tendered benefit.

“I need not emphasise,” he said, “how much I should like to be supporting you. But my word has been given. I have no doubt, however, that you will find the small support I could have given to be quite unnecessary. Your reputation will be sufficient without my voice.”

Silanus placed together the fingertips of each hand. “Let us hope so, let us hope so,” he said gravely. “I have come forward at great inconvenience to myself, in fact at the express request, I might almost say command, of my friends here. The state is in a very serious crisis.” He shook his head. “I must do my humble best. What is required is a strong man of moderate views who can obviate a dictatorship of either extreme party.” He lowered his voice modestly. “As a man of, er, moderate views I feel I have my duty to the state.”

The company nodded and murmured. Cæsar congratulated him on his sense of duty and certainly of election, but Servilia interposed, addressing Silanus.

“Yes, my dear, all you say is perfectly true, but it would have been very handy to have the support of Gaius. The assemblies are becoming so riotous nowadays.”

“That,” said Silanus, “is exactly what I propose to remedy.”

Servilia compressed her lips and glanced at Cæsar. He moved his head with a slight sign of negation, in which his eyelids expressed most of the meaning. She frowned but looked away hurriedly.

Cæsar rose to leave. “Don’t go,” she said, turning back. “Even if you can’t support us, we know you’re a friend.”

“My colleague,” said Silanus, “is to be Servius Sulpicius. He will be here directly.”

Cæsar wished that he could leave before Sulpicius arrived, for Sulpicius was one of the men whom he wholly respected. He was a jurisconsult, one of the group in whose hands the closely-guarded interpretation of the law was left; he owned one of the clearest minds that had worked on the giving of responses; a quiet sense of public spirit informed all his activities; but he had not so far entered on the noisier area of politics.

“I prevailed on him,” continued Silanus with satisfaction, “to leave the study in this hour of his country’s need. He is of course a trifle dilatory as a practical man, but such failings can be, er, balanced otherwheres.”

Cæsar was sorry. Sulpicius would have no chance whatever, and it would be a pity to see such a worthy man rebuffed. Not that Cæsar would have done anything to help the election of Sulpicius, since he considered such a man dangerous with his good intentions at the head of a divided state. As for Silanus, Cæsar did not think he had any chance either, but he was amused at the prospect of his failure. The conservatives were putting up Murena, who had been one of the generals of Lucullus, and it seemed as if Catalina and Murena would win. Then would come the fight.

Sulpicius arrived, a tall man with a stooping walk and long, melancholy face. The conversation turned on the preliminaries of canvassing. Sulpicius had little to say; but to Cæsar’s embarrassment he seated himself at his side, and when the talk became general he turned to him.

“I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you would be for Catalina.”

“I am. I am here only as an onlooker. They pressed me to stay.”

Sulpicius stroked his long chin. “I believe that your friend means well, but a state is too delicate a thing. It can’t be torn up and given a new life in a day. The heart dies out of it.”

“Yes,” said Cæsar, something shrinking within him against his will. “Yet things cannot be left to drift.”

Sulpicius did not reply to this comment, but went on with his own thesis. “Take a word. It has so tenuous and yet so tenacious a life. It cannot be snapped from the emotions and thoughts amid which it grows. It needs great care to know a single word so as not to do it wrong—great care to see its meanings and relations, to follow it through the quarrels and misunderstandings it provokes. How then can a man set out to change a complex and powerful state such as ours at a blow? Thousands and thousands of words growing together, entangled, nourishing one another, defeating one another. Such a vast, painfully enlaced business.”

“Yet you are standing for the consulship?”

“What can a man do? I have little hope of achieving much, yet I can at least prevent others from doing the wrong thing. That may not seem much of an ambition. Yet who knows? One may see the way suddenly. But it can’t be forced.”

Cæsar wanted to cry out that Sulpicius as counsel treated pre-eminently of society as a quarrelsome self-hating organism, a thing of rape and knavery. How then could he feel so aloof, so sure of the continuous structure preserving justice beneath the tumult? Surely he was hiding behind words. He had so long reduced conflict to its exact formula that he had forgotten the roots of conflict in malice and evil and greed. Whence did the man’s distillation of un-envious goodness arise? It troubled Cæsar. No men could be more unlike than Catalina and Sulpicius, and yet there was a disquieting similarity somewhere between the confidence of Sulpicius in the structural power of law to knit together the warring human units and the faith of Catalina that all would go well if the people were fully loved and trusted. Such single-minded men were frightening.

As soon as he could leave politely, he went. Sulpicius looked after him, sighing and stroking his long chin.

6

Clodia, wife of the prætor Metellus Geier, was in her boudoir furnished throughout with expensive citrus-wood from Africa. She was big-hipped and not very tall, yet she gave an effect of graceful energy when she moved; her round high-cheekboned face framed a pair of lustrously dark eyes. She was now lying face down on the silk-covered couch with one arm extended sideways. A slave-girl polished her nails, while another massaged her spine.

Clodius entered and stood without apology hovering near the doorway. Clodia turned her face round without otherwise moving. “O you,” she said. “ Come on in. I’m being put together. Someone took me to pieces last night.”

The girls continued with their work, and Clodius stood looking discontentedly at his sister. “Well,” she went on, “you seem out of sorts. What naughty dog-faced woman has bitten you? Or have you merely been adding up your debts? You shouldn’t do such things. You ought to imitate your loving sister and become domesticated.”

Clodius sat on the couch on the side away from the girls, and twisted Clodia’s dark hair in ringlets round his finger. Clodia turned her face round again to look at him.

“Something ought to be done about the world,” said Clodius. “It isn’t a fit place for you and me. Come and let us live on one of the Cyclades. An island with cliffs all round except on the single tiny harbour, and there we’ll build a fortress full of catapults.”

She shivered. “That would be a wonderful world. We’d be so bored that we’d invent worse things than you’ve ever been able to think of between two kisses.”

She sat up abruptly and pinched the girl who was manicuring her. “You hurt me, you little beast.” She shook herself like a dog. “Outside, both of you.” The two girls went out quickly, gathering up the tweezers and lemon-sticks.

Clodius picked up his sister’s hand negligently, studied it, lifting and shutting the fingers, and then ran his lips up to her shoulder. “Don’t,” she remonstrated. “It makes my blood run cold.”

“I’m sick of vice,” said Clodius, rising and stretching himself. “I want to be impossibly good, but I don’t know how to start.”

“Leave off drinking and wenching.”

“That wouldn’t be a start. It would be a vacuum.”

Clodia was restlessly gazing into a bronze mirror. “I’m feeling rather distrait too. That husband of mine is wearisome. I think I’ll poison him.”

Clodius was interested at last. He came up and took her in his arms. “What a woman you are to think of something amusing. I know the stuff exactly. An Egyptian I know showed me. Such a clever fellow. We tried it on a dog.”

Clodia held the mirror up over his shoulder and continued looking at her face. “Stupid. I won’t poison him to please you. He’ll be consul the year after next. I’d enjoy the bustle of being consul’s wife. Would you like me better if my nose was ever so slightly turned up?”

“Are there any parties on?” he asked, rising morosely and turning over the phials on her dressing-table.

“I was thinking of courting a yawn by a visit to the Temple of Bona Dea,” she said. “But that excludes you. My mouth is really quite large enough without being stretched any more. Kissing is a wretched habit. But it’s too late to stop now. Someone should have told me when I was innocently impressionable.”

Clodius paused, struck by an idea. “You shall go to Bona Dea, and I’ll go with you, dressed as your winsome slave-girl.”

She surveyed his smooth face and small mouth. “You’d certainly pass,” she said, “as long as you didn’t growl. But think of the scandal if you’re found out.”

“I won’t be found out.” He began pulling out the clothes from a cupboard let into the wall.

“Here,” she said, rising. “Leave those clothes alone. You’ll ruin them, you fool. If you don’t stop at once, you shan’t go with me.”

He stood back triumphantly. “That’s my wicked sister.”

“Remember,” she answered. “If you’re found out, I’ll disown you and let the women emasculate you on the spot. I’m sure that’s the penalty. I’ll propose it myself. So beware.”

“For you,” he said gallantly, “I’d dare anything.”

7

The interior of the dimly lit Temple on the Aventine was thronged. Six attendants stood at the door to see that no man strayed into the precincts beneath the sacred rock where the rites of the unnameable Good Goddess were being performed. On the threshold stood the Herbarium, where were kept the healing herbs and infusions that were sold to the worshippers—chiefly for uterine complaints, though on ordinary days men might purchase as well as women. The ritual was very old, but its origin was forgotten and the tale told that Hercules when driving past with his stolen cattle had asked some female celebrants for water and had been refused; wherefore he had excluded women from his holiest rites, and the women had retorted by excluding men. Thus was symbolised that retirement into the glorification of the differing organs of sex, that concealed conflict beneath the embrace, that ultimate source of bodily form which was source of the individual’s fecundity and which at that last level of nuclear self was felt as alone and supreme.

Very old was the ritual, coming from pastoral days, so that though wine was now introduced the ritual insisted that it be called milk under penalty of profanation, and the vase in which it was held be called the honey-pot.

The attendants were droning, “See that ye bring no myrtle. See that ye bring no myrtle.”

Clodia walked through, wrapped closely in white silk edged with blue embroidery; and Clodius, with a hood drawn over his face, went close behind her like a bashful servant-girl. Unchallenged, they passed through.

At first Clodius could not see clearly. The shut inner-doors, the smoke of incense and sacrificial fires, dimmed the air; and there was a close, sweaty smell and thick chatter from the packed bodies of the women. The only light was from two long-spouted lamps and a hole in the roof over the rough stone altar, beside which stood a miniature chapel over the hole of the snake, guardian of the fane. Along the walls hung representations of injured and cured limbs, votive tablets expressing gratitude, crutches and bandages smeared with dried dark blood. In front of the altar were stationed two priestesses. One was naked, tall and muscular with great breasts and thighs. She held in her hands the emblem of maleness and a rod of myrtle from which all the leaves but one at the tip had been stripped. The other, heavily gowned, held a goblet of wine and a second myrtle-switch. The pair intoned a ritual catechism:

“Give me some of your wine, daughter Fauna.”

“I will not give you my wine, father Faunus.”

“Then I will take your wine with my hands, daughter Fauna.”

“Not while I have hands to beat you, father Faunus.” The naked priestess struck at the other, who pretended to flee and then turning submissively poured some of the wine over the emblem in the other’s hand. The women filed past, hoping that the priestesses would include them in the myrtle-fight; and every now and then one of the priestesses aimed a blow at a worshipper, thus chosen as blessed among women.

Clodius felt stifled. He cursed his whim. It would have been far more amusing, quite mysterious, to have heard Clodia’s witty account, but the fact was banal; and if he were found out the consequences would be serious. There were just as many women in one of the larger lupanars, and considerably more fun. He wanted to leave at once, but did not like to show cowardice before his sister, who had warned him. Slinking aside, he stood near a pillar in the deepest shadows, as near the door as possible. Clodia had moved on, for she did not mean to be implicated if he were found. Let him play his games; they made existence less tiresome, and she had a constitutional objection to interfering with other persons’ pastimes; but he must ruin himself alone if that was his intention.

There was a surge in the jostling crowd, and a woman was pressed close up against Clodius and wedged there. She was a handsomely built woman, and he could have kissed her behind the ear by leaning forward ever so slightly. The position was pleasant but worrying.

The woman turned with a wriggle and tried to stare at him. He felt that he was discovered, and prepared to hide his face and fight his way out before the women were properly aroused. Then he would duck down a side-street, and into a tavern nearby which he knew. He wasn’t altogether without his plans for a quick exit.

But the woman, peering closely, recognised him. “Publius,” she said.

He knew the voice but could not label it. He stared back; he must find out who she was, and gain her over; and the woman would be angered if he did not reciprocate with recognition. “You!” he murmured and passed his finger over her lips.

He felt the woman relax against him, still wedged in the crowd. Luckily her surprised mutter had been heard by him alone, for he was pushed back in a space between the pillar and a cast of a woman’s arm pegged to the wall. The light from one of the lamps had flickered across his face, but hers was hidden in shadow. Leaning forward, he kissed her shoulder gently, and was gratified with the thrill that ran over her body.

There was a movement among the crowd; a number had passed the altar, and the pressure slackened. The woman turned fully round, and in gust of light from the opening door he saw who she was at last. Pompeia, Cæsar’s wife.

“I followed you,” he whispered. “When can I see you alone?” He had never thought of her before, but felt that he must gain her at all costs.

“Foolish brave one,” she said in a low warm voice. “You must go.”

“When can I see you alone?” he repeated, desperately rash.

“I’ll send you a note,” she answered, as frightened as he was. Any lie would serve to finish this terrifying situation. He moved his hand down until he found hers, pressed it against her lingeringly, and moved quickly away towards the door. Drawing the hood closer over his face, he passed thankfully out. At least he had an adventure with which he could counter Clodia’s jests at his flight.

But the encounter was a nuisance. He had no desire for Pompeia; she was Cæsar’s wife; and he liked Cæsar, and had no desire to seduce his wife. But that did not matter. She could not betray him now, for if she declared that she had seen him in the temple she would compromise herself by being unable to explain why she had not raised the alarm. He would find a way of keeping her off. He was free; that was the great thing.

He turned to dodge into a tavern and drink there, but remembered his disguise. Swiftly he walked off down the road, then remembered that such a pace was hardly feminine. Cursing, he forced himself to set out quietly home, ignoring the two drunkards who were whistling to him.

Clodia, who had reached the altar, was singled out for one of the blows from the tall big-limbed priestess who stood glistening with sweat; red weals were rising on the woman’s hips and ribs where the myrtle had slashed. Clodia admired the bulk of limb, the browned skin, the play of muscle, but curled her lip to see the unwashed dirty feet, a torn, gnarled toenail. A priestess shouldn’t have an ugly toenail. What was religion coming to? Everything and everybody were lax nowadays; even the poets couldn’t scan. But she smiled coyly at the priestess and passed on, smarting from the tap of the myrtle-wand.

She whispered to herself: It’s no use, Goddess, I shan’t be fertilised by you, however hard you switch me; I’ve had one girl and that was enough for me—as old Ennius wrote:

My death rather I’d meet ten battle-times

than once a child throe forth.

She walked out, looking curiously round for Clodius and thinking how much better a poet Ennius was than the fashionable young versifiers who sneered at his rough lines. One felt so superior in patronising poets long since dead. If the infuriated women found and murdered Clodius, she’d hunt through Ennius for a suitable quotation to put on his tomb. He deserved it, the darling idiot.

8

Cethegus had taken Chelidon lightly at the dinner-party, amused at the senseless form of her owner, Cassius, that lay snoring beside them; but he found to his annoyance that Chelidon this time refused to be taken lightly. She was tired of Cassius; and her drink-crazed mind fixed on Cethegus as the most desirable man in the world. For reasons, she pointed out that he was the best friend of Cassius and had such strange hair. Cethegus had an ailing high-born wife whom he had years ago banished to his small country-estate, where she reared some goats and three ailing daughters; and in Rome he kept a mistress Precia, who, like Chelidon, had once been a power behind the political scene. But she, too, was ageing, and Cethegus tolerated her more out of habit than anything else. Though a man without fears in the ordinary course of action, he was frightened of women, and alternated between a weak assumption of indifference and excessive brutality. He had once broken Precia’s arm by twisting it, and had punched her black and blue when drunk, yet he lacked the courage to throw her out. Every time he saw her pouchy face he felt outraged, fearing that his friends would laugh at him for keeping a woman who had long outlived her attractions, and yet he was unable to rid himself of her. She, though suffering his occasional outbursts of physical violence, had established a mental ascendency over him of which she was aware but which she took care not to make obvious.

Now Chelidon was intent on causing trouble, and Cethegus was afraid of her. She sent a slave with a message purporting to be from Cassius, and when he arrived at the house he found her alone. She was drunk as usual and made immediate overtures to him, and he succumbed. Then he quarrelled with her and beat her and she kissed his feet and said that he was her perfect man. He was in anguish all the while that the slaves would hear and report, and his nerves were not bettered when he looked up from the midst of her most pressing embrace to see the faces of two girls smiling round the side of the curtain. Normally he did not fear Cassius or any other man but in a woman-quarrel he felt foolish, and he dreaded that Cassius would burst upon him with reproaches. He was careful and refused to see Chelidon again. She arrived at his house and penetrated into the living-room before he saw her. He had her thrown out, but that did not affect her. She sent him a tipsily scrawled note saying that she was arranging to have Precia strangled and dropped down a sewer, so everything would be all right as he couldn’t hide the fact that he loved her whatever he did.

In misery Cethegus threw himself more toilfully than ever into the work of creating disaffection. Among other matters, he was gathering arms, for he was certain that even if Catalina were elected bloodshed was inevitable. He loved weapons, and already had a large collection ranging from ancient daggers of bronze to all the latest improvements in swords, together with examples from barbarian or eastern peoples. He knew all the iron-workers in Rome, and often visited Puteoli to talk with the men there who designed and forged the blades. The relation of length and weight of blade, and that of hilt to blade, were questions on which he could talk for hours, and he had worked out what he considered the perfectly balanced sword. Now with the help of a small foundry in the north of the city he was arriving at the right steel for it; and in view of the impending outbreak he had added to his serious collection piles of cheaper swords, daggers, spear-heads, axe-heads, and so on. With the care of a collector he had even these ticketed and arranged in neat rows or stacks in the cellars.

His other work drew him to Catalina’s house, to hear the latest news from Etruria or the south, and to consult various memoranda. Orestilla treated him and all the other men with studied and slightly cold politeness. Occasionally this struck his notice and puzzled him. He recalled the days when she had had a reputation for loose living, and he had once seen her dance on the top of a table at a seaside-party.

These memories had also begun returning to Orestilla the last few days, unaccountably, disturbingly. She had thought them long buried, but they had suddenly started out as fresh as ever. Her first year of marriage had been so filled; she had grown to love Catalina, to realise the deep trammelled aspirations of his spirit, and to yearn to help him to release those powers. She had forgotten the dubious charms of a fast life and had felt a new world opening about her. She shared with her husband the deepening realisation of the inefficiency and crookedness of the state’s dealings, and the growth of his ambition had made her grow too. She lived a new emotional life, looking outward upon a huge world which she and her man, small obscured figures, were destined to bring gradually under their control. Her daughter by her first husband, a sickly child, whom she felt sure irritated Catalina though he never admitted it, she had sent into the country to a relative, and almost forgotten.

But since Catalina’s return from Campania this fascination had fallen away, or, rather, it remained intact, but deep beneath it, darkly and hotly, there awoke phantoms of rebellion and frightening desire. She had shared his ambition and knew that nothing mattered beside it, yet she seemed to be living another life as well. The other life beckoned and whispered and pleaded to be given outlet. It argued that it need not upset the primary life of ambition. Why could she not enjoy herself and yet remain heroine of the new world of Catalina’s conquering?

But she felt shy. How could she enjoy herself? She would never be able to drink and dance and talk with the old abandonment. Besides, Catalina would hear of it, and that she could not bear. The voices whispered that there were even more hidden pleasures, contacts which no husband need ever hear about; but she shrank from these voices, miserable that she could even be tempted.

She was therefore colder far than usual to Cethegus as they sat in the side-room where he was looking through some papers, and he, fresh from his worries over Precia and Chelidon, gazed at her admiringly. How calm, how unapproachable she was, the kind for a wife. If he could find one like her, he’d throw Precia out at last and divorce his old hag, even though he lost with her a large dowry which he’d never be able to raise.

Orestilla was considering that she should not be here alone with him. She must call in one of her girls; she would not leave even the remotest room for any rumour to laugh at Catalina. But as she rose, she lurched; her left leg seemed to have become emptied of blood; the ankle gave way; and she leaned against Cethegus where he stood with his hand on the table-edge. She felt faint and could not draw away, and Cethegus, shifting his hand at last, took her in his arms and kissed her.

She suffered his kiss, then pushed him away. “No, no,” she said and left the room. Cethegus stared after her, and tried to regather his wits and look through the papers again. He had not meant to kiss her; but when she had leaned up against him like that, he had had no choice.

It was the only possible gesture. Women were most damnably difficult to understand. She had undoubtedly intended to be kissed. Suddenly he felt a great desire for her, so calm, so unapproachable, with the dark-blue slanting cat’s eyes and the necklace of blue Egyptian stones. He seemed never to have possessed a woman worth possessing. They had all been like Chelidon or Precia or worse, far worse. His wife had been dry as bark, a tree with the heart crumbling out of it. He envied and hated Catalina in the strength of his desire for Orestilla. Why didn’t the man value his wife? If Cethegus had such a wife, he’d love her properly. His knees weakened under the stress of remembering the moment when she had lain in his arms. Fool to have let her go so easily. She must be despising him.

He called to a servant. “Will you ask your mistress if she would kindly return? I find some more notes that I want to ask her about.”

He waited impatiently. Next time he would act decisively. But the servant came back with the message that Orestilla was resting with a headache and begged to be excused.

Cethegus fumed. He wanted Orestilla as he had never wanted a woman. As he looked back, he seemed to have spent his whole time running away from a pack of gold-rotted harlots. Orestilla was the first real woman that he had ever touched. She had practically given herself, and he had bungled the affair. Of course she sent that message. Everyone considered him a fool about women, and they were right, damn them. But he would get Orestilla yet, and have the last laugh.

9

Orestilla was tossing on her bed, horribly ashamed, rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand. She would never be able to face the man again, one of her husband’s chief lieutenants. Why hadn’t she at least apologised for her faintness. He would think that she had meant it. She wanted badly to justify herself to him, to explain things; she must write him a note. No, that would be fatal. He must be left thinking she had meant it.

But the voice within her murmured that she had meant it, that she had enjoyed it when it happened, which came to the same thing. She swore that she would never again leave herself alone with a man; she was not to be trusted; she was unworthy of Catalina. Then, unwillingly, she reached forward, took a mirror in her hand, inspected her face, and touched her lips softly.

10

Catalina’s return awoke Rome to energy. All the organisations put into action for Cæsar’s election throbbed even more devotedly and persistently. The conservatives, anxious to have every possible weapon ready, decided to pass another bribery-law. Nobody could very well oppose such a law, for opposition sounded like the advocacy of corruption; but to give the bill as impartial an appearance as could be, Cicero and his advisers decided to use the eminent counsel Sulpicius to draw up the provisions. Sulpicius was told that he had a free hand for a bill covering every aspect of electoral reform, and he set pleased to work. The bill he presented was very comprehensive; it tightened the penalties, enacting ten years’ exile in addition to the fines and exclusion for all offices; it particularised various methods of corruption, limiting the number of gladiators to be put on at a show and insisting that such shows must be genuine funeral obsequies. But it went on to abolish the whole system of voting by classes which gave such predominance to money, and proposed instead that all citizens should vote separately. Only thus, argued Sulpicius, could bribery be eliminated, since it was the organisation of voters in groups that encouraged mass-bribery, whereas to bribe individual voters would be far too long and tedious a business.

The conservatives were horrified at this clause, which represented an extreme wedge of radical principle. Quickly dropping it, Cicero set forth the prohibitory clauses, and they were passed as a Tullian Law which would enable the conservatives to exile Catalina if he were so imprudent as to succeed at the elections. The radicals were, of course, not deceived by the magnificently generalised speech which Cicero delivered against corrupt practices, and they pointed out to the populace on every possible occasion what was being prepared against their success.

Abolish all debts.

The cry rose everywhere in the streets. The words were enshrined in comic songs or painted on all the walls in red paint. Enthusiasts even spread them across the walls of the taverns and lupanars, where scoundrels tried to pretend they were a rule of the house. The merchants and stock-dealers talked of nothing else as they walked up and down the shady colonnades of the Forum, dropping in to speak with serious voices to the bankers and changers who had offices there. But many of those who condemned the policy in public hoped personally that it would be brought about; they did not dare say so, and they feared what other revolutionary projects might come in its rear. Few of the tradesmen, shopkeepers and dealers did not have mortgages of some kind, and they wished to support the measure if only they could be sure that it would involve no further attacks on property. Very many of the senators and their friends had heavy debts; they lived by a process of continual borrowing, never repaying capital advances but merely striving to find yet another loan to meet each interest-day. These men naturally had an affection for debt-abolition, though they did not let such views appear when talking among the financiers to whom they owed money.

But it was not to relieve any individuals that Catalina saw the need for the measure. Without being able to analyse the issues, he felt that the money-system was not adequate to the demands on it. Credit was hopelessly behind the needs of industry and agriculture; and the knot of insufficiency had become so contorted that nothing but a drastic step would make money fluid again. Beyond that he could not see, and in his new-born mood of frenzy did not ask to see.

Abolish all debts. Let the mockers say that he wanted to escape his own debts. He would break down the walls of the bankers’ offices and let the money flow into the laps of the poor. No one deserved the money less than those that had it. There the morality of the question began and ended.

Abolish all debts.

11

Orestilla forgot the fear with which she had been awaiting Catalina. As soon as she looked into his face, she remembered only that he was her man; and he in the stride of his resolution had left far behind all memory of the night at Volsinii. They embraced, each happy yet absorbed in a world of fervent action, not of love. Orestilla woke suddenly on the night of his first arrival, and realised this with a confused jangle of pain in her head. Let love go then. Here was something that included it and was greater. In Catalina’s arms she found oblivion; in the arms of Cethegus she would find only a fretful honey-pulse that would leave a cloying sourness on the palate of sense. Strange then that she recalled Cethegus as she lay there, and the night of years past when someone had embraced her on the top of a tower. A windy night. That lover had gone to Sætabis, in Spain; his father was in the linen-trade; he had remembered her and sent some kerchiefs from the factory. Kisses were not more pleasant on the top of a windy tower in the darkness. They were less pleasant; the wind blew the hair in her face and flapped the dress about her, and she had to grasp hard at the railings; and there was the fear of falling, out into the bottomless dark. Yet she recalled that night, and there seemed something peculiarly desirable about being embraced on the top of a windy tower with the stars flung in handfuls at her face as she opened her eyes, looking through a glimmering net of hair.

Catalina slept deep, dreamlessly.

12

Cicero was pleased with the world once more. Labienus had prosecuted a conservative, Piso, for malpractices in Transalpine Gaul.

Cicero had defended and secured an acquittal. Won over by the fervour of his own oratory, the buzz and plaudits of the court, he was assured that all was well with the world; and even the news of Catalina’s return did not disturb his energetic complacency. He felt that he could afford to unbend for a space and give some attention to domestic matters. A young man, one of the Pisos, Gnæus Calpurnius by name, a man of solid family-position if not in the aristocratic front-rank, had long expressed an ardent admiration for Cicero’s oratory; ambitious of court-success, he had taken Cicero as his model; and some time ago he had been betrothed to Tullia. Now in the year of Cicero’s great consulship he asked for the marriage-fulfilment.

Cicero’s sole daughter, Tullia, was just entering puberty. Having passed her thirteenth year, she was ripe for marriage. A slim, thoughtful girl, whose charmingly regular face found added rather than less attraction in the loose swelling underlip of her mother. Perhaps in time the lip would become looser and attach a nagging lisp to her voice for the moment it merely underlined and deprecated her gravity. She hung on every word of her father, and was in the habit of annoying Terentia by quoting at length his moral enunciations.

At first Tullia refused to be married; then hearing that young Piso wished to marry her out of respect for her father, she became intensely keen. Terentia had closely considered the advantages of the match, and though angering Cicero by depreciating Piso as an advocate she had grudgingly forwarded the arrangements with secret urgency. For she was wrapped up in her baby son and had long been out of sympathy with the morally garrulous Tullia. Cicero had been inclined to think that the old betrothal might be disregarded if a noble suitor could be found; but after Terentia had jeered at Piso, he decided that the last thing he wanted was some condescending libertine for son-in-law and that Piso was in every way an excellent and suitable young man.

“Why does he want to marry me?” asked Tullia for the hundredth time.

“He wants to be married,” explained Cicero, “and he wants to be connected with my family.”

Tullia could not gainsay that both explanations were highly plausible, yet she wanted to ask more.

“You’re a woman now,” said Cicero fondly, wondering if his remark could really be true. Yet he could not deny the years, and Terentia said the girl was marriageable. How sad. Surely it would be better for everyone if Tullia could live for ever amid her dolls and beads, sitting on his knee in the moments spared from his career. He could grow old contentedly himself if Tullia were to remain untouched and smoothly young. Yet she must marry. It would be a relief in a way to see her settled, and the connection was not to be despised. Nothing could ever happen to such a sweet girl. He was comforted to meditate on the utter impossibility of anyone or anything harming her.

“Sit on my knee,” he said, wishing to bring back for the last time the fled years, but Tullia stepped away with a surprised frown.

“I’m grown up now,” she chided him. “Perhaps my husband wouldn’t like it.”

Cicero laughed, a little hurt; then a tear glistened in his eye. “But I’ll kiss you,” she said, relenting. “Girls always kiss their fathers, but they don’t sit on their knees after they’re grown up. It would be a bad example for the servants.”

She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him tumultuously; then she burst out weeping and clung to him, weeping, her small breasts heaving with dismay. What was she doing with tears, a grown-up woman?

Footsteps were heard. She leaped away and stood against the wall with her hands behind her back, waiting in dread. Yes, it was Terentia and an unknown young man. The terrible interview was about to happen. Tullia looked at the young man. He was more or less upstanding and robust, but she didn’t like him. His face had nothing about it to which she could object, but she didn’t like it. He seemed so very sure of himself, and she had been crying a few moments before. But Piso was too busy talking about the latest prosecutions and giving the news from the courts to send more than a cursory glance her way. He became involved with a rambling anecdote about a man who had tried to evict a rival farmer from some property under dispute by sending a gang of slaves over after dark to burn and murder; the slaves had lost their way and burned down the cottage of one of their owner’s tenants, ravishing the wife by accident; now the aggressor was suing his enemy for the loss.

Terentia made some caustic remarks about men talking shop, and tried to tidy Tullia, who edged away along the wall, scowling. Cicero had been leaning forward and answering vaguely; and this only made Piso doubly anxious to shine. At last, Cicero, finding a lull in the discourse, took Tullia’s hand and led her into the middle of the room.

“Here’s the maiden,” he said.

“Oh yes,” said Piso, and placed his hand on her head. “So she is, to be sure. So we’re to be married soon, my dear?”

“That’s what I’m told,” said Tullia, keeping back her tears with difficulty. What did he mean by putting his hand on her head? He wasn’t so very much taller, and he didn’t have a beard. She felt a strong desire to be married, but married to anyone in the world except Piso. His ears stuck out. But she’d make him a good wife.

She saw that they were all looking at her. She put her hands behind, closed her eyes, and recited the first thing that came into her head. “Respect for home-life is what has made Rome the glorious mistress of the world. Let the Greeks have their statues and their books, let the Chaldeans have their mathematics, and the Etruscans their powers of divination. Rome has the religion of the home. That is her greatness and her safety.”

It was one of the many passages from Cicero’s orations that she had learnt by heart. There was lots more, but that was enough. Opening her eyes, she gazed at the three uncomfortable elders, and giggled. How silly they looked.

“Behave yourself,” said Terentia, rushing at her and dragging her shift so tightly round her throat that she coughed. “Why can’t you stay tidied?”

“Make her a good husband,” said Cicero brokenly to Piso, suddenly overcome by emotion. The recitation of his own words had startled, touched and stupefied him. “I beg of you. I love her more than anything in life.”

But Tullia could not stop giggling. Terentia took her roughly by the shoulders and pushed her out of the room.

“She’s very young,” said Cicero, feeling miserable and somehow degraded.

“She’s your daughter,” said Piso tolerantly, as if that title could excuse anything.

Cicero looked kindly at the earnest young man, not quite sure whether he wanted to grasp and squeeze his arm or knock him down. A compliment was a compliment, but sometimes dearly bought; and Tullia was the sweetest girl in the world. He contented himself with saying mildly. “I know you’ll look after her as if she were your own.”

Shuffling, Piso resumed his anecdote, a respectful junior before the great man of the bar.

13

Curius continued to have bad luck with the dice, and Fulvia, after her first loan, found it hard not to keep making offers. He never asked for money, but he fidgeted, hinted by talking about the gains he had almost made, looked at her hungrily; and she heard herself calling again for the purse. But she made him pay for each loan with bitter remarks. He writhed, but took the money, darkling revolving in his mind the revenges that he would have once his luck turned. Then he would be rich, and she would want him; he would reject her in some devastating way, flaunting before her a younger and prettier rival; he would hire men to cheat and fool her; he would do something to pay her back for the tears and whines which she extorted.

Fulvia felt that she was not without a retort. After each loan she gave herself more ardently than before to the young Flavius of whom Curius was unaware; she lavished caresses on him; never had she abandoned herself to such passion. But afterwards she was frightened, uneasy, and lashed at Curius with her tongue. She felt that he must know or at least guess, and that the only way to bring him to the point of open attack was to goad him; secret knowledge was too worrying. Curius had been suspicious of a rival, but her insults curiously comforted him; he felt that she would be more slyly kind if she were being unfaithful. He tried to learn from the maid where Fulvia got her money; but the maid was well-trained, gave evasive replies, spoke darkly of a legacy, and reported at once to Fulvia, who became more furious. When she did permit Curius any love-making, she did it with a detached air that humiliated him. She yawned, looked about the room, watched him distantly, reached to raise a fallen garment, or asked if he would take more care of his appearance next time he called on her.

Curius grew more enraged. He wanted his revenge; but as that kept on being postponed indefinitely, he wanted to impress her. He enlarged on the preparations of Catalina, stating as certain fact every boast and threat of Catalina’s following.

“It doesn’t matter if he isn’t elected. Everything’s fixed for a coup. He has an army in Etruria under an officer named Manlius. He’s going to take control of all the state-revenues. Each of his friends will be a great man. He’s promised me a rank that I can’t mention, as he swore me to secrecy. But it will give me as much money as I want, and I’ll be able to take my revenge on those that maltreated me. We’ll stop at nothing.”

Fulvia was not deceived by the claim of future office, but she listened carefully to all the other details. They fitted in well with the general rumours about Catalina. Curius was certainly in a position to learn things. Every time she tried to bring herself to the point of turning him away, she recollected his threats. If there was a revolution, Curius would at least have the power to arrive on her doorstep with some cut-throats and treat her unmentionably. These fears, acting on her sense of guilt, unnerved her. Once she gave orders to the maid not to have Curius admitted; but the moment she heard the girl going down the passage to stop his entry, she ran out ahead of her and for once clasped Curius warmly.

Then she insulted him worse than ever. He ranted, afraid to look at her, talking about the fine days when Catalina’s sword would be held at Rome’s throat. “Rome’s for sale,” he said. “You know what the Numidian King Iugurtha said when he’d managed to bribe all the generals and investigators that should have been taking action against him. He said: A venal city, ready to fall to the first bidder. Well, we’re going to buy Rome—with steel.”

Fulvia caressed her throat and did not demur when he came to take her in his arms. He was still the weakling, but he had developed a kind of tearful brutality in response to her deliberately dulled acquiescences. That night she made him another loan, and afterwards Flavius was smuggled in the back way.

Flavius was very young and believed everything she told him, believed that she was very virtuous and had to protect her good name, and that she was able to take money from him only because she loved him so dearly.

To-night Fulvia was tired. “You’re a friend of the quæstor Sestius?” she said.

“Yes,” answered Flavius. “He’s a good fellow, Sestius. Though he’s quæstor to the consul Antonius, it’s only because our side thought that there ought to be a dependable man keeping an eye on the fellow. Sestius is really managing all the affairs of Antonius and reporting to Cicero.”

Fulvia considered. “You know I told you that you mustn’t come in the daytime, but I’d like you to send Sestius along to see me one morning or other. He’s a public official, so people couldn’t talk. I have some important political information that I think he ought to hear.”

“Tell me,” pleaded Flavius wide-eyed, “and I’ll tell him.”

Fulvia kissed him indulgently. “I want there to be nothing but love and love and lots more love between us. No, this is dry old politics. You’ll send him?”

“You haven’t fallen in love with him?” asked Flavius with a sadly confiding smile.

“Silly boy.” She kissed him again. “I don’t even know him. I couldn’t love anyone but you. It’s truly politics. I think I can be of some use to the state. You made me so patriotic, the way you care for things so tremendously.”

“I wish you weren’t so mysterious,” said Flavius reproachfully. “But I’ll do what you ask.” Perhaps if he were perfectly obedient, she would relent and tell him later. “It isn’t that you don’t trust me? I don’t mind as long as I can be sure of that.”

“Sweet, sweet boy,” she said, opening her arms. “I’d trust anything to you—even myself.”

Flavius was happy.

14

After the first week of May, the evil month for marriages, the Vestals began working their sacred salt-cakes from the first ears cut from the standing corn. They ground the corn with a stone pestle, and made the paste in the ancient fashion.

A few days later came the Rite of the Ghosts, performed to keep away the spirits that were not laid quietly in acceptable tombs—the spirits that, instead of rightly feeding the harvest with life, were become the crawling pestilence of death. Then in every house where respect for religion remained, the father rose at midnight and washed his hands. He made signs with his fingers and thumbs to ward off ghosts, and walked through the house, his mouth filled with black beans. As he walked, he spat out the beans, looking in another direction and saying, “With these I redeem me and mine.” Nine times he said it.

Then the ghosts came up behind and took away the beans. He washed again and clattered the brass-vessels. He said, “Depart, spirits of my fathers.” Nine times he said it.

Then it was permitted to look round. The house was safe for another year.

At midmonth there was a procession to the old bridge of wood that iron had never helped to make or mend. The Flaminica of Iuppiter was there, in mourning, without her blood-red marriage-veil, and the Vestals were there. Bundles of rushes, tied to resemble men bound hand and foot, were thrown into the Tiber by the Vestals. Some said that the rite was a relic of the days of human sacrifice, but deeper was the drama of birth and rebirth, the seed of form dropped into the flowing body which would reappear as babies and the serried armies of the corn.

Later there was another lustration of the Trumpets, those mighty weapons in which was housed the blast-power of Mars that slew and impregnated.

15

Clodius returned several times to visit the boss Nacca. He asked after Flaviola, and was allowed to enter Nacca’s private quarters and have a few words with the girl. On his third visit he brought her a book, a rendering of some Æsopian Fables. He tried to excuse the gift, explained that he had noticed it cast aside by his sister’s girl, and said that it was of no value. Flaviola was enraptured. She spelled busily away, and at each visit insisted on taking him aside to read out the deciphered portions, undeterred by her frequent mispronunciations. He bought her some more rolls, carefully running through the bookstalls in the Argiletum to find something not too hard to read; but he always excused them in the same offhand way.

Nacca was as grateful as his daughter. He pestered Clodius with thanks, and Clodius spent his time parrying remarks about the rolls when others were about. He could not analyse why he wished to keep the gifts secret, but when he bought a brand-new roll, he tore the pumiced edges, discoloured the labels, and even scratched the bosses with his finger-nails. One small roll of verse on the most dainty papyrus had gilt bosses, a scented surface, and a painted miniature of the poet. This he first wished to give in all its freshness; then, losing heart, he fenced with it against a passing street-mongrel, worrying the dog until there were some tatters and teethmarks showing. Even so Flaviola thought it a wonderful roll, and nursed it in her bosom.

She was very quick-brained, and took a fancy to the verses, learning many of them off by heart and making funny little mistakes in metre. The latest present had been the copy of a play on Phædra by one of the new psychological obscurantists, which Clodius bought in a hurry though feeling that it would be too much of a puzzle. When, however, he arrived, he found that she had many of the heroine’s speeches ready to recite. She eagerly drew him into the kitchen-parlour, where he sat bashful-eyed and amused at her emotion.

She stood against the hearth, her hands clasping her heart:

ah wondrous suffering

that can be cured but by its own excess.

The drowning man must drown to regain breath,

the burning man must burn

or char to death.

Therefore to you I turn …

She stumbled on the longer words, but looked so serious that her stammerings accentuated the effect of passion, or so Clodius swore. “You don’t understand that,” he said.

“I do,” she answered hotly.

“Explain it then,” he mocked her.

Tears came into her eyes. “Because I can’t explain it, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand it.”

Clodius was upset and wanted to retrieve his remark. “I was only joking. I knew you understood by the way you put the right expression into it.” And she had given the words expressively, he realised with a shock. He looked at her closely, then tousled her hair. “You’re older than I am,” he went on, “I do believe. You’re a goddess, and will never show your years. You’ll stay like you are always and always, while I’ll grow old and dribble. You’re a dear child, and so good that I’m sure you’re not real.”

“Yes, I am real,” she said seriously. “I don’t want to be like what you said. And I’m not good.” The mischievous look came back into her eyes. “Ask the old woman next door. Yesterday I dropped a copper out of the window after making it hot in the fire, and she picked it up and burnt her fingers.”

Clodius was relieved. “You ought to be allowed to act, my sweeting, but girls are only given parts in those wicked mimes, and I wouldn’t like to see you acting there.”

“Why don’t people talk like poetry?” she asked. “It’d be so much nicer. I’m sure people could if they tried. I can almost do it myself now, and I haven’t read much.”

Clodius looked at her with admiring pity. What was he doing, filling the girl’s head with stuff that could only make her unhappy. She was doomed to marry some garlic-breathed lout, at the best a fussy tradesman who’d soon sneer and beat such nonsense out of her. Or perhaps she would marry some loose-moralled creature and sell herself under his orders. For the first time he realised that she would be quite an asset with her literary airs. He revolted against the thought. He wanted her to stay pure, and it would be ghastly if he’d merely turned her into a higher-class street-walker. He must caution Nacca to see that she didn’t talk to undesirable characters. Perhaps it would be the best thing if she were married off quickly. Poor girl what could her future be?

Flaviola, however had no fears about her future; she was engrossed by the present.

“What are you going to do with yourself?” asked Clodius. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I mean.” he explained. “What do you hope to end as?” That was crude. “Don’t you want to be married or anything like that?”

“No,” she said with wondering eyes in which there yet seemed to lurk a hint of mischief. “Not married, or anything like that.”

Was the repetition of his phrase a mockery? “How many lovers have you?” he asked in jest.

“None, of course not.” She flushed, then her eyes lighted up. “Father brought home some old man or other. He sold tallow, he said, and I was told to kiss him. So I scratched him, and pulled his ears, and ran upstairs, and I heard him tell father that he liked quiet women, not hedgehogs with lanky legs.”

Clodius was pleased; but when he met Nacca outside, he asked him aggressively about the tallow-dealer, forgetting that he had advocated marriage. Nacca shouted with laughter and corroborated Flaviola’s story. “But he wasn’t an old man. Only about forty years. But he had a bald patch on the top of his head.”

“I think she’s a trifle young yet,” said Clodius. “She seems to be enjoying life.”

“I hadn’t any intention of hurrying things. But she’s a motherless girl with no relatives nearer than Tarentum, where lives my unmarried sister with a squint and a bad temper; so I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in a betrothal. I’d feel easier in my mind then in case anything happened to me. These are not troublous times, I’m glad to say, and, apart from what may or may not be brewing, my lads in there sometimes fling flagons about. They all love me, I’m proud to admit, but that wouldn’t help me if my head got in the way by accident.”

Clodius was on the verge of saying that he’d be ready to look after the girl, but controlled himself in time. Nacca might misunderstand, and the impulse surprised Clodius himself.

“There’s one thing,” observed Nacca, “she certainly doesn’t come running round for household-chars nowadays. She thinks she’s a lady, and I always tell her that she’s flattering the silken-chemised bitches.”

16

Clodius, after a humorously lurid account to Clodia of his hours in the temple, had forgotten all about Pompeia, but she had not forgotten about him. Such a glamorous episode could not so easily be dispelled from her mind. A man had wanted her so much that he had disguised himself as a woman and profaned the rites of Bona Dea. Heaven knew what would have happened if he had been found out, and surely the fact that he had not been found out argued that Bona Dea was not very angry. Pompeia had never had a lover before. She had been a virgin in the middle teens when Cæsar had married her, and she had never indulged in the merest of vagaries since. The stern, watchful eye of her mother-in-law saw to that, and Pompeia wanted to be good. She was satisfied to be Cæsar’s wife; he treated her with pleasant consideration, though he seldom talked to her except in the most impersonally kind way.

He had married her in a revulsion from his first marriage with its dangerous adventures. Cornelia had died, and his boyish defiance had seemed so wasted. Things had become quiet at Rome temporarily, and he had decided to work among the liberals. Everyone was to subordinate himself to the ideals of social service; Rome would be transfigured from within, reforms would shoot up like young wheat in the ploughed field of regenerate man. Pompeia, a relative of Sulla, he had selected for wife as a sign of his reconciliation with society; what Sulla could not achieve with force, Cæsar now accepted when his resistance to force had proved successful.

But Cæsar soon found that the way of politics was not so simple. The connections of Pompeia proved valueless as he linked up more with the popular movement, and Pompeia, never desired personally, vanished into the background. She had drifted into her vague role without revolt, for she was much happier than she had been at home; and even if she felt discomfort in the presence of her mother-in-law, it was not because she meditated even the mildest of infidelities. She read books and played music with Cæsar’s daughter by Cornelia, the gentle-mannered Iulia, whose submissive charm made more natural Pompeia’s own submission.

Now romance had shattered her ease. She waited in an ecstatic trance of terror for the next move from the daring Clodius. Surely he would scale her window on a ladder, or kill the porter and steal up into her room at midnight. How gloriously worrying that she should have been chosen out for such a love. Of course she would not consent when Clodius did appear. She would explain to him that she was intensely flattered, but he was quite mistaken, she was an entirely ordinary person and she couldn’t be unfaithful to her husband, whom she loved as she had been taught. No, she would not consent, but that did not prevent her from anticipating the marvellous moment when she would repel the advances of her impetuous lover.

She waited tremulously, but nothing happened.

17

It was customary for the dependants of a rich man to call in the morning and pay their respects. In the old times these clients had been almost a kind of poor friend, who dined with the master; now they degenerated into pensioned parasites. When a man achieved prominence, his list of morning-callers increased, and he was forced to put some order into a following that amounted to a court. Catalina’s comparatively small house was overtaxed in these days, and the front room was almost cleared except for benches, while the poorer visitors congregated in the porch and along the street outside. First were admitted to his presence the lieutenants, singly or in pairs; then came groups of lesser but important individuals, officials from the townships and the enthusiastic lads who wanted a clean sweep socially; then the hangers-on were herded along as many as the space allowed at a time.

The strategy of the elections depended on the propaganda that could be circulated about the financiers. Already, at the first word of Abolition, the bankers and lenders had raised their interest-charges; and since the majority of the official, industrial and farming classes lived on credit, the effect was at once demoralising. The bankers did not act on any principle or scheme in raising interest-rates; the money-market blindly responded to the panic induced by Catalina’s threat; and each financier thought only for himself.

Cethegus and Cassius were busy collecting data about the results.

“Everything depends,” said Catalina, receiving his lieutenants while still at breakfast on some bread dipped in wine, “on the reaction to the money-tightening. If only the middle class feel the pinch sufficiently, they can’t be such fools as to vote for a continuance of the system.”

“The bankers are trying to excuse themselves,” said Cethegus, “by blaming us. They say the rise comes solely through the threats.”

“It’s our business,” replied Catalina, “to make it obvious that the dearness of money had to come. Money can’t be hoarded in the hands of a small class without this strangulation occurring At the very most we’ve only speeded up the process. We’re making the bankers expose their hand.”

“That’s what we’re spreading,” said Cassius, accepting Catalina’s invitation to a second breakfast and swallowing some of the wine-sops. “We sent out another fifty men yesterday to make the rounds of the shops and put some sense into the tradesmen. But it’s hard going. The fools have grown so reliant on the bankers that they believe anything they’re told by them.”

As they were leaving, Cassius handed Cethegus a tablet. “Chelidon told me to give this to you. I haven’t opened it as you’ll see by the seal, and I don’t know what’s in it. Please don’t tell me.”

Cethegus muttered, “Something for Precia, I suppose. Why didn’t she write direct? Wait a moment and I’ll show you.” He played about with the tablet, turning it over and looking at the seal; he had no intention of showing it to Cassius, but wanted to make him refuse.

Cassius threw up his pudgy hands. “No, you won’t. The woman’s driving me mad. She can’t go to sleep without drinking a pint of wine and bothering me in all kinds of ways. Why on earth a man like myself that believes in a quiet life ever has anything to do with a woman I don’t know. Tell Precia to turn Chelidon inside out like an old cloak and hang her up in a cupboard where her screams won’t be heard.”

Cethegus broke the seal and opened the tablet. “Tell her Precia will write,” he said guiltily. Cassius looked at him shrewdly out of his small fat-sunken eyes. He was very jealous of Chelidon, but would rather die than admit it. For a moment he loathed Cethegus and let his mind rove over all the most excruciating methods of torture; then the emotion flagged. It was Chelidon’s fault, he must make her pay, but he’d rather see her dead than another’s. It was always the woman’s fault; if he found her out, he’d do away with her.

He beamed at Cethegus and put his arm on his shoulder. “Come home and have a drink.”

“No, no,” said Cethegus, far too vehemently. The last person he wanted to meet was Chelidon. She had written to say that unless she saw him soon she would tell Precia all and make a scene in the middle of the Forum. He calmed his voice. “I’ve far too much work to do, I’m afraid.” He was worried how Chelidon would take the message he had given Cassius. Tell her Precia will write. But what else could he have said? He felt a furious rage against Cassius. Why couldn’t the fellow keep his woman in better control? He wanted to unburden himself and tell Cassius the truth, implore his protection. But that was madness. He thought again of Orestilla, so calm, so unapproachable, who had yet offered herself. Against his reason he felt that only by seducing the wife of one friend could he escape from the lunatic overtures of the other friend’s woman.

He nodded briskly and moved off through the throng of callers. Cassius was sorry that he hadn’t broken the seal and looked into the tablet. But surely Chelidon wouldn’t have given it to him if she was after Cethegus? He abandoned thinking of women and turned his thoughts to revolution instead as a more congenial subject.

18

From the roof of the house of Metellus Celer in the Slope of Victory, most fashionable street of Rome, there was a view straight down over the Forum. The house overlooked the steep edge of the Palatine, skirting the pillared Colonnade of Catulus. Below it rose the Temple of the Twin Brothers and the Chapel of Vesta, where the Sacred Way ran into the Forum; the Forum itself, filled with shops, porticoes, offices, statues, stalls, with painted and carved walls, and sloping roofs, lay clear to the eye; and opposite beetled the Citadel of the Capitoline Hill and the splendid Temple of Iuppiter. To the left stretched masses of housetops broken by streets and squares and temple-roofs, with the river glistening in the distance and the Ianiculan Hill blue beyond.

Clodia had had her roof fitted according to the latest ideas for roof-gardens. Some rare balsamic plants and rose-bushes stood about in glazed pots; and under a striped awning were set couches, chairs, and shelves for books or sweetmeats or crystal flasks of wine. A silver wine-cooler for snow stood in a corner; the floor was bluely tiled; and canvas lay ready for hoisting against rain.

Clodia had a headache. Beating at the slave girl masseuse who had failed to bring relief, she climbed the stairway with its carved rail and stood on the roof gazing down over the city. She leaned on the balustrade with her hands under her chin. Her interest was more taken by the grinning head of a satyr-rainspout than by the Forum below with its ant-heap of hurrying people. The goat-face was mocking at her, despising mortals whose energy knotted with pain instead of flooding out into nature. She rubbed herself against the stone-coping felinely, and unexpectedly felt better. The satyr’s grin had done more than medicines.

Lying on the couch, she opened a tablet and began scribbling verses on the wax with a steel pen; then losing heart, she let the tablet slip to the floor, took up a roll instead, Lovegames by Lævius, and read on, marking the experimental words. Lævius liked queer compounds, but perhaps he went too far. O to the ravens with critical catchwords. Nobody could go too far if they were going anywhere at all. The younger poets now rather frowned at these tricks, it wasn’t pure Latinity; and yet what they called pure Latinity was the result of a Greek sense of discipline. So much for the learned poets. They wanted to fix Latin and become cosmopolitan; they objected flatly to all nationalistic themes and copied the elegiac poets of Alexandria to make themselves original. Good for Lævius. “Beautycoloured.” It was a long word, why not? Women were longer than they were short.

She retrieved the tablet and scribbled, watching the words show up black through the white wax:

Beauty is my hue I think

but is it blue or is it pink?

blue when I’m sitting in the cold

but red when I’m in kisses rolled.

However that was disgracefully immoral in metre; it wouldn’t pass with the purists. All the better.

A maid appeared at the top of the stairs. “The consul Cicero to see you, mistress.”

“Send him up,” said Clodia, yawning and yet awakened from her drowse. There was something ridiculous about Cicero that appealed to her, something solidly, worthily ridiculous. Anyone could be a fool, but Cicero was funnily sublime. She did not make any effort to tidy herself, but left the loose ringlets which she knew were hanging over her brow, and the creases which she knew were obvious in her dress.

Cicero mounted the stairs, bidding his escort wait below. “Ah, alone,” he said with an air of surprise. “Where is the good Metellus?”

“Being good somewhere else,” replied Clodia. “Where, I fortunately don’t know. He may have gone to Africa or the Lawcourts down there in the Forum, for all I can tell you. No, that’s wrong. He’s city-prætor of course, and can’t leave Rome without special permission. Do you want to see him? Is there a war to declare or has the price of cabbages risen? I hear all the news from my hairdresser, but I haven’t seen him for two days, so I’m out of touch with things.”

Cicero hemmed. This was one of her talkative moods; last time she had been haughty and reserved, with just a touch of cordiality like a small rouge-spot on a snow-white face. She patted the couch near her, and he took his seat, at a loss for words. It wasn’t often that happened.

“Which do you think is the more important,” she asked, “poetry or the marriage-tie?”

Cicero could not follow the remark “I don’t think they’re incompatible. I’m married, and yet I’ve dabbled.”

Clodia sighed. “I think you’d make a wonderful poet if you’d only grow a beard.”

He fingered his chin and turned to her. “I’ll tell you a great secret. I did once grow a beard when I was very young. I admired the old Roman farmer-heroes so tremendously that I wanted to be bristly-bearded like they were, as the first step on my career.”

She smiled on him. He was refreshingly boyish sometimes, and capable of betraying his greatest pomposity with a revealing aside. There was really much more in him than people allowed.

“Well, now you’re an antique hero,” she said with a faint note of sarcasm, “though you shed your beard.”

He flushed at the insinuation of mockery. “I’m only doing my best,” he said with a mixture of feeble apology and arrogance which she considered charming.

“I’m serious,” she answered, suppressing her smiles and looking into his eyes with a passionate intentness. “I think you’re the best consul that ever was. Everyone says so. Quintus says so before breakfast, when he’s so grumpy that he’s never once kissed me.” She was trying not to laugh, but managed to keep the deep warm note in her voice. Cicero was not sure of her intentions but could not resist that pulsating huskiness.

“I’m not,” he said, stirred and wanting to show her the real profundity of his character, the conflict which no one guessed. “I feel I’m a failure at times. All the parties are against me. I’m alone. Yet I could do so much if I were given a chance. I know I could. If people would only trust me, I could do anything. But they follow any cheap phrase-maker or they join together in wretched cliques. Perhaps a great danger would shake them out of their scheming apathy and give me my chance. You wouldn’t laugh at me then.”

He was entirely pathetic and she almost loved him. She continued looking at him with her dark slumberous eyes, but there was no mockery in them now. It was a shame to tease him. He was a good man, and there weren’t many of them nowadays. She would give herself to him then and there if it would help him.

“Reach me that cushion,” she said, and he leaned forwards across her. He felt that she wanted him to make some gesture of approach, and he was about to touch her cheek when she wriggled out and walked to the balustrade. He was disappointed. Not that he wanted anything vulgar like an affair; he was a family-man; but there were ways of arranging things. If he and Clodia came to an understanding, divorces could be arranged. There would be a wrench repaying Terentia’s dowry; but he could raise almost as much as he wanted now among the bankers, he was thoroughly respected in financial quarters. Tullia’s marriage would make the separation easier. Clodia would be a fitter wife for a man who meant to play so great a part in history. A Claudian wife, that would be a fine culmination for the conquering son of a petty Volscian burgher. Marius had ended by marrying a Iulian woman, and the Ciceros were weightier people than the Marii at Arpinum. In fact three generations ago a Cicero wouldn’t have entertained a Marius at all.

Clodia had intended to make him embrace her, but at the last moment she had pitied him. “Look at them,” she said, pointing down to the crowded streets. “Human activity is never realised as so meaningless, so irritatingly and insensately driven, as when one looks down on a mob from a height. No wonder poets put the gods on Olympus. What are they all doing, those people? It’s awful to think that each one of those scurrying, bustling figures is hurled along in a world of his own which he thinks desperately important. Yet if we were down there, we’d never notice it, we’d be hurled too.” Rather silly kind of talk, but the stuff that he liked.

Cicero rose and stood at her side. Indeed he felt her rightful mate as they stood there, Olympian over the fleeting tribes of men. “Rome is a great city,” he said, assured that at last he had reached the Claudian level. “So many trades, so many interests and powers. The heart of the world beats below there. It’s the clearing-house of the world. Soon the Syrians will have to buy at Rome the scents that their own fields produce. It’s a great privilege to have a hand in ruling its destiny.”

She was pleased that she had restored him his faith in rhetoric and ended his embarrassing sincerity. Yet she couldn’t resist pricking at his confidence.

“Nobody rules it. Greed rules it, or madness, or lust. Nothing else. It’s for sale. Every man down there is thinking of himself.”

“There is something else,” said Cicero grandly. “There is a need of power, a piety of government, that is ours alone; and by the God Stone, that need shall flow through me into the veins of Rome. It shall not be lost.”

Clodia was silenced. There was a rightness in the words. For once rhetoric had coincided with the drama of the moment, but she knew that he would bluster in the next breath and spoil it all.

There was a sound on the stairs and someone was heard pushing aside the protesting maid. The face of Mucia appeared, framed in a tall coiffure of hair with an emerald tiara. “Come up,” said Clodia languidly to her sister-in-law, “and save Marcus from being bored.”

Cicero flushed at the use of his praenomen, a mark of familiarity, and stammered that he was charmed, not bored, charmed to see Mucia also, entirely charmed with the world. Mucia, a woman with regularly modelled face, beautiful but slightly running to fat, came and stood beside them, settling her embroidered yellow dress about her.

“Nothing new,” she said complainingly.

“What did you expect to see?” asked Clodia. “It would be too expensive to buy the scene and lay it out afresh.”

Mucia looked at Cicero with her head coquettishly on one side. “Do you think Quintus will soon be back?” she said to Clodia. “I really must be off.”

“I never ask him where he’s going. The only time I can’t help knowing when he’s at home is when he’s snoring.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t snore,” said Mucia. “Aren’t you?” She addressed Cicero. “He doesn’t look like it at all. After all he’s my half-brother.”

Cicero was annoyed at having been found alone with Clodia, and he decided that he disliked Mucia. Sometimes she said such imbecile things that it was hard not to think she meant them to ridicule; but she was transparently stupid and very virtuous of conversation. She now drifted into a glibly shocked account of the latest adulteries, with details in a hushed voice. Cicero cleared his throat to announce his departure; but Metellus, a short, impassive-faced man, came up the stairs. Cicero took him aside and discussed the points of law which he wished settled. No loophole must be left against Catalina.

The family of Metellus was plebeian, but had so early thrust its way into the ranks of the official nobility that it stood almost as high as a patrician family like the Claudian. The Metelli had been long famed for industrious honesty, for thorough-going but unoriginal capacity; and Metellus Celer was typical. His sole rash act had been marriage with Clodia, but that could be excused in view of her lineage; it was after marriage that she and her two sisters had become notorious as leaders of the emancipated women. Metellus, however, refused to listen to scandal; that was part of the opaque frankness of his nature; and though busybodies had tried often to cause trouble, and though he found Clodia at times a nagging nuisance and unconventional enigma, he did his best to shut his eyes and continue undisturbed on the path of civic duty.

He did not approve of Cicero’s visit, but was so used to finding his wife surrounded by puppyish young admirers, poets and fops, that he had no objection to make. He merely expected better of Cicero, but did not like to show his attitude. He talked courteously. Only once did he allow himself a dry retort.

“Such a course,” he said, “would not befit the tradition of our ancestors.”

Cicero reddened, though Metellus had laid no emphasis on the pronoun; but both knew that Cicero had no ancestors in the legal sense of the Right of Images. The ancestors of Cicero and those of Metellus were as different as a shapeless mass of clay from the figures shaped out of it.

Metellus affected not to notice Cicero’s discomfiture. Unlike the more intolerant conservatives, he respected Cicero, though he considered that as consul he should have summoned the prætor and not gone gadding on a visit to his private house.

“What do you men find so much to talk about?” said Mucia, coming up. “I really am always being left without a word in my mouth, and I do envy you men. I wish I could follow politics, but it all seems to me like saying the same words in different ways. If I was in the Senate I’m sure I’d always vote for the wrong side.”

“Luckily,” said Metellus aridly, “you are not in the Senate. Women are still in theory tethered to their proper area. I want a word with you, Mucia.”

He took her aside. Clodia knew he was rating her for the stories that were going round about her equerry, a Greek youth; he feared that Pompeius would hear reports and divorce her. Mucia was of course denying everything. She looked up at Metellus with wide-open eyes and quivering underlip. Clodia knew that she was saying, “You can’t really believe such cruel things about me. I’d die before I’d ever think of doing such things.”

Cicero was savouring the nearness of Clodia. Would he ever come to the point of suggesting an understanding? Not unless she was very kind, as she had been this afternoon. People said that she bullied Metellus unmercifully. Well, Terentia wasn’t exactly a cooing dove. Clodia would be different with him; he wasn’t a sour, meticulously correct abstraction like Metellus.

Tears were bright in Mucia’s eyes. Cicero wondered what Metellus was saying. To all appearances it was the man who liked bullying. Clodia was murmuring to herself, and Cicero tried to listen. It sounded like: But is it blue or is it pink? It couldn’t be that.

19

Cato had received a note from his brother-in-law Lucullus, asking him to call. Disdaining all forms of carriage, he set out alone; for he had no fears of assault, and his fearlessness protected him. Unpopular as his views were, the people admired him and said, “He’s a hard man, but he’s not after lining his own purse.” He walked now with rapid strides, striking northwards for the magnificent house on the Pincian Hill which Lucullus had been building for years and which seemed as if it would never be finished. Cato disliked the display, but admired Lucullus as administrator and general, and had been one of the few who had resolutely but vainly opposed the intriguing efforts of Pompeius to supplant Lucullus in his command. Lucullus on his return had divorced his wife Tertia, Clodia’s younger sister, for adultery, affirming that Clodius, besides others, had been seen lying with his sister by more than a score of slaves who were ready so to testify. He had then married a half-sister of Cato, the younger sister of Servilia.

Objecting to pointless cogitation, Cato did not meditate on the possible reasons for the message. He spent his time during the fairly long walk in reckoning over the state-expenses for the first three months of the year. During his year at the Treasury he had instituted many practical reforms, and ever since kept a forbidding eye on the clerks.

He was welcomed effusively at the palatial doors of the mansion by a red-liveried butler and half a dozen footmen. Tightening his lips silently, he suffered himself to be passed through the hands of a series of ushers. Lucullus was pacing up and down the floor of a cosy side-room to the enormous library.

“So you’re here,” he said nervously. Cato made no reply; self-evident propositions should be ignored. Lucullus wiped his brow. “Of course you got my note. Take a seat.” Cato sat down on the edge of a chair with padded leather seat and back, beside which stood a slanting desk where rolls could be placed for reading. Lucullus kicked at a knot in the thick camel’s hair carpet.

“I may as well come to the point. It’s my wife.”

Cato’s lips tightened again, but he still made no reply. Nothing could astonish the man whose wisdom was virtue in a rabid world. He refused to help Lucullus to speak.

“She’s no better than my first one,” blurted Lucullus. He stopped beside a shelf, took out a roll, snapped it in half, and then stared in dismay at his work. “Bad, bad,” he said. “I don’t like destroying things. I always hated war. That’s why I always won. No one could have won those battles with less loss of life than I did. But even more than human lives I love the beautiful things into which men have put the best of themselves. No poet was ever worth his least poem. That’s the madness of life.”

Cato frowned. He objected to these philosophisings; they demeaned Lucullus. He knew that Lucullus had loved fighting, and he admired him for it, he respected the way Lucullus, with nerves of iron in his own limbs, had exacted every ounce of energy remorselessly from his men till they could bear it no longer. Lucullus was the last of the patriot-generals. Love for mankind? Pah! Make the brutes decent first, and let love take care of itself.

Lucullus had lost the train of his thoughts; he did so occasionally nowadays. He leant against the shelves with the pieces of the broken roll in his hands. He was back in the city of Amisus on the shores of the Black Sea, that beautiful Greek city which his soldiers had burned and plundered and destroyed. He had tried to stop them. When the rioting had began, he stood in the way of the largest body of plunderers, he besought them to spare the city; he wept, he who had had no tears to spare for fatigue or danger or battle. The men had been in an ugly state. They swept him aside and cursed him. If it hadn’t been for that centurion, he would have been trampled to death. The beautiful city was burned, and the soldiers danced like Furies, tearing rich cloths and golden plate and screaming women from the houses that fell with a crash of timbers on their drunken faces. Beautiful things burning aimlessly in the streets, and women moaning who would never know the fathers of their children. He, Lucullus, had been responsible; for the soldiers were his, the men he had driven and loved. The thought of the beautiful city burning sickened him, but not the mounds of corpses when he had hacked the huge Armenian army to shreds beside the river bank. He had snuffed that air of slaughter and been proud of the small army that he had led to victory.

“You were speaking of my sister,” said Cato harshly.

Lucullus recalled himself. “She has committed adultery—with a slave.”

Cato sat silent for a while. Then he said: “Bring her in.”

Lucullus clapped his hands and gave the order. The two men did not speak. Then the sound of rustling steps was heard, the curtains parted, and the woman entered, a slimmer version of Servilia with Cato’s pale cold blue eyes. She stood looking at the floor after one shrinking glance at Cato.

“You have disgraced yourself,” said Cato in his roughest tones, staring at her. “You have played the wanton. You are a filthy creature.”

She said nothing, but choked back a sob. “What do you mean by it?” he demanded.

“I didn’t hear him coming,” she said without mockery. Cato darted at her a raking glance. She had always been rather a simpleton, unlike her sister.

“What am I to do about it?” asked Lucullus helplessly. Cato stared at him with contempt. How old the man looked as he stood there, afraid of an adulterous wife.

“Flog and geld the adulterer. Flog and divorce the adulteress.”

“She’s your sister,” said Lucullus weakly. “I’m sick of the whole business. I don’t want to harm her. My anger’s gone.” It had passed out of him with the memory of that burning city. He wanted to forget the world, to create a new space of luxurious textures and impossibly toothsome foods. Women must be shut out altogether. No man knew who was the father of his children. There must be a divorce, but nothing hasty. Perhaps he would give her another chance for Cato’s sake. He thought very highly of Cato.

His wife, whose senses were dazed with long weeping, had slowly realised that she was being threatened with a flogging. She screamed and threw herself at her brother’s feet. He thrust her away, and she turned to Lucullus, grasping him about the legs. Lucullus shuddered. It felt as if he were back at Amisus. The ravished women were all about him, accusing him because they would not know the fathers of their children—because he, a Roman general, the man who had finally won the East for Rome, could not discipline his soldiers.

“Don’t flog me,” she moaned. “I’ll be so good. I’ll worship you. Never, never again will I do anything wrong.”

Lucullus tried to push her away. “You shan’t be flogged,” he mumbled. “You’re a silly little damned fool. I’m not going to flog you. I’m sick of you. That’s all.”

Cato sat looking on with disapproval. He could not see why any discussion was needed. He was sorry for the woman’s distress, she had been his favourite sister; but pity or liking did not lessen her guilt. Let her suffer. If she were divorced, he would take her back and keep her under his eyes; she was always well-behaved when he was about. It had been the same during their childhood. With him she had been good. When he was away, she had been up to all kinds of tricks with the stable-boys. He would look after her when she was divorced, but meanwhile she had wronged Lucullus and must pay for it.

Lucullus managed to extricate his legs. Stumbling to the door he shouted for assistance. Two slave girls rushed in, picked up their mistress, and carried her out.

“I love you,” she moaned to Lucullus. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll always be good now.”

20

They carried her and laid her down on the bed and then retired. She lay sobbing for a while in the big carved bedstead, among the crumpled silks. Then she sat up and looked wildly round. There was no one near but her confidential maid Doris.

“Am I safe?” she whispered.

“Yes,” said Doris. “He isn’t going to do anything. I heard him through the curtains saying that he wouldn’t beat you.”

Her mistress lay back, thinking. Her relief passed, and she grew angered. How dare Lucullus take such an attitude after the way he went on with his pet Callisthenes. How dare he treat her like a slave. She wouldn’t have it at all costs.

“Doris,” she whispered, “you know that nice-looking boy who serves in the cellar. Go and tell him to bring me up a cup of scented Lesbian wine.”

Doris hesitated. “I’m frightened.”

“If you don’t go, I’ll tell them all the other things and you’ll be flogged for certain.”

With a weak mutter of complaint Doris stole out of the room. Her mistress lay stretched taut in the bed. Her body felt streaming with fire. It was all the fault of those men. She wouldn’t be treated like a slave, not even if they did flog her. Her life was flowing out of her. Who would staunch it?

Doris entered, followed by a reluctant slave boy with a half spilt cup of wine. She shoved the boy forward. Her mistress sat up in bed, took the cup, and, still holding the boy’s wrist, gulped down the wine. The boy tried to move away, but she tugged at his arm. “Kiss me first.”

“They’ll crucify me.”

“They will if you don’t do what I tell you. I’ll swear that you tried to force me.”

Trembling violently, the boy leaned down and kissed her.

21

Cato rose to go, refusing an offer of wine for refreshment. He was disappointed in the behaviour of Lucullus. But what else could he expect? Lucullus had been a stalwart in defence of the ancient discipline of manners before his departure for the East, and now he was the chief exponent of costly living.

Lucullus pressed Cato to stay for dinner, but Cato refused curtly and Lucullus walked with him to the front door. They passed through the library where experts from Alexandria were cataloguing, sorting out, testing the accuracy of texts, arranging the rarer volumes, and directing the host of slaves who were clipping, polishing, staining against worms, and pasting on labels. They went along the gleaming hall lined with priceless statues and inlaid with marble from the Island of Melos. As yet the Alexandrian gaudiness of contrasted marbles, the plaques and gilt and incrustations, had not yet reached Rome; the wish to make a show had gradually increased; but it was in the next few years, when the inflow of money from Pontus and Gaul had temporarily overcome the credit-tangle, that Roman luxury was to burst out with its full splendour and vulgarity. The house of Lucullus was a landmark between the old and new standards of millionaire display.

A low sound of mallets could be heard somewhere in the rear where carpenters were still banging. Through an open doorway painters were seen at work, standing on planks laid across trestles while slaves ground and prepared the colours. Each room had its colour-scheme, with frescoes to match. Lucullus had spared no pains to find the best Greek masters; and the hangings, the easel-pictures, the statues, had been carefully graded and matched to make each room perfect in its harmony.

But for the moment he had lost all interest. It served him right for marrying a second time after wifeless years at the war, but he had thought Cato’s family at least reliable. Cato felt the implied rebuke but refused to defend himself. When a man married he did so at his own risk, and there was something shameful about a man whose woman fooled him. It was the fault of giving women freedom; pampered, they of course misbehaved, it was their nature. He recalled the words of his great ancestor: only three times in his life had he done something that left a remorse—he had lived a whole day intestate, once taken a ferry when he could have walked, and once entrusted his wife with a secret. Never kiss your wife unless it thunders. Those were sound maxims.

Lucullus and Cato stood in the portico with its long line of richly ornamented pillars, looking down on Rome. Before them lay the northern slope of the stone walls, the thickly housed area of the Quirinal. Over the Capitol hung a dark cloud.

“It looks like rain,” said Lucullus. “Surely you’ll let me lend you a litter?”

“No. I prefer to walk.”

“As far as the Gate at least.”

“No.”

Cato turned and went, striding rapidly down the paved carriage-way set with cypresses and box trees. On the lawns there rose some of the cherry trees which Lucullus had introduced into Italy. They were acclimatising themselves perfectly; soon they would be foam-clouds of purest white. The sight of them warmed the chilled heart of Lucullus, and he forgot his wife. At least the cherry-experiment had succeeded. His mind turned more interestedly to the problem of food.

“Send Pausias to me in the Apollo Room,” he told an attendant. He would discuss with this cook, the most intelligent man he knew, the æsthetics of dinner. Surely harmony was necessary in colour-relations here as elsewhere. Could a dish of prawns or lobsters be served decently in a room with dawn-grey walls and a painting by Apelles? What hangings would best suit the red wine and what the white? What were the relations of the various sculptors to the menus? These were serious matters, worthy the attention of a general who had no more worlds to conquer and whose wife was unfaithful. At least he would build a beautiful city, an oasis in the desert of vulgar uproar, an Elysium where the gratifications of every sense were harmoniously blended. But women must be excluded henceforth. They marred any wall-decorations.

22

Cato arrived home weary, not with the walk (for he was very fit and strong) but with rage against his half-sister. Where Lucullus had looked down on a city of swarming vanities and encircling tumults from his portico on the Pincian, Cato had seen only a race doomed to exhaust itself by an unrestrained fury of appetite. He had never realised before how displeased he was by the surrender of Lucullus to luxury and the arts. Lucullus, the sturdy opponent of the democrats, the hard-living soldier, the general who brought back to the army for a few years the ruthless level of discipline which had come naturally to the legion of farmer-patriots—Lucullus was conquered by Greek cooks and books on sauces. It was token of the end.

Cato walked the streets in which he could feel the first tremors of cataclysm. Idiots, chattering and flushed with petty greeds, all doomed. What could a man do? Fight to suppress, to keep things as they were, not out of hope of redemption, but out of contempt for his own fate. The ancient discipline was ended, but Cato could proclaim its virtues. The idiots should not lose themselves in their childish pleasures on the lap of earthquake; he would at least disturb them and give them bad dreams before the end swallowed all alike.

Arriving home, he retired into his private room, and, refusing any food, called for a large three-pint jar of wine. Then he settled down to drink the night out. Since he always drank alone, he had the belief that no one knew of his habit; and since it never interfered with his tense fitness, he refused to consider it a moral lapse. The farmer-soldiers had been hard-livers, and he fought out his battles alone in the dimly-lighted chamber over his cups of wine. The shadows swelled riotously. He saw himself shouting, fighting, damning, denying all compromise. The warriors of old rose up, thronging to hearten him, his only real friends. They were the living, the voices that he heard, the arms that clasped him. They were his strength, his nightly companions. How could a man live unless he had friends with him to share his thoughts and resolutions? How easy it was to defy the puny men of the day when he had such friends!

Yet Cato felt very lonely as he poured out the first wine cup.

23

It was the end of May, and about this time the festival of Ambivalia, the beating of the bounds, was celebrated. Flamma, who cherished all country-pieties, saw to it that all was done with full formality. Every man, woman and child in his employ was given garlands and ribbons and brightly-coloured clothing; they sat down to a good meal, and then, warmed with wine and food, they took up their olive-branches and went in procession thrice round the bounds of his estate, singing and waving the leaves and jostling one another playfully. With them they drove the threefold sacrifice, the pig and bull-calf and lamb, and thus the many dangers that threaten young and growing life were warded off. The wolf, the pest, the blight, and the drought were beaten out; Mars Silvanus was driven outside the bounds into the wilderness; and triumphantly the soil was redeemed as humanly owned.

Flamma loved the rite, but was worried. Though he had spoken cheerfully to Catalina on the coming revolt, he feared it; for he wanted a comfortably-settled countryside above all things. Yet he did not see how that could be brought about without violence, and he therefore supported the ousted farmers. It was all very sad, this inability of mankind to agree and save themselves from infinite misery and broils. Perhaps they never would agree. But that did not stop a man from hoping, and if he hoped he felt himself drawn to act and help the action which promised best, even if it would end in the same old muddle. In the last resort it was everyone’s primary duty to put their own affairs into order, to cultivate their own plot of ground. He had done that; his conscience should be easy.

The sacrifices were made. The pipers shrilled away their loudest so that no ill-omened sound should spoil the proceedings. If there was any flaw, everything would have to be done over again. Flamma spoke the prayer proper to the occasion, taking care not to misplace a word.

“O Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee to be kind and propitious to me and my household and my lands, for the which end I have caused the threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land; and I pray thee to keep, avert, and turn away from us all plagues, seen or unseen, all desolation, destruction, damage, and unseasonable influence; and I pray thee to give increase to the fruits and the crops and the vines and the plantations, and to bring them to prosperous issue, and to keep also in safety the shepherds and their flocks, and to give good health and vigour to me and my house and household; and to this end it is, as I have said, to purify and to make due lustration of my farm, my land cultivated and my land uncultivated, that I pray thee to bless the threefold sacrifice of sucklings O Father Mars, to this same end I pray thee to bless the threefold sacrifice of sucklings.”

He was praying for the entire world. Who was to drive the threefold sacrifice round the bounds of the world and abolish all evil at last? A long journey for a man to make. Catalina had set out on it. Flamma felt that he was praying for Catalina.

V - BEFORE THE ELECTIONS

I

Cicero was elated. The routine of preparing for the elections was so customary to him that he felt no doubts in mustering the opposition to Catalina and the other popular leaders such as Cæsar, who had come forward for the prætorship; and the gloomy remarks which he heard for ever among the bankers and managers of the joint-stock companies made him feel that Catalina was indeed a villainous politician when the remotest rumour of his success could derange the whole financial world. The bankers told him that Catalina’s election would mean the total collapse of credit; the business-men declared that, despite Sulla’s precautions in establishing granaries nearer to Rome than the port of Ostia, the breakdown of the merchant-marine would mean starvation for the populace. Cicero determined to protect the mob from the consequences of their own folly, and at the same time to stop a depreciation of the shares in the various companies with which grateful directors presented him.

His friend Atticus was working hard in the business-world to organise the propaganda against Catalina, and that was a further encouragement. Atticus had no doubts that Catalina’s election would be a disaster. He spent much time at Cicero’s house, and Cicero, feeling the visits part of his duties, called on Atticus in his house on the Quirinal to hear the latest news from the agents which the capitalists had everywhere throughout the empire.

“You and I know that there are abuses,” said Atticus, as they sat in his plainly furnished living-room, “but they must be tackled one by one. The man is either mad or a charlatan.”

“Isn’t it possible to be both?” asked Cicero, sipping some watered Caecuban. “Isn’t it possible to be both a fraud and a fanatic? I take that to be the most dangerous combination.”

Atticus considered. “You’re right, and it’s an observation that would have come better from me as an Epicurean. I’m ashamed I left it to you to make. All evil is done by men who are tormented. Once a life becomes a burden it should be ended. Catalina is tormented by the wish to save the world by destroying it because he doesn’t realise that it’s his own suffering purse that galls him. But he knows it at the same time, and that’s why he’s tormented.”

Cicero cleared his throat. He did not quite like these analyses. Could not a good man be troubled by an uncertainty as to his own motives? Or rather not to his motives but the effects of his actions? He, Cicero, knew that he was working for the best, and he knew that no other course was possible, and yet he was disturbed by the fact that a policy of genuine good will could attract so much misunderstanding, scorn, resentment. “It means a lot to me,” he said, “that you’re helping me in this, you who don’t believe in political action.”

Atticus noticed the inwardly turned eye. “Yes,” he answered. “I believe in letting evil alone. I don’t mean that one shouldn’t defend one’s life against a footpad, but the only ultimate defence is to withdraw. One defeats evil by ignoring it. Yet here it is a question of a thief in the house.”

Cicero was comforted. Atticus, who lived so peaceably, so humbly, was the best judge. His meals were sparse, a few vegetables; he wasted no money, and yet was the least miserly man in Rome; his culture was quiet and deep and pervasive; he treated his household friendlily, from the confidential agents to the lowest kitchen-slave; he charitably cared for the poor of the neighbourhood, lent money to his friends without interest, and lived on the most loving terms with his mother and sister, with his wife and daughter.

He was the man to judge of the genuineness of one’s actions, and he stood by Cicero in this crisis.

“By the way,” said Atticus, “if you see Curio the elder at the Senate to-morrow, tell him that I’ve arranged everything. He has been worrying, I find, because a loan of his is coming due.”

Cicero rose, glowing with pleasure at the man’s amiable nature which reconciled the needs of business-efficiency and fellow-feeling. “I must go now. These state-affairs, you know …”

Atticus smiled gently, and ushered him out; then he returned to the study and sat trying to compose a quatrain on Camillus the ancient conqueror of Veii. He was making a collection of such verses for a book of miniatures. It was hard to compress a man’s biography into a few lines, and he could not think of other things when so occupied. Those neuritis-pains seemed coming back. He could not think of business always, and sometimes thoughts were blindly mocking, like clucking tongues of water, senseless and dull and never-ending.

But that was only occasionally; for the most part he was happy, withdrawing from a world where fools wrestled with evil. Sit at peace and help your friend, and if you may sit in a garden you are blessed. Evil grows by resistance, violence creates violence. Yet he too was drawn into the net, he was helping against Catalina, and he had no choice. Catalina was a thief in the house, and Cicero was the friend of Atticus.

A secretary entered, chewing at the end of a stylus. “This municipality in Africa you were speaking of—they’re two years behind in their interest. We have a right of seizure over several farms and buildings, and I find that the firm of Cælius in Puteoli would like to buy them.”

“Make them over,” said Atticus. “We have waited long enough.”

The secretary went out, scribbling notes. Atticus sat thinking again. People would be evicted; the municipality would suffer; there had been a drought there the last season. But he stiffened. Business was business; unless mankind accepted the disadvantages, they would lose the great benefits. It would be the firm of Cælius that attended to the matter. He would be merely selling what was his; many bankers would not have waited two years. Withdraw from evil. Cælius was a worthy friend, and he wanted the properties. Help your friend. Cælius was his friend, and he, Atticus, did not know the Africans. Cælius would take the responsibility; not an unreasonable man, he would do his best for everyone.

Atticus tried once more to meditate on the quatrain about Camillus. He was still meditating when the slave fetched him the bowl of salad which would be his whole meal. He thanked the slave with a gentle smile, and wondered if he would indulge in his only form of entertainment, a passage of verse or philosophy read aloud by one of the trained readers whom he kept for hiring out in the evening. But he called the secretary instead. As he ate, the secretary read off pages of figures and calculations. Atticus followed closely, he could remember almost endless lists of facts relating to his business-deals, and could turn up a fact for reference without effort.

He relaxed, listening. He was lost in a space of calculation whence all human existences were excluded. He had withdrawn from evil, for the figures were a world of their own. They were figures, not forces that were controlling hosts of men and their families.

He gave his instructions accordingly.

2

Cethegus did not find many chances to make overtures to Orestilla, but he was so constantly visiting the house that she could not entirely avoid him. He managed to press her hand twice, and once to come up close behind and lean against her. Worse, his eyes followed her all the while she was in the room, and she could not believe but that Catalina would notice. But Catalina was too enveloped in politics, and when her relief had passed she found that she could not stifle an annoyance. For the first time since their marriage she asked him questions about his former wife.

“I never knew her. What was she like?”

Catalina was surprised. “I’ve told you as well as I can.”

“Tell me again.”

“Fair. Smaller than you.”

“But that might be almost anyone. Can’t you tell me more about her than that?”

Catalina did not want to tell more. There wasn’t so very much more, and yet he would never be able to tell it. Not that it was even anything certain. Pollia had been always a little sickly, though she looked so healthy at first sight; she had been small-boned but plump, and with the fairest hair that he had seen at Rome—as if a golden glow was caught at the moment of extinction; you saw the gold, and when you looked again it was gone. That was Pollia. Gold, and then ashy white. She had looked so softly alive, and had died so easily. She had been delirious in her last illness, and cried incessantly that Catalina did not love her because he spent all his time drinking among the gladiators. It was foolish to say that she had died of a broken heart; she had died because her vitality was exhausted; the gold had burned out in its first marriage-flush and only the ashes were left. She had always been moping after she bore his son, and that had certainly made him spend more time than ever fencing in the schools, riding in the Field of Mars, swimming in the Tiber, hunting in the Sabine hills. He was proud of being able to beat all the professionals. And her son had taken after her. He had been handsome and looked so strong, and died of a chill as she had. In his early teens he had died, and Catalina’s life had been broken in half.

“How can I tell you about her?” he said. “She was a quiet person, rather without character. She only attracted me because I was inexperienced, and she looked fresh and virginal.”

“And was she?” asked Orestilla viciously. “Or did she fool you?”

Catalina did not answer. He gave a startled glance, and looked away. Orestilla was as startled herself, but could not withdraw. “You men are all such fools. No one is virginal nowadays. Only in the old days when girls lived in farmyards among rutting bulls and cocks and stallions were they virginal.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Catalina mildly, but his pulse raced. He was trying to think of Pollia as a drab. No, no such luck. That would ease his mind if he could believe it. “It really doesn’t interest me.”

Orestilla was infuriated. She could feel the lack of conviction in his voice, the careless effort to placate and silence her. “You know that isn’t true. You’re fighting not to believe it. You couldn’t bear to think she fooled you.”

“You didn’t know her—” Catalina burst out.

Orestilla waited, then as he didn’t proceed, she sneered. “I knew I’d only have to probe to bring out your delusions. You’ve given yourself away.”

Catalina felt the heat tugging at his scalp; he must put these thoughts away; Pollia and her boy were dead, and death was the end. He rose and took Orestilla’s hand in his. “What is worrying you?” he asked. “It can’t be Pollia. She meant nothing to me, and you are part of myself.”

Orestilla was ashamed. She looked into his slightly haggard face, and saw that all questions of jealousy had been eaten out of his mind. Why should she rebel because it was a loyalty outside their private life that had lifted him above all triviality? He had lifted up his love also. He carried it in his heart with the other images of piety. She softened. “O how can I worry you like this? Forgive me. I’ve been unwell the last two days. It’s that.”

He kissed her lips and looked sadly into her eyes, glad to accept her excuse; and then he returned to his work. She moved about the room, hoping that she would find something to do to aid him or that he would speak to her. Then she went quietly from the room. Catalina, roused by the noise, glanced up sightlessly for a moment towards the quivering curtains and then glanced back to the papers on the table.

In the bedroom Orestilla found the baby crying to herself while the nursemaid slumbered with her head in a corner of the wall. She tore the girl from the stool, banged her head, and, holding her tightly, beat at her with the disengaged hand. Then she realised that the girl was sobbing, and let her drop to the floor. “ Go,” she said.

The girl rose and slunk out. Orestilla picked up the baby and began to peel off the swaddling-clothes, swaying and chanting a lullaby.

Sleep pretty child

and nothing shall hurt you.

Sleep in my lap

where I bore you less gently.

3

The people were growing more restive, filled with dazzled hopes and rising angers. One day as Catalina with his men was walking through the northern slums, he encountered what was a usual enough spectacle: the ruins of a tenement-house. These huge four-faced buildings were run up with no concern except for cheapness and the number of rooms that could be partitioned off; sun-baked instead of kiln-baked bricks were used though floods or rains were liable to sap the walls and bring the whole mass crashing down on the heads of the huddled inhabitants. The house which Catalina now saw collapsed had been a medium-sized tenement, and the faulty foundations had given way after the spring rains. Last night the house had fallen, and scores of people had been buried in the ruins. Some of those who were not too deeply covered had been dug out by the survivors and neighbours, and as Catalina approached a woman was wailing over the dead bodies of her husband and three children.

“He kicked me out of bed and told me to go and earn some money,” she wailed, “and the roof fell in on him. It’s all my fault. Heaven broke the house down on him in revenge for the wrong he did me.”

The dead had been laid out on planks and doors pulled from the ruins, and a crowd had assembled along the street, waiting for the funeral to move off to the common burial-pits on the slopes outside the eastern walls. Generally the people accepted such misfortunes as part of the day’s burden, but the election-propaganda had roused them to a livelier sense of injustices, and there was a sullen air about the gathering.

“We ought to bring the owner along and dump him first into the pit under the bodies of his victims,” said one man.

“Murder I call it,” said another, and there was a murmur of angry agreement.

“There’s a few of your voters gone, master Catalina,” a man called from the crowd. “They’re killing us off as fast as they can, but there’s too many of us.”

The crowd burst into cheers, and the noise drew further reinforcements. Catalina decided to make the most of the chance. Conferring with the mourners, he set out at the head of the procession with his companions, while the funeral followed, the corpses upborne on the boards and shutters. In the rear came the populace, stamping and shouting and singing the insurrection songs.

O I’m a Roman citizen,

the earth is mine, they cry;

for I am given stones to eat

and the ground on which to lie.

Through the streets they wound, the numbers increasing at every step taken. Out of the taverns and lanes came the people clamorously, bright-eyed and hopeful that at last the day of revolution had come. Many swung weapons, others girt on a sword under their cloaks, women and girls came linked arm in arm with their men. The shopkeepers hastily closed their shops, and the few officials in the vicinity took refuge behind the nearest doors. Some pipers pushed to the front and struck up a tune. The procession defiled towards the Esquiline Gate, orderly despite its noise and the congestion caused by new groups struggling out of the side-streets.

Catalina felt the swing and roar of a host marching at his back, and he was filled with joy, though he tried to control his emotion. He must not play into the hands of his enemies. This was a rabble, when all was said and done; but it was also the material of a new world. These sufferers, for all their grime, longed for justice upon earth as none of the cultured and legalistic quibblers longed. What did it matter if hate was mingled with the longing? These people had suffered.

At last they passed the gate and entered into the burial-fields, making for the waste plot where the nameless dead were thrown. As in other spots along the walls and roads, some large stone-tombs stood outside the gate, inscribed with well-known names; but for the poor there were only some vast pits in which corpses rotted together until the stench made it necessary for lime and earth to be shovelled in by the public slaves under the caretaker’s control. The crowd deployed outwards round the pit to which the bearers were directed, covering the slopes and standing massed along the walls, climbing the rickety fences, trampling the few straggly bushes, good-humouredly quarrelling.

The caretaker, a small bearded man, was out of his wits. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, rushing from man to man, till at last he halted before Catalina. “A breach of the peace,” he panted. “Who are you?”

“Get out of the way,” said one of the mourners, “or we’ll chuck you in too.”

The caretaker subsided and retired up the hill. Catalina climbed on a rain-worn tombstone that dated from the days before the slopes were paupers’ ground. The crowd turned to hear, pressing closer; a hush fell; and Catalina felt all his anger at the waste of life flow back upon him as he looked down at the dusty blood-stained mangled corpses spread out at his feet and the great disordered crowd straining towards him below.

“There lie Roman citizens,” he said, pointing to the corpses “to whom belong provinces and kingdoms.” The mob groaned. “The conquered world reveres and envies the name of Roman as the noblest title a man can earn. Would they be so envious, do you think, if they could see Romans enslaved at the heart of the empire? Would they strive for the privilege of starving inside brick-prisons and of being foully crushed to death?”

The mob shouted, joyously groaning, lamenting, beating themselves into fury, as he went on to denounce the exploiters who used sweated labour and then filched the wages for rent, yet would not even make houses safe. In the homes of the rich meanwhile were heaped the spoils of a world; there was no question of dearth.

“Who with the feelings of a man can bear in this starving world to see these men with more wealth than they can use? They squander it in building houses piered on the sea or in levelling the mountain tops for sites, and yet we starve. They knock together several houses and yet feel cramped, and we have no hearth of our own. Yet the wealth of the earth is endless. These men buy pictures, statues, embossed plate; they pull down a house for a whim and build up another; they lavish and abuse their gains in every possible way, and yet with all their caprice they cannot exhaust their wealth.

“But for us there is poverty within the house, and debts without. There is no hope now, and yet the future is darker than the present. What have we left but the bare fact of misery?

“Will you then still shrink from action?”

He could not make himself heard after that. The mob roared, howling for him to lead them at once against the oppressors. They went mad with a delirium of enraptured rage. They pummelled one another for lack of enemies, leaped and roared; men and women clasped and kissed violently, only saved by the closely packed ranks from falling to the ground and rolling down the slopes. They could all bear things no longer. Catalina was their leader, he must lead them to tear down the walls of privation and destroy the enemy who feasted on the other side.

For a moment Catalina himself was carried away by the uproar. He made to leap down from the stone. Then his excitement died; his energy had flared up into words and burned itself out; the sense of uncompleted preparations, the barriers against action, reared up, blotting out the vista which had opened so alluringly. He must not give his foes the chance they wanted; already they’d have evidence against him for a breach of the peace, though they would not dare an impeachment as yet. To quiet the mob, he signed to the mourners to take up the dead on their shoulders again and cast them one by one into the pit.

The men obeyed, and slowly the mob ceased its outcry, hypnotised by the sight of the bodies lifted one by one and cast to the sound of mournful piping into the pit where they would rot together. When the last corpse had disappeared, Catalina raised his arm imperiously and spoke again:

“There is nothing more to say. You have seen. Remember.”

The roar broke out afresh, but he stepped down and moved with his bodyguard quickly round the edge of the gathering towards the gate, followed by cheers. The mob, deprived of his presence, began breaking into knots of arguers, shouting, laughing, embracing. Some crowded towards the gate; others, seeing that it would be some time before they could crush through, walked off along the foot-path under the walls to the further gates; others, who had kept their womenfolk with them or grasped unknown pleasing girls, were for making a day of it and wandering out into the fields beyond. Vendors had suddenly appeared crying hot cakes and portions of pease-puddings.

The caretaker, plucking at his beard in anguish, kicked his slaves and bade them fetch lime in barrows. “Some one will pay for this,” he muttered. “The world’s on its last legs when there’s such a funeral given to trash.”

He felt that he must throw the whole of his lime-store into the pit to ease his emotions; nothing less would keep such pampered dead from walking. He’d do it even though the clerk at the quæstor’s office should insinuate that he had been cheating the government by re-selling the lime. His feelings came before his reputation.

4

Clodius for once shrank from the excitements of an election. He had some interviews with Catalina, and the man’s dark exuberance chastened him. It was always so. Left to himself, he preached insurrection and ranted in the taverns and street-clubs; but when he was instructed to do so by Catalina, he found the impulse quenched. He saw only the hopelessness, the bad joke of trying to create a Utopia out of gutter-material; he resented Catalina’s faith, though it was his own when he let his emotions flow out.

In this sceptical reaction he almost felt like throwing in his lot with the conservative diehards. He wanted a state of iron-regulations and Spartan immolation of self, a communism of military hardships. Then this wavered into a pure lust of dominion. He longed to pull the whole of Rome down and re-build it as an incredibly complicated palace in which gorgeous fantasy would yet be subordinated to a scheme of beautiful proportions. All those who could not be fitted into their right jobs would then be slaughtered, all children beyond a certain quota strangled.

Now his reaction against Catalina’s faith was intensified by his doubts about Flaviola. He wanted to stop visiting Nacca’s hall, yet kept on turning up almost daily, and Flaviola was taking the regularity of his visits for granted. He must make a break. He therefore took advantage of an invitation from Hortensius and set off with Aulus Fulvius to stay at his country-villa.

Hortensius was resting from the courts for a few weeks. His throat was a trifle relaxed, and he was undergoing a treatment of gargles as prescribed by his Greek doctors. A portly fine-looking man, he carried into private life something of the largeness of gesture and luxuriance of diction to which he had trained himself as orator. Once when he was jostled on his way to the courts, he issued a writ against a man responsible for disturbing the elaborate folds of his toga, so closely did he consider every detail.

Hortensius welcomed the two youths with good-natured ease of manner, delighted that he would have a chance to show off his garden and Thracian Glen (where a piper dressed as Orpheus piped out a number of tame animals) to Fulvius, who was making his first visit. The evening was mild as the guests sat eating in the rays of the declining sun under a colonnade with trailing vines. Hortensius was a rich man, though he had never peculated in the provinces or worried with investments. His methods were simple. He defended the peculating governors in the courts, and took a percentage of their plunder. It would have hurt him to oppress provincials, but, once the deed was done, he felt no compunction in mulcting the oppressors. “It’s no use saying that my success in getting them acquitted encourages them,” he said cynically to his friends. “If they didn’t pay me, they’d spend the money in bribing the jurors for the same end. It’s better that my skill in oratory should be rewarded than that the jurors should be made even more corrupt.”

Cæcina, a fattish Etruscan who, like Clodius, had just come from Rome, was bursting with information. “Cæsar has been bribed half a million by Catalina.”

“Where did Catalina raise the money?” asked Clodius hotly.

Cæcina looked at him. He recalled that Clodius had rebel-affiliations. “Where does a man like that always get his money? I’ve heard that he runs a secret gang of thieves and brigands. Isn’t it suspicious that he’s spent so much of the last year in Campania and Etruria? There was a moneylender murdered last week. Myself, I connect that obviously with this bribery of Cæsar.”

Clodius swallowed his rage. When away from Catalina, he felt intensely loyal. He wondered now why he had left Rome. But Lamia, another guest, broke in and maundered into a long discourse. Who could marvel that things were going to the bad? Look at the way children were educated by a herd of mongrel Greeks. In schools too—all the social classes intermingled. Schools meant the end of all real education. There was no time for home-life.

Fulvius asked him if he knew anything about carrier-pigeons, remembering the crate of birds for which he had exchanged his racing-gig; and Cæcina answered. He had scores of them. When in Etruria, he had them loosed from Rome with the colours of the winning horses tied to their feet, so that he could learn at once how his bets had fared. He sent them off also for the folks at home when he was at Rome; for they all wanted to know how the races went, even those who had never seen any of the horses.

Hortensius surveyed the diners benignly. Everyone was cheerful when stomachs were full. Therefore politics was only the art of filling stomachs; and yet the problem was beyond human capacity; perhaps the cooks should govern the world. A successful man, he simply could not understand lack of success in others, and looked on the hungry populace as naughty children who queerly were sent, not by the parents, but by themselves supperless to bed.

Lamia, an elderly hard-faced man, began again talking of the nearing end of the world. “You’re quite wrong,” said Hortensius. “I’ve lived through several revolutions, and prospered, solely because I took no sides. I can recall how everyone prophesied the ruin of Rome when the vote was given to the Italians, after they’d spattered Italy with blood. And what happened after all? Did the Italians troop along to vote for all kinds of treasons? Nothing of the sort. The only result of the enfranchisement was a land-boom because of the increased ease with which land could be sold.”

The company was disturbed by a deep groan from Fulvius. His face had turned ashen, and he dropped his goblet to the floor. “Is the man ill?” asked Hortensius, “or is he merely cursed by heaven?”

Fulvius had no ears for sarcasm. He had suddenly remembered that to-day there came due the bill he had signed as security for Sempronia and that the moneylender had been distinctly nasty, having ascertained that Fulvius himself had no hope of obtaining the money for repayment. Fulvius had begged him to wait till his father died. The man, a wizened Asiatic, had refused and made pointed remarks about the lies Fulvius had told in getting him to accept the signature; he grew even more angry when Fulvius proffered the explanation that the lies were invented by Sempronia. Sempronia merely laughed. She had held Fulvius in leash for one week, at the end of which she took his signature and closed the door in his face. Now the moneylender would go to Fulvius senior, and then—Fulvius found his mind go dark at the thought. But he had all the rest clear at last. He had got drunk last night because he had been aware that if he didn’t get drunk he’d remember the debt; and he got drunk so effectively that he banished the subject altogether. The night’s sleep had been earned too dearly. What could he do? He must talk it over with Clodius as soon as possible.

Hortensius, who did not like a meal to pass without some literary flavouring, had introduced the set-theme: Which hand of Venus did Diomedes wound? But as no one had any suggestions save himself, he discoursed for almost half an hour in his best style.

Clodius looked out at the setting sun. The rosy clouds drifted through a sky blue-green at the edges, and the lower leaves of the trees glistened. A great silver shaft struck through to the earth. How dull was the sage conversation of men beside the meaningless chatter of a young girl with mischievously appealing eyes who read poetry and loved it and didn’t understand a word! That was the best way to read; she was the poet’s only reader.

Lamia had recaptured the conversation. “The slaves are too well treated nowadays. Feed them on the fallen olives and the brine from pickled fish. That gives them something to sop up the bread with.”

“I prefer,” said Hortensius, “to undermine the state than to see pinched faces about me. My slaves I feed well for that base reason. I admire all you strong-minded men, but it’s so much easier to be kindly.”

5

There was a great sensation at Rome when Metellus Nepos, half-brother of Clodia’s husband, arrived. He had been serving under Pompeius, and travelled with lengthy mule-trains which rumour said were filled with silver and gold from the plundered East. Everyone was at least certain that Nepos was the envoy of Pompeius and that his task was to act at the elections for his master. When he announced his candidature for the tribuneship, his orders were obvious; and his success, what with the bribery-gold and the respect still paid to Pompeius by the middle classes, was assured.

Would he covertly join the radicals? For a while he remained quiescent. A rumour spread that Cato had snubbed him; but his first open act was to call on Cæsar. After that he was continuously at Cæsar’s house. Catalina he did not visit; and Cæsar arranged to conduct all the negotiations.

The matter needed careful handling. The diehards could be relied on to alienate Pompeius with their fear of a military dictatorship; yet if too revolutionary a procedure was adopted before Pompeius had disbanded his army, there was the risk that some accident might break down the prejudices of the diehards and make them seek an alliance with Pompeius. And above all was the risk that Pompeius might take the dictatorship which was easily within his grasp. Still, he was a political coward. If he was presented with an accomplished fact, he would be unlikely to object—as long as he were voted all kinds of public honours. At the same time efforts could be made to detach his soldiers by voting them large donations and pensions. Once the army was disbanded, there would be no problem.

Cæsar did not find it hard to work on Nepos. Cato as usual made things easy for the radicals by searching questions about the contents of the mule-baggage. He learned the provisions of the new bribery-law by heart and hurled them at Nepos, while demanding by what right Pompeius had been settling boundaries and governmental issues in Asia without even the aid of a senatorial committee.

Mucia tried to draw her half-brother out on the subject of her husband’s attitude towards her. She did not like to ask directly if he had heard stories about her doings, but persisted with questions about his health and with complaints because she had received no letter.

“He is in the very best of health,” repeated Nepos shortly.

“He’s been so long away from poor me,” said Mucia “I’ve forgotten I ever was married. You’re sure he still loves me as much as ever?”

“I’m sure he hasn’t changed his character.”

“He isn’t in love with all those princesses that he’s been capturing, is he? Of course I’d forgive him. He’s so far away, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mean it. But you might tell me, so I can forgive him.”

“He’s been far too busy commanding his army even to speak to the womenfolk of Mithridates. Besides, several of them committed suicide. And all the concubines that were captured he sent off with their jewels and wardrobes untouched.”

“Now isn’t that like him!” said Mucia bitterly. “He knows I love jewellery. What can those women want the things for? Concubines, you said. It was downright immoral for him to lend them the tools of their trade. I’m sure you told him so.”

“I’ve left that for you,” said Nepos grimly.

“He might have written to me. Perhaps he doesn’t love me anymore.”

“You’ll learn in due time. If you’ve behaved yourself, there’s no cause for fear. You know he’s always just.”

“I haven’t any faith in him,” protested Mucia miserably, “after what you tell me about him giving all those jewels and clothes away to a lot of women who ought to be wearing chains and things. I can see that everyone’s going to tell lies about me, and this story of yours proves it. For he wouldn’t act as he’s acted unless he didn’t love me anymore, and if he doesn’t love me any more he’ll believe any lie that’s told, and everyone will tell him lies because they’ll see that he doesn’t love me anymore, and they’ll want to worm into his favour. So there isn’t any hope for me, and it’s all your fault because you’ve confessed yourself that you didn’t say a word when he piled jewellery and things on those women, and I’m sure that if you’d stood up for me, your sister, he would have stopped doing it, because you’ve admitted with your own mouth that he’s a just man. So what you did amounted to helping him against me and encouraging him to believe lies, and if he turns on me it will be all your fault.”

Nepos showed no expression on his face. Mucia, watching him carefully through her tears, was unable to guess for certain what he was feeling.

“Anyway,” she went on, drying the tears that had failed in their end, “if Gnæus doesn’t treat me properly, Quintus will ruin him.”

Nepos made no reply, but could not repress the ghost of a smile. Haughtily drawing her stola round her, Mucia signified that she was above the reach of fear or suspicion, and moved from the room. The face of Nepos twitched slightly. He did not mean to get into bad odour with Pompeius because of anything Mucia had done; he knew where his future lay, and if his half-brother Quintus was obstinate enough in talking about the family-honour to oppose Pompeius, it was Quintus who would be hurt.

6

Sestius the quæstor was a man resolved to rise in the world. Though poorly educated, irascible, and lacking in initiative, he owned a steady determination and had attached himself to the conservatives. In Cicero he had seen his chance; and when allotted to the staff of the consul Antonius, he had quickly informed Cicero that he intended to act as spy and supervisor of his superior’s activities. Antonius, unable to carry out his bargain with the radicals, had slackly surrendered to the conservatives and was only too glad to leave as much of his business as possible to the officious Sestius, who was prevented from making any mistakes by referring everything to Cicero. Antonius scarcely appeared at all in public, pleading illness and only attending unimportant sessions of the Senate. His sole interest was the province that he would gain at the end of the year.

Sestius received the message from Flavius and was doubtful what to do. He had no thoughts for women; there was a wife at home to satisfy his needs, and the rest of his life was his career. But he was indefatigably concerned about the career, and the suggestion that Fulvia had something to narrate involving the commonweal was enough to draw him to her house. Probably the woman was lying and merely wanted to blackmail him in some way, but he wasn’t frightened of her. He made Flavius repeat his story before two witnesses on whose tact he could rely; and then he called on Fulvia.

She frankly told him the whole story, requiring only that he should reveal nothing to Flavius. He listened with furrowed brows and scratched the tip of his nose with curved forefinger.

“There isn’t anything new in that,” he said after she had recounted the threats of Curius. “Everyone knows that Catalina is desperate and that if he loses the consulship—as of course he will—he’ll have to do something or he’ll be ruined by his creditors.”

“Exactly; and who but myself is in the position to find out the precise plans as they arise? Naturally, nothing will come to a head till after the elections.”

“You’re right,” said Sestius, searching her face. “What do you want for it?”

Fulvia stretched herself with luxurious slowness, her hands behind her head. “What it’s worth.”

“I can’t tell you that till I know what you’ll learn.”

She stared into his straightforward inquisitive eyes. “If I find something that enables all you creatures to ditch Catalina, it will be worth quite a lot?”

“Quite a lot.”

She yawned. “You can go now.”

He gave her a long searching look, and went. She was troubled by that look; it had been so entirely void of desire for her, so purely concerned with getting behind her mental defences. For a moment she wanted to call him back and see if she could seduce him. She held her breath. He wasn’t that kind; she would only ruin things and frighten herself; she didn’t want him. She was only frightened and trying to frighten herself more.

But his look searching for her motive still troubled her. Why was she offering to betray Catalina and his friends? It wasn’t the money. She could get as much in pleasanter ways. It was hate of Curius, she told herself, hate for the way that he was taking her money and becoming so blusterously self-pitiful. Why didn’t she turn him away? Perhaps he would kill her if he found out what she was doing. She wasn’t making things safer, and yet that was what she had meant to do. She sought for a way out of the net. She had let herself in for this complication, and she must solve it. Then she saw the way. She must inveigle Curius in the betrayal. He must do the betraying. She would force him to lose what little fragment of self-respect he still possessed. Then it would be safe to turn him away.

7

June was the month when the shrine of Vesta was opened for a week. On the 7th the Storeroom was opened, and all matrons might enter there. For seven days barefooted the matrons were to be seen coming and going about the chapel. Within they watched the Vestals at work, prayed for their households, and were thereby swept clean and reprovisioned for the following year by the influence of Vesta. Marriages were ill-omened during this week and the Flaminica might not open to her husband, the Flamen of Iuppiter, until the Storehouse was cleansed and once more closed.

On the 15th the Chapel was swept out, and all dust and refuse were taken and thrown over the slope of the Capitoline Hill at a spot where there was a break in the cliff.

Other festivals there were. For throughout the year the foundation-days of the numerous temples were celebrated, and this month among other deities were the great birth-goddess Fortuna and Mater Moneta worshipped. Far back went these birth-worships, and the Temple of Mater Matuta near the Great Circus was built over an old shrine. Only the wife of a first marriage might deck the image; the sacred cakes were cooked in earthen-ware; and only free women were admitted. One slave girl was sent in and then driven out with a box on the ear. The women prayed first for their nephews and nieces and then for their own children.

8

The prætor Lentulus with his suave smile and horse-face was a man without principle. Catalina did not like him but accepted his aid because of the value of his name. So many waverers were liable to be caught by the sound of an ancient name, and Lentulus belonged to the clan of the Cornelii from which both Sulla and Cinna had come. The scoundrelly qualities of men like Cethegus did not worry Catalina; for he believed that he could control them, and had sympathy for scoundrelism as the thwarted expression of vigorous individuals. Cethegus was less a reprobate than one of the lordly oligarchs who bled a province. Energy must be accepted and used wherever it appeared; to reject it when tainted would be merely to confess a failure to realise and control the thwarted side of oneself. But there was something repellently cold about Lentulus.

He had profited greatly under Sulla, but had long past squandered his gains. His methods had been so callous that he had been attacked in the Senate even under Sulla, but had retorted with a sneer. Then, when later prosecuted, he bribed the jurors, and, finding himself acquitted by two votes, complained that he had wasted money, since one vote would have been sufficient. He was stepfather of Marcus Antonius, but had exercised no control for years now beyond refusing to pay debts.

He was a sceptical man of the world, who believed in nothing except perhaps his own stomach, and yet he played with Chaldeans and other Orientals, soothsayers and mathematicians of the stars. He gave no credit to their words, he said; they merely amused him. He liked to see how far their science miscarried. If everything was written in the stars, then foreknowledge could not affect it; if it was not written there, no experiments could read it. But the game had its zest. After all, if it did nothing else, it disproved the whole thesis of science. If human activity was not bound by law, why should nature be? If mankind was not part of nature, then the human mind could not read nature. Therefore all science was nonsense. Star-reading was the supreme nonsense, and therefore it deserved consideration.

But though he sometimes grew angry with his Chaldeans and Egyptians, and turned them out of the house, he soon sent for them again and said, “Well, let’s get on with our experiments. If you can’t guess better next time, I’ll foreswear you for good.”

His enemies said that he had slaves used as living sacrifices, that a Druad kidnapped specially from Gaul in a wooden box had read the future from the contortions of the limbs, and that Etruscans had been present to note the markings on the liver while it was still part of the pulsating body.

Lentulus sat in his study with Matthias, an Easterner of unknown race, who folded out a piece of parchment on the table before him.

“The Sun passes through the Crab,” he read. “The Moon in control. The Element Water.” He looked up. “I can’t be bothered with all these figures. You’re the expert, or supposed to be. What’s happening up aloft among the star-swarm? Can you hear them buzzing? I wish they were hornets stinging you awake.”

Matthias plucked at his square-cut beard and arranged his yellow gown with dignity. “I am but a window into eternal space. I am nothing. I seek to know that I am nothing. Then I shall be pure, and the eternal law can reflect itself in me, as the moon is reflected in the waters of her dominion.”

“Keep pure,” agreed Lentulus tolerantly. “I don’t object to purity in other people—that is, except in the women I happen to like. But I don’t care much for women. Hash served up from yesterday. Either too dry or too sloppy. So go on purifying yourself by all means.”

“If I fail to see the full facts of the future,” said Matthias, staring with large black eyes and gravely ignoring the remark, “it is because the window is not clear enough. It is fogged with the exhalations of my body.” His eyes rolled in their sockets. “I wrestle with my body. I beat it down. I see clearer daily. And all for you.” His voice sank caressingly.

“And all for my money,” laughed Lentulus. “You wouldn’t be so devoted if I was poor.”

“You speak untruly to try your servant,” replied Matthias, clasping his hands submissively before him. “I am devoted to your destiny. I would see that destiny shining through you, like the moon in those deep waters, whether you were rich or poor. I follow that light.”

“I admire your skill in avoiding unpleasant questions,” jeered Lentulus. “What does this moon-glow that you spy behind my brows betoken in actual fact? That is all that interests me.”

“I cannot say as yet.” Matthias bent over the paper and ran his blackened fingernail along the lines of calculations. “But I can say this. The project at which you are working will succeed. It will yet suffer one setback, but it will progress nevertheless, as the crab that turns sideways moves all the faster thereby. That project will succeed. I see the figure Three for ever appearing in your life. Three is the culmination, the key.”

“Trail down that Three.” Lentulus dropped his lids and spoke wearily. “Bring me Three on the palm of your hand, so that I may see it and touch it. What is Three apart from Things? I know three apples and three cats and three women, but three I have never yet handled or smelt.”

“A woman near the Capenian Gate gave birth to three children last night.”

Lentulus turned the parchment over and looked at its dirtied and creased back. “Do you mean to insinuate that I am the father? I assure you that you’re wrong. Are you in conspiracy with this accomplished woman to accuse me of paternity? If they’re your own brats, drown them in the Tiber. If they’re not yours, let someone else drown them. That’s my whole philosophy.”

“It is a portent,” said Matthias unruffled. “That three should have been born in one birth at the moment when I discovered the triad in your future, is a sign. I have ascertained the precise hour and find that it corresponds with my calculations.” He pointed to some figures. “It is not a fulfilment but a correspondence.”

“Was she a handsome woman?” asked Lentulus with a faint interest.

“The wife of a petty debt-collector.”

Lentulus showed his heavy teeth. “Then let the brats squall in peace. Never shall it be said that I roused a debt-collector, even a petty one. You can leave me those numbers, and go now.”

Lentulus continued staring at the parchment, which he did not understand. Matthias made no move. “What do you want?” asked Lentulus, knowing that the man wanted payment.

Matthias said nothing for a moment, then he burst out. “Were you poor, I would share a crust with you after what I have read in your stars and in the shape of your head that reveals the temple of the sky at your nativity. But since you are not poor, I expect to share in your bounty at least to the extent of that which will preserve my life for your service. I am part of your destiny now. You cannot throw me aside any more than you can shake the stars out of the sky.”

Lentulus looked at him with dislike, all passion was nonsensical, and this passion plucked unpleasantly at his internals. “Quietly, my good fellow, quietly.” These Orientals should really be discouraged; their eyes were too dark; that must be a sign of madness, that impenetrable glare. If one was to fall under their domination, one would also go mad. Yet there was something sincere about the wretch. Poor fool. “I object to being called rich. Probably I’m far poorer than you are, but your roguery deserves a reward.” He scribbled on a slip of paper. “Give that to the steward on the way out.”

Matthias bent down and kissed the hand that proffered the paper. Then he took the paper and went. Lentulus continued staring at the parchment on which were inscribed the figures that he did not understand. There was something fine about a total incomprehensibility; perhaps star-gazing, if not an interpretation of life, was at least a commentary upon it.

9

A great number of Catalina’s bills were coming due at the end of June, and it was necessary for him to obtain a further loan. He went carefully through a list of his possessions and those which Orestilla controlled in her own and daughter’s names, and found that together these properties more than covered the debts, if only a fair price was obtained. He had so long been abused as a criminal aiming only at private debt-repudiation that he had for some time neglected any exact book-keeping, and was surprised at the result. His own debts were not very great; they had been mostly cleared by the fees from his work in Africa; and his chief troubles were the bills of other persons that he had backed.

However, ready money was needed at once, to meet interest on the June-bills and to pay election-expenses. He thought first of asking Cæsar’s help and calling on Crassus; but he felt averse from that course for two reasons. He knew that Crassus was opposed to the extreme revolutionary programme, and he felt that to seek for a loan from him now would be a kind of blackmail on past associations. More deeply, he disliked asking Cæsar’s help on a financial issue; he wanted so badly to bring out Cæsar’s support for his ideas that to ask him to help with money was like bartering the moral side away. For if Crassus lent, it would only be through Cæsar.

The sole course therefore was a banker. Several of Catalina’s bills were drawn on Quintus Considius, a Sabine by birth. Catalina preferred to deal with him rather than with one of the many Jews or other Easterners who had now crowded into the money-areas at Rome. The Jews in chief were getting a firm hold; they had their quarters and synagogues; and their tenacious continuance in their ritual and manners of living tended to make the indigenous or more plastic populace distrust and fear them. Occasionally there was an outbreak and a few Jews were murdered, but the power of the colony was already too great to allow of any official persecution. Catalina was uncertain in his attitude. His desire to bring Rome back to her proper path made him wish to sweep the Jews away, though he could not deny that apart from their racial intolerance they were industrious and law-abiding citizens.

One of the basic principles of the revolutionaries was hatred of all usury, of all methods whereby money produced more money without actual labour. All loans that bore interest were denounced. That money should breed was a monstrosity of nature. It turned money from an emblem of value, a counter of exchange, into a menacing thing of excremental life; and every instinct of the popular party cried out against interest. Catalina had heard all the arguments that without interest there could be no credit and that without credit industry would die, and he could not see the way out of the impasse. But emotionally he stood entirely with the simple revolutionary thesis that interest should be abolished. He had not yet gone so far as to proclaim his agreement. Debt-abolition was the war-cry; but both his emotions and his sense of logic told him that debt-abolition was futile unless followed up by a suppression of usury. Surely Rullus and the theorists could find some way of credit-extension that would remove the matter from the hands of the most unscrupulous and in many ways most short-sighted citizens in the state?

Yes, when in power, he would abolish interest and see what happened.

Considius was a small grey-headed man with a sly cheery peasant-face. That was why Catalina could tolerate him better than the others. His offices were in the corner of the Forum near the Temple of Saturn; and he was sitting with hands clasped on the table and nothing of his trade visible in the room except a few papers clipped together. He had been very astonished to hear Catalina announced, but did not show his emotion as he rose to indicate a seat.

“Very nice weather we’ve been having,” he said affably. “The farmers will be thankful. They need it, poor fellows. I thought it was going to be too dry, but we’ve had a perfect balance. Nothing pleases me more than good weather for the farmers. It’s the one thing we cannot command. We can do much, but not everything.”

Catalina waited till Considius had no more to say and then announced that he wanted 300,000 sesterces. Considius hemmed and hedged, talking about his partner, till Catalina threw down the list of property-evaluations; then he could not resist snatching the list up in his eagerness to learn who else had loaned Catalina money.

“Very interesting. But do you think the properties would bring in all that money?”

Catalina shrugged. “How do I know? I know that’s their value.”

Considius raised his eyebrows and laid his head on one side. “What is value, my good sir? A merchant is meeting a demand; he sells his goods at a high price. He has losses elsewhere and must sell his entire stock at any price; once the other dealers know that, are they likely to give him the price he was getting before? I don’t think so. People say it’s the depravity of our nature. I hold they’re wrong. It’s a law. People don’t say that it proves the depravity of a pair of scales if they put such a heavy weight in them that the chain breaks. Such an act merely shows lack of calculation. If a man goes bankrupt and his property is sold at low prices, he’s breaking the weighing-machine; he must take the consequences of unloading stock without calculation. It’s a law. I didn’t make it, and neither did you. I’d certainly alter it if I could, and doubtless so would you.”

He looked with friendly questioning at Catalina, trying to draw him out. Catalina merely replied, “What I have put down there is a fair evaluation. Will you lend me the money? Speak frankly.”

Considius did not like the direct demand. After muttering about his partner, he summoned a smilingly open countenance once more and asked if Catalina hoped to enact a repudiation of debts.

“Yes,” said Catalina quietly.

“Yet you as a man of honour come here to borrow my hard-earned savings with the deliberate intention of repudiating the debt before it comes due. Is that even remotely honest, master Catalina? You will forgive my frankness. It was you that first suggested it.”

“You mis-state the problem. I come to borrow because that is the only course before me under the present system. If I fail in my efforts, I won’t moan because you foreclose and ruin me. Do I risk more than you?”

“No,” agreed Considius, speaking slowly. “But then we are tackling the issue on different grounds. You make your agreement with me in financial terms, yet you seek to meet it in political terms—by a legalised repudiation. On the contrary I go ahead on the terms with which we began. That seems to me more honest.”

“Put it in any terms you like. I offer you a gamble. Put it like that if you wish.”

They argued on, skirting round the issues till Catalina again demanded a plain answer.

Considius considered. It went against his grain to finance this enemy of his class. But perhaps the man’s talk of abolition was only claptrap for the masses; he naturally wouldn’t admit it now. When he gained office, he would probably start thinking only of a province like the others. He had been driven to extremes by the set against him in the Senate. Besides, it would be valuable to have a finger in the man’s schemes, whatever they were. Debt-abolition was old and stale talk; the Greek cities had tried it at times; it never had any real effect. Better lend the money, or someone else would.

“I’ll lend you the three hundred thousand,” he said.

Catalina inclined his head and rose. “I’ll send you a memorandum as to the form in which I require the money.” He felt immensely relieved; this squalid necessity had been weighing far more heavily on him than he had realised. He knew that by the profound sense of ease that now enclosed him. He smiled, and Considius, watching closely out of the corner of his eye, had a moment of misgiving. But he was a man of his word, in a world of graceless and lying debtors. Catalina should have his three hundred thousand.

10

Clodius was bored with the country but did not want to return to Rome. He spent his time browsing through the library of Hortensius, reading Greek treatises on politics and making sketches for the vast house he meant someday to build on the Palatine. First, however, his sister must become a widow, since he wanted her house as part of the scheme. Fulvius lounged about miserably, refusing to explain. He could not conceive why he had left Rome; he should have forced his way into Sempronia or somehow persuaded the moneylender to postpone going to his father. Sooner or later he would have to return.

At last he babbled out his trouble to Clodius. “What are you worrying about?” asked Clodius. “Doesn’t your father expect you to get into debt?”

“I don’t know if he expects it,” replied Fulvius, gulping feebly, “but he forbade it. You don’t know my father.”

Clodius was seized with an idea. He found that he loved the country after all; he would steal Flaviola away and give her a lovely little country-villa, all her own, with half a dozen girls-slaves and a wall all round. She would grow up perfectly cultured, everything that she wanted to be; and he would bless her from a paternal distance for her charm. Under the stimulus of rating Fulvius for cowardice he achieved the energy to take himself back to Rome. Fulvius was only able to go when Clodius promised to be present at the interview with his father.

Fulvius senior was an old fashioned Roman who exerted every shred of his legal authority; and when Fulvius appeared stuttering before him, he cursed and denounced him. Clodius tried to interfere.

“You can’t talk like that nowadays. Hasn’t the fellow any life of his own?”

“Not till I’m dead,” replied the old man, shooting up his thick grey jutting eyebrows, “and I’ll cheat his wishes awhile yet. But who are you, sir? Another creditor?”

“He’s my friend,” said Fulvius with a trace of pride.

“He’s come to tell you that it wasn’t my fault—”

“Your friend, is he? Then he can get out at once.” The old man raised his staff threateningly and ordered Clodius off the premises. Clodius, with a compassionate sneer at Fulvius, left. The old man then damned and blasted Fulvius, and demanded to know who Sempronia was.

“She’s a woman,” said Fulvius, pale and trembling. “She’s a—a—woman.”

The old man bade his son follow, and with two slaves set out for Sempronia’s house. Fulvius spluttered an occasional protest and was told to shut his mouth. The old man swung his staff in the air, and Fulvius shrank from the quizzical glances of the passers-by. He was shamed for life, so what did anything matter?

At last they reached the house. Father and son were admitted and the last hope of the latter was dashed. Sempronia was in one of her most modern moods; she was modishly dressed in a low-cut gown of white muslin figured with gold thread, her hair sleekly piled on her head. She had been expecting a visit, and relished the sight of the furious old man and his wretched son. After staring at them both hard for a while, she refused to admit any acquaintance with Fulvius.

“You tricked this idiot son of mine into putting his signature to a debt of yours,” cried the old man, banging his staff on the floor to emphasise his points. “By what right did you, a matron, extort the signature of a man not of your family? By what right did you even know him?”

“Dear me,” said Sempronia, tapping at her brow. “I remember him now. He forced his way into the house, insisting that he wouldn’t go unless I let him sign something. So I let him. Why shouldn’t he, after all? Why else did you have him taught to write?”

“Not to sign his patrimony away to harlots! I demand to see your husband.”

“But he’s far away. I forget where. Gades or Miletus or Antioch. Hundreds of miles away.”

“Give me his address then.”

“Certainly, if you’ll allow me time to look through my bureau. He wrote to me some weeks ago, but I haven’t had time to read the letter yet. Don’t you find the pace of modern life almost alarming? However, I’d better warn you that he’ll merely reply: Splendid, ask her how she did it so that I can get the youth to sign some papers for me.” Quite untrue. Decimus never could make a joke, not even an unintentional one; but she had to say something to this fine old fellow. Who would have expected Fulvius to own so lively a progenitor?

Old Fulvius ground his teeth. “I shan’t leave till you give me some satisfaction—”

“Make yourself at home,” she answered, and then turned to the youth. “I’m beginning to recall you better now. It was you that the girls threw the slops over when you tried to crawl past the janitor and find something else to sign.”

Fulvius cowered. “Don’t be so cruel, Sempronia.”

“I demand a full explanation and satisfaction!” shouted his father.

Sempronia looked at him coolly. “Very well,” she said, and started to strip. The old man watched her, disconcerted at last. She stood in the middle of the floor above her discarded clothes. “Go out, Aulus dear,” she went on, “and bring along the most respectable-looking passers, so that I can show them the kind of company this father of yours persists in frequenting.”

Defeated, the old man pushed his son savagely in the back. “Come on out of this at once.”

“Do stay, Aulus dear,” said Sempronia in her sweetest voice.

Fulvius lost his head. He threw himself on the floor. “I won’t go,” he sobbed. “Tell him you love me, Sempronia. I did it all for love.”

His father kicked him hard in the ribs. “Get up!” he shouted, and called to the two slaves who were standing in the porch. “Carry him out.” They grasped Fulvius, carried him out, and, at their master’s orders, threw him down in the mud of the roadway. Fulvius, dazed, rose up, staggering. “Come along,” said his father, beating at him with the end of the staff held short. “We’ll make an example of you. You must have thought that I was near death when you tried such tricks. I’ll outlive you, you whoremonger, you.”

11

Sempronia, left alone, felt too indolent to dress. She stepped out of the clothes and wandered, with her hands clasped behind her, out of the house by a side-passage into the small garden-courtyard. There she threw herself down on a plot of grass hardly bigger than a couch and looked up at the summer-sky of blue mealy with white-gold. No one lived but herself; no sound of the city penetrated; the house was silent. How quickly one could throw off the sophisticated life with the clothes that represented it. She felt perfectly innocent, a newborn babe of quietude in a world of blue and gold and green. She would go away to some mountain-nook all on her own, live on milk and honey, and ask for no companions. One had not been alone till one had been naked and alone, with nothing visible but a branch against the sky. There was strength in being alone, and innocence returned. Who would have thought it?

She sat up. The quiet was a trap. The blue and gold and green were closing in to crush her out of existence, barbaric trappings on the chariot of silence. Toppling hooves of light would beat her out of existence. She saw the stucco of the house-wall with relief. The sky was too far away.

“Hey, someone,” she called in a voice that sounded small, coming from such a distance. A boy appeared. “Bring me my clothes.” She would have a party to-night; she would ask everyone she knew; and she would wear as many clothes as she could wear without melting away from heat. She would wear all her jewels, even if she looked vulgar and her hard-up friends stole half of them as soon as they saw her getting drunk. Anything was better than being alone.

12

July came on, and the date of the elections was nearing. It was clear however that the frightened Senate was loath to have the day appointed. July was a month of harvest, and some old rites dealing with this lingered on, such as the Romping of the Girls, their fighting one another in two parties, their sacrificing under a wild fig tree in the Field of Mars. But these rites were overshadowed by the great Games of Apollo that took up the second quarter of the month. Whatever politics were being mooted, the games must be staged. Apollo, the bright invader from Greece who had been invoked less than 150 years before as a protector against plague, was now an important god of the Roman populace, among whom were so many Greek slaves or freemen.

There were plays to be viewed, and on the last day Games in the Circus, charioteers, foot-races, wrestling, boxing, and a hunting-display. The plays were the chief items; and to make the Tragedies of interest to a crowd that considered them old-fashioned and rather stupid, the producers racked their brains for stupendous effects that held up the action indefinitely but amused the audience. If Menelaus arrived, his retinue marched on, followed by several hundred asses with rich baggage; if Agamemnon set out for a war, his army marched and manoeuvred across the specially huge wooden stage; if Helen appeared, it was in the most gorgeous of costumes accompanied by a bevy of beauties almost equally striking in their show of the latest fashions; if Pentheus was to suffer for blasphemy, the stage revealed a prolonged Bacchic Festival. The only use of the Trojan War was to provide an occasion for building the great Wooden Horse. But even so, the spectators stamped and hissed sometimes, bored, and keen to hear the famous singers in favourite arias.

On the second day during the production of Hecuba, Curio, an expert on the stage, held forth in his corner on the theory of the drama; and instead of booing, the audience roundabouts turned to listen to his words, ignoring the parade of Trojan warriors in the full kit of Roman legionaries.

“The day of the legitimate drama’s over,” announced Curio, standing up and addressing Marcus Antonius, who paid no heed but continued winking at a pretty girl further along. “By overdoing realism it’s disrupted itself. Consequently we see it dividing into its component parts. Drama and song and character. The mime is taking over the character-definition. There’s no heroes or heroines left in the world; there’s only pathetic or ludicrous people stuck in a social quagmire. I prophesy that the coming art-form is the ballet with musical or vocal accompaniment. And probably the voice-part will branch off and become a separate type of art. Already Tragedy is nothing but a string of airs punctuated by processions and gesticulations.”

The people could not hear all he said, but they gathered that he considered the singers of more value than the play.

“Take off the army,” they bawled. “Pay the army’s wages. Take them away and send on Hypsipyle to sing.”

“I’ll give them a song,” said Antonius, and threw out his chest, taking a deep breath. “Something with a tune in it.”

Curio thumped him in the ribs. “You inartistic lump of swine-flesh! If you dare sing, there’ll be a riot.”

“I’m going to sing,” insisted Antonius, and opening his mouth he emitted the first stentorian note of a drinking song. At that moment some seats at the other end, where the poorest spectators were closely packed together, gave way. There were screams and bellows, the crash and rattle of breaking wood, the thud of falling bodies.

Antonius looked pleased in the direction of the noise. “Well, I don’t need to worry now. That’s livened things up a bit. Let’s go and have a drink.”

“No,” said Curio. “Here comes Hecuba’s Lament.”

“Edepol,” groaned Antonius, “she hasn’t even got a pretty face. She looks as if she’s swallowed a baby-elephant and got it stuck in the wrong places.”

Hypsipyle, the famous soprano with the over-developed chest to which Antonius objected, stood bowing as much as her corsage permitted in the middle of the stage, dressed in a saffron-coloured gown broidered with gold.

“Come on outside,” said Antonius. “Let’s see if someone with a thirst has got ahead of us and dried up all the taverns. I thought there was going to be a tune on the Babylonian bagpipes.”

VI - THE ELECTIONS

I

The price of money continued to soar and many of the financiers began foreclosing, fearing that in a few months the chance would be taken from them. Distress grew. It seemed that the bankers were playing into Catalina’s hands, cramming into a handful of weeks the baleful effects of their whole policy; but the conservative spokesmen were doing their best to calm the middle-class by claiming that the distress was temporary, caused merely by the threat of revolution, and that confidence in the government was alone necessary to put a stop to it. That confidence could only be expressed be rejecting Catalina. Therefore, reject Catalina: money would become cheap again and industry flourish.

The radicals replied that events had started on their final spin and that whatever happened a crash was inevitable; the voters had merely to choose whether they wished to watch the crash impotently or to place in power a man who could apply remedies. Interest must be abolished, and as a first step all debts cancelled. Then some method of state-control and aid would be devised.

Whenever there was an assembly, there was a riot. In the poorer quarters the houses of tradesmen, especially of bakers, were being broken into. Some moneylenders, including a few Jews, had been murdered; and it was said that the Jews were sacrificing young gentile children to their god, who was circumcised yet had no body—the kind of superstition that such villains would hold. A Jewess had fainted after being forced by a crowd to eat some pig’s trotters—a sure sign of a guilty conscience. But on the whole, though tending to violence, the mob was good-natured. It preferred to chase moneylenders and pelt them with mud and rotten vegetables; the murders were mostly accidental, the result of someone being trodden on by a great number of excited people.

Police-methods were still primitive in this city of over a million inhabitants; for the ædiles who supervised the order of Rome were more concerned in winning popularity and providing magnificent shows than in cleaning up the streets. They were in office only for a year. What was the use of undertaking reforms that your successor would let lapse? The enormous debts into which they ran for the shows necessitated that all their efforts should be put into forging ahead for the provincial appointment that alone could recoup them.

Catalina and the other candidates had donned the chalk-whited gown and walked about the streets accompanied by their retinues and nomenclators, slaves trained to memorise names and prompt their masters; for nothing flattered the citizens more than to be hailed by name, even though they knew it was the slave’s memory and not the master’s that had functioned. It was usual for every kind of bribery to be used: small gifts, subscriptions, special tickets for shows, free dinners and drinks, and lump sums to the district-associations. At this work Murena, come enriched from Asia, was far ahead of his rivals; for Silanus relied on transparent nobility, Catalina on his revolutionary programme, and Sulpicius flatly refused to bribe at all. But it was necessary for each man to be endlessly smiling, to lend a ready ear to any chatterer and complainant, to keep the doors of his house open twenty-four hours daily.

All elections were noisily enjoyed by the populace; for besides what bribery-money circulated, these were the days on which they tasted the fare of their betters. The taste for fine foods had been started among all classes, and the plebs remembered throughout the year the pheasants, pigeons, and even peacocks that came their way at election-banquets. For a few weeks they drank good wines and forgot the stuff that rasped their tongues and teeth on other days. But this year the excitement and merry-making was intensified by the feeling that it was merely the first round of an unceasing good time. Oppression and starvation would be no more. Mankind, or at least the Romans, would live in an eternal succession of delectable dinners, stirring shows, and flattering speeches.

Catalina caught this part of the people’s reaction, and it disquieted him. What would happen when the disillusionment came? The solution of things could not be found by an act of repudiation. He knew that as well as his critics; and it seemed to him at moments that he was leading the people on a delusive quest at the end of which they could only turn on him and murder him. There would have to be harder work and much self-sacrifice before liberty could be made real, and then it wouldn’t be quite this kind of liberty; that at least was clear. Yet he sympathised with the rowdy simplicity of the popular wish. Why shouldn’t the people enjoy themselves and disregard work? It was the privilege for which their betters fought.

Perhaps this ingenuous confidence of the people would turn to madness when it found itself foiled. At these moments he hoped that he would fail of election so that he could escape the dreadful responsibility of facing the angered mob and telling them that they must still suffer and toil, though in a new cause. Would they think him only a fraud? Would they tear him limb from limb? So be it.

He became more fanatically roused. He had little sleep, for men were continually bursting in to talk to him; and he found that he could not sleep even when Orestilla demanded a respite for him. He did not want or need to sleep. He ate little, and yet his energy grew. His course was set. He would tear everything down. If he was a fraud, the people would tear him to pieces afterwards. That was justice. He was seeking nothing for himself, he would evade no risk. Almost he longed for the day when he would stand before the crowd, when they would pelt him and curse him, and when he would be trampled under. He was doing his work. That was why he had such energy. It was easy going when the whole tide of life went with you.

2

More and more, Cæsar anxiously felt the purpose of Catalina enveloping him; these years of intrigue between Pompeius, Crassus, the radicals and the liberals seemed pointless and shameful; he had been no better than the feeble doctrinaires or blinkered careerists that he had affected to despise. In Catalina he sensed something as deep as the sensation that he had of Rome. As a young man in the presence of Sulla he had felt something as unconquerable; perhaps that was the real reason why he had defied the injunction to divorce Cornelia. That defiance had been a blind effort to assert himself in the face of a power greater than his own, a power that was not external show but a deeply-rooted emanation, a dark glow of will.

But he was no longer an unreasoning boy who kicked against what he could not understand. Catalina lacked that steely straightness of Sulla; but he had something subtler and it abashed Cæsar. He felt that he must fathom it or stand aside from the course of events, a beaten man; but he would not stand aside.

He wanted to test the grip that Catalina had on him, and decided to visit Atticus and Crassus, the two men with the coolest minds that he knew. If contact with them could shake the grip, he would know it to be too irrationally removed from the social fact. If the grip remained, he would be content to subordinate himself to Catalina. As prætor he could be of the greatest use to Catalina as consul. Metellus Nepos would be tribune, able to dominate the corporation in the name of Pompeius. Bestia, a fiery radical orator, was also standing for tribune and would provide all the strength that Nepos, new to politics, might require. Catalina and Cæsar, with the backing of Nepos and Bestia, could create a dictatorship. Pompeius would be compromised in the person of his emissary and his hand forced. Then Catalina could lead where he pleased.

First, however, Cæsar must test himself.

3

Crassus lived on the Palatine in a large house before which stood two lotus-trees prized by gardening enthusiasts at a fantastic price. But he did not live with undue expense; he was a thorough family-man despite his ambitious twist and had no personal vices. It was the itch of envy in him that made him wish to cut an imposing figure and beat Pompeius, the man who had stolen unfairly from him the renown for crushing the revolt of the slaves under Spartacus. He was found ready to act as patron for almost any citizen who would cringe, but he could not win popularity. At a point he always became the financier and spoiled all his other efforts, yet he could not remain financier alone.

He welcomed Cæsar cordially, but with slight embarrassment. He knew that Cæsar was becoming more involved with the extremists than his usual eclectic policy allowed, and he wanted to keep out of things. He chatted lightly about the gossip of the Courts and the scandals of the Senate House.

Cæsar ended these non-committal remarks by asking him direct his opinion of the radical programme, and Crassus answered that general ruin could be the only result.

“Look at Italy,” said Crassus without animosity, “not at a mere mob of discontented proletarians in Rome. You’ve had some experience of business, but not perhaps so much as I have. You know something of the way that trade’s extended during the last century. I’ll give you one item. You hear about ruined farmers, but do you realise that for the first time there has actually been oil exported these last few years? Think what a change that means. I tell you that we’re on the edge of a great wave of prosperity, if only things can be managed rightly. People can’t see it because it’s something new. I have the best opportunities and I can see only a segment of it, but I can feel the life there.”

Behind the rotund but actively thewed figure of Crassus, pleasantly assured and hospitable, Cæsar saw the figures of thousands of other Italians, men who had toiled to bring into existence this new world of which Crassus spoke. They were building a network of communication and distribution, and raising factories whereby the greatest luxuries of the past would become common property in the future. There was greatness in that; but entangled with it all was this rapacity of competition, the greed that turned a decent family-man into little better than a beast.

He felt that Crassus was frightened of him. In Crassus was the same short-sighted greed that made these men resist all efforts of reform for fear that they would lose that for which they had fought. Crassus could hide the fear more urbanely, with greater culture; that was all. Then, suddenly, he saw behind the mask of affability and greed into the man’s farthest recess, his real energy. Crassus was a great organiser; in that he found his happiness and yet could not recognise it. His greed spoiled it for him; his greed and fear were the same thing.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Cæsar. “But it has just struck me that your household holds the genuine clue to the solution of the world’s troubles.”

Crassus betrayed his uneasiness for the first time; he looked around him and then stared at Cæsar. “I wish that what you say was true …”

The two men sat looking at one another, feeling that the conversation had been peculiarly inconclusive.

Crassus had built up his vast estate-business by grabbing land from Sulla and buying cheap properties, which he patched up with his mason-corps. He worked through a myriad small contractors. Also, since fires were common in the narrow crushed streets of Rome, he had organised agents to report on outbreaks. Then his brigade turned up, the agent bought the blazing property and those adjacent for next to nothing, and the firemen thereon set to work. That gave the man away. He would see Rome burn if he had a chance to buy it cheap. He organised blindly as the bees built their hives, but without the communal purpose of the bees. There was no virtue in him, decent family-man as he was. The fire-brand Catalina was the man. If he burned Rome, it would be that a new Rome might arise from the ashes, the Rome of Justice. Better the first few shepherd-huts than a metropolis where the markets existed to cheapen every human worth.

4

Atticus was at home, and Cæsar found another caller, Cicero. The three men were confused for a moment, and then each recovered himself. Atticus became the kindly host to whom political questions were unknown; Cæsar became the light-hearted but sympathetic commentator on the follies of men; Cicero became the slightly heavy ironist with a burden of state-affairs. Atticus was pleased to see Cæsar, for he liked to keep in touch with all leaders except the radical reprobates, but he would have preferred the visit to occur when Cicero was absent. Cicero distrusted Cæsar and envied him his carefree aristocratic manner which conciliated without condescension men and women of all classes alike, whereas he the democrat felt not quite at ease with both the lip-curling nobles and the obsequious plebeians. But he could not altogether disregard Cæsar’s air of good-fellowship; his own bonhomie found such an appeal irresistible, though afterwards the sense of having been gulled added to the original distrust. Cæsar genuinely liked Cicero, for he saw the warm humanity through all the layers of protective verbiage and sarcasm; he appreciated the man’s rise in the world at its true worth, a victory for literature over social barriers; and he felt that Cicero was a great man but not in the least the great man of his own estimation.

In the presence of a political foe Cicero was entirely on the defensive, full of crushingly grand and generalised phrases; but Cæsar refused to be drawn. He was busily summing up Atticus, seeking to pierce to the heart of the man’s quietism. Was it a real perception of values or a mere armour of fear?

None of the men wanted to be the first to mention Catalina, but Cicero could not resist.

“We live in rousing times,” he said bellicosely. “I wonder if my consulship will he more famous as the year in which Gaius Cæsar became Chief Pontiff or in which Lucius Catalina left Rome in disgrace?”

“It does not need any such minor additions,” said Cæsar, ignoring the intended insult. “Some men say that the only hope of a consulship being remembered is the chance of a good vintage year. Then the cellars are full of casks marked Cicero Consul, and every time men drink they remember you. A very good year might keep one remembered for thirty, fifty, even a hundred years. Perhaps there are worse ways of being remembered than at meetings where men grow merry; and the period is long enough.”

“It is my curse to aim higher, I fear,” said Cicero, drawing himself up. “1 judge all my actions by this criterion: How will they appear in six hundred years’ time?”

“Six hundred years,” mused Cæsar. “Six hundred years ago Rome was a hamlet. Six hundred years hence it may be a hamlet again.”

“Never,” said Cicero firmly. “Not while I am consul.” Then, realising the absurdity of the remark, he reddened and said, “I mean, I couldn’t bear such a thought. I live only for posterity.”

Atticus sighed. “It’s all very sad. The empire is ringed with enemies, and here we are tearing at each other’s throats.”

Cicero seized the opportunity and launched into a diatribe against disloyal citizens. Atticus sat without motion, his hands loosely clasped in his lap, but occasionally the thumbs twitched and caressed one another. Cæsar felt distaste for him. Men were not born to sit in a corner with twitching thumbs. Atticus feared—not for his own property perhaps; he was above crude greed; but he grasped together his nexus of credit as a safeguard against the world, and the world was always breaking in. He feared the world; but he did not want peace. That was his lie. He could have retired long ago to a country-seat somewhere in Italy or Greece; he wanted power without responsibility. His hands were spiders. He would do no man harm, but his hands were spiders. Break down the spiderweb, Catalina; that was the right course.

Cæsar made his excuses and went. Atticus sighed. “He is a pleasant fellow, and he means well, and he has the best literary sense in Rome.”

Cicero cleared his throat. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, he’s a traitor; but he has reckoned without me. I shall not let personal considerations weigh.”

Atticus felt his shoulders. He had a slight touch of neuritis. “I think Cæsar can look after himself. He’s been too well trained as an adulterer to leave traces. There’s perhaps a method in his amours—or perhaps I’m doing the usual thing of basing a lot of analysis on a trifle of hearsay about which I know nothing.”

5

The conservatives were disquieted by news of bands of rough-looking men passing through the Gates. These men came from the disaffected country-districts and were found cheap lodgings by Catalina’s agents. Cicero instructed Sestius to obtain details of these transactions for use, if necessary, in a bribery-trial. The bands grew; groups of ten to fifty were tramping the roads from Etruria, and their presence in the taverns caused many brawls. The police reported that the situation was becoming difficult. The new-corners were all propagandists for debt-abolition. Wherever they met, they talked of nothing else, and they kept at fever-point the indignation of the plebs.

Cicero was delighted at the turn that events were taking daily he found it easier to summon his wrath against Catalina. Every action of the man showed a disregard for the constitution; he was mustering forces before he had even tried the ballot-box; he was fomenting insurrection by the most bare-faced appeals to the sloth and cupidity of the mob. The man wasn’t a fool; he must know that he couldn’t carry out his programme. Even a whisper of it disrupted financial dealings throughout the empire.

In the midst of these discussions came news of the death of King Mithridates, the doughty enemy of Rome who had fought for so many decades to rouse the peasants and artisans of Asia against their oppressors and the tax-gatherers. Once by the offer of debt-rebate he had engineered the massacre of some 80,000 Roman businessmen and their families. This year he had taken refuge from Pompeius in the Crimea, where he had been trying to collect yet another army and invade Italy through the north by a march across Europe. His followers, aghast at the plan, had rebelled under his son, and he had committed suicide. No one in Italy had been very keen to welcome a redeemer from the East with the anomalous title of King; but now that he was dead, the eastern portion of the city-populace talked about his great qualities, how he had sought to be the saviour of the world and had perished old but brave and tireless. Yet the saviour would come. Surely his name was Catalina. Crowds thronged the consecrated spots where the Gracchi had been slain, leaving flowers and fruits there, and offering up prayers to the holy martyrs.

At last, having sent on as many men ahead as possible, Manlius arrived with a large body of veterans. They took up their quarters in the poorer districts in the north-west and round the docks near the Aventine, and began militantly preaching the millennium. No one but the tribunes dared call an assembly, and since all opponents stayed away, these meetings were perfervidly in unison in accepting the revolutionary policy.

Manlius was at home in the tumult. “Order of the day,” he said each morning as he called on Catalina, saluting with raised arm as if he were entering his general’s tent in the field.

Catalina grew to love him. Never did he feel that his aim was so simple and so easy of accomplishment as when he talked with Manlius.

“When are the elections coming along?” repeated Manlius. “My lads are getting out of hand. The enemy are in sight, they say, and we can smell the gold in their baggage, not to mention the women and the cooking, and yet we’re kept tied down.”

“It all depends on the consul Cicero. He has to name the day.”

“This is bad campaigning, if you don’t mind me saying so, when we have to wait on the enemy to give us the word for the advance, master Catalina. My lads can’t find a single man in the city that won’t drink to your health.”

“Perhaps it’s the wine that attracts.”

“No, you’re wrong. Do you think they’d waste their own wine-money like that? They make the other folk do the buying, and it’s seldom they have to rub a man’s face in the gutter first.”

Then he went on with reverently lowered voice. “Let’s see her again.”

Catalina smiled; he knew what Manlius desired. The first words that Manlius had spoken on arrival after his greeting had been a request to see the Cimbrian Standard of Marius. Catalina now rose and walked into the atrium with Manlius; they halted before the shrine with its silken hangings. Catalina jerked a cord and the hangings moved apart, showing the staff surmounted with a silver eagle. From the short crossbar on which the eagle with upstretched wings rested, there fell a square of purple cloth with long fringe of gold; and along the staff were affixed medallions commemorative of the engagements in which the eagle had witnessed victory.

“May I touch her?”

Catalina nodded and Manlius reached out his hand, stroking the eagle and staff as if they were fragile and liable to break.

“Marius was a soldier,” he said. “I was in Sulla’s army, and we marched on Rome and made Marius run, but that was after he’d tried to be a politician. Marius and Sulla weren’t enemies when that eagle ate the flesh of the barbarians on the Putrid Plain.”

6

The conservatives were not leaving the field to Catalina. They drafted in able-bodied men from their estates, and wrote to the more prosperous and therefore more loyal towns asking for men. From Cicero’s native town a squad of admiring young burgesses turned up armed to offer their services, and he took them as his bodyguard. The youth of the first and second aristocracies were gathering and drilling, enjoying the chance to show off their dyed uniforms and gilded swords. Atticus for once appeared in public action, taking charge of the chief detachment of the Equites. Pickets were maintained day and night on the Palatine, and the glow of their fires through the darkness contributed to keep alive the sense of Rome as a battleground. The lack of police was keenly felt, but so strong was the Roman hatred of individual usurpation that the mechanism of preserving order had remained rudimentary through fear that it would be made the tool of a militarist official. Still in theory the state was a combination of families in each of which the father was completely capable of seeing that all members were morally subordinate.

The unofficial levies were told to keep out of the poorer areas, but even so there were fights; a few men were killed and many wounded. The streets resounded with catcalls, and under cover of nightfall rival parties painted every available piece of wall-space with exhortation and abuse. Sometimes these parties met, broke each other’s ladders, and splashed each other with red paint.

Regular canvassing ceased, though Catalina and Murena, the two active partisans, kept their agents at work. Sulpicius, who became daily more disgusted, had announced his withdrawal; and the conservatives were forced to support Silanus as their second candidate. At first Silanus resented the patronage, and then drifted more and more into talking of the need for law and order, observing that perhaps the uproars were a blessing in disguise since they would turn men’s hearts to a leader who offered more rational plans.

The elections for the officers of the plebs were held. As the other conservatives were afraid to face the noisy hustlings, Cato came forward and stood for the tribuneship, and, supported by the middle-class voters, he scraped into the corporation; but among his colleagues he had Bestia and Metellus Nepos.

7

Orestilla did not again raise the subject of Catalina’s first wife, but she remained restless and asked questions of some of the older slaves who had been with Catalina in the days of his first marriage. Then she grew ashamed of this, frightened that one of the slaves would repeat to his master her undignified behaviour.

Cethegus continued to beset her with glances and touches of the hand. His affairs were still tormenting him. Chelidon had scared him into accepting a meeting in a room over a perfumer’s shop. He took her to keep her quiet, intending to argue the matter out reasonably. He told her that he didn’t love her.

“That’s all right,” she said, kicking out her lean smooth leg at the linen coverlet. “I don’t love you. I only want to meet you here twice a week.”

“It can’t go on. There isn’t any point to it.”

“O yes there is. I’ll show you.”

“You can’t want a man who doesn’t want you.”

“Can’t I? Live and learn.” She flung her arms about him. “I’m not going to let you go. You’re the only man I’ve ever met that could make me shiver so gloriously. I like the way you glare at me and show your teeth. Would you really like to eat me? Say yes. I want somebody to want to eat me.”

“I tell you I loathe you.”

“It’s so wonderful to have a man like you loathing me. I had the most horrible dream last night. Do you know that the man who keeps this shop will poison a rival if one pays him enough? He puts something into her face-lotion. It soaks through to her brain, and when she dies there’s a frog found in her brain. Fancy that.”

Cethegus could make no headway. He tried harder to gain Orestilla, though he knew very well that if he were successful he would merely complicate things, and that if Chelidon heard she would be ungovernable. But he could not stop himself. At last one day Orestilla did not move away when he pressed his arm against her. He went home almost dazed with pleasure, and spent the rest of the day among his weapons, fingering them amorously.

Precia was becoming suspicious. She came into the armoury and watched him. “You’re very subdued of late.”

“You know what’s going on.”

Her small dried-up face with large yellow eyes scrutinised him. She came over and stood looking down at him as he sat on his stool with an Iberian sword in his hand.

“You’re very forgetful of late. You seem to have forgotten where I sleep.”

“I’m absorbed by what’s going on,” he mumbled, without meeting her eye.

She continued staring at him. “If you want a change, I’ll send in my girl Rhodanthe, or I’ll buy you something out of the ordinary from the war-slaves that are being put up daily down at the docks. But I won’t have you making a fool of me with other women. You know that?”

“Yes,” he said sullenly, “and you can keep Rhodanthe to yourself. I don’t want her or anyone else.”

Precia turned slowly on her heel and went out. Cethegus squeezed his finger between the hilt and scabbard of the sword, and cursed under his breath. All women ought to be kept in a jail where one could visit them in the dark; there they could bear children, never seen of men; and the world would be a fine place.

8

After Cethegus had gone, Orestilla waited till she could find Catalina alone. “Do you trust Cethegus?” she asked.

“Of course.” He blinked at the unexpected question. “I don’t say that his motives are altogether pure. I’ve gone past asking such questions of myself or any other man. But he’s in this thing with me beyond chance of withdrawal. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t like his eyes.” She was sorry that she had spoken; she would only discontent Catalina to no purpose. “I suppose I’m wrong. I thought it was a pity he came here so much. Couldn’t you get rid of him by sending him to Capua or somewhere?”

“But I can’t treat him like one of the lesser men, even if I wanted it. He’d feel resentful. Besides, he’s far more use here.”

“I suppose I’m wrong.” She passed her hand over her brow. “Something in his eyes. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

Catalina dismissed her remarks as mere feminine vagary. “You seem to be getting rather worn out,” he remarked, realising it for the first time. “Why don’t you take a holiday? The season’s past for Baiæ, but perhaps that would be all the better. Why not go to Antium? That’s closer. You need a rest.”

“I don’t,” she said fiercely. “I need something to do. I see you obsessed with a world of action, and I can only wait. Can’t I help you? Can’t I do something?”

Catalina was touched. “I understand.” He pondered. “But I don’t see a way out. You know how your love helps me, but it seems so selfish for me to say that. I know how inaction crazes me. I ought to be more sympathetic. I keep things too much to myself, when it would freshen me and quicken my mind if I talked them over with you.”

At a loss, he rose and took her in his arms. For a moment she stiffened with a resistance that she had never known before; then she clung to him.

9

Sulpicius was causing trouble with his objections. He pointed out that no one was obeying the election-law that he had sponsored and that the worst offender was the conservative Murena. He was joined by Cato who demanded that the infringers of the law should be disqualified. Both Murena and Catalina, Cato declared, should be turned down by Cicero on the election-day; for the presiding consul could refuse nominations.

“I have the legal right,” agreed Cicero, “but everyone will say that we’re afraid of Catalina and stretching a point to oust him. Nominations are hardly ever refused unless a criminal action has already been begun.”

“Then turn down both men. Who can speak of favour then?”

“They’ll say we have plenty of possible candidates, but all their effort is concentrated in Catalina.”

“So much the worse for them.”

But Cicero shook his head. A point-blank refusal would mean riots and civil war. But Sulpicius and Cato continued to collect evidence against Murena, exasperating the consular council. Cato was known to be pigheadedly consistent, but virtue could be carried too far. To quash Catalina before the elections was too dangerous; but perhaps the matter could be settled with a little more shrewdness. If public opinion was sufficiently prepared and Catalina impeached beforehand, the refusal would be different.

But how to prove Catalina a conspirator? The law against conspiracy was indeed conveniently vague. Any private organisation of which a majority in the Senate disapproved became a conspiracy if an Ultimate Decree was passed against it; and the adherents of Catalina were avowedly malcontent. But to carry the timid majority of the Senate it would be necessary to have a proof of definite implication in a plot for the use of force. Fifty years ago the available evidence would have been ample; but with the complex growth of cultural and social relations, questions of conscience become more entangled, fears of action entrench themselves behind doubts of legality. Some dramatic exposure was necessary, something more than the direct statement of Catalina’s responsibility for an unruly faction. Sestius had reported to Cicero what Fulvia had told him, and he was now ordered to make every effort to find some striking fact illustrative of Catalina’s guilt—the kind of thing that would panic the senators into yielding the government a solid moral support.

10

Cato, leaving to Sulpicius the work against Murena, put his energies into attacking Catalina in the Senate. His denunciations were general in character and consisted of accusing Catalina of corrupting the electorate through ambition and greed. The debates sickened Catalina, but he could not stay away without giving the conservatives the chance to circulate the rumour that he was over-awed and frightened. He schooled himself to sit impassively through the interminable discussions enlivened only by the bitter attacks of Cato and his clique.

Once, however, Cato’s vituperation became even more personal than usual. He shouted in his tirelessly hoarse voice that doom was prepared for Catalina, that a man must meet the fate he prepared for others. A drone of thunder filled the air. As a man sows, so shall he reap. The thief shall be robbed, and the slayer slain.

Suddenly Catalina lost his control; the long room darkened, redly starred. If the world was ripe for destruction, let it perish. He rose to his feet and cried in a vehemently ringing voice:

“If a conflagration is lighted against me, I shall put it out not by water but by pulling down the roof of things.”

There was a silence through the room. The senators were stupefied by this cry of pain which to them was the extorted admission of villainy. The worst was true. Cato himself was surprised. He paused, remarked in a cold voice, “You have condemned yourself,” and sat down.

All looked at Catalina, who after his outburst had drawn back into his impassive mask. Then they looked at Cicero, awaiting a momentous utterance. Cicero felt at last the great triumphant hour of his consulship. His career was finalised. The rest was easy. He had the man in the open, he would hunt him down with a clear heart. Catalina was condemned out of his own mouth.

Catalina felt the strength that his outcry had given his enemy. He gritted his teeth and fought down the angry words that struggled in his brain. He had said enough, he had said too much already. Let them grin. He would prove his words true. His enemies had torn the words from him, and now he must abide by those words. Smash the world.

But the senators were not grinning. They were afraid. Only Cicero and Cato were calm. In both men a sense of victory was enkindled. But whereas Cato merely knew an intensification of his normal feeling of duty done, Cicero was like a man reborn in a glorified earth. His enemy had delivered himself into his hands. A word had left him naked.

Cethegus who was sitting beside Catalina fidgeted, and Lentulus roused himself from a meditation to cast from his prætor’s chair a lazily shrewd glance towards the bench where they sat. Nobody was quite ready for such a declaration of hostility, though Cato and his allies had been bawling for it for months. Everyone had known that it must come, and now that it had come they were thunderstruck.

Catalina rose. There was no point in staying longer now that Cato had desisted and Cicero had shown himself unable to act. He wanted to go. For a moment he stood in the row, looking round the room to see if anyone else would rise to challenge him; then he walked down the steps and out through the centre of the hall. His gaunt face showed no emotion.

Cicero wanted to scream to the attendants to stop and arrest him. Perhaps the armed youths who thronged the porch, listening to the echoes of the debate, would cut him down. Why did no one send and bid them kill the rebel? All the senators were cowards and waited for the consul’s order. He would give it, but in his own time.

The proceedings dragged on without conviction. Everyone felt that Cicero had won a great advantage and yet that he had somehow lost his chance. On dismissal the senators clustered in anxiously murmuring groups.

11

Cicero now redoubled his efforts for evidence. Catalina himself had facilitated things. If only the dramatic details would be forthcoming to release into action the now steadily increasing but damned-up emotional forces!

Sestius called on Fulvia, but she had nothing beyond the ordinary talk of threats and hopes to repeat. Sestius stretched himself. He felt easy with Fulvia now as with an old friend. “We know ourselves,” he said, looking her up and down. “I don’t need back-alleys when there’s a straight cut before me. Cicero wants evidence about a coup for election-day.”

“I don’t think there’s any. They seem sure of winning.” She curled up her legs under her.

“Well, perhaps a clever woman like you could start a plot rolling.”

She caressed her throat; the apothecary had sent her some special almond-paste for rubbing into the creases; but what was the use of trying to be beautiful when her nerves were lacerated daily by Curius. “I’ll do my best. But Curius can’t actually do anything without the others. He isn’t one of the heads, and you’ve promised that he won’t be punished whatever happens, haven’t you?”

Sestius nodded She wondered why she had asked for that promise. At first she had thought that she would involve Curius in any disclosures and thus get rid of him. Then she had felt afraid. Besides, what would Sestius and the others think of her if she didn’t make that stipulation? She went on. “Why can’t you dress up some of your own men and produce an attempt that fails, then blame Catalina?”

“A clever woman! I said so. But I’d thought of that idea already. It might be used. But look here now. Can’t you give me some of the kind of facts that would make the trick look genuine?”

“I’ll try. But you’re fools if you try to rush matters. There’s violence behind these people. I’m sure of it, and if you take your time you’ll get your facts.”

Sestius regarded her thoughtfully. “If I was ever to deceive my poor wife, it would be with a woman like you.”

“Then you’ll never deceive your poor wife,” said Fulvia, uncurling her legs and rising. “ Not unless you find my double.”

“Don’t take me up so quickly!” complained Sestius. “I meant it as a compliment, not as an invitation.”

12

August, the month of harvest when the deities of fire and water were propitiated, was passing, and yet there was no election-day. The Flamen of Iuppiter had plucked the first grapes and prayed for the crop; the navel-hole, the earth-pit that reflected the sky-dome, on the Palatine had been opened for a day. The harvest could be made; the dead could come forth and return. Still there were no elections.

At last Cicero had to do something. The joy of Catalina’s self-exposure in the Senate had gone, reinforcing the now-unquestioned need to destroy the man, but deepening anxiety. How was the destruction to be made in a way that would be as simple and finally effective as the single sentence that had confessed the rebel-wrath? But something must be done at once. Resentment was growling out of the city-mob. There were lawless meetings at the street-corners and even in the Forum. The police could do nothing. Frays between the mob and the government-supporters grew more violent. Everyone felt the nervous stress. The senators could stand it no longer. Let a move be made against Catalina, or let the elections be held.

Cicero could not bear to let his first success pass tamely by. With the meagre evidence at his disposal he decided to call the Senate and see if they could not be warmed to that state of terrified resolution in which compacted measures could be taken. He fixed the election-day, and then called a meeting of the Senate on the day before the date. Striving hard to work himself into a rage, he declared that plans had been laid by the radicals for a tumult on the morrow and for the murder of him, the presiding consul. Cicero wanted to persuade and the Senate wanted to believe, but the magnetic point of conviction was lacking. Everyone expressed the greatest concern for the allegations, but the speeches lacked fire and all that Cicero could do was to promise fuller details on the next day.

Next day the Senate assembled full of apprehensions. Catalina took his seat and Cicero spoke in terms of vague and diffuse denunciation. A plot had been laid for the murder of the consul in the Fields of Mars, and he demanded protection. The debate opened with strong support from the Cato-section; then other senators spoke, all agreeing that the commonwealth was threatened by evil-minded men; but there was no pervading force. All wanted to throw on someone else the responsibility for any irretrievable course, and the mere multiplicity of words produced an effect of retreat from the demand for action.

At last Cicero called on Catalina. He rose and spoke laconically:

“There are two bodies in the state. One is feeble with a feeble head. The other is strong, but headless. While I live, the strong body shall never lack a head if it deserves one.”

Cries of rage surged up all around him, but the pulse of action was still lacking. Reluctantly Cicero dismissed the gathering; he had the good sense to see that it would be futile to ask for an Ultimate Decree. The moral cohesion that alone could give the decree meaning was altogether absent. Cicero felt oozing out of him the power which Catalina’s self-exposure had created, but there still remained the hard knot of fear and determination to crush. The misery now was lack of means, not lack of an easy conscience.

13

The election-day arrived. The streets were crammed with quarrelsome and gleeful factions. Any member of either side who went alone was likely to be trounced. Respectable burghers, summoned by letters from the Senate, had come from all over Italy; and the army of vertean under Manlius had swelled daily through the last month. The conservatives’ hope that they would be starved out by the delays had proved false; if they were hungrier, they were all the angrier because of it. In the Field of Mars outside the walls there were continual scrimmages; the mob did their best to intimidate the better-class voters; the gangways were thronged with tightly crushed files proceeding to drop their votes into the ballot-boxes. Both sides did their best to destroy any secrecy in the ballot by crowding the booths, peering at what initials had been scribbled on the wooden tickets, shouting insults, slogans and threats.

Cicero was not leaving all the intimidation to the mob. His armed bands had been picketed in all the temples, porticoes and other points of mob-gathering. At the city-gates and at convenient positions about the Field there were imposing detachments of soldiers, their weapons and corselets brightly scoured. According to instructions, they clashed their weapons and occasionally executed movements to show their discipline in comparison with the surging populace. Cicero himself on his presidential dais, surrounded by the armed Volscians, was dressed in a toga thrown loosely over a heavy suit of armour, and he took care to let the sunlight glint on the metal dazzlingly. Emissaries spread the news that several attempts to assassinate him had been narrowly foiled.

Cato, followed by Favonius, thrust his way among the sweating crowd, informally superintending. The clerks at the ballot-boxes were mopping their brows, badgered by the representatives of the candidates. Everyone was sure that everyone else was cheating and that whatever votes were registered a faked account would declare the foe elected.

The day was a blaze of dust and white-gold light. The sun throbbed in a cloudless sky. All the roads to Rome were thronged. The heat rose from the earth in corrugated veils like water and ran in sweat down the foreheads of the wayfarers. But it was the dust that was most irksome; it threshed up from the road as if the rays of the sun were flogging at the earth as well as biting through cloth and skin; it smarted in eyes, gritted between teeth, prickled behind the nostrils, crawled itchily under garments, and blackened the most elegant of fingernails. Not a pleasant day for travelling, and yet the roads were thick with people.

“How’s it all going?” cried a red-faced man nearing the Raudusculan Gate on the Ostian Road to a traveller from the city.

“Fine, my friend, fine!” shouted the other, his voice cracking under the effort as he found his saliva dried. “We’ve got them right here.” He smacked his fist into the open palm of his other hand.

A ragged tramp raised a throaty whoop and stared insolently at a passing litter. The curtain had parted; a hand with plumply tapering fingers appeared; an emerald ring gleamed on the second finger, and the hand had the pale sleekness which confessed continual lotions and ointments. Then the gold braid was lifted and a cosmeticked sagging face looked out. The tramp smirked, and the woman hurriedly withdrew.

“You’ll be learning the feel of a staff across your shoulders.”

“I learned it long ago. But my day’s coming. I’ll knead her sort like a lump of dough before long. That’s what she’s asking for. O, it will be a sweet day!”

The group halted to argue in the few yards of shadow thrown across the parched road by a fig tree. Beyond the sparse boughs, between the road and the river, several old tombs were mouldering. The nearest tomb showed the statue of a shrouded woman and a battered sundial; and a melancholy goat chewed at the shrivelled grass. On the rising ground behind stood a ruinous hut with an overgrown vegetable-garden and a new villa on which the workmen were busily stuccoing the walls.

A posse of well-dressed horsemen with attendants galloped past, making no effort to avoid the talkers. The tramp was almost run down. He cowered against a mile-stone and then shook his fist after the riders.

“Mark them down,” he said. “Mark them all down. The great day’s coming.”

14

Murena and Silanus were announced as consuls elect. Catalina had been beaten by a few votes. The greater voting-power of the wealthy had beaten the numerically far greater will of the populace.

15

Catalina was numbed by the blow. He had staked everything and lost. Though he had joked with Manlius about taking by force what the ballot-box might not bring, he had never believed that he could lose this time. The enthusiasm that he had aroused had been so terrific; the compulsive moral force which he had felt within himself had seemed invincible. All his faith crumbled, and he felt defenceless. Evading his followers, he tried to lose himself in the crowd, muffling his face.

He wanted to lose himself, to be one of the undistinguished crowd. There people might suffer; they might love and hate and toil and desire things that they couldn’t get; but they weren’t asked to stand out against the world and be rejected. He had fought and lost. He was worthless. The months of baffled effort recoiled in a blind hunger for oblivion. He had stood out against the world. That was madness. The only way was to discard resistance, to suffer and enjoy without thought. He had forgotten Orestilla and his friends. They were his thoughts. He didn’t want to see them again or anyone that he knew. He wanted to be lost.

Drink. That was the first step. He had thrown off his senator’s toga into the hands of a slave and donned a cowled cloak which was always held ready in case a riot should make a disguised escape necessary. Now he slipped into the first tavern near the Carmental Gate. On its wall was painted the sign of a large woman labelled Venus, embracing an equally large wine-jar. He must get away from the babel of the street.

Half a dozen depressed men were sitting about, two of them farmers who had trudged up for the day. The lamps were lighted, flickering with fat yellow flames as the door opened. A smell of rancid-oil, sweat and wood-ash. “There was a trick somewhere,” said one man, shaking his head slowly. “I told you this morning that there wasn’t any chance of a fair deal.”

“Liar,” said another in friendly but depressed banter. “You thought there’d be two suns in the sky to-morrow.”

“A lot of good that would do me. Two suns would only parch what’s left of my crop.”

“I’m sick of elections,” said a squat bearded man. “They can’t do any good, and they always do harm. Perhaps things or people were different once, or I don’t suppose elections would have been started.”

A fourth man, savager-looking than the others, spoke. “I don’t believe in starting things, but the way I look at it is that someone else is doing the starting, and if we don’t look out we’ll be too late for our own funerals.”

There was a silence. The men were sitting about a rough table where drinks were served. Catalina sat in a corner-seat under cobweb-blackened rafters, beside a deep chimney-hole, and ordered a flagon. Everything must be washed out. How could a clear future be born while the torment of the past buzzed and stung the flesh? The past was a swarm of wasps, stinging the flesh from within. Drown the mind. Drown the wasps in their nest, the mind.

A man with a black bandage over his left eye entered, a city-ruffian. Taking up an empty cup, he banged on the table. “Some drink here!” He leered at the others. “You look a sad lot. Can’t you do something? Haven’t you a right to dung on the earth? There’s room for all and food for all and enough women to go round twice. String up the bankers, and then let the world get drunk in a heap.”

There was a murmur of sulky agreement, but one of the farmers interposed, “You’ll be making things worse if you don’t take care. Things are bad, but if you throw law and order over—”

The savage-eyed man silenced him with a raucous laugh. “Listen. He talks like the consul Cicero.” He turned his cup upside down, looked under it hopefully, and then went on with a parody-emphasis. “Here now, you set of cabbage-faced scoundrels, why don’t you gnaw yourselves or starve in decent quiet like good citizens so that the capitalists can go on carrying the crushing burden of their wealth for the benefit of the state. Pah.”

“Law and order!” jeered the one-eyed man. “Law to squeeze my vitals out, and order to make me stay where I’m put. The more I see of law and order the better I like a dog-fight.”

Catalina drank. He would drown his mind, and this room and the men in it would drown. Did not every word show that they were all figments of his failure? Out of his heart would bleed oblivion over the world. He would give the world something better than money. He would put it to everlasting sleep. He would snap off the bough on which hung the hornets’ nest, and he would dip it deep under the hurrying waters of oblivion.

The farmer disagreed. “Wipe off the mortgages, yes. But when you once start more than that, where are you going to stop?”

The one-eyed man banged the table again. “Those that are naked can only lose their lice.”

Ah, that was the truth. Strip naked and then clear the flesh of its stinging parasites, the lice of the nerves.

“Yes, you have nothing. I’ve got a farm that would be doing well if I could pay my mortgage off.”

“Then slit the throat of him that’s screwing you and throw the mortgage into the fire before his dead eyes.”

“Didn’t I do my best when I went and voted for Catalina?”

Catalina was the failure. The votes had been cast into a bottomless pit; they were falling; the whole world was falling, clutching at a friend for support and driving the friend lower, wrestling with an enemy in terrible hope to climb upwards on his body, falling faster than the limbs could climb, falling.

“And didn’t the man with the mortgage go one better when he went and voted against Catalina?”

Always the same. Always a voice crying, rousing human hearts to hope, and deceiving them. Catalina was the liar. If he should unveil his face, the peoples of the earth would hunt him to his death. He was the rejected one, the scape-goat. What hope was there for him? Let him be drunken, trodden into the vat.

“Bad as things are, I was never one of those that hold with chopping off a man’s head to rid him of a headache. Cures can kill.”

The one-eyed man spat on the floor. “Then there’s a lot of people I’d like to cure. Let them that are milch-cows drop out their udders to be milked, but the man that fiddled with the bull got a horn where he didn’t expect it.”

The innkeeper, a swarthy man with a cast in his eye, entered from a side-room and stood with hands on hips. “What’s the call for these long faces, lads? Better luck round the corner.”

“That’s what I was saying,” said the one-eyed man. “Dead moneylenders breed worms instead of interest.”

The innkeeper squinted round the room. “No money-lenders present, I hope; so don’t look bashful. I was referring to drink. A man can drown six feet of cares in a cup not much deeper than his nose, and that’s the blessing of life.”

“What fills our guts,” said the savage-faced man, “fills your purse.”

Money that should be food, food that should be money, where was the flaw? The food rotted and the money ran short. There was a gap between, the bottomless pit, the river of death.

The innkeeper glanced round with a benevolent shrug. “Do you think I got vines growing in my cellar? I’d give you the wine free if I got it free. But it costs a man to spit nowadays.”

The farmer pointed at the one-eyed man. “When this fellow gets to work, you’ll have to give us free drinks.”

“There’ll be free drinks,” said the innkeeper, with assurance, “when the Lord God lets wine instead of water come dripping down through his sieve up in the sky, and that will be in the days when fish turn themselves over in the frying-pan. I’ve been in this trade all the hours of my life, and one thing’s certain. The wine’s getting better every day, and so who wouldn’t be drunk, even if he had to steal for it? and while I’m talking about it, don’t forget there’s more girls three doors up than know what to do with themselves. If you mention I recommended you, you get special care and no tricks. But I can’t have women brought here. It’s not that I object to women as women, but they make life too hard for a man that lets lodgings. The last one that crept in had two fellows saying words over her, and there was a howling murder in the house early in the morning that spoilt my sleep and cost me a deal in hush-money. So you’ll understand the rule I made.”

Catalina drank. The flagon was almost empty. He felt himself part of the hurrying river, warmly drowning. He was losing himself at last. But he must never wake; waking was his fear. He must no longer hear the world calling on his name.

A grizzled man who had been sitting hunched up in a corner tottered to his feet and pointed a finger scornfully at the host. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and took a drink.

The innkeeper was used to insults. “If you didn’t keep your own mouth open so much with a pot tipped up in front of it, I’d have you thrown out. But a good customer has his rights.”

“Clear the house,” said the man hopefully, appealing to the one-eyed man. Finding no support, he sat down and then jerked himself back upon his feet. “I served under Sulla,” he said ferociously. “Those were the days. Votes! If you’d asked for them, we’d have told you to put them where the pig keeps his acorns. But after he died the jobbers got their hearts back and turned everything to the wrong by coaxing folk to sign bits of paper. I don’t know and I don’t care, but I say that if I had my sword back I’d lose it this time inside somebody where I’d know where to find it. I remember Sulla. Clearer’n I see you all. He said to me outside Athens, he said, ‘Go over and fetch me a drink of water in your helmet, you ugly swab, for I’m thirsty.’ So I went, and by the time I came back, he’d found something else to do and gone off about it. That’s the kind he was. A proper general.”

The company stirred, and the innkeeper stopped the talker. “That’s enough of you now. We all know how things were better in the old days when women had tails and goats walked on their hind-legs. You got to get used to the change.”

“I won’t,” bellowed the man. “They took my land away and turned my wife out into a ditch only a few hours off bearing-time.”

“You’re lucky. At your age too. It took your mind off suspecting the young fellow next door.”

“You’re in their pay!” The man tugged at his waist and then shouted with rage at finding no weapon. “She died in a ditch, and may you be damned for it. It was years ago. But that doesn’t make it any better. I’ll smash your teeth in and see how they agree with your spoilt belly.” He rushed at the innkeeper. “They told me to eat stones. See how you like it.”

There was a melee. The one-eyed man, under pretence of helping to collar the drunkard, wrought as much damage as possible among the others. Only the innkeeper and Catalina did not move. The innkeeper stood aside, saying, “Don’t handle him rough, or he’ll spew on the floor. Leave the door clear and you’ll be able to heave him out with a good swing. I don’t mind what his politics are, but I won’t be insulted in my own house.”

The man was thrown out, and Catalina, draining the flagon, rose. He had been thrown out too, out of the world of men, rejected, a meaningless babbler. He walked out into the evening air and a sudden space of stars. The brawler lay with his head on the basalt-blocks of the pavement, moaning. Blood trickled from his forehead. Stepping over him, Catalina turned to the left. Out of the world.

16

Misery everywhere. Blood on the stones. A man moaning. Step over him and leave the past behind. A city of madmen, and a man who wanted to run along the streets of the future. There was no such thing as death; it would be too kindly an escape. Perhaps madness was the only release. The mad were happy, the only people who were utterly sure of their logic. Therefore the brief madness of wine was all, though it killed with briefness.

Catalina drank again, mixing with the people, but utterly unabsorbed. His head was burning. He did not dare to look anyone full in the face, for he felt that his eyes were slots of fire and that those who looked into them would scream with terror. He was a marked man, the sacrifice that takes on himself all the sins of the people and is driven out with sticks. There was no escape. The bustling uproar of the town was the noise of pursuit. He must hide. He pulled the hood over his head and bought more wine. He would fall drunk in the gutter, and in the spider web light of dawn someone would find him lying senseless and kill him. He would never awake. That was best.

Misery and madness. There was a woman sitting in a window-hole with a child nursed in her arms and two others clinging to her feet. She was whimpering. Catalina had promised her food and lied. There were men quarrelling in their despair, trying to throttle one another because they were beaten. There were men drinking, because drunk they were lords of the world and thought muck a better bed than the swan’s down in the mattress that bulged about a fat gilded trollop. There were men shouting, to drown the mocking voices that said they were beaten. There were men sitting silent, because no words were now worth saying. “Catalina, Catalina.” That was the sound everywhere in the shouts, in the mutterings, in the silences. “Catalina, Catalina.” That was the reproachful miserable sound everywhere, becoming a menace in the pad-pad of hurrying footsteps.

Catalina. What use was Catalina in a world of misery and madness that he had set out in vain glory to redeem? Nothing remained but the mad voices repeating “Catalina” for ever and ever till the brain burst. More wine!

Rome could not sleep. Gangs patrolled the streets. The armed bands had cleared the centre of the city. But in their houses the burgesses sat behind the strong shutters and listened to the cries made eerily bestial by distance; and in all the narrow twisting streets where the poor lived in propped-up hovels, in dark holes under stairs or in the frail partitioned rooms of the huge tenements, there was noise. There was despair. Men and women drank and danced for defeat as they would have drunk and danced for triumph. Cethegus and the other leaders were skulking, depressed, in their houses; but Manlius had found that Catalina was missing, and he was searching the streets almost as madly as Catalina sought to lose himself along them. He, too, was drunk and weeping among his men.

“Where is he?” he asked, peering into taverns, alleyways, every unlatched door. “I shan’t lose him. He’s the only man alive, and I love him. I’ll burn this stinking city down if he’s harmed. I’ll burn it down anyway. But I want to find him first.”

17

Curio and Marcus Antonius were enjoying themselves. They drank among the populace, encouraging the groups of veterans to arson and plunder. The men listened, a little afraid; perhaps these well-dressed young men were agents commissioned to lead them to their ruin. Clodius too had lost his head, but he was preaching insurrection because he meant it. Those to whom he preached had no doubts of his sincerity.

A tenement caught fire, and the mob stood round in the glare, apathetically daring the imminent collapse of its bricks. The dry wooden floors and lattice-work of its interior burned furiously, and some families had been trapped on the roof. They leaned over, staring at the crowd below, too suffocated now with the smoke and the uprush of hot air to cry out. Besides, there was no use in crying. No one could help. Someone had produced a ladder, but it was far too short. Stirred suddenly by the suffering of the child who sobbed at her knees, a mother on the roof snatched him up and threw him over the parapet. The spectators saw the body hurtling down, and crushed away. It fell with a thud on the cobbles. A girl’s face was lighted for a moment by a burst of flames from a window below, then she was seen no more.

Some of the onlookers were trying to steal the articles of furniture which had been thrown out of the lower storeys, and arguments were going on over the ownership. A demented bailiff was flogging at some slaves, hoping to force them into tearing down the next door building before the flames spread.

The night was stifling-hot, and the flames made it unbearable. Curio and Antonius had been watching. “Drink, drink, drink,” shouted Antonius, and, lifting Curio up, sat him on his shoulder. The nearest tavern was filled with veterans. In anger at the day’s defeat, they were quarrelling among themselves as to whether Marius or Sulla was the greater man.

“Why don’t you quarrel as to which of you is the greatest fool?” cried Curio in his girlish voice from the table on which Antonius had deposited him. “If you’re going to fight, fight somebody with a corpse worth robbing. You’ll get nothing out of one another but hard knocks.”

“Drink, drink, drink,” chanted Antonius. He flung a gold coin on the floor. “Wine for all my friends.”

The men crowded round him. He was on good terms with them at once, and began wrestling with a big fellow, showing him the professional grips. The others clapped, and Curio danced about on the table, acting as umpire.

18

Catalina was feeling wearier. There was a mercy in that. He chose a tavern less noisy than the others and sat drinking. Two youths entered. He recognised one of them, a lad named Cælius. Cælius was one of the young enthusiasts who, though belonging to the affluent classes, had flocked in callow but genuine idealism about Catalina.

The two youths were drunk and sat beside Catalina without noticing who he was. “Where does it all end?” asked Cælius.

“It never ends,” replied the other, a flat-chested lad named Alfenus Varus from Cremona, who had sold some inherited shops and now pinched himself to study law under Servius Sulpicius. “All this doesn’t matter.”

“But it does. I feel my heart broken.”

“You don’t understand. There’s nothing but the Law. Not the laws that are made in the Senate or the Assemblies. The Law in itself.”

“I can’t see things separate.”

“It isn’t separate. It’s Rome. It’s the pulse that keeps us all alive. It’s Justice I mean. You can’t understand. It grows by precedent and expediency. And yet that’s the last thing it is. It’s justice becoming human, or humanity becoming justice. It goes on and on. It can’t be stopped. I’m part of it. We all are. If I can add something to it before I die, I’ll die happy.”

“I don’t care for your law. I tell you I loved Catalina, and now they’ve broken him.”

“Catalina’s only part of it like you and me. The Law that I’m speaking of can’t be broken. It’s greater than any man.”

“Then I hate it. I wanted Catalina. He was the man for me. You don’t know how I felt about him.”

Catalina sat spelled. He felt for a moment that he must reveal himself, then he drew back and set down the untasted cup of wine. Who was he to draw the heart of loyalty out of a man and then surrender the task because he had met a check? He must go on. Was all that he had learned in Etruria in vain?

He loved this boy who had had faith in him. He must go home and set to work again. There was no question of failure. He could not fail.

Rising, he hurried out.

19

Orestilla was sitting pale-cheeked in the front-room. She recognised his step outside the door and hastened to meet him in the porch. “I was so afraid,” she said, and threw herself into his arms. “Where have you been?”

Catalina shook his head; he could not speak; he saw the stain of dried tears on her cheek.

“Poor one,” she murmured. “Did Manlius find you? He was nearly mad with worry that something had happened to you.”

Catalina tautened. He must not weep. The world was so good. He was surrounded with such loyalties, and he had run away because his vanity had been hurt. He felt the bond between him and the world tighten infinitely. This was faith, this knowledge of love. They all loved him, and he had almost failed their trust.

At the same moment he knew how weary he felt. With a weak gesture of the hand he moved on to the bedroom, followed by Orestilla, who was deeply perturbed by his silence.

Then, as she approached with tenderly questioning face, his weariness dropped off and he felt only desire for her. He could not wait. He took her in his arms and fell with her to the floor. As if he was falling from a great height, he felt her body, the earth, rushing upwards to receive him, to take him into oblivion.

VII - THE CONSPIRACY

I

Next morning Catalina woke with a feeling of enormous emptiness, as if the world and everything therein had become hollow and meaningless—eviscerated puppets pretending to life. He was weighted by this sense of ghastliness, of people acting with the best of motives, but unavoidably twisted into evil by an unseen hand; the smile upon the face of Venus was frozen into idiocy; it could not be scraped from the stone; it mocked.

Then, throwing aside the coverlet, he threw off the oppression. His movement roused Orestilla, and she sat up, lifting the hair from her slanted eyes of dark-blue flecked with green in the early light. She remembered the night, his return, his suffering face, his inarticulate passion. She had surrendered to it, frightened but roused to an agony of tenderness which his roughness had accentuated. She could see only his suffering face. Then the darkness of sleep had buried them both, as if the earth had given way and swallowed them into its hot bowels. She feared now to look at him, but she looked.

He was Catalina, the man whom she knew. That mask of indrawn suffering was gone. She was deeply relieved. What had she expected?

“Why didn’t you come home at once?”

He pushed the subject away with opened hand. “Don’t speak of it again. I am ashamed. I failed utterly. I don’t mean the defeat at the elections. That was nothing really. My vanity was hurt, hurt to death, thank God. It’s dead now, and I’ve work to do.”

He came and knelt with one knee on the bed beside her. “Forgive me that I didn’t come home at once.” He touched her cheek and breast gently. “How beautiful you are.” He felt as he had felt when looking down on the Etruscan Plain in search of Voltumna. A beautiful earth, but in its veins were centuries of cruelty. In the blood of Orestilla who wanted only to be loved and to love. She was his earth, and last night he had returned to her.

His face closed again. The tensity of possession passed over it again, and Orestilla chilled to see the distance into which he withdrew. A moment before he had been so close; never in their married lives had he been so close; and now he was lost again. She hated his purpose. It was evil, or it could not come between them like this. But she felt thankful that there was no sign of last night’s delirium. At least this possession was controlled, understandable.

She heard the child crying in the next room, and rose from the bed, picking up a silken dressing-gown. Catalina did not notice her go. He rested thinking for a few moments, and then began mechanically dressing.

2

He called a meeting at his house: Lentulus, Cassius, Cethegus, Manlius, several of the lesser agents, and Labienus as the representative of Cæsar, who had won the prætorship. They were all somewhat ill at ease, as if each man expected to be blamed for the failure—all except Manlius.

“What did you expect?” he said, after asking leave to speak. “I told the general that it would be the best thing. Nothing can be done by politics. If he’d been elected, he’d only have got tangled in the schemes of these people that know how to twist words, and he might have spoiled everything. Then the poor folk would have turned on him. You’ll excuse me for speaking out. I mayn’t know much about politics, but I can get together an army for him.”

There was a silence, which Catalina broke:

“Thank you, Manlius. Now listen, all of you. The political test was no test at all. The present system rests on the force at the disposal of the propertied classes. There’s only one question. Do we give up, or do we meet force by force?”

“That puts it clear,” said Manlius.

The others looked uneasy. They were fully decided to continue with the challenge, but were afraid of the exposure of words. A thought was safe; but words were things, capable of being written down or repeated, hostages or weapons. It was one matter to talk half-jokingly of a coup, another thing to plan it in cold blood.

Cethegus shuffled in his seat. He could not bear to look at Catalina, so much now did he hate the man who had come from Orestilla’s bed; but for that very reason he felt impelled to reply, to show that he also could make decisions. By replying he took on himself the responsibility for all that came after; he dominated Catalina.

“I’m for fighting force with force,” he said in a dry voice.

The others breathed more easily. The word was spoken. “I can’t say I’m for fighting,” wheezed Cassius, “but I’ll arrange to have other people removed.”

“I suppose there’s no other way,” said Lentulus in an off-hand voice. “I vote for insurrection.”

The others chimed in. Labienus alone did not speak. He was against all such conspiracies; for in his heart he wanted only to cut a fine social figure, and he feared the consequences of a mob-upheaval. To use the mob was part of the political game, but a conspiracy was playing with fire.

“I’m not here merely for myself,” he said, seeing that all were eyeing him. “You know what I mean without mentioning names. But I’ll repeat what you say. All I can answer now is that you know you have our sympathy and that whatever happens this confidence will be respected.”

Lentulus lifted the little finger with which he had been pressing his check and pointed languidly at Labienus. “Come now, young man. Speak more to the point. No one can respect confidences in a matter of this sort unless he’s fully implicated. I’m not a Stoic, but I hold at this moment to their maxim that all degrees of guilt are the same—or rather I invert it, all degrees must be the same. A man who wrings a cockbird’s neck may be as bad as a parricide, but in the parricide’s club he has to kill his father as well as the bird. Are you with us or against us?”

“I’m with you,” said Labienus in a steady forceless voice. “But I can’t speak for my principal. What do you want me to do? Am I to treat with him or make no report? Am I to explain the situation or to tell him a parable about cocks?” His voice gained strength as he came to the sneer at Lentulus.

Lentulus tapped the table quietly and was about to speak again, but Catalina anticipated him. “What Lentulus says is true, but here alone we must make an exception. I ask you all to leave to me and Labienus the handling of this question. For the rest we have decided. We must make the coup. The next question is: When?”

“Now,” said Manlius.

“No. You must go back to Etruria and collect your men properly. If we begin an insurrection now, we’ll have a mere rabble that we can’t command. The forces that can be raised in Etruria must be our mainstay, for the men are good soldiers and determined. Besides, there are other arrangements to be made. I suggest that we provisionally fix on the first of January as the date.”

This was agreed on. Manlius promised to gather his veterans from the taverns and bawdy-houses and sheds where they slept, and send them back to Fæsulæ. There they would form the nucleus of an army. They would act also as recruiting-officers, and soon he would have several thousand first-class fighting men.

The meeting broke up. Catalina signed to Labienus to remain behind. He could not believe that Cæsar would desert the cause but the compact had been made only for the elections. Labienus sat with set face. He was resolved to break from the conspiracy and did not think for a moment that Cæsar would consider joining it.

Catalina felt his distrust for Labienus greater than ever. He could not speak frankly with him. “Will you tell Cæsar what we discussed?” he said at length.

“I will. But are you sure there’s no other course? Cæsar will be prætor next year, and Metellus Nepos and Bestia are tribunes.”

Catalina sat silent, then he said, “Tell Cæsar what we discussed.” He was angry that he could not placate this man on whom he had to rely as intermediary. “There is no other way.” His emotion burst forth. “I tell you that there isn’t. We’ve got to break things first. It had to come. Even if I’d been elected, it would have been the same. These men are set like stone. They laugh to see fools trying to tear down the walls of Rome with bleeding fingers. Fire and steel and battering-rams are needed, and by God I’ll bring them.” He hit the wall of the room so hard that he tore his knuckles, but did not feel or see the wound.

But the blow calmed him. “Tell Cæsar what we discussed,” he repeated, almost appealingly. “You’re a young man, Labienus, and you’ve got the selfishness of youth. You’ve much to learn, if you’re to learn anything.” He mastered himself. “Don’t come between me and Cæsar, that’s all. Do your duty and keep your mouth shut, and if you feel scared of this work of ours, stay out of it. I’ll see that the others don’t molest you.”

Labienus for one brief pulse wished to say that he would join; then he moved back, his lip lifting with contempt for himself. For Catalina he felt neither admiration nor contempt; he felt the man was mad; and he wanted to have nothing to do with him.

“You’ve spoken openly,” he said, “and I’ll give you what you gave. I mean to keep out, but I shan’t talk except to Cæsar, when I take him your message; and I’ll take that to him faithfully.” He rose and walked straight out.

3

It was hard to realise the change at first. Catalina did not realise it fully until Manlius called to say that he was leaving in an hour for Etruria. Then he felt how much Manlius had meant to him. The die was cast. He was the leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Every moment of his life henceforth must be hemmed with danger till the conspiracy succeeded; and if it failed, he must die. He envied Manlius. The man was going out into the open, but his master must stay to plot and scheme, and one false step would mean death, not a battle-death but a wretched execrated dungeon-death among jeering enemies, with the grinning face of Cicero as the last image on his eyeballs.

But there was compensation. This knowledge of environing danger meant that he was tied inescapably to the project, as the harvest-figurines thrown into the flowing Tiber were tied to their task of bringing the year once more to birth. He was a soldier in treacherous country. Behind every thicket lay an ambush; every stone concealed an archer aiming at his heart. He must be wary. The fight had begun. There was wine in his blood.

“You won’t forget her?” asked Manlius, and to Catalina’s look of disturbed questioning he answered, “The eagle. The eagle that flew over Marius when he smashed the northerners.”

“The eagle will be with me when I come,” said Catalina, despite himself longing once more for the day when swords would be unsheathed.

4

No word from Cæsar. Catalina was anxious. He had to force himself not to seek out Labienus, take him by the throat, and ask him what lies he had told. But Labienus had told no lies. He had coolly recounted to Cæsar what Catalina had said, and stood nonchalantly waiting to hear Cæsar’s ironical comments.

Cæsar had known that the information must come; there could be no other course for Catalina now; and yet the direct request for aid took him by surprise. For he had reached no decision. He was now prætor-elect as well as chief priest; through Nepos he had established friendly relations with Pompeius; personally he had much to gain by severing contact with Catalina. Yet he could not bring himself to do it. The man had stirred something too deep in him; that depth continued to utter its subtle note of appeal, spoiling all arguments based on ambition. Rome was indeed in drastic need of reconstruction; the ruling classes were irreconcilable; the break must come.

Things certainly looked as if either Catalina or Pompeius must become a dictator. Why shouldn’t the break come now—under Catalina? Catalina had awakened the people to a demand for justice greater than had ever spoken in them before; they loved and trusted him; throughout Italy the disaffection had spread, and the grievously burdened provinces were crying for a deliverer. Surely now the moment was ripe. Was Cæsar through fear or petty devotion to a career to miss the grand moment of Roman rebirth?

He felt uncomfortable as Labienus stared at him with the assurance of a man concerned only with known and computable things.

“They can’t succeed,” he compelled himself to say, “and yet I don’t see how anything else can succeed in this distracted world of ours, Titus.”

Labienus shook his head. “The only question that I can see is how to get away from these hot-heads before they betray themselves. I don’t mean to be ruined with them, and I told Catalina so.”

Cæsar sighed. “You are young, Titus, and so you know everything. If you had been your present age in the year that Sulla died, would you have prophesied that within ten years the tribunes would have regained their old powers and that in less than twenty years the capitalists would be the great supporters of the senatorial rule?”

Labienus was silent. It was a bad omen that both Cæsar and Catalina had made the same remark about his youth; the two men were thinking alike. “I can’t answer that,” he said. “But I have to believe that hot-heads are fated to ruin themselves, or I’d lose my faith in myself.”

Cæsar decided not to discuss Catalina any more with Labienus. The man was afraid and would become untrustworthy if pushed into a matter that he disliked. “Stick to your faith,” he replied lightly, “and we’ll leave Catalina to look after his own affairs. Here’s something more important. I want you to propose that Pompeius has the right on his return to wear the triumphal bay-crown for the rest of his life.”

Labienus was not entirely convinced; the change of attitude had been too sudden; but he took up the new subject with alacrity. It was the kind of thing that amused him endlessly. He respected a man like Cæsar who could win over a rival by such obvious tactics that conceded nothing of value. Of course the conservatives would be enraged at the proposal of the crown and would fight it almost as sternly as a serious matter like Catalina’s gang.

He paused with a frown. Yes, Catalina’s gang was a serious matter, but they couldn’t succeed. They were madmen. Politics were invented for clever strategists like Cæsar. Cæsar must have been trying out his pupil and henchman with that nonsense about Catalina. That was the explanation! Of course. Labienus was pleased and proud of having seen through the game; but Cæsar’s probes had undeniably shaken him for a moment. The man was a fox.

5

Cæsar continued to feel his will divided. He suffered; for he had never felt like this before. Always, despite the veering of developing impulses, he had been able to make a decision when action called, whether the decision was reckless or prudent, whether he rushed into some calculated defiance or withdrew into a corner of talk. Again and again his ideas and methods had changed, but he had never found himself stranded with a cleft impulse. Obstinately the cleft refused to mend. He could neither desert Catalina nor throw in his lot with him.

So he did nothing; and Catalina also waited.

Daily Cæsar felt born deeper within him the Roman pang, the cry of an undelivered world. This sensation was new. He had been used to the discussion of grievances from his earliest days; in boyhood he had heard his business-class relatives-by-marriage abusing the maladministration of the Senate; he had never lacked a quick sympathy for the suffering which he had met continuously; but the grievances, the perception of suffering had rebounded from his lively temperament. They had never penetrated to the depths. Now at last he felt the birth-throes of the age. Rome was with child and could not bring it forth. His ears were dinned with deep bestial cries of pain like those of a cow from which the calf has been taken. There seemed someone crying in the next room.

Catalina had awoken this realisation in him. Surely then his loyalty must turn to Catalina. Surely Catalina was the greater man? Cæsar struck down the hydra-heads of vanity, determined to reason the matter out. If Catalina was the greater man, then Cæsar would serve him without question. Catalina lived at the heart of the suffering age; it was his self-dedication that had rebuked Cæsar out of his absorbed delight in the mastery of a career. Cæsar, unless he turned to the teacher, was but another of the ungrateful scramblers for a bone of personal ambition.

He was jarred to the depths. All the efforts that he made to reason away the domination of Catalina left him feeling wretchedly perverse and mean-spirited. Danger? Of course, there was danger. Catalina moved in the centre of the storm. No one could shelter a feeble chamber-lamp of ambition there. The winds would snap the flame-blossom off. There were only elemental lights, moon and sun and stars. Otherwise darkness. Better darkness than a guttering little lamp fed with borrowed oil.

Cæsar’s mother Aurelia saw that he was torn with a deep conflict. She did not interfere, though she guessed what it was about. She believed that he would find his solution, but she was ready if she should detect the signs of defeat. Then she would speak; but it was well never to hurry things. He would come to her when it was necessary.

His wife Pompeia saw only that he was distant as usual. She cautiously made inquiries among her friends about Clodius. The man must have fallen ill. Or perhaps he had decided that she wasn’t worth loving after all. That must be it. What a relief, and yet it made life strangely dull. She could not settle down again to the routine of harp-playing and embroidering and reading with Julia.

6

The conservatives were carried away by their success. Catalina was finished, and nothing now remained but to squeeze him out of Rome as a bankrupt. Cicero, however, had other opinions. He had reacted too strongly with hate to Catalina’s hate, and he knew that the man had resources both in himself and among his followers that were far from being dissipated. Sestius had managed to compute through spies the number of veterans and active proletarians, and through Fulvia he had at least obtained the names of all who visited Catalina’s house, or promised support. Cicero was not carried away. On the contrary, after the first flush, he became frightened. Catalina was really a danger at last.

Fulvia was also frightened. She had now gone too far in betrayal to draw back, and her emotions found expression in alternate abuse and placation of Curius. He was drinking heavily, tortured by an inability to understand her. She had made excuses to keep Flavius away for the next few months, since she needed all her nerve to control Curius. He was growing obstreperous. Once he actually beat her, and in the morning crawled to her, kissing her feet and praying not to be sent away. She had had no intention of sending him away, even if she had not needed him to learn about Catalina. She had given up her plans of losing him and felt nothing but the need to escape the net of her spying. But she could not escape until she had fully betrayed Catalina. She hated herself, and found in the self-pitiful Curius a kinship which she abhorred.

She took to drinking a little herself, but not with Curius. The effects appeared only in a less careful toilet; her face looked faintly bloated; and the cosmetics became blotchy, no matter how she applied them.

She lent Curius money, and he lost it and came whining for more.

“Find out if Cæsar is with Catalina,” Sestius told her.

“Of course, he is,” blustered Curius, when she asked him. “Everyone’s in it. Everyone that owes money. That’s everyone.”

“But how are you so sure about Cæsar?”

“He sends Catalina messages. I know. But what’s the use of this talk? I’ll give you seas and mountains, girl, when the massacre begins. I’m going to take one whole jeweller’s shop. You can pick it for me.”

7

Orestilla sat waiting for Catalina. She wanted to tell him what the child had done. The child had lifted up her little terra-cotta doll and offered it to the wet-nurse who was suckling her. Orestilla had the doll in her hands, for she had come from putting the baby to bed after its bath, and she played with the moveable limbs, raising up the folds of the dress. The child did that, and she, Orestilla, had done the same as a child; and she still raised the folds in the cheated hope of finding something beneath that would explain a mystery. What mystery? A physiological one? But any mirror could yield that answer. Yet the impulse to look persisted, though nothing was found but a smooth space of terra-cotta and the jointing that allowed the body to turn.

Orestilla hugged the doll and kissed its scarlet-painted cheeks. She was full of the exciting desire to tell Catalina how the child had wanted the nurse to suckle the doll.

Then she heard Catalina coming. There were always so many people with him. She dropped the doll behind the chair and waited. Surely he would come in and speak with her for a moment. But he had passed into his study with half a dozen men. They were all talking together. Orestilla sat listening to the unintelligible hum. Like a subdued concert of parrots, she thought, and tried to imagine the men as bristling with bright plumage and perched on boughs in the thicket of their conspiracy.

A servant entered. “Master says that you’re not to wait up.”

Orestilla signed imperiously, and the lad went out. Magistrates from some smaller Campanian towns, introduced by a conspirator named Cæparius who knew the south well—these were the men whom Catalina was seeing to-day. The net was being cast wide. He was working like a hundred men, but surely he could have spared the time to hear about his daughter and the doll.

Suddenly she heard the deep-throated laugh that Cethegus affected, mixed with the high snickering laugh of Cassius. The laughter of Cethegus wasn’t quite convincing, it was too deliberately masculine. But it plucked strongly at Orestilla’s pulse. She lay back with her eyes closed. What cowards men were. He could easily find an excuse to slip out and see her. He knew where the bedroom lay. If he encountered a slave, he could pretend that he had lost himself, and ask where the privies were.

She drowsed, the doll in her lap. Footsteps. She quivered. Her thought had reached him and she felt guilty. It was her thought that was bringing him. Keep away, Cethegus.

Cethegus it was. He entered on tiptoe and stood gazing at her. Wide-eyed she stared back, tranced. With a glance round to see that no one else was in the room, he moved across and took her in his arms. “No, no,” she moaned weakly, but did not fight. He kissed her wildly, passing his mouth over her mouth, her eyes, her throat. She pushed at him nervelessly. “Go away.”

She relaxed, curving under his embrace; but then, at the last moment, she realised what she was doing. Fiercely she pushed him away and retreated. He stepped after her, and she swung the doll which she still held. He ducked, and it hit him on the shoulder, cracking. Panting, he stood looking at her with pallid face.

“Someone’s coming,” she muttered. “Go.”

“Not unless you kiss me.”

She hurried to him and kissed him. Again he clasped her and she relaxed; but the sound of padding slippers in the room beyond gave her back her strength. She pushed him through the curtains.

The old woman who tended the baby appeared at the farther doorway and regarded the curtains that still swayed. “I thought I heard voices.”

“No,” said Orestilla, turning as if she had lifted the curtain and then drawn back. “They’re still in there talking. I think I’ll go to bed.”

“Shall I help undress you?”

“No, you have your own work to do. Send Glycera in. No, I don’t want anyone. I want to be alone.”

With a curious glance at the flushed face of her mistress the old woman retired; she was devoted to Catalina and suspected that something was wrong. The world was in a sad way, and no woman was good enough for her master. In her young days she had slept with his father; she had been taken by him on the very night of Catalina’s birth, a virgin; and that made her feel like a mother to Catalina. While the moans and cries of the woman in childbirth had been filling the house, she had lain in the arms of the father of the child, gasping as if the cries were her own. Catalina was her child. Let any wife dare play him false.

Orestilla, alone again, held out the doll which she had been hugging against her breasts. Poor thing. It was badly broken. An arm was hanging loose, a thigh was fractured, the nose was chipped. What could she do with it? The child would be so upset, but the doll was past mending.

She looked round to find a hiding place. Then she decided to take the doll to bed with her. She could say that it fell out and broke itself. She would buy a better one to-morrow, one carved from ivory. But that wouldn’t mend the broken doll, nothing could mend it.

As she lay in bed, she nursed the doll, muttering incoherently to it.

8

The political tension was now interrupted by the Roman Games. Catalina however continued with his work, and the hilarious days of the games were not unsuited for agitators to mix with the unruly populace. Cicero also did not slacken in his efforts to obtain evidence and to arouse apprehension; but the conservatives were mostly too relieved after their late worries. They looked on him as a bothering panic-monger; he had exaggerated things from the beginning; he wanted to pretend that Catalina was a social peril in order to reap the benefit of crushing a rather harmless lunatic with great pomp and noise. Cato and his group however needed no convincing, and they began to look more kindly on Cicero.

But the people were taken up with their pleasures. They were not interested much in the Banquet of Iuppiter, the core of the festival, where the magistrates, after the sacrifice of a white heifer, sat and ate in the company of the three Capitoline deities, Iuppiter and Iuno and Minerva. Iuppiter lay on a couch, richly decked, his face painted red; and his two womenfolk sat on seats at his side. Food was placed before them, and the sacramental meal of the state was consummated. But for the people there were plays and, more importantly, the games in the Circus. After a solemn procession, during which the spectators talked and betted, there were chariot-races in which a warrior stood at the side of each charioteer and leaped to ground at the end of the chariot-drive, finishing the race on foot. The populace sported the colours of their favourites; they laid wagers among themselves or with the professional bookmakers who ranged through the crowd; touts offered inside information; brawls and exchange of missiles between rival factions kept the streets and the Circus in continual uproar.

Then there were athletic games, dancing, competitions in horsemanship, and, greatest attraction of all, gladiatorial combats. Marcus Antonius was especially keen on the wrestling and bored Curio with all the technical terms, the Greek phrases for the grips, the choke when the man was caught from behind and the elbow forced up under his chin, the bends and twists, the hook or trip from behind, the push, the feints, the pulling up of the man’s legs from under, the twirl when a man was spun round by a sudden spring, the ladder or pounce up his back, the middle-grip, the neck-bend, the upset when a man’s ankle was grasped and his balance spoiled by an arm levering under the thigh.

“Come away,” said Curio. “Why don’t they have women fighting?”

“This is the last pair,” replied Antonius, drawing him back into the seat. “Ho! a good one!” The man had made a quick dart forwards, grabbed his adversary’s left hand, and with a violent crunch broken all the bones of his fingers.

Satisfied, Antonius rose, stretching himself and knocking over the man in front. “Come on now. Let’s get a drink.” They dived out of the Circus, a long oblong space tiered with stone and then wooden seats, and curved at one end where the stables lay. Along the gangway they shoved, until they had climbed down a narrow stairway and come out into one of the passages that led to the seats from the roadway outside. The lower storeys of the Circus, opening on the road, were let out to shopkeepers, dealers, wine-sellers, restaurateurs, or brothel-managers, and the inner rooms were filled with blazing ovens, food-counters, stalls where mages sold prognostications about the races or birthdays, shops stacked with cheap souvenirs and gifts, dens where women could buy jars of white-lead for their faces or contraceptives, dark steaming rooms where drunkards sprawled over benches or women with price-tickets sat painting themselves.

Curio and Antonius passed a door inscribed: Syrian Girls Only Guaranteed. They entered one of the drinking-rooms where women were also to be found though the tavern-keeper threw them out every now and then for enticing away good custom; and they sat near a group of sailors.

“It was an island somewhere out west of Gades,” one of the men was saying. “We’d been blown out of our course for the Tin Islands, and we were short of water. So we were glad to see land. But when we neared the beach what did we see but a herd of goat-legged satyrs scampering out of the woods. Then we guessed the reason. The wind was blowing off the sea and we had three women aboard. The satyrs had scented them. As you know, satyrs don’t usually attack unless you attack them first; but this herd was quite mad. There was nothing for it. We didn’t have time to cast lots, so we took up the fattest of the three women and hove her overboard to them. That gave us the chance to get out into deep water again, and we escaped.”

“Don’t believe it,” said a man who was so drunk that he could only open one eye.

“Why don’t you believe it, you owl-eyed liar?” asked the narrator in disgust.

“Because the other two women would have jumped after the first one,” said the drunken man, and, falling back, he snored.

A lizard-faced girl sidled up and sat on the knee of Antonius. “Away, my darling, or I’ll throw you to the satyrs,” said Antonius. He took hold of her under the knees and neck, and lifted her up over his head. “Here, who wants a wench.” He made the motions of tossing her among the drinkers. The rafters were low and the girl thrust her face in a mess of cobwebs.

“Let me down,” she screamed, knocking her elbow on the ceiling in her hurry to brush the cobwebs off.

“Throw her out,” said the proprietor, hobbling up. “She hasn’t any right in here. She belongs opposite.”

Antonius laid her down carefully on the table. “I won’t. After all, she’s only thirsty like the rest of us. Give me some drink.” He picked up a flagon and poured it over the girl.

“Have your fun,” grumbled the proprietor, “as long as you pay for it.”

The drunken man awoke and looked at the streaming girl. “Waste,” he said. “Horrid rotten stinking waste. Why doesn’t someone empty her into a bucket?”

Antonius licked her. “Not bad wine. Give me another flagon.”

9

Next day there were gladiators. The spectators, proletarians and capitalists and nobles, howled their delight to see the men hacking at one another. The men with nets fled, circled round the heavily armed Samnite, cast their nets. If the net-man missed, then was the armoured man’s chance. He rushed in and tried to catch the other before he could haul in his net again. The sand was soon spotted with blood. It was left bloody to look impressive, though slaves stood by with brooms to smooth it over when the fighting was finished.

The net-men sang to the warriors whose grilled helmets were surmounted with the image of a fish:

Not you I chase but the fish that I see.

Hey, why do you run away from me?

The flute-players shrilled; the horns blared; and the men with cymbals waited to add their rattle and clang to the blows of the fighters.

Occasionally the waving of kerchiefs or the lifting-up of thumbs granted mercy to the fallen man. More often the people hooted and leaned forwards to see the death-blow. Men dressed grotesquely as death-spirits rushed across the sand to drag the body out through the gate of death, chanting and hopping. The victor stood by, fanning himself with the palm-branch, admired by all the women.

To-morrow there would be hunting-games. Ten leopards, thirty boars, fifty deer, eight bears and three lions would be driven frantic and slaughtered.

10

Though Cicero was busy at his detective work, he found time to complete the arrangements for Tullia’s marriage. Since the day when Piso had called, he had felt increasingly anxious to have the matter finished. The religious rite of marriage with its sanctified bread-breaking by wife and husband was now only used by a few very conservative families; even the legal methods based on a method of sale or on the prescription of a year’s continuous use were not much employed; for the revolt of women had made them unwilling to pass legally into the hands of their husbands. The wife was in law the husband’s daughter; she merely changed one paternal authority for another, and could not hold property. Therefore various fictions were devised, and most wives were strictly living a life of concubinage, though for all social purposes they were married and could only break the relationship through divorce. Either party could divorce by stating that the marriage was at an end; but this apparent ease of procedure was very much limited in fact by money-questions of repayment or loss of dowries.

Tullia was spending her time in play with her baby-brother. Terentia was superstitious and had just ordered the full carcass of a boar. “Be sure to get me one with the head entire,” she said to the slave who was going to the meat-market. She wanted to use the teeth for toothing-charms, tying them to the cradle.

As she entered the nursery she found that Tullia had removed a doll-like bundle from the window-niche. “How dare you?” she cried and gave her a clout on the head. Tullia crouched down beside the cradle, tears in her eyes; but she refused to sob. She was almost a married woman, and when she had a baby of her own she would order Terentia out of the room for talking so loud. Terentia would be sure to talk too loud and provide the chance for the snub.

Terentia replaced the bundle carefully on the ledge. It consisted of garlic wrapped up in a swaddling-cloth with pieces of hawthorn, and served to keep out all wandering witches, all spirits that might be looking for a baby to steal.

“It’s lucky the sweet little crow is still here,” said Terentia. She picked up the baby, who at once changed his coos into screams. “I expected to find only a lump of straw or some black-faced changeling.”

Tullia rose and walked out of the room in dignified silence. What a pity a witch wouldn’t fly in and turn Terentia’s face black. She peeped into Cicero’s study and found him staring at the ceiling. He at once shuffled some papers, then, recognising her, called her in.

“I want to be married soon,” she said, compressing her lips. “I can’t stand that woman who’s your wife.”

“But she’s your mother,” said Cicero, mystified.

“I don’t care. I didn’t choose her. I’m satisfied with you as father. When will I be married?”

“Next week.” He was glad to find her so amenable. “I’m just finishing all arrangements now.”

“It’s a pity one can’t get married without a husband,” mused Tullia. “But I suppose I’ll get used to him.” She pointed at the papers. “What are you doing all the time?”

“I’m making your father someone that you’ll be proud of. I’m going to be the greatest man that Rome ever produced. Others have led armies, but I shall be the first man who made the civic sphere a martial one and the martial sphere a civic one. The reign of peace is to begin. A new era …”

Tullia listened with seriously wrinkled brow. It was all very interesting.

11

Some decision was necessary. Cæsar felt that he could not go on for ever with a divided will. He received another message from Catalina: “Are you for us or against us?” on a slip of paper; and he knew from the emotion which the question evoked that he could not turn back. Catalina had stated the issues inescapably. There could be no neutrality. Did he declare for the future, or did he pit his trivial weight against the landslide? Let the decision be made. He had never taken an outright dangerous choice since the day he had defied Sulla; there had always been a fair margin of safety, however insolent some of his actions might have appeared. He knew that he could retreat. He had dared everything for Cornelia; now he would dare everything for Catalina. The love of a woman had been his world once; now he was submerged by a love of the world, a sense of the world’s suffering as imaged in Catalina’s bid for mastery. If he failed, he would at least have made the generous choice.

He wrote to Catalina, “I will meet you at Sempronia’s at dusk to-night. I am wholly with you.” Wings of exaltation threshed about him; he had made the right choice. He gave the note, sealed, to a slave whom he could trust, and waited till the dusk settled down over Rome. At last the insistent wails of space peopled with the spectral misery of a world were lulled. He was rocked peaceably in the cradle of mighty gathering forces. He saw the race perish and arise reborn before his eyes. The body of the race lay down in the grave, in the earth-womb, and came forth in the morning glorified with new life. The drama of the dying and resurrected Year was about to be made once more supremely concrete in the fate of Rome. What must arrive was no mere redistribution of power but a completely new concentration and responsibility. Whence but from the revolutionary movement made coherent by Catalina could the new impulse come? The surface-whirls of confusion and bloodlust did not matter. What mattered was the passionate need of growth uttering itself through the movement, through the dedication of Catalina.

At dusk Cæsar set out for Sempronia’s house, exalted and confident. He was submitting, not to Catalina, but to Rome.

He knew Sempronia slightly, but was aware that Catalina used her house as a rendezvous on account of its nearness to the Forum. She welcomed him with subdued courtesy, and he wondered at the stories that circulated about her. He sought to stare down her modest gaze, but retired baffled. She in turn was searching his face. She had not believed that he would join, and she feared that he was setting a trap; he was a cold-hearted amiable person who thought only of his own ends. Rather like herself, she considered.

Catalina arrived with Curius and some slaves who had once been gladiators; then Cethegus came. There was no time to spare, as Catalina had to leave in less than an hour to see some important burgesses from Verona and Ravenna. His heart was warm with joy; Cæsar had at last shown himself, and Catalina knew that he had never doubted this outcome. Cæsar was part of the movement and could not stand aside.

The two men clasped hands. Catalina was too moved to speak, and Cæsar also felt that he had no words for his emotion. The walled-up impulses of several months, the intensest sympathies and enthusiasms that he had ever felt, broke through, sweeping away all the foreground-defences of his mind.

“I knew I should hear from you,” said Catalina simply.

They sat down and began earnestly discussing arrangements for awakening further support and for organising effectively the support already awakened. Cæsar listened with only half his attention. Of course he had had to come.

There had been no choice. Prudence was a virtue only in preparing and devising. Once the time for action came, prudence was evil. Catalina’s tense preoccupation, his efficient ordering, his grasp of all the details that he discussed, impressed and yet distracted Cæsar. Catalina was drawing him in; he, Cæsar, was henceforth an underling. The sensation was strange, intolerable, and yet it must be accepted. Catalina was the man who had first grasped the moment of action; only peevish jealousy could resent it. Cæsar must learn to obey. He had found no difficulty in taking instructions from Crassus or Pompeius while smiling to himself; that had not been obedience, it had been a disguised use of the men whom fortune had raised for the moment higher; but the situation now was different. In submitting to Catalina he submitted to a will that pierced to the core of the action, that sprang full-born and immaculate from the depths of vital necessity. To Catalina then the lordship.

Sempronia sat quietly, studying the men; but Cethegus could not help stirring in the background. Orestilla was a poison in his blood. He did not care for anything now but to possess her. Therefore Catalina must be destroyed. But there would be no gaining her by a crude betrayal. The conspiracy must go ahead, but it must end by trampling Catalina down.

Curius knocked at the door to say that it was time to go. Catalina rose at once, pressed Cæsar’s arm again, and turned to go. At that moment Cæsar saw Cethegus staring at Catalina; never before had he seen such a look of envenomed utter hatred on a man’s face. The eyes were darkened fierily; the lips were drawn back in the beginnings of a wolf-snarl. There could be no mistake. Hate was written on the face, suffering hate.

Startled, Cæsar looked away. He could not muster his thoughts, though he muttered something as the two men passed out. What was the meaning of that hate? All his doubts and fears rushed back, stronger incomparably. He was dazed with the inability to focus, to realise the scene into which he had intruded his aspirations. He was lost. He had abandoned himself for no purpose to danger.

He grew aware that he was alone in the room with Sempronia. She was more curious than ever to read what was going on in his mind. He would certainly break with Servilia now. Sempronia was subtly attracted by him; there was more in him than she had ever surmised. Why was he behaving so childishly, he the cool-headed intriguer? Why had he come in the first place?

“You are in no hurry,” she said. “Give them time to get ahead along the road. Some wine?”

He nodded and she produced a small green glass beaker and two crystal cups from a cupboard of carved ebony. Placing them on a table of fretted sandalwood, she beckoned him to sit on the couch beside her. He was thinking hard. He must reconsider his whole relation to Catalina. A man who could employ as his right-hand man in such an enterprise one who for some reason detested him, was not a capable leader; the enterprise was doomed; there was a flaw of unrealised hate somewhere in the leader who provoked such a stubborn resistance in those on whose mercies he relied. Catalina must be too close to the storm. By his fiery presence he had drawn together all the conflicts of the age and had thereby made it possible for others to see more clearly where the pressures lay; but the solution could not be in him. He was the final portent, the precipitating factor, not the achieving will. Had Cæsar mistaken the fact that Catalina had awoken him to awareness of the real need of the travailing world, for a belief that Catalina was the predestined deliverer? Again Cæsar thrilled with pride. If this surmise was true, then Catalina was obliterated by the awareness which he had awoken in Cæsar. Cæsar was the incarnation of that awareness; Catalina was only the forerunner, a voice of dark challenge crying before the dawn.

These thoughts hurtled through Cæsar’s mind, but he forced himself to shelve all conclusions for the moment and turn to Sempronia. She was a fine-looking woman as she leant forwards with parted lips offering him a cup of wine.

“You are very thoughtful,” she observed. “I have always heard that Cæsar was a very gallant person. Was he maligned or am I not worth gallantry?”

“Yes, I am thoughtful,” he replied. “I have had to come to some fairly far-reaching decisions to-night; but even so I cannot but be very warmly conscious where I happen to be at the moment.”

Sempronia decided that she must gain him as lover. She had not been able to find anyone with a dash of originality for months now; she had tried all the types; here was someone different. She could not understand him in the slightest; she had always thought of him as an astute and cultured politician, and here he seemed to be as emotional as Catalina himself.

Cæsar could feel her interest, and perhaps the only way to hide his thoughts was to take her cue and make love to her. But he did not find it easy. At the back of his mind hammered those doubts. Never had he felt so oppressed, so clogged with a sense of evil. The break in will seemed to reach down to the primal schism of things, and the fumes of the evil morass filled his brain. He must find his solution or surrender entirely to that division. He turned to Sempronia with the intention of caressing her hand and then taking her in his arms; but something interfered. The hammers were too threatening. He compromised by lifting the cup towards her before he drank and looking up at her with lowered head.

He wanted to get away, and yet in his uncertainty of mood he did not know how to go.

“Why didn’t you kiss me just now when you turned to do it?” she asked.

He laughed ineffectively. “I can’t hide from you, I see. Here is the truth then. I am deeply shaken by the decision I have made. There is something in Catalina that is overpowering. He is too simple and too complex for world-lings like you and me.” He took her hand and kissed it. “There is the kiss I meditated.”

He rose. “I am no lover to-night. When shall I see you next?” He had not meant to ask her that question; but fear of the woman, fear of his own still-divided impulses, fear of the hammers that were pounding at the back of his head, made him unable to go without making his excuses in this shape.

“To-morrow afternoon or evening,” she said. What was the real reason for his flight? It wasn’t repugnance for her; he had wanted to embrace her for that moment; there was some cross-current that she couldn’t understand. He bowed, kissed her again in the soft place where the forearm ends, and left the room, feeling that he had never before acted with such sorry weakness in a woman’s presence.

To-morrow. Sempronia lay back. Life was worth living. She had never looked forward to a tryst so deliciously since her girlhood. Everything that Cæsar had done to-night was altogether contrary to her expectations. Was he merely a weakling who had been pricked out of his refuse, or had she indeed caught him at some difficult moment of transition? To-morrow would tell.

Her eye was caught by a slip of paper beside the chair where Catalina had sat. She slipped from the couch and picked it up. It was the note that Cæsar had written. Reading every word over slowly as if they enclosed some cipher, she folded the paper up and thrust it into her bosom. She always kept incriminating documents, even the love-letters she received, out of an emotion that they would come in handy sometime. At the worst she would be able to fill in her old age re-reading and docketing them, reconstructing half-forgotten episodes from a few scattered lines, revivifying dead faces. It would almost be worthwhile to be old; perhaps.

12

Cæsar walked home so fast that the slave at his elbow had to break into a trot once or twice. He was in a mess; that was all of which he was certain. How was he to extricate himself? And did he truly want to be extricated? He must decide before to-morrow evening; for if he called again upon Sempronia and yielded to her he felt that the pull would prove too much; he would be dragged into the conspiratorial net. He would never climb out, even if he should decide against it after all. He cursed. Instead of arriving at a decision, he was plunging into doubts immeasurably more painful and cloudy, and nothing was settled; but he had made things almost impossibly complicated for himself if he should want to withdraw.

As he neared the door of his house, he saw someone standing in the porch speaking to the porter. It was one of the attendants of the Vestals. Noting his master, the porter stopped gesticulating, and the girl turned to Cæsar. “You are wanted in the Chapel,” she said. “I was told that you must come.”

“I will come,” said Cæsar; and sending the slave inside, he walked across to the Chapel with the girl.

The Abbess was waiting on the threshold. “I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she said, drawing him in. “I’m out of my wits. I can do nothing more.”

One of the Vestals had become uncontrollable. She had been found using cosmetics and scenting herself; and when the Abbess had remonstrated, she had become sulky and disobedient. Then worse things had happened; the girl seemed to be going mad; the Abbess couldn’t explain or mention the things. They were too dreadful. She had sent for Cæsar as the spiritual Father of the Chapel, perhaps he could quiet the girl and make her see sense. The Chapel would be polluted; calamities would occur; and the Abbess would be blamed by everyone. Cæsar forgot his own troubles for the moment. Surely this must be the warmly blossoming girl who had so beautifully dared his eyes before? The fires of Vesta had burnt her after all; they had risen from the caverned depths of the blood; they had scorched the skin. How could it be otherwise? Was the cult of Vesta worth the suffering of one of its devotees? Yet others suffered as well as virgins. The value of this religion lay in the potency of faith that it engendered. Let the girl suffer.

Steeling himself, he let the Abbess usher him into one of the dormitory-cells. Two girls sat on a low shelf-bed, one holding the other and rocking her as if to put her to sleep. The Abbess motioned, and the girl who had been holding the other went out. To Cæsar’s surprise the girl who remained on the bed was not the rosy-faced one whom he had expected to see. It was the pale delicate one.

She looked at him with glittering eyes. The Abbess stepped forward. “You must learn to be good. Here is your Father come to speak with you.”

“What ails you, Beloved?” Cæsar asked, using the prescribed form of address.

The girl shuddered and turned to the Abbess. “Go away. I hate you. Take your eyes away, they’re killing me.” She fell back, exhausted, crying and covering her face with her hands.

The Abbess looked at Cæsar timidly. “She seems worse when I’m with her. Shall I leave you with her to see what you can do? I’ll wait in the passage outside.”

Cæsar nodded and the Abbess went. As the door closed, the girl slyly opened the fingers over her face and gazed at Cæsar through them. “Is she gone?” she whispered.

“Yes. Tell me what worries you.”

“I’m sick,” she said complainingly, “I’m too sick to talk loudly. Come nearer.”

He moved across and sat at the bedside. She rolled over and stretched out her arm. “You’re kind, aren’t you? You have such a kind face.” She stroked his cheeks. Then she sat up and pointed at the door. “She isn’t peeping in, is she? She’s mad. She wants to kill me.”

“No, no,” said Cæsar soothingly. “She only wants to help you. You need a rest. I’ll tell her to send you to the country for a while.”

“You mustn’t.” Her body shook as if she was retching. “She wants to get rid of me, but I won’t go.”

“Where do you feel sick?” asked Cæsar, at a loss how to deal with the situation.

“Here,” she said eagerly, seizing his hand and thrusting it against her. She clung to his arm, rubbing herself against him and purring like a cat. “Only you can make me better.”

Cæsar felt a wave of desire shake and break through him as if his body were a flag flapping in the wind. It was too much. Then he recovered. He withdrew his hand from her grasp. “You must be good, and I’ll visit you to-morrow.”

She lay back with eyes closed. “Promise me.”

He placed his hand on her fevered brow. “Poor child. You must be good.”

“I’ll do anything you tell me. Anything, anything, anything …” She kept on muttering the word, and he moved on tiptoe out of the cell.

“Have you calmed her?” asked the Abbess as soon as he came out. She twined and untwined her hands in perturbation. “ I always thought that she was the best behaved of the girls too! Such a disgrace. Will purifications be necessary?”

“Send her for a rest in the country,” said Cæsar. “I’ll speak to you again to-morrow.”

13

He walked out of the Chapel into the night, the flustered Abbess forgetting to offer him attendance across the short distance to his official residence. As soon as he was clear of the light cast by the opened door, he stopped and pressed his hands to his brow. He was as fevered as the girl. What was he to do? He must reach a decision to-night or his will would be broken. He must decide once for all, and then stand by his decision. He must think everything out all over again.

He turned to go home, but found that he was held back by a powerful revulsion. First Sempronia, and then the pale Vestal. He had withstood them both. A faint sense of nausea rose. He could not return home. Where was the gesture that he sought? He could not desert Catalina now unless he were utterly sure—of what? Twice he had put a woman aside to-night, and now he wished to put aside a man. A searing emotion of renunciation tore at him. He had renounced everything, the love of man and woman, the clasped hand of comradeship and the offered body of desire. He was alone and he felt his loneliness to have no worth. He belonged to no other person, and yet he did not belong to himself.

The moon had not risen, but a spilth of stars stained the sky with light. People were passing—not many, for all respectable persons were at home; the tradesmen had shuttered and barred their houses at nightfall. The bad illumination and policing of the city tended to keep in practice the ancient custom of rising at dawn and retiring at dusk. Only the rich, whose dinners were beginning to encroach on the night-hours, visited much in the evening; but already there was a large population of night-birds, thieves, beggars, lechers, harlots, topers, stranglers, the homeless and those to whom night brought a feeling of escape: the scattering daylight was gone and night made space more private, even if it opened up mysterious chambers of sky. The earth shrank and silence became the swaddling-clothes of the mind.

This night was warm, and many restless people prowled round. Cæsar stood at the top of the Sacred Way, the street chiefly chosen by the harlots for their walk. Most of them were now back in yellow-lighted rooms; but a few, who owned no rooms or still hoped for luck, were to be seen aimlessly walking along or loitering against the pillars, dressed in the male toga as the law insisted for a mark of infamy.

Suddenly the nausea, the sense of emptiness, left Cæsar. There was a purpose in life—a purpose in his life at any rate. He could know no other purpose than his own. Rome, this city rustling under the starlight of summer, was his. He would never abandon it. Here was the loyalty that he sought. Trust and love the people, but first be able to trust and love yourself. Rome was his; he owned it. In this moment of pride and certainty desire flooded back through his veins. Twice he had desired a woman to-night and had failed to rise to the woman’s offering of herself. The third time the gesture would come from him, and there would be no denial.

His mind was made up. He turned and walked down the road, keeping to the shadows. He passed some pairs of men and women talking; dim forms glided away from his approach. He felt the city as a shadowy organism spread around him, tentacled with hate and fear and desire; and he was the heart of it all. He loved each cell of the organism, the lustful and the chaste, the stupid and the intelligent, the cruel and the humane. They were all part of him; dominated by his centralising will. No, as yet they were loose, floundering in this soft summer night; and he was in search of that centralisation. As yet he was separate, a spirit seeking for the body whose spasm of ecstasy coincided with its need of entry. He must pour himself into this matrix of purpose; his sperm of lonely will must unite with the body of action and become Rome.

A patch of white in the darkness announced that he had met his goal. “Going for a walk all by yourself?” came a woman’s husky voice. He stopped, and she spoke on, “Isn’t there room for two where you’re going?”

He approached her where she stood against the wall, leaning back into a cavity between two houses. He took her in his arms; she did not resist but continued speaking. “Here now, what about something to eat first? I’m hungry. Let’s buy some boiled peas and some pig-sausages, and come home to my place. I’m a nice girl, I promise you, and you’ll find me even nicer than I look. But I’m hungry.”

“Time enough to eat,” said Cæsar. She did not object again. But he was exultant. In this woman, this common girl of the road, he embraced Rome. She was common property, the wife of all the Romans, and he was wedding her. He was wedding Rome, his destiny. This woman was the counterpart of the Vestal. The one concentrated and stored the essences of growth, sharing it with none, so that continuous life might be assured; the other threw away with lavishness, with prodigal waste, with promiscuous trust, the essences which, if only stoppered in the Vestal, would result in barrenness and the lapse of continuity. One balanced the other; both were priestesses of the year’s fecundity; both were themselves barren, unlike the wife vowed to a single man.

Cæsar had wedded Rome, and to this marriage he would remain true. All indecisions were ended. Now there was only wariness and mastery left.

“Where are you going?” cried the woman in a low wailing voice, clutching his cloak. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come and buy me a bit of bread, if you’re too mean for anything else. Serves me right for trusting a man. They’re all the same. Think only of themselves.”

“Here,” said Cæsar, drawing off a golden ring from his finger. “Sell this and buy yourself bread.”

The woman took it greedily. She could feel that it was a ring but could not see what it was made of. “Brass or wood I suppose,” she said. “May your eyes drop out of your head if that’s all it is. May you marry your great grandmother and beget a double-headed cat on her—”

He left her still mouthing low curses, and strode homeward. The heat had faded from his head; he was cool and sure of himself. However much it might hurt, he must break with Catalina. He must submit to the pain of knowing that Catalina believed him a paltry cheat and coward; he must think of nothing but the real duty to himself and to Rome, which he had discovered. Catalina had stirred those depths, merging the last elements of ambition with the subtler needs of purified will. So be it. The only way that Cæsar could repay the debt was by seeming a paltry cheat and coward. He must not shrink from it.

Catalina had been his friend, helping him to a final maturity of aim; Catalina was now his enemy, luring him aside from that aim. Catalina must be sacrificed so that that aim might be realised. Catalina was a fanatic; to succumb to him would be death and the loss of purpose.

As Cæsar entered the house, he found that his mother, Aurelia was sitting up in wait for him. The others had gone to bed. She rose and put her hands on his shoulders, looking into his face with her piercing blue eyes. “I was afraid for you to-night,” she said. “I felt that you were meeting a danger somewhere.”

“The danger is passed, mother.”

She looked more deeply into his eyes. “Yes, I can see that. Your strength is in yourself, my son, not elsewhere. I think that you were forgetting that. I have seen it in your eyes of late.”

“When we lose a thing and have to fight to regain it,” said Cæsar in a soft assured voice, “we know it better and value it more. If one is to grow, such experiences are necessary, however dangerous.”

“You have grown,” she said, still staring at him and speaking as if to herself. “You have grown, my son. I am content. I do not wish to know any more about it. Good-night.”

She dropped her arms to her sides and moved out of the room with quick steps, showing her age only in the slight droop of her shoulders. Cæsar watched her go, proud of her vigilant love and understanding. Yes, he had grown, and now he had to pass through the hardest period of his life. He had to stand aside and watch Catalina destroy himself. He had to play the part of a paltry cheat and coward. Now he would be able to test thoroughly his belief in himself.

14

The next afternoon Cæsar sent a slave, the most handsome lad in his household, with a note to Sempronia. “I am unfortunately detained.” He knew that he would incur her enmity whatever he did, and decided that all excuses would be foolish in the face of her shrewdness. The lad returned with a note. “Thank you for the substitute.”

Cæsar eyed the shrinking boy. “Did you like the lady?”

“No—yes—what does she say about me?” stammered the boy.

“Nothing,” said Cæsar. “You’ve done your duty. You can go.”

But Catalina troubled him more deeply. No appointment had been made in the hurried interview; and when Catalina’s slave-messenger arrived with a request for a further meeting, Cæsar was torn by the wish to send at least a word of encouragement. But that would be the merest hypocrisy. Do the job straight-forwardly. He ached to say, “Tell your master that my heart is with him. I pray that he succeeds and proves me the lesser man. But our ways cannot mingle.” He wanted to justify himself. It couldn’t be done. He must not even allow himself the pleasure of adding that he could be relied on to keep the confidence which had been reposed in him. If the conspirators decided to have him assassinated, he must take his chance. He would redouble precautions, but could not descend to beg off their possible revenge. They knew that he had held his tongue in other matters almost as risky in the past. They must draw their own conclusions.

“Tell your master that I cannot come,” he said. “That is all. I cannot come.”

Catalina could not believe the message at first. He questioned and requestioned the slave, and then fell into a gloomy mood of apathy, from which he awoke feeling very lonely and dispirited. But he beat the mood away. He had work to do. He had all Italy to friend; why was he fretting for a single man who had proved himself worthless when the test came? But he could not restrain his bitterness altogether. He became sharper and coarser in his words; he bullied more. Somehow the world was worthy of great deeds, but he could not find anyone therein who was worthy. No one but Orestilla. But she was part of him. He needed her as he needed his own blood, but he still felt lonely; and even to Orestilla he found himself at moments speaking sharply and coarsely. She made no complaint, and that hurt him more than abuse from another.

But, blessedly, there was work to do. In work there was a knowledge of worth, an escape, an elusive but real achievement.

Manlius was the difficulty. He had gathered his men and wanted to start. The raising of the standard would bring in all the laggards. Why wait? He had given out that he was massing the debtors for a petition to the Senate, but disquieting rumours began to creep to Rome, stirring the Senate out of their false security. Cicero saw to it that the most was made of each story. Catalina, however, was put out by his ally’s over-energetic methods. He wanted to make arrangements for a simultaneous insurrection throughout Italy. That was the only way to be sure, the only way to destroy the menace of the army in the East. At least Catalina had learned from Cæsar an insight into Pompeius; the man would not resist what was manifestly the will of the whole of Italy, though he would be pleased to crush a revolt merely localised in the city-mob of Rome. But if Manlius precipitated things, there would be no time to finalise. The burgesses of Cisalpine, Gaul, Picenum, Campania and Appulia, needed careful handling; they must be drawn on without being told too much at the start; their support would melt away if events were stampeded.

There was work to do.

15

Pompeia grew tired of waiting for a note from Clodius. She had exhausted all the interest of devising rebukes for his ardours when he showed no further signs of being ardent; and she found herself lingering more and more over methods of finding him. This change frightened her at first, but she grew used to it after a while and even aroused sufficient courage to talk to her favourite chambermaid Abra. Once the confidences began, she found their pleasure too great to stop. She told Abra everything.

Abra, a big quiet Lydian girl with long braided hair, suggested that Pompeia should write to Clodius; but this shocked Pompeia. She couldn’t do such a thing. Besides, it was months since the meeting in the Temple; he must have grown tired of her. Abra admitted that the affair was a puzzle. She made inquiries and found that Clodius was in Rome.

“He’s been drinking in the taverns.”

Pompeia was worried. “Do you think he’s in despair?”

“Of course that’s it.” Abra clapped her hands. “Can’t you do something for him.”

“I’d like to see him, if only to tell him not to be so foolish. He can’t love me so much. What is there to love in me? He really can’t,” cried Pompeia in distress.

“O yes, he could,” said Abra admiringly. “You don’t know what men are like. And if he had to fall in love with someone, he couldn’t have chosen anyone lovelier than you. I only wish I was a mirror so that you could see yourself as I see you.”

“You mustn’t flatter me, or I shan’t trust you anymore. I can’t understand it.”

She couldn’t understand it, and was therefore all the more curious. Last year she had noticed Clodius at the Games and learned who he was; that was how she had recognised him in the Temple; but though she had recalled him occasionally she had never dared to think of him as anything but a wild bright-eyed youth, very unlike her husband; she had never dreamed of any encounter until that one enigmatic meeting.

At last Abra had an idea. “Why don’t you call on his sister, the wife of the prætor?”

Pompeia had already thought of that, but was glad that the suggestion should come from Abra. “Do you think I might? Perhaps I could. There wouldn’t be any harm in it. He isn’t likely to be there.”

So she asked Cæsar if she might call on Clodia. He was surprised, but at once gave his permission and then again forgot that he had a wife.

16

Clodia also was surprised. Pompeia lived so retired a life with her mother-in-law and step-daughter; she was seldom found visiting. But Clodia was therefore also interested. There must be something behind the visit. Since she could not conceive any motive on Pompeia’s part, she searched for a motive that could have made Cæsar send his wife.

Postumia, the wife of Servius Sulpicius, and some young men with trimmed beardlets were present, and Pompeia sat uncomfortably on the edge of her chair, sorry that she had come. One of the young men asked her her opinion of the satirical verses of Calvus, and, finding that she had never heard of them, he smiled scornfully and walked away. Pompeia blushed; she could hear him laughing with a friend at the other end of the room. What would people think of her?

Postumia, an advocate of women’s rights, was interrogating Clodia. “It’s fearful the way girls are brought up. Any kind of nurse will do. Mothers think only of turning out a fashionable figure, even if it ruins the health of the girls. Intelligence doesn’t matter.”

“My daughter can choose her own figure,” said Clodia, smoothing down the bodice of Greek cut over her full breasts. “Though if she turns out bandy I’ll forbid her to come near me. Otherwise she can try out all the curves and angles of Euclid.”

“But you mustn’t leave her so much to the nurses. They’re as mulish as can be. You’ll find that they’ll put her into stays as soon as she can walk, if you don’t keep an eye on them. Why, I found a case where a woman hung weights to her daughter’s shoulders and tied bands round under her breasts to keep the rib-bones from growing out. ‘But don’t you think a narrow breast and sloping shoulders are so becoming?’ she said to me. I could have knocked her down, I felt so indignant.”

“Clodia, darling,” called one of the young men. “Do look at this poem that Aurelius has scribbled. It’s the most dainty bit of smut that our literature can boast.” The poem was handed round. Pompeia tried not to blush; but that only made her feeling of shame worse. It was bad enough to be shown some obscene lines in the presence of three strange young men, but it was far worse not to see what the lines meant.

Postumia scanned the piece of paper and put it aside.

“As I was saying about education—”

But Pompeia could not drop the subject so easily. She unwillingly caught the author’s eye, and, to her horror, giggled.

“Leave her alone,” said Clodia, putting an arm round her. “You wretched set of sniggering fops, you don’t know a virtuous woman when you see one.”

“Dance for us, Clodia,” said the tall thin young man in a green dress, who treated her most possessively. “We know a good dancer even if we can’t tell a good woman till she screams for help.”

Clodia slapped him across the face. He glared angrily at her and then stepped back with reddened cheek to his friends. “Bad-tempered bitch,” he said. “She’ll hit something once too often someday.”

“I’ll dance for you,” said Clodia to Pompeia, “if you’d like to see me.”

“O yes!” said Pompeia, clasping hands. “Do.” She didn’t dare to look at the three young men. They were an unpleasant lot; Clodia was right.

“Dancing is an excellent exercise,” said Postumia. “I agree with Plato that it instils a sense of fitness and therefore of moral harmony.”

“Don’t tell Clodia that,” said the youth who had been slapped, “or she’ll stop it. She doesn’t dance to feel virtuous—”

Clodia turned on him in fury, slapping and pinching. “Out you go,” she cried, her deep voice thrilling fiercely. “And take your friends with you.” The man retreated ruefully, followed by Clodia. “Out you go, and don’t let me ever see your faces again.”

The men trooped out with a shamefaced effort to smile and scoff, and Clodia turned back into the room, her large dark eyes blazing. Then she calmed and spoke to the two women. “I’ll dance for you. I don’t need music.” She took up two Egyptian castanets and fitted them to her hands; and then, throwing off her outer garments and her scented gilt sandals, she began the dance. Pompeia was entranced. It was different from dancing on the stage, this dance in a private room with only two spectators. She pressed her clasped hands into her lap. Clodia was wonderful. She moved slowly, sinuously, across the floor, without any of the gyrations and pirouettes of the professional dancer. Her gestures were slow, heavy; yet without increasing speed she conveyed an accumulative energy. Her dance was one of wooing; and as she moved slowly and gracefully round, chasing the unseen fugitive lover, she seemed to Pompeia incredibly, shamelessly, terrifyingly passionate. Pompeia had never guessed that such a woman, such a passion, could exist. She was sorry that she had seen the exhibition; now she would never be able to forget it; it would trouble her dreams, for she would never dare to seek the knowledge of such passion herself and yet she would be unhappy lacking it.

Slowly, heavily, gracefully, the chase grew faster; but though Clodia’s strong-thewed thighs, shadowed whitely through her transparent shift, seemed still to move with as deliberate and poised a grace, as if she bore so heavy a burden of desire that it was only a tremendous will which saved her from dragging them wearily along, Pompeia felt that the dance was dazzlingly swift, remorselessly invoking and involving her. She clasped her hands tighter. How terrible if Clodia should think her to be the fleeing lover and embrace her with those slender gold-circleted arms. The suspense was unbearable.

At last Clodia dropped suddenly upon the floor. Pompeia was relieved for a moment, then she felt even more anguished; for Clodia was weeping. Tears were pouring from her open eyes. Pompeia wanted to dash forwards and wipe the tears away and say, “Don’t cry, don’t cry. It’s too terrible. I didn’t know life was like that, and now I’ll never be able to sleep again.”

Postumia was either the most tactful woman in the world or the least observant. “Yes, dancing is a splendid exercise,” she repeated, as if Clodia had merely danced to illustrate her guest’s impersonal thesis. “If ever I have a daughter, I’ll teach her to dance …”

No sign of Clodius. When Pompeia could stay no longer, she murmured to Clodia, who had become subdued and tired-looking since the dance, “I’ll never forget your dance, never.”

Clodia pressed her hand, but felt interest no more in callowly virtuous wives. She had noticed how Pompeia glanced towards the door, and remembered the meeting with Clodius. So that was the cause of the visit; but she dismissed the subject. She was far away, an Ariadne lost on Naxos ringed with bitter foam. Only in legends did a god come with chariots of deliverance and wine spurting from the thyrsis-struck ground.

17

On the first of October the three chief Flamens drove to the Capitol in a covered chariot, their right hands wrapped up as far as the fingers in white cloth. On the Hill they sacrificed to Faith in her Temple. On the same day there were rites associated with the Sister Beam, a timber beam stretching across a street near the fashionable quarter of the Carina. This beam was perhaps a primitive form of the Ianus Arch which the Romans turned into decorative power as Arch of Triumph and into engineering utility as the supports for bridge and aqueduct. The passage through the arch purified: which was the reason why a conquered army was passed under a yoke and why peasants passed a sick child through a split tree, repeating the act of birth. From such obscure religious fears are developed the constructive values of racial power.

On the third the navel-pit was opened again; and on the eleventh the new wine was tasted on one of the many festivals to Iuppiter. Then everyone said charms to ensure health for the next year, and drank copiously till they were tipsy, protected by the sure belief that new wine was non-intoxicating. Four days later the fountains were garlanded, and on the fifteenth a war-horse was killed with a spear in the Field of Mars. Two-horse chariot-races were held, and the rear horse of the winning pair was sacrificed to Mars. The tail of the horse was cut off and carried hastily to the Regia so that the warm blood might drip on the sacred hearth. The head also was cut off and decked with cakes. Once there had been a free fight for it between the men of the two quarters of the Sacred Way and the Subura, but that was past now. Yet still the horse, the year-spirit racing for victory and dying that the new year might come in turn, was sacrificed.

Four days later the Salian Priests lustrated the Holy Arms to keep them potent through the winter-sleep.

18

Cicero was delighted to hear the reports from Etruria. He realised that the quicker Catalina’s hand could be forced the better; and with the aid of Sestius he despatched agents to act provocatively and rouse the fury of the veterans into greater rashness. The rumours of Catalina’s activities at Rome also grew thicker. It was impossible for him to hide his hopes beyond a point; he could aim at most to keep the actual details solely in the possession of the committee and a few other trusted adherents. For the rest efforts had to be made openly to sound disaffected persons and prepare them for a coup.

Among those sounded were various senators who were badly in debt; and these men, determined to get what benefit they could from the coup, wished also to be on the safe side. They therefore warned by word of mouth or letter men who could testify on their behalf later on if necessary. Several of the debtors of Crassus wrote to him; they took care that the letters, though anonymous, could easily be proved theirs; and Crassus felt that he must hand on the letters or be incriminated. He was equally afraid of the conspiracy and of the attempt that the diehards might make to show him implicated in revenge for his earlier flirtations with the radicals. He discussed the matter with some friends who had also received messages; and inviting one Marcus Marcellus and a Scipio as witnesses, he set out to see Cicero in the dusk of the tenth of October. The letters, he explained, had been left by an unknown man with the hall-porter; he, Crassus, had opened only one and had at once decided to refer the whole bundle to the far-seeing consul.

Cicero opened and read through the other letters, and pretended to consider the revelations with great seriousness. “I must lay these letters before the Senate,” he said warningly.

“Nothing could please me better,” said Crassus, rubbing his hands uneasily together. “Everyone knows that there’s something in the air; and if it wasn’t that we all feel such reliance on you, I fear what would happen.”

He uttered the compliment with unctuous effort, for he disliked Cicero intensely. As the real leader of the capitalists and joint-stock companies, he objected to the way in which Cicero assumed himself to be the mouthpiece of all solid citizens; he felt that this compiler of phrases was impertinently thrusting himself into the complicated world of business where his ignorance was only equalled by his voluble incompetence. Always someone arose to obscure the position of Crassus; first Pompeius had shoved him unjustly out of the martial area; Cæsar and Catalina had beaten him in the game of winning the confidence of the populace; Cicero had overshadowed him in the courts and was now trying to assert himself as patron of the financial interests.

Cicero knew that Crassus disliked him; but he could not resist a compliment even when he suspected its utterer. “I shall do my duty,” he said with bridling dignity. “These letters shall be read to the Senate to-morrow, and I am not going too far in anticipating the vote of thanks and assuring you that you will have earned the gratitude of all right-thinking men, all patriots and officers of the state, in bringing this nefarious evidence to the man most capable of dealing with traitors.”

Crassus winced under the long-winded sentence.

19

The necessity for Cicero now was to fix a date for the rising. Otherwise his exposure would lack force. Fulvia was working hard, pumping Curius and retailing all information at once to Sestius; but it was impossible to discover what date, if any, Catalina had fixed. Encouraged, however, by reports from the agents in Etruria that Manlius was boasting of action before the end of the month, Cicero decided to risk an error and to fix on the twenty-eighth as the day when rebellion was to manifest itself. He could always claim that his exposure had demoralised the conspirators and prevented the carrying-out of their plans.

He was not far wrong in his conjectures. Manlius had sent a message pointing out that Catalina must not delay much longer. The Senate would collect troops and disband the veterans soon; the first of January was hopelessly ahead; the chance of action would slip shortly. Let the veterans seize the stronghold of Præneste at the end of the month, and simultaneously let there be an insurrection at Rome.

Catalina saw the truth of this. The farmers of Etruria would throng to fill out the garrison of Præneste, and the gaining of two such important cities as Præneste and Rome would serve as the signal for risings all over the South; then the further North would revolt, and the cities of Latium would quickly pass into the hands of the disaffected. Short of simultaneous risings everywhere, the plan suggested by the difficulties of Manlius was clearly the best.

Cicero learned from Fulvia that Præneste was to be attacked, but that was all she could tell.

On the twenty-first Cicero convened the Senate and read the letters. The perplexed senators felt that something must be done, but dreaded a precipitate action, which seemed like a challenge to the other side. They could not, however, refuse their assent to the generalised motion that a state of war existed in Italy. Fearful that they had gone too far and yet not far enough, they dispersed to their homes.

Next day Cicero spoke more confidently. He had certain evidence that on the twenty-seventh Præneste was to be seized and on the twenty-eighth all senators and reputable citizens murdered in their homes at Rome. Quintus Arrius, a friend of Cæsar, announced that in Etruria the enemies of the state were levying soldiers. Confronted with the claim to exactitude of knowledge, the Senate fell into a panic. Several speakers rose to question the declarations, but Cicero’s unshaken insistence on his facts had its effect. Urged by the ferocious but simple rhetoric of Cato, the Senate passed the Ultimate Decree, empowering the consul to provide for the safety of the state.

20

The diehards had won the day. The Ultimate Decree, which they had been demanding for so long, was passed, but it gave little satisfaction. It had been wrung from such a nerveless Senate that it lacked moral force, and they dared not use it for the immediate attack on Catalina and his associates.

Catalina and the others spent the night barricaded in their houses, expecting the assault, while their agents hurried through the proletarian quarters and bade the people be ready for the call of defence. But with the scanty forces present in Rome Cicero could not move. His resolution had passed away at the moment of victory, and he needed further stimulus before he could make use of his gains. However, he could not leave Præneste unattended to, or he would be shamed. He gave instructions for all available troops to be marched at once to the town and for the gates to be thereon closed. The citizens of the strong hill-town, which, being so near Rome, was always the bone of contention in a civil war, sighed as they saw the soldiers come clattering up the steep track and tramp insolently through the gates with double doors. For whichever side won, there was sure to be an excuse for plundering and ravishing. The Prænestines were always accused of having favoured the losing side. They looked now at Sulla’s great glistening Temple of Fortuna. Built over an old cell, it rose in five lovely white terraces to the hilltop; there were twenty-nine arches, the central five of which formed a kind of portico niched with fountains. Under the hill the stone was honeycombed with passages, in one of which young Marius had met his death. The citizens thought of the massacre after Sulla’s capture of the fortress, and sighed. Much use was the future-piercing goddess to her children.

VIII - THE DUEL AT LAST

I

Cicero thus had his victory, but an entirely flat one. He did not know what to do with his advantage. In his hands he had the whole state-machinery for quashing rebellion, with all hindrances suspended; and he felt more powerless than before. The very completeness of the control which he had been granted weakened and disturbed his will. More than ever he discovered qualms and scruples to disguise his inability to act, and in his agony he prayed that Catalina would make some gesture to betray beyond the doubt of the dullest senator his villainous intentions. The more that Cicero felt weakness growing on himself, the more he blamed his lethargic sensations on the obtusely feeble Senate that refused to recognise with effective horror the monster in their midst.

For several days there was a lull, during which Cicero arranged for volunteers to be enrolled and stationed about Rome. Cato was advocating the instant arrest of Catalina, but Cicero feared such a step as premature. It might be the signal for a revolt in the city and elsewhere, of which the consequences might easily be disastrous. Cicero’s evasive qualms united with his intelligent grasp of the situation to prevent him from any foolish action. Catalina meanwhile waited at home, hoping that Cicero would lose his head and make the first movement of aggression. So much depended on that in the doubtful state of things throughout Italy. If an accident-proof coup could not be worked, it was all to Catalina’s good to manoeuvre into the position of a wronged and harassed man.

In the Senate at the end of the month Lucius Sænius stood up and read a letter which he had received from friends near Fæsulæ. Manlius, he said, had thrown off the pretence of a peaceful petition, and had raised the standard of rebellion. At the same time Cicero announced that slaves were revolting in the south. Appulia and the town of Capua were threatened.

The Senate managed to lose something of its torpid irresolution. Outside the city walls were Marcius Rex and a Metellus, both fresh from commands in the East; they had made requests for Triumphs and were still in possession of the Imperium with its right to lead soldiers. The Senate ordered Marcius to set off for Etruria and Metellus for Appulia with the men at their disposal, recruiting as they went and holding the rebels at bay. The prætors Metellus Celer and Pompeius Rufus were also empowered to act in the state’s defence; Geier was instructed to hold Picenum, and Rufus the town of Capua; but as they had no troops ready, they set first about raising levies. Cicero was also given the right to issue a proclamation offering rewards for information concerning the coup. Any informing slave was to be freed and to receive 100,000 sesterces; a freeman, a pardon and 200,000 sesterces. Cicero was further allowed to seize and torture the slaves of suspected persons. A decree was passed for the quieting of the gladiators in the schools of Capua and for their distribution throughout the district.

Despite the rewards no informers appeared; and though the police seized several slaves, nothing of value was extracted under torture. Credit was tottering and distress increasing daily. Considius the moneylender now came forward and offered a moratorium on his loans, some fifteen and a half million, during the period of crisis; and the Senate passed a resolution thanking him. But though such measures might relieve some of the richer debtors, they did nothing to aid the poorer classes, whose condition was becoming worse and worse. Catalina stood grimly by, aware that every moment of delay was strengthening his hand.

It was clear now that the conservatives would not dare a violent counter-coup without further justification, and Catalina took his seat at the senatorial debates. Though assailed by outcry and abuse, he sat unconcerned. His policy was to ignore all attack and to manoeuvre Cicero into a false position, while taking full advantage of the growing disaffection. Cicero would have to bring the matter to a head and appear as the first exponent of violence or find himself overborne by the very storm which he had himself raised. Something would have to break, and the man who held out longest would conquer.

Many of the aristocrats secretly hoped for Cicero’s fall, though they could not bring themselves to actual support of Catalina. The spectacle of terrified business-men pleased them immediately, and they laughed at the moratorium of Considius and his associates. It was no great matter to delay the seizure of moneys that would not have been forthcoming at the moment in any case. The faces of the agonised stock-brokers was pleasing even to Cato, but he refused to let such satisfactions draw him from his manifest duty to denounce all bad citizens; in due time he would make the jobbers rue the support which he was forced temporarily to lend them. Let Cicero plume himself on having brought about a Concord of Orders. Cato meant to break that concord later on unless the financiers would be respectful enough to realise that their place was definitely secondary.

As Catalina was passing along the aisles of the Senate House, he felt a pressure on his arm, and, stopping, saw that old Catulus was leaning towards him. “Do not slay yourself to no purpose, my friend,” said Catulus in a low kindly voice, and then sat back. Catalina felt more shaken by this act of sympathy than by all the abuse with which he had been for days surrounded in the House. His mind grew oppressed with a leaden discomfiture as he tried to listen to the voices. Why was there such discord among men who should be united for a common end? Catulus and Cato, Cicero even, wanted the well-being of Rome. Why could they not agree? He felt the friendly touch of Catulus weighing him down, piercing him at his most vulnerable spot. It was a wound in the side, through which his blood flowed. Here was weariness and hate, the curse of brother-hatred that had stained the walls of Rome on the day of her foundation. Cæsar had deserted him. There was only weariness and hate. But his hand was on the plough. He must expel all distractions from his mind; he must drive his furrow straight, though he dropped dead at the end of it.

2

Lucius Æmilius Paullus, a rich young man, was giving a dinner-party. Though the son of a radical leader who had lost his life at the same time as Servilia’s first husband, he took no great interest in politics and there was no political meaning in his dinner. Clodius, Curio and Marcus Antonius were among the guests, and the only intention was to eat, talk and be amused. Paullus had determined to break some records with his entertaining. The party was given in a side-room where he had had the door specially widened. “You’ll see the reason for that soon,” he declared.

They saw the reason when a monstrous cheese was wheeled in on a trolley. “They guaranteed it a thousand pounds,” he said. “From Luna. You can see the crescent-stamp on it. I think that’s about the biggest cheese that’s ever been served up at a meal.”

A server appeared with a long straight sword, with which he assaulted the cheese, carving it into as many portions as there were guests. The room was filled with the smell of cheese and Curio grimaced from his embroidered napkin of linen. “Eat what you can,” said Paullus, “and put the rest aside. It will be wrapped-up for your slaves to take home.”

The courses were arranged geographically, so that no one district should supply more than one item. The peacocks were from Samos, the grouse from Phrygia, the cranes from Melos, the kids from Ambracia. There were several kinds of fish from different parts of the Mediterranean, nuts from Thasos, dates from Egypt, and special acorns from Spain. Such dinners filled the archaically minded with horror as a blasphemy against the earth, a transgression of lust as bad as the roving fancy that wanted strange women with all the various vices of the world in place of the home-abiding wife whose function was not to provoke but to conceive. Paullus had a large map of the World—the countries round the Mediterranean—set up on the table, and the spot from which each dish had come was marked by a pastry-model of the food in question. The map itself was a confectionery concoction inscribed with berry-juices, and the sea was shown by a green-blue fish-sauce.

Someone who had returned from Alexandria boasted about a prodigy that he had seen there, a creature who could actually eat a hatful of feathers, a pound of nails and burning coals. A small-eyed drunk insisted that the feat was easy. “But could he eat thirty hard-boiled eggs?” Somebody said that thirty hard-boiled eggs were beyond the capacity of the human digestion. “Not mine,” hiccupped the drunk. There was a quarrel, ending with a demand by the drunk for thirty hard-boiled eggs on the spot. Paullus saw in the demand only a test of the resources of his kitchen; for cold hard-boiled eggs could not be produced at a moment’s notice. Frowning, he ordered thirty hard-boiled eggs. Luckily the cook had them ready, intended for the stuffing of an Appulian sucking-pig with mint and some small fish from Massilia. He sent up the eggs and set to work devising a substitute. The honour of Paullus was saved; he ordered the eggs to be delivered to the drunk, who, amid shouts of encouragement and warning, swallowed them down successfully and sneered at the traveller from Alexandria.

After the food the wines, Italian, Greek and Egyptian, were poured plentifully. Paullus himself was elected wine-master by a Venus-throw of the dice—the highest throw when the four dice each threw up a different numeral. As master he had the right to order the proportions of water-mixing and the amount of toasts to be drunk.

“I’ve got an attraction,” he said. “I read about it in a book. I’d pretend to have thought it out, but one of you fellows might have read it too. So I’ll admit the truth. But even if you’ve read it, you’ve never seen it before.”

He clapped his hands and a crowd of naked girls rushed in, wearing very high clogs. “Now take off one of your clogs, each of you,” he ordered. The girls obediently unstrapped a clog each and threw the discarded clogs into a heap before the diners. Slaves wheeled in gilt barrels full of apples. “Now the girls have to run round the room,” explained Paullus, “and we have to pelt them with the apples.”

A group of musicians had appeared at the upper end of the room, and they struck up a wild dance-tune. The girls ran round the long room, ducking and colliding, hopping grotesquely on their single clogs, limping and tumbling over. The tipsy diners pelted them with the apples, roaring with delight at a hit. The painted walls were stained with smashed apples and the air reeked with apple-scents, at last eliminating the tang of cheese. The girls panted, collapsed, struggled on, their hair flying, their single clogs rattling on the mosaicked floor and syncopating the music madly.

“That will do,” said Paullus at last, rolling helpless with laughter on his couch. “You can go and wash yourselves now, and then come back again.”

While the men were waiting, the talk turned to politics, and Clodius jeered at the weakness of the Senate that passed an Ultimate Decree and yet feared to make any real use of it.

“You’re right,” drawled Paullus. “Something ought to be done about it. All my sympathies are with Catalina as long as he doesn’t try to rob me. That’s to say, I think all politics are rot. But it’s disgusting to see such a cowardly collection of nincompoops calling themselves the ruling class.” He sat up excitedly. “ I’ll tell you what I’ll do, fellows. I’ll shame the lot of them. I’ll start a prosecution of Catalina to-morrow for violating the peace. That’ll show up their Ultimate Decree for what it’s worth.”

His friends cheered him. “He’s the coming dictator,” remarked Curio.

“Well, now that’s settled,” said Antonius, “I’ll take any six of you on at a wrestling-match, and if you won’t have it, I’m going to sing a song.”

“Bring in another cheese and throw it at him,” moaned Curio. But the company’s attention was taken up by the man who had eaten the thirty hard-boiled eggs. He was twisting on his couch and clutching an anguished stomach. Paullus ordered him to be carried out and inspected by the house-physician. A second time he had scored; not everyone had a fully qualified Greek ready at a moment’s notice. He beamed with good nature towards the sufferer who had twice been the cause of these triumphs.

But now the girls, washed of apple juices and anointed with Assyrian nard, were trooping back. The bruises from the apple-chase would not be showing until the morrow.

3

Next day the eater of thirty hard-boiled eggs died and Paullus appeared in the law-courts to give notice of an impeachment of Catalina for breach of peace. The authorities were rather astonished at their new ally but did not refuse his aid, though they felt that his use of the ordinary methods of prosecution reflected somewhat ludicrously on their extraordinary but scarcely-used powers under the Ultimate Decree.

Catalina, like Cicero, was taken unawares by this eminently obvious procedure; but it did not affect his plans particularly. To continue his policy, he demanded that some citizen whose repute was beyond suspicion should receive him into his house until the end of the trial. He first approached one Lepidus, a consular, but was refused; then he offered himself to Cicero, and was refused again; then to Metellus Celer with the same result. After that he delivered himself to the Marcus Marcellus who had accompanied Crassus during the visit with the anonymous letters to Cicero. Marcellus was a man who wished to be on both sides.

On the whole Catalina was satisfied. It would be even more difficult for the conservatives to make an unconstitutional attack on him while he was awaiting trial in the law-courts. Such an attack would now be a confession of disbelief in the justice of their own cause.

Meanwhile Cicero was hard at work. The signs of rising in the South gave him the most fears; for Manlius was an open enemy. If the South rose in mass, there would be a general revolt. He therefore sent Sestius, as one of the few reliable officers, to take charge of Capua. Sestius reported that he had turned out two important emissaries of Catalina, one of whom was tampering with the gladiators. In Rome Cicero had established watches under the inspection of the minor magistrates; and he now sent word to Fulvia that she would be well paid if she could extract more than general points from Curius.

This suited Fulvia’s mood. She had reached the end of her tether. Now that Sestius was gone, she felt that she had no one to trust, and her rage against Curius became unbounded. She must drag him down. He came in, half drunk, and began ranting.

“You’re mad,” she said. “You think that you have a lot to tell me, don’t you?”

“I will soon, Ecastor! I’ll rub your face in gold and strangle you with a string of pearls. How much do I owe you now?”

“Come here.” He lurched across and she drew him down. He struggled and then lay still. Clasping him tight, she whispered into his ear. “You owe me your life.”

He struggled again. “Let me go. You make my ear burn. What did you say?”

“Do you want me?”

He seemed sobered by the direct question. “Do I want you? I want nothing else. I suppose I do. You drive me mad, but I want you.”

She felt her body stiffen as she nerved herself to the dreaded statement. “Then you’re going to act as a spy on Catalina.”

He tore away. “It’s you that’s mad. I’d die first. I love him.” Tears rolled down his cheeks; even in this moment of repudiation of her threat she saw all his future surrender, all the pain and dirt.

“You love him more than me?”

“More than any woman. I loathe you now, you filthy-hearted slut.”

“Then I’ll have you arrested at once for the money you owe me.”

He writhed. “But you wouldn’t do that, Fulvia. I’ll have all the wealth of the world in a few days.”

“Don’t talk to me like that again. Your Catalina is doomed. I want my money now.”

He walked over to her unsteadily and placed his hands round her throat. “I’ll kill you if you corner me. Do you hear?”

She lay back, opening her arms laxly. “Kill me then. You won’t go far before you’re arrested. I thought this would happen. I’ve left all your bills with a full statement about you in the keeping of someone who’ll know what to do.”

He dropped his hands. She lay there still laxly offering. He shook his fist in her face. She did not move. He threw himself beside her, kissing her wildly, snuggling against her.

“Speak to me, Fulvia. Speak to me. Ask anything else, and I’ll do it. I love you.” He caught her and tried to drag her up. “Speak.” He collapsed again. “Oh how wretched I am. Why can’t you pity me?” He caressed her again, and embraced her. “Love me, Fulvia.”

She made no response and he paused. “I can’t stand it. I’ll betray him.”

Suddenly she came to life. She clasped him close, she kissed him. Her hot lips sucked the tears from his cheeks. She stroked him. Convulsively he surrendered.

“Love me,” she said. “Please, please, darling.” She was as terrified as he was.

“I’ll do anything you want,” he sobbed. “Anything. Yes, yes, yes.” Then he broke down. “I can’t do it.”

“You promised,” she whispered. “You’ll do it for me, and I’ll know you love me, and I’ll be kind always.”

He clung to her. “I’m so wretched, Fulvia. I can’t live without you, but I can’t betray him. It would haunt me sleeping and waking. He’s the only true friend I’ve ever had. My food would choke me.”

“You’ve got to do it,” she answered harshly, holding him close. “For me. Don’t you see he’s doomed?”

“But how do you know?” he persisted.

“I have friends. They tell me. Cicero knows everything. They were going to arrest you and torture you.”

He burst into a sweat. “But they can’t torture a free man.”

“Who would know? They meant to kidnap you in the dark and throw you into one of the dungeons. Then they meant to break you on the wheel.”

“But why me? I’m not one of the heads. Why me?”

“They had to choose someone—someone who knew enough but whose absence wouldn’t be noticed too much. They’re waiting outside now. I’ll show you.”

They were in the upper-storey front-room. She took him to the small latticed window, paned with mica, and showed him a hooded man skulking at the corner below. It was the man from Cicero waiting to hear her news. Curius drew away, trembling. “I won’t be tortured. I couldn’t bear it.”

She soothed him. “Don’t fear. Nothing will happen. I swore to them that you would tell everything without it. You must do as I say. You won’t be harming anyone. Catalina will fail whatever you do.”

Curius beat his head. “If I were only sure of that … But it must be so.”

“Can’t you see it? Why do you think I’ve been unkind of late. I’ve been suffering in my love for you. I feared …”

“Did you?” His self-pitiful beseeching face looked up at her, his mouth open. “O Fulvia, if you truly loved me, I wouldn’t care for any shame.”

She turned and took down her purse from a shelf on the bedside table. “And they sent you money.”

He watched with avid eyes. “I don’t want any. If I do it, it will be because of my love for you, because you say it will make you kind again. I don’t want money, I tell you!” he cried, his voice rising and breaking. “Take it away.” He covered his face. “I can’t sell my friend. I’ll do it from love of you, but I can’t sell him.”

“Very well.” She threw the purse down on the bed. Curius watched it as if it were a live thing, a rat that would whisk away into a hole or make a squealing leap for his throat.

“Why didn’t they give it to you?” he said at last, gulping.

“It’s mine now, since you won’t have it. He isn’t my friend.”

Curius hesitated for a while, then he said, “Well, you can lend me some.” He shifted, unable to face her. “I need it as much as you do. More. I’ll pay it back.”

She lifted the purse and poured out the coins among the tumbled bedclothes. He scraped them up with his hands, fumbling for some that slid behind creases. Fulvia turned away and pretended not to be watching. “You can come back later.”

He approached and kissed her hand. “Thank you, little dove. Thank you. I know you love me. I couldn’t live now unless I knew that. There’s nothing else to live for.” Under his gown he clutched the coins.

“See what you can find out,” she answered. Still not looking into his face. “And come back later.”

“I will, my darling,” he said with a whine of joy in his voice. “Let’s always be happy. Life’s too terrible otherwise.” He paused, drew himself up, and moved towards the door. “I’ll be back later.”

Fulvia did not dare to speak for fear that she would insult him. Yet she was shaken with relief, as if she had escaped a great danger. As soon as the conspiracy was crushed, she would turn him out. He was degraded, the most worthless creature alive; and yet she was already yearning for the time when he would return.

4

Clodius continued to avoid Nacca’s hall, but one day, meeting Nacca in the streets of the Subura, he had no reply to the man’s rough jests and promised to call soon. “Flaviola will be glad,” said Nacca. “She hasn’t been at all well. I suppose the dog days don’t agree with her, though I’m told the dogstar sucks the marrow out of men but makes women all the sprightlier. She’s getting a big girl.”

Clodius bought a book of verse and went straight to the hall. He knew that Nacca would be absent as he had complained about an errand to the Aventine. Knocking at the house-door, he was met by a sad-faced Flaviola, whose eyes lighted at once.

“Oh do come in and don’t run away,” she said. “I’m so frightened you’ll vanish.” She caught his hands and dragged him in. Clodius was remorsefully pleased to have come. He would give Nacca a good sum of money as a dowry and enable him to marry her off to some better-class tradesman. But Flaviola had taken the book and was spelling it out. As she came up to ask him what a long word meant, he put his arm about her and kissed her. She showed no surprise. She waited till he had finished the kiss, and then said gravely, “Thank you.”

“You’re a sweet thing,” he replied, trying to pretend that the kiss had meant nothing.

“I hoped you’d kiss me,” she said sitting on his knee. “I was so miserable when you never came.”

Clodius took up the book and began reading it through with her. She looked up lightly into his eyes, her arm about his neck, and was so studiously attentive that he did not know how to take her prior complaisance. At last he heard Nacca’s step. Flaviola at once jumped from his lap and sat on the chair at the other side of the table.

“I came straight along to see the little invalid,” said Clodius. “She doesn’t seem very ill, if you ask me.”

“Neither she does,” agreed Nacca. “Pour me out a cup of wine, young woman. I’m turned to dust inside like one of those funeral figures where you take the head off and pour in the ashes of the late-departed. But look here, Master Clodius, you can tell those that you and me both know that things are going very well. If need be, Nacca’s boys will be in the forefront, and it’s more than dust they’ll raise.”

“What does Met-a-mor-phos-is mean?” asked Flaviola. looking up from her book.

“It means the turning of someone into something new and strange, something quite unlike the old self,” said Clodius. Was her remark a sign? He had changed her. Was he changing too? Certainly he had been thoroughly bored at the party of Paullus the other night. If only Flaviola were in his own class and he could marry her … But he wouldn’t harm the girl. He wouldn’t change her that way. “If you were changed into a pusscat,” he went on, “that would be a metamorphosis.”

“O dear,” she said, wriggling. “I’d rather be myself. I saw the boys throw a cat down the sewer hole yesterday.” She looked troubled, and Clodius wanted to console her.

5

Tension was deepening. Though from one point of view the conflict had become a test in staying-power, yet neither side could afford to hang on indefinitely. If the deadlock persisted till the end of the year, Cicero would pass out of office and the whole affair would be deflated. If Catalina did not do something, the veterans in Etruria and the disaffected persons in the South would become disheartened. The prosecution by Paullus made Catalina finally face this dilemma; and once it was faced, he saw that for him there was only one solution. Cicero must be killed. With Cicero removed, the conservatives would be demoralised; the radicals could make arrangements to seize the other consul, who would submit to dictation and if necessary announce a dictatorship.

Once Catalina had settled this in his mind, he felt no qualms about the use of murder as a political weapon. The conservatives had successively murdered all the popular leaders, and only lack of nerve was preventing them at the moment from attacking him with an armed force. To shrink from murder as a counter-weapon would be idealistic foolery of the most obnoxious type. Moral values had passed beyond any question of individual equity; they could appear only in the broader issues of class against class, idea against idea.

Catalina therefore called a meeting of his chiefs at the house of one Læca, who was conveniently obscure though devoted to the cause. Marcellus, in whose house Catalina was lodging, closed his eyes to the evening-stroll of his prisoner-guest, and Catalina, heavily muffled, reached the Street of the Scythemakers safely unrecognised. Cethegus, Lentulus, Cassius and all the others were present, including many representatives from the municipalities and lesser followers such as Volturcius and Curius. Curius was soddenly drunk but did not show it, save for his bloodshot eyes. Catalina at once put to the gathering his decision about Cicero. They agreed without a dissentient voice, obviously lightened by his words.

“I can’t leave Rome till he is dead,” said Catalina. “But if he was killed, we could at once seize the city and set up a provisional government. The first step would be to annex Antonius and make him the figure-head. At the same time the wife and sons of Pompeius must be guarded as hostages, and all the conservative leaders thrown into prison. All efforts to resist by force must be met by force and the opposition crushed by the sword. I could leave Rome the moment that the first steps were taken, join Manlius and lead the army to Rome, breaking up the government-levies. Nothing stands between us and an easy assumption of power but Cicero. He must be murdered. Who will volunteer?”

Flat-nosed Cornelius spoke. “I’ll do it. I hate the man. He snubbed me once before a woman I wanted. She turned me down.”

“I want two men,” said Catalina, smiling at Cornelius. “Who’s the other?”

A large sleepy-looking fellow named Vargunteius, son of a dealer in hides, stepped out. “I can’t see Cornelius done for without putting in a word. We shared a flagon and a wench last night. We share something else before to-morrow ends.”

“I look on Cicero as a dead man,” said Catalina. “I suggest that you call on him early, before dawn, to-morrow morning, saying that you have come to claim the informer’s reward. Make a great noise at the door and get it opened before anyone quite knows what’s happened. Take a picked body of slaves, good fighting fellows. Have some with you and place the rest near at hand so that they can rush in after or rescue you if need be. Arrange signals for all that. I leave the details to you.”

Cornelius and Vargunteius retired to talk at the further end of the room. Læca, a fat-bellied man with thin arms and legs, hustled the slaves round with wine for the guests; and the company broke up into groups of action, discussing their final arrangements. Lentulus, Cethegus and Cassius were in charge of Rome; Septimius of Picenum; Gaius Iulius of Appulia; Cæparius of Capua; Catalina himself of Etruria. Catalina moved from group to group seeing that all details were understood and that at the signal of Cicero’s death every man could proceed instantly on his task.

There was a spirit of hope and energy in all the groups. Catalina was satisfied. “To the death of Cicero,” croaked Læca, seeing that all were served with wine. “And to the new state under Catalina.” The toast was drunk in silence, then a buzz of enthusiasm sprang up again.

Catalina noticed Curius half-hidden behind a group. Something fuddled and lonely about the man attracted his eye, and he spoke to him, “You seem the only one without something to do.”

“No, no,” said Curius, drinking deep. “I know what I’ve to do. You don’t doubt me, do you?”

“Where have you been lately? I haven’t seen much of you.” Catalina recalled how once Curius for all his sly touch of unhappiness had been full of jests and stories; and he was drawn for the moment out of his preoccupation to consider the private existences of all these men who were linked with him, venturing so much. Such a network of emotions radiated out from this room; hundreds of families were directly dependent on the results of the meeting; and beyond those families the whole of Italy, the world, would be affected to the depths by those results. For the first time Catalina saw the impact of his idea on life as a multiplicity of human factors, incredibly entangled. He withdrew from the contemplation; action would be impossible if one was to become obsessed by those infinitely ricocheting effects instead of the simple and inspiriting cause that alone gave meaning and sanctified all suffering.

“I’ve been working,” said Curius, unwillingly assuming an air of mystery.

Catalina looked at him curiously. “Gambling again, or is it women?”

“Neither,” insisted Curius. “Work on your behalf—our behalf.” Then, as Catalina turned away, he tugged at his sleeve. “I’ve been rather sick. Whatever happens, you’ll know I loved you … please?”

Catalina stared into his appealingly drawn face. The man was drunk, and scared; his yellowed eyeballs exuded terror. Whatever happened … He feared that things would fail, and was drunk to drown his fears. Catalina felt contempt. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently and moved away. The encounter with the helplessly involved world in the person of the fear-drugged Curius had displeased him and he wanted to forget it.

Curius muttered under his breath. So Catalina didn’t like him after all; he didn’t appreciate his offer of love; he had been turning on Curius secretly all these months; he didn’t deserve faithful servants. Well, let him look out.

“Shall I be able to get back that piece of land that was stolen from me?” asked one of the delegates of Catalina as he passed.

Catalina, irritated by Curius, felt a particular dislike of these trivialities. “We’re not going to war about pieces of land,” he snapped. “We’re going to get down to bedrock and start things all over again.”

The man retreated. How were things going to start all over again if he didn’t get that piece of land back?

Catalina took Cornelius and Vargunteius aside to go over their instructions once more. There were the men he liked, the sturdy scoundrels.

“What is money?” Læca was arguing. “It’s only a credit, an agreement to pay. It isn’t a weight of silver or gold.” But nobody was listening. They knew what money was; it was a house to decorate, a woman to hug, and food to eat. Those were the things they wanted, not an agreement to pay.

“Once the door is opened,” Catalina said to Cornelius, “go straight in. I’ve found out where he sleeps. Pass down the corridor on the left. The second door …”

Cethegus was standing near Volturcius, who was drinking and talking with a friend about the travels in Etruria. Volturcius was laughing at Cornelius for having taken some poor spoils from dead robbers and then being forced to give them to the girl that Catalina called in.

“Catalina called her in?” interrupted Cethegus.

“Sure he did,” replied Volturcius, and told the tale.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” demanded Cethegus with almost a snarl.

Volturcius stared at him, and Cethegus realised that he had said too much. “I’m surprised; that’s all,” he said, and walked off.

6

Curius slipped out into the darkness, still muttering to himself, “So he doesn’t want my love, eh? He’s been deceiving me all this while. Cicero’s right. He’s a villain …”

Reaching Fulvia’s house, he was at once admitted. How different from the old nights when he had beaten at the door for hours on end. He felt comforted. Fulvia wanted him. He hurried to the bedroom upstairs, where she was sprawling abed.

“What do you want?” she asked, angrily aware that she did not look her best when awakened from a short sleep; her face felt hot and there was a nasty taste in her mouth.

“He doesn’t love me anymore,” whimpered Curius. “I’ve news for you. You can’t say any longer that I’m nouse. They’re going to murder Cicero first thing to-morrow morning.”

Fulvia slid from bed without a word, and went to a small writing-desk. “Give me details,” she said sharply.

“I don’t care what happens,” began Curius. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“Give me details,” she repeated, even more sharply. Curius bit his nails, hesitated, and then spoke. “He met us all at Læca’s …”

Fulvia scribbled quickly.

7

When Cicero was wakened by a slave and handed the note, his first emotion was one of fear. The insurrection had broken out at last despite all his efforts to smother it. Nothing remained but to save his own life. He must flee. He groped under the bed for his slippers. Then he read the note again. Only two men and a band of slave-cutthroats. He would send at once for Cato and the other senatorial leaders as witnesses; he would collect soldiers and arrest the two armed ring-leaders. That would be all the proof needed against Catalina. Particularly as there would be sure to be a fight.

But what proof would it be after all? The men were desperadoes. They might stoutly deny Catalina’s connection. He would have to arrest Catalina, Lentulus, Læca and all the others, and confront them with a single spy, Curius, a man of bad reputation. The radicals would say that it was a put-up job. There would be riots. Nobody would listen to the evidence one way or another; the minds of all would be made up beforehand. The populace would say, “It’s all very well; Cicero wasn’t hurt; there’s something fishy; he trumped up the story to make these arrests.” The insurrection would break out. The gangs on the Aventine and about the dockyards, the tenement-mobs of the Subura, they’d all come roaring along. There were so many senators who didn’t want to believe … No, an arrest would be of little value. There was only one thing to do. Break Catalina’s nerve. Bar the door and keep the murderers out. Shaken as he was, Cicero was able to think clearly.

When Cornelius and Vargunteius, who had been up drinking all night to steady their hands, knocked at the door, there was no reply. They knocked and hammered. They lost patience and kicked. They levered up a stone from the roadway, and, calling to some of the reserve forces, tried to smash the door down. But it was strongly barred and barricaded. By the time that the sun had risen above the house-tops, they were forced to realise that their plan had somehow leaked out. Cursing, they retired.

Cicero at once sent messages for his council and others of the conservatives to meet him at his house, and for the Senate to be convened on the next day. He hoped that the failure of the attempt, the contemptuous disregard shown by merely shutting it out, would disturb Catalina sufficiently to make him withdraw from Rome. All that day he talked the matter over with his advisers and prepared the speech that he was to deliver.

8

Catalina’s plans were given a rough setback by the miscarriage of the assassination. He hurriedly sent messages to his lieutenants, saying that he would not now leave Rome and that all plans were suspended till further notice. It was clear that some spy had betrayed them, but who it was he could not think. Meanwhile he awaited the meeting of the Senate on the morrow. He was determined to attend, in the hope that Cicero would be goaded into arresting him; for that would bring out the populace at once. He could not see what else the conservatives could do; and though there was great danger for him in thus courting attack (since Cato and his friends would think nothing of cutting him down under cover of the Ultimate Decree), he was ready to take the risk. The conflict had settled down to a duel between him and Cicero; and he felt that it was only fair play to expose himself thus to the retort of violence after his effort of assassination.

The meeting had been called for the Temple of Iuppiter Stator at the foot of the Palatine, since that was an easily defended position, and Cicero had lost no chance of making the event impressive. Catalina’s lip curled as he saw the packed detachments of upper-class youths fully armed and stationed on all sides about the temple. With his half-dozen attendants he strode through the armed groups, looking neither to right nor left.

A few insults were shouted, but most of the men were sheepishly silent. As Catalina entered the Temple, the senators shrank away from him with exaggerated gestures of horror, and he was left in a large empty space near the end. He took no notice, but sat alone with vacant seats all around him, while the senators crushed away together, eyeing him as a leper. There was an uncanny silence. The spectators felt that the proceedings were a duel, and they did not like to intrude even a whisper on the preoccupation of the two antagonists. Catalina considered the situation, haughtily staring at a richly carved breastplate that hung on the wall opposite as a trophy. If Cicero had the courage, this would be Catalina’s last day; but Catalina did not think that Cicero would dare.

Cicero, appearing with full train, marched proudly to his seat. He threw a glance at the isolated and brooding figure of Catalina, and waited with a forced composure till the preliminaries were completed. Then he rose and launched the attack. Without any pretence at a debate, he turned straight to Catalina and with a sweeping gesture of the arm pointed him out to the craning senators.

“When, Catalina,” he cried in his powerful voice, “do you mean to cease abusing my patience? How long is this madness of yours to keep mocking us?”

His voice thundered through the wide space, gathering echoes among the high rafters and beating down the noises from without. Catalina stared straight ahead, though his hand fumbled as for a sword-hilt. Let the man vomit his ruffianly abuse. The test was patience. Cicero spoke on, his voice gaining volume and force. Certainty swelled within him. This was his hour. The Senate were dominated at last, utterly his.

Remorselessly, in a voice that never faltered, Cicero went on to claim the full rights of the Ultimate Decree, to accuse himself of dilatory weakness in fearing that he would be misunderstood if he crushed Catalina on his own responsibility. He recounted all the details of the meeting in Læca’s house. He lashed himself, he lashed the senators. Catalina, sitting stonily still, felt a loathing admiration for the man’s remorseless voice. It would never stop. It was the voice of judgment gone mad. But Cicero, though he felt that he had at last dominated the Senate and Rome, was not without his worries, as he spoke on. All would fail unless he could drive Catalina from the city. He attacked Catalina personally with wild hints that Catalina could not follow. He almost besought him with abusive appeal to play into his enemy’s hands.

He pictured Rome crying on her disloyal son to depart. Men could then blame the consul, since the evidence of Catalina’s villainy would be obscured. Let that be so. Nothing mattered but the safety of the state. Cicero would take the obloquy and feel it glory. Then he turned to threats. Unless Catalina and his creatures went, they would be turned out.

But after this medley of appeal, threat and vilification, Cicero paused and prepared to end his speech on a crescendo note. Quietly he turned to the altar of the temple and spoke in a voice lowered in tone and yet ringing with passionate prayer. “And you, Iuppiter, who were consecrated by Romulus with the same auspices as the city, you whom we rightly call the pillar of Rome and the Empire, cast out this man and his companions from your altars and from all other Roman temples, from the houses and walls of Rome, from the lives and fortunes of all Roman citizens. Confound and crush all the enemies of the virtuous, the foes of the Republic, the robbers of Italy, now leagued by a treaty and infamous alliance of criminality, dead or alive, whelm them in eternal punishments!”

There was a profound silence. Even the armed groups outside seemed to have ceased stirring. Catalina slowly rose from the bench and looked round the temple, his eyes travelling across the serried ranks of the men who were all staring at him. Alone he stood amid tiers of empty seats, while the bank of hostile senators towered up over him on the other side. He was ringed with eyes. He made no effort to distinguish the faces, though he knew each man personally; they were all unknown faces, unknown eyes, the eyes of ravening beasts. At last his glance reached Cicero, and he looked straight into Cicero’s eyes. Both men felt the shock of the meeting glances; both felt something virulent and heartening penetrate their beings. They were linked by that exchange. Hatred, love, all such words were meaningless before the grappling intensity of that glance.

Catalina turned and walked down the aisle and out of the temple. As he passed out, the senators found their voices and pursued him with shouts of “Murderer! Brigand! Traitor!” An answering murmur arose from the detachments without; then the men burst into a roar of fury. Catalina did not blink, but walked down the steps. Now was the moment. If Cicero had courage, Catalina would never pass through that mass of armed men alive. They parted to let him through, but continued shouting, shaking their fists, clattering their weapons. Catalina hardly heard the noise. He walked straight ahead, wondering if Cicero would dare.

Beyond the armed ranks there was a crowd of proletarians, howling back in defiance at the armed groups. They opened with cheers, and Catalina walked among them. Cicero had not dared.

9

While the Senate were meeting in the Temple, the chief conspirators were meeting at Sempronia’s house. Catalina had given Orestilla a message to take, and she had not refused. It was his order, and therefore it was his responsibility that she would meet Cethegus there. The conspirators were uneasy and talked in circles, conjecturing what had happened at the Temple. Cethegus seized an early opportunity to get Orestilla aside. He pressed her with protestations, oaths, promises.

“What do you want?” she repeated.

“I want you.”

“How? For an afternoon in some assignation-house? That isn’t much to ask. So little that I wouldn’t be bothered to give it.”

“I want you wholly.” He was on the point of bursting out against Catalina, but restrained himself. They wrangled on and on. At last Cethegus said, “Catalina was unfaithful to you with a girl at Volsinii.”

Orestilla paled. “I don’t believe it.” Her fingers plucked at her dress. “You’d tell any lie against him.”

“Ask him then. You’ll soon find out if I’m lying.”

The assurance in his voice appalled her. She believed him. A fierce rage burned in her. She had wasted her life. “I’ll meet you then, where you like, how you like.”

Cethegus sweated with fear that he would somehow spoil this submission. “To-morrow.” He gave her the address of some rooms behind an apothecary’s shop.

“I’ll be there,” she said. But she was only interested in the thought of returning home to question Catalina. He must not think that he had got away with this deception of her. She would not have minded, she told herself, if he had come back and mentioned that one night at Volsinii he took a girl. It was the secrecy that she could never forgive he had left it for Cethegus to tell her. He had thereby handed her over to Cethegus. She felt that she did not want in the least to take Cethegus as a lover, but that Catalina had forced her to him by this concealment. He had made Cethegus the only possible instrument of her revenge, and he had made it necessary for her to take revenge.

She left as soon as she could.

Sempronia had noticed the attentions of Cethegus, but she also had something on her mind. “What has happened to Cæsar?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Cassius. “Catalina is dealing with him.” Catalina had not spoken to anyone of Cæsar’s defection. He could not bear to do so. He had let it be understood that Cæsar, for reasons of policy, was negotiating in some hidden way with him alone.

“I think he’s playing a double game,” said Sempronia.

“Very likely. I don’t know.”

Sempronia was determined to pay Cæsar for his actions. She had shrewdly surmised that some political decision lay behind his running away, but she objected to being made the pawn in his politics. The insult remained, and she had not forgotten the note in his handwriting. He had many enemies who would like to get that note if the conspiracy failed, and she expected it to fail but had no fear that she would be harmed by it.

10

Orestilla’s brain was flinging at her the questions that she must ask Catalina. She did not know what she would do if her fears proved correct, but she knew that she must test them. As she neared the house, she saw painted on a large blank wall three words, DOWN WITH CATALINA and under them some lines of verse:

To bed the young bride would not go

till the young stepson lay down dead.

Dead the young stepson quickly lay,

then the young bride lay down in bed.

Even in her paroxysm of anger she said to herself that she must send out someone to erase the lines before Catalina saw them. That slander was too cruel. She hadn’t tested him yet. The words of Cethegus might be a lie. She must have the words erased at once.

But when she entered the house, she burst into tears and had no thought except for her misery. She walked up and down the rooms waiting for Catalina’s return. She could never forgive him. He had betrayed her to Cethegus.

Catalina, escorted by a cheering crowd, came face to face with the lines. He read them rapidly and passed on, his heart pounding. What could they mean? What were the dark hints that Cicero had hurled at him? Suddenly he shivered. The world was mad. The lines could mean only that Orestilla had objected to a grown stepson and that he, Catalina, had got rid of the boy, that he had murdered him. The full force of the lie broke on him shatteringly. He stopped, clammy with a noise of blackness. Then he recovered and hurried inside.

Orestilla was waiting. He did not see her tear-stained face; he could see only the words that he had read. “There was something written up outside,” he muttered.

She had felt nothing but a flash of incoherent joy as she saw him enter. She realised how frightened she had been that something would happen to him. His face was haggard with pain. Her suspicion and anger vanished, she could not sustain them before his suffering face. She wanted him, no matter what he had done. Cethegus had believed his accusations, but he had mistaken something. It didn’t matter. The blow of the verses was everything, and she was responsible for it. She had had more than enough time to have them erased; she had let the blow fall; she had willed it by her absorption in her own misery.

He made an effort to see her and distinguished the horror on her face. “You knew?” he whispered hoarsely.

She understood that her face had exposed her. “Yes,” she whispered back. “But you can’t let it hurt you. Such a lie. Such a meaningless lie.”

He shook his head. People were saying that he had murdered his boy, the son in whose grave so much of his hopes and plans lay buried. The world was mad, and he was mad to think of doing anything for it. He sank down with his head in his hands. Orestilla threw herself on the floor at his side and put her arms round him.

“Don’t. Don’t. You can’t be hurt by such a lie. You can’t.”

He silenced her by placing his hand over her mouth. “I want to think.” She kissed his hand and lay there accusing herself, torn by remorse.

Catalina tried to think. What had been his intentions? To stay in Rome and beat Cicero at his game of persistence?

He could not collect his thoughts. He was unutterably weary, and beyond the weariness he could feel only a desire to go away, to be among faces that were not fouled with these lies. He must leave Rome and join the army in Etruria. The cheerful, insolently submissive voice of Manlius sounded in his ears. There was a man whom he could love without reserve. Their compact was simple; no lies, no half-thoughts, no desolating subtleties and doubts could crumble it. It was simple and therefore the only thing worth having in the world.

“I’m leaving for Etruria to-night,” he said, looking up. “Send for Lentulus and Cethegus.”

11

Now that his decision was made, his mind worked easily. He gave his instructions succinctly but clearly. Messages came that Cicero was strengthening his garrison and that there was talk of starting a brawl before Catalina’s house, to end with arson and slaughter. Then the men went and he stood with Orestilla while the attendants got the horses and baggage ready. The silver eagle had already been sent on to Manlius. Orestilla was laden with her misery. She felt that she had somehow maimed and slain Catalina, though she had no way of judging whether his decision was right or wrong. She merely felt that what came out of that attack upon him could not be right. Miserable, she did not know what to say. She clung to him, carried far past tears.

He kissed her. “Love me,” she murmured. “Perhaps it’s the last time.”

He could not reply to her speech, and she clung faster, feeling that her words had been evilly omened. They were the worst words that she could have chosen. “Forgive me.”

He was impatient to go, but he lent over her, took her in his arms and tried to caress her. But it wasn’t a success. Both felt the false strain. “Love me, love me,” she repeated through set teeth, and he felt his caress become rough, violent. He wanted to finish, to go away, to break through the resistances that clenched him in. There was a wall before him, and he must smash through it.

Then he felt wretched. “Be careful,” he said. “Heaven knows what will happen.” He was leaving her defenceless amid his enemies. Suddenly he recalled the touch of the hand of Catulus, the kindly voice. “I must write a note to Catulus,” he went on. “He will see that nothing happens to you, though he’s on the other side.”

He sat down and wrote hastily:

“Lucius Catalina to Quintus Catulus, good health. Your great integrity, known to me personally, gives a pleasant confidence, amid extreme perils, to this my recommendation. I have therefore resolved to make no defence of my new course of conduct; yet I wished, though conscious of no guilt, to offer you an explanation which on my honour you may receive as true. Provoked by injuries and indignities since, robbed of the fruits of my labour and exertion, I lost the post of honour due to me, I have undertaken, according to my usual custom, the public cause of the distressed. Not but that I could have paid out of my own property the debts contracted on my own security; while the generosity of Orestilla, out of her own and her daughter’s fortune, would discharge those incurred on the security of others. But because I saw unworthy men ennobled with rank and myself proscribed on groundless suspicion, I adopted a course amply justified by my present lot for preserving what honour is left to me. When I was about to write further, news was brought me that violence is being prepared against me. I now commend and entrust Orestilla to your protection, entreating you by your love for your own children to defend her from injury. Farewell.”

He sealed the letter with a strong pressure, and then looked up to notice Orestilla sitting inertly on the couch. With an effort she threw off her dread and despair. She rose, smiled, and stood with gently dignified demeanour as he raised his arm in salutation to her and walked out.

12

November, the month of ploughing and sowing, had few rites. On the eighth the navel-pit was again opened, and on the thirteenth the old birth-goddess Feronia had her day. But while the conflict of Catalina and Cicero was being waged, the Plebeian Games had begun; they would run for almost a fortnight.

IX - AMONG THE REBELS

I

Meanwhile Marcius Rex, gathering what troops he could, had proceeded into Etruria. Manlius, hearing of his approach, sent some men to him with a petition of rights. It had been drawn up by Catalina. Appealing to the traditions of debt-relief and plebeian protest by secession, it made a sturdy statement of aim:

“We call gods and men to witness, general, that we have taken up arms neither to injure our country nor to imperil any individuals but to defend our own persons from harm. In miserable want, we have most of us been deprived of our homes and all of us of our characters and property by the oppression and cruelty of usurers. Nor has any of us been allowed according to old usage to have the benefit of the law or to keep his person free when losing his goods. Such has been the inhumanity of the usurers and the prætor.”

Marcius replied in the only terms open to him. “Let the men lay down their arms and invoke the compassion of the Senate, which none have ever petitioned in vain.” He himself would bring the petition to those who could best deal with it, but he could not parley with armed rebels.

2

The information that Catalina had at last departed overjoyed Cicero. His spies had been watching the house, and they shadowed Catalina to the gates; thence they returned with news that he had gone galloping furiously up the Aurelian Way. Cethegus and the others of the revolutionary committee spread the news that Catalina had voluntarily gone into exile to Massilia. This was to gain time and to excite odium against Cicero.

On the day after the departure Cicero called an assembly in the Forum. The square was thickly picketed, and the proletarians excluded. The purpose of the meeting was to convince the tradesmen and lower middle-class who had some small stake in the country, that Catalina was justly driven from the commonwealth. Cicero luridly outlined the dangers from which he had rescued Rome, and the types of bankrupt and libertine who constituted the rebel ranks—men who when ruined had the audacity and impiety to prefer death in rebellious company to death in a lonely ditch.

3

As soon as Catalina had ridden about thirty miles from the city he called a halt and considered his plans. Dressing twelve of his attendants as lictors, he bade them precede him as if he was on a proconsular expedition; for he knew how ingrained was respect for magisterial prerogative. The initiated might scoff, but some such show was imperative for the common people.

Addressing the peasants at every village through which he passed and gathering them in rough squads under the command of his men, he progressed northwards. Marcius Rex, finding his forces too small for Manlius, had retreated towards Rome; and the Senate, feeling that a real consul must be appointed to attack the false proconsul, named Gaius Antonius as general of all the levies. Cicero did not dare to leave Rome, the real centre of revolt; and the experienced and reliable officer Petreius was nominated as second-in-command to Antonius. Petreius was to do all the work and report on the least sign of trickery from Antonius.

The levies were going ahead fast. The Senate had sent alarmist-messages to all the richer municipalities, and the younger members of the middle-class were enrolling. Though not yet capable of meeting Manlius, the forces of the Senate were growing daily. Everything, however, depended on the events at Rome. Still not a single informer, free or slave, appeared from the rebel-ranks. At Arretium Catalina stopped to visit Flamma. He found his friend still seeking to keep a cheery outlook. “I’ve a confession to make,” said Flamma, clapping Catalina on the back. “I’ve gone and married a wife. I had to have someone to help with the accounts.”

His wife was a strong-limbed country-bred girl who shared his interest in farming. “Here’s my wife,” said Flamma, introducing her. “I know it isn’t the time for marriages, but I had to have someone to help with the accounts, didn’t I, Fannia?”

She assented with buxom gravity, and he clasped her in his arms. “It makes such a great difference in one’s life,” he confided to Catalina, “to have someone to help with the accounts.”

Fannia was unperturbed by his embraces or his description of marriage-motives. She evidently thought the wish for a helper with the accounts was a quite satisfactory reason for marriage. She saw to the comfort of the guests and departed for the poultry-yard to choose some tender specimens of bird-flesh for dinner. At the meal she sat on a chair beside the couch where Flamma reclined; and though he did not speak to her, by the time the apples were being handed round she had moved the chair closer and he had drawn himself out of the couch to lay his head on her lap. Her short but gentle hand moved every brief while over his hair, but otherwise she sat in matronly quiet.

These two were happy. Catalina thought of Orestilla and then cruelly drove the image out of his mind. But as he lay talking with Flamma of the state of Etruria, he felt that unbridgeable distance stretched between him and the wedded pair. He was bringing fire and steel, no matter what his motive, upon the earth; and these two were peaceably increasing the earth’s wealth. They owned an Elysium from which he by his very virtues was excluded, and what greater injustice was there than that a man should be damned for his virtues? Yet for what was he fighting but that this wedded pair should inherit the earth, they and all their happy other-selves? One seed must die in the earth, splitting suddenly with the unrealisable spark of growth that the ears of corn may wave in the breeze of sunlight. He was the seed broken in the darkness.

As he lay in bed later, his mind still reflected the picture of Flamma and his wife standing with arms about one another, looking out amorously on a future of harvest-days. Yet he did not want to go back the long road to the moment when he and Orestilla had stood in the marriage-awareness with a world of choice before them. Then he could have chosen the farm-life; but he had not chosen it; therefore he had not wanted it. He did not want it now. His hand felt out in the darkness for the sword which he had placed on a chair at the bedside. His palm closed round the hilt, and he rejoiced in the darkness.

4

Among Catalina’s retinue was a youth named Tongillus. He had accompanied Catalina to Campania and had been acting as one of the agents there. Catalina had a peculiar affection for the youth, which had been one of his reasons for keeping him away from Rome. Tongillus was very like in face and character to Catalina’s dead son; he had the same fair hair, the same rather dreamy manner, the same rather aimless wish to help and be useful. Catalina would have liked to adopt him, but feared that Orestilla would be hurt; and that was another reason for keeping the youth away as much as possible. But he was glad of his company now. He forgot Pollia and her dead son; he felt only the filial devotion of Tongillus, which somehow lessened the sense of frustration that at times became too painful.

Tongillus was sleeping at the foot of Catalina’s bed, and at the first streak of dawn he leaped out. Catalina rose and sat on the side of the bed, watching the lithely naked youth. He would adopt him later; it was the only way to be sure of beating the curse of sterility. The adopted son of a patrician, received with full religious sanctions, was incorporated into the blood of the family, though maybe a man still longed for a son whom he could feel to be the direct seed of his loins.

Tongillus paused in his exercises, shy at Catalina’s following glances. At that moment he was intolerably like the dead boy. The wraith of Pollia wavered behind him, and Catalina felt an anguished desire to be able to put his arms round the youth and say to himself, “This is flesh of my flesh, the seed of my loins grown into manhood.” What right had Pollia to accuse him of having overdriven their son? The boy had been strongly thewed and eager to excel. Perhaps Catalina, with his resources of energy, had expected too much of him. But who would have thought that a mere chill could slay such a clean-limbed boy?

Tongillus approached Catalina. “You won’t forget that you promised me the command of a squadron of horse?”

“ I won’t forget, but I’d rather you stayed out of the fighting.”

“Why, why?” pleaded Tongillus. “Don’t you think I’m good enough? I’ll show you!”

Catalina turned away. He did not dare to continue looking at the youth’s finely flushed face; he would not be able to control his emotions; he would clasp him and call him son and weep. “You shall have your squadron,” he said and began dressing with averted eyes.

Tongillus leaped into the air, kicking up his legs backwards and dancing the Spartan Bibasis, in which lads and girls competed for the number of times they could successively touch their buttocks with their heels. As he leaped, he chanted in a low voice a battle-song.

5

As Catalina advanced northwards, he was joined by small bands of peasants. Catalina succeeded in keeping his forces well under control, but from every side came news of villas looted by the insurgents and murders of the landlords and business-men. The town of Arretium had been seized, and those of the official class who had not fled were flogged or stabbed. But Catalina decided not to hold the town, which was lower than the dismantled and once-powerful Etruscan stronghold on the heights. He called on the men to proceed to Manlius at Fæsulæ. Manlius had taken and garrisoned Fæsulæ, and was now proceeding with a picked body of men to meet Catalina. He had sent a message fixing the meeting-place at a village some fifteen miles above Arretium. Catalina, leaving his troops under Munatius, a coarse soldierly fellow, set out with a bodyguard, pleased at the thought of once more seeing the blunt faithful face of Manlius. Manlius was drinking in the tavern when his pickets arrived with news of Catalina’s arrival. Vaulting on his horse, he galloped out to meet his master. Then, when within about twenty paces, he reined the horse in violently, slipped to the ground, and stood waiting, one hand grasping the bridle of the plunging horse, the other raised in salute.

6

Catalina waited till the rest of his forces arrived, and then set out for Fæsulæ. With Manlius he rode about the countryside, and wherever he spoke the villagers and farmers threw down their farm-gear and started off for the camping-ground. Manlius had selected reliable men who could take the recruits in hand and drill them in the army-manner; and the inexperienced men were distributed through the skeletal cohorts of veterans; but there was a great lack of weapons and armour. Many of the men had only leather-shifts, scythes, axes, hammers, or even staffs. Raids on the villas and townships increased the supply of arms, and gradually the gathering became more effective in appearance and drill.

Stragglers continued to come in from Rome, chiefly small knots of better-class young men or ruffianly down-and-outs. Catalina was carefully excluding slaves, for the Marian revolt and the Slave War had shown how ungovernable they became in victory. Some of the youths from Rome were enthusiasts for liberty; others were debauchees whose sole interest was the chance of rapine. There were curious corners of the camp where patrician rakes hobnobbed or brawled with cutthroats, and a number of camp-women had appeared from nowhere. Some of the rakes had even brought a mistress; and though Catalina objected to all disturbances of discipline, he was forced to countenance these thieves’ kitchens on the outskirts of the camp.

“Where’s Fulvius?” asked one Publicius, a lean youth with long yellow curls and small chin.

“I sent him a message,” replied his friend Munatius. “He had been banished by his father, heaven help him, to the country-estate. Something about money, I believe.”

“If I were Fulvius,” said Publicius, “I’m sure my father would have the misfortune to drink a cup of Falernian in which a careless vintner had dropped some hemlock.”

A small painted girl in a rich embroidered cloak rolled over against him. “What a talker you are.” She took up a thin-necked flagon and put it to her nipple. “Drink, pretty bottle.” Then she lifted it to her mouth. “Are they always drunk in heaven or is it heaven to be always drunk?”

Publicius held her down and blew in her ear while she squealed with dismay. “Serves you right, Chloe,” he said. “Next time I’ll blow right through.”

“That’s what I’m always frightened about with a kiss,” said Chloe, “if it takes too long.” She shook her head to jingle the long gold earrings. “That’s the kind of noise gold makes. So don’t say you can’t tell me in the dark.”

A blowsy woman sitting nearby with a dirty-faced ruffian interrupted. “Shut up. Can’t you let respectable folk drink in peace?”

“You respectable!” said Chloe. “So’s your mother’s beard.”

The woman snarled and drew a dagger from her sandal. “Put that down,” said Munatius. He took up a cup, hurled it, and knocked the dagger from the woman’s hand.

“Leave her alone,” growled her lover. “She only wanted to pick her teeth.”

The woman turned on him and tore at his hair. They tumbled on the ground, punching, biting, their legs kicking in the air.

“Fine,” cried Chloe. “My money on the fat lady. There’s more about her than appears. I’m learning fast.”

A rose-chapleted girl peeped round the side of an upended cart and poured a bucket of water over the fighters. They sat up, shaking their heads and breathing hard. “Who stole my dagger?” said the blowsy woman, feeling round in the grass.

“Search me,” giggled Chloe, who had hidden the knife under her dress. The woman saw it, leaped across, snatched it up, and stabbed at Chloe’s breast. Munatius kicked at her, catching her under the chin and laying her out. “She’s killed me,” screamed Chloe. The dagger had passed through the fleshy part of her upper arm.

Publicius pulled the dagger out. “You’re all right. Let’s see how your blood tastes.” He kissed the wound, smeared the blood on his mouth, and then kissed the moaning Chloe. The dirty-faced man took up the fainted woman by the two heels and dragged her away under a tent.

On the other side of the cart a group of farmers were arguing about politics. “I tell you I won’t stand for those Gauls up beyond the Padus getting the vote. I had a cousin who started a farm there, and they cold-shouldered him into ruin.”

Next to them two men were discussing the trouble they had had over the frosts this year, and a trio were shouting at one another in debate over the values of pig-manure, lime, seaweed and leaf mould as fertilisers. Only on one subject was the army entirely at one: that the financiers had wrecked the world and that Catalina was the only man capable of giving a fair deal.

7

Catalina decided to keep on the defensive till his army was better trained and weaponed, and to arrange for the outbreak at Rome on the first suitable occasion. Meanwhile his cavalry scoured the country, cutting off where possible the consular levies. News came that Metellus Celer had reached Picenum and was setting hard to work to garrison the mountain-passes. The consul Antonius was encamped a little north of Rome while his general Petreius organised the levies. Catalina had no doubt of his ability to sweep that force aside as soon as the revolt at Rome was ready. He mixed with his soldiers in the camp, heartening them and gaining daily a great fidelity.

8

Aulus Fulvius took no great interest in politics, but he received his friend’s message at a time when he was unutterably bored with his country-exile. Munatius, who had written to all the youths of his acquaintance, had remembered to add a postscript for Fulvius. “Item: all bad-tempered fathers to be deprived of civil rights.” The prospect of such a revolution was too sweet for Fulvius. With the vaguest of ideas as to what the trouble was all about, he set off with a single servant after kissing the negro slave-girl whom he had been meeting in the apple-orchard; for he had been greatly struck by a chance remark of Clodius that a man should have two mistresses, a black-shaded girl for the dark and a blonde-hued girl for the light. He expected to find Clodius with Catalina, and wanted to boast that he had at least tried the first part of the recipe.

Since he took the revolt so lightly, he made no attempt to find out where the consular army lay or to hide evidence of his treasonable intentions. As a result he blundered into a party of horsemen who found in his baggage the letter from Munatius as well as one which Fulvius had himself written for Sempronia, declaring his undying love and his resolution to join the rebels. He was therefore sent under guard to his father at Rome, and his father, after staring at him in speechless anger, ordered him to be kept in chains until a family council could be held.

The council was not long in assembling, and Fulvius was brought chained before it. His father, two uncles, three cousins and a great-uncle were the members. The elder Fulvius stated the charge briefly.

“He has been whoring and squandering money. I told him to stay at the villa. He left without orders and was taken prisoner while riding to join the rebels. There is evidence in his own hand.” He flung the letters on the table and then turned to his son. “What have you to say for yourself.”

“I wanted to see some of my friends,” stammered Fulvius.

“That’s enough from you,” shouted his father. “The letters condemn you as a rebel to the state. I, am here to take the advice of the family council as to the only fitting punishment.” He looked at the embarrassed council. “As you all know, that formality is essential so that my sentence may be legalised. But you can all have no doubt as to what he deserves.”

“Send him back to the villa,” suggested one of the uncles.

“Give him a touch of the stick,” said the youngest of the cousins to the great indignation of Fulvius. The suggestion wouldn’t have been so bad coming from one of the elders, but from this youngster it was insufferable.

“I won’t be beaten,” he said boldly. “I’m a Roman citizen.”

“You’re a son who is completely in the power of his father,” replied the elder Fulvius sharply. “Even if that power needs the authority of the family council in extreme matters. Needless to say, the only possible penalty is death.”

The other members of the family gasped. Certainly they could legally impose such a penalty, but the power was never used nowadays since the state-tribunals had been set up. Fulvius could not comprehend the statement at all. “Here I say now,” he protested. “I was only going to see some friends.”

“I have the vote of the council supporting me, of course?” said his father in a ferociously interrogative voice. The other members stirred and looked at one another. The youngest cousin opened his mouth and shut it again.

“He is your own son,” mumbled one of the uncles. “The last word is for you … but I think all the same …”

“You don’t have to think,” replied the head of the family. “He is guilty of treason. He therefore deserves death. That being settled, he is no longer my son, except in so far as the relationship allows me to execute judgment and finalise the denunciation of his status.”

The others stirred again. They did not like it, and yet did not dare to face the glittering eyes of old Fulvius and invite his passionate voice. He was the father and within his rights. Let him have his way then, and on his own head be the act. They wanted to escape.

“We leave the sentence in your hands,” said the uncle.

“That is, you acquiesce in the death-sentence.”

“Yes … that is …”

Old Fulvius ignored the equivocations. “The council is dismissed.” The men filed out, unable to look at young Fulvius, who stared round in doubt and bewilderment. What nonsense was everyone talking? Then he was alone with his father.

“I won’t do it again,” he said weakly. “I only wanted to see some friends of mine.”

“You won’t do it again,” answered the old man fiercely. “That’s the truest word you’ve ever spoken.” He signed to two strong-limbed slaves. “Take him out and strangle him.”

Fulvius shrieked and rattled his chains, but the slaves were upon him, pinning his arms and clapping a huge hand over his mouth; it wasn’t often they were given a chance to murder one of their masters with impunity. Fulvius was quite helpless and forbore to struggle. He felt utterly robbed of strength, embraced by some giantess. Who would ever tell Clodius now about the little negro-girl? It was impossible to feel danger when he couldn’t shriek. All his thoughts were taken up by the difficulty of breathing through his nose, over which a thumb was pressing. One of the slaves produced a length of rope. The negro-girl’s teeth flashed and then were scattered about in starry glints. Someone was making a noise like a croupy fowl. Why didn’t someone else tell Clodius?

9

Old Fulvius called for a beaker of wine, and, wiping away the line of dried sweat from his lips, drank it with a steady hand. Then he sat staring before him. “He had no one but himself to blame,” he said in a low voice. “I warned him. He lived only to see me dead. He was a traitor.”

The iron-hearted men of early Rome were hallooing down the years. He leaned to catch the voices; but the years were windy or age had rendered his hearing weak. Did not the founder of the Republic sentence his two sons to death for treason? Perhaps this was the last year of the ancient virtue; it was well then that there was still a father who could signalise the year with an act of justice that showed no consideration for person. He was not so old. He could beget further sons.

“Send in Lalage,” he said, and drank again.

A tall copper-haired girl entered. “You sent for me?”

“Yes,” he said, and the hand which he reached out was quite steady.

X - THE BETRAYAL

I

Orestilla’s first thought in the morning after Catalina’s departure was of Cethegus. What was she to do about him? She had kept him at bay during the last few weeks by repeating to herself that she was afraid of Catalina’s presence, and that if he ever left her alone again she would take revenge by surrendering, at least once, to Cethegus. Once, only once, the voices craved lyingly; once will be enough; and she, lying, agreed. But now that she was left alone, she felt terrified. She sent at once for the maid and told her to inform the porter that on no account must Cethegus be admitted. Every step in the corridor made her shake with fear.

Then, side by side with a deeper sympathy for Catalina, there arose a stronger revolt. She remembered her daughter in the country and sent for her, arguing that she did not like to leave her there while things were so unsettled. That was what she would tell Catalina, but she could not bring herself to believe that they would meet again. That last embrace had been so crudely distant, so selfishly preoccupied on both sides, that it seemed in its completion to have severed them for ever. She feared that she would be with child because of it; for she felt that the child of such an embrace would kill her at birth, being as ruthlessly egoistic as the spasm of its conception.

As she brooded on this fear, she was inclined to send for Cethegus; but a fear still deeper held her inactive, and she awaited the return of her daughter by her first husband with growing eagerness.

2

Three scowling magicians stood in the study of Lentulus, and Lentulus was pleasantly aware of their emotion of trade-competition. There was Matthias; a pygmy of a man named Labda; and a man who looked like an albino-negro named Leucon. “Now,” said Lentulus, drumming on the table. “I want to see if experts can agree. Gentlemen, explain yourselves.”

“I have explained myself,” said Matthias without looking at his companions; his large black eyes were fixed on Lentulus as if all other objects were non-existent. “My heart is clear to you as the fires of crystal that engirdle the world.”

Leucon took out a phylactery and bound it round his brow. Labda squatted on the floor and drew triangles with his finger. “Will my lord please to spit?”

“Certainly.” Lentulus spat on the floor and Labda bent down to trace out the constellations implied by the drops. Leucon’s eyes turned inwards as if they meant to disappear inside his skull. He gave a gurgling cry and spoke in a quick unintelligible voice. Slowly some sense came out of the babble. Certain words repeated themselves.

“Lord lord I call upon him beyond me stands the lord lord lord where the wheeling wings wings wheel wings which lord lord lord …”

Matthias refused to be distracted. He took from his breast a scroll and handed it to Lentulus, who read: “In the Sibylline Leaves it is written, The three Cs shall rule Rome.”

“Three. What do you make of three?” Lentulus inquired of Leucon.

“Three is the number of a man split three split one the woman moans the man stands out of it comes the lord three three three …”

“Venus will be in occultation of the Moon,” said Labda from the floor. “Saturn rules and Mars is rising. War and triumph and a reversal of gods.”

“The three Cornelii,” resumed Matthias. “ Cinna, Sulla, and Lentulus Sura.”

“He is first that rises third on the third arises the number of a man arising …” Leucon was becoming more coherent. “I see a new Rome. I see power in his nostrils and a crown upon his head.”

Lentulus sighed. “Too much noise. But experts are always noisy in conference.” He closed his beady eyes. There was something behind all this. Why should not a liar be a mouthpiece of divine truth? Were not the lowest types most likely to be mediums of the unknown, since they could be most readily worked on by the unconscious forces of fate? He opened his eyes to find Matthias staring at him with dark-eyed insistence. Lentulus was the third Cornelius and would be king of Rome. Why not?

3

When Cethegus was refused admittance to Orestilla, he was furious. Then he grew coldly angry. He would gain her yet; but to do that safely he must first destroy Catalina. But the conspiracy must go ahead, and he did not feel sufficient confidence to seek control of it alone. His thoughts at once turned to Lentulus. The position of Cæsar worried him, for Catalina had refused to let the others know how far Cæsar was implicated. On the night of Catalina’s departure Cethegus had suddenly realised that it was necessary to know exactly where Cæsar stood, and he had sent Curius to ride after Catalina and ask him how Cæsar was to be treated. Curius caught the party up just before they reached the gates and gave his message.

“Tell him to leave Cæsar alone,” said Catalina sadly.

Curius, with his own nerves on edge, caught the note of pain in the voice. “Has Cæsar drawn out?” he asked slyly.

Catalina did not like the tone of the question. “Tell Cethegus what I said,” he replied, and turned away. He had lost all liking for Curius, and wondered for a moment what had changed him; then he dismissed the subject. He had other things to think about.

Curius was hurt again by Catalina’s snub, but he also registered the emotion that Cæsar had somehow let Catalina down badly. He was pleased to learn this, for it curiously relieved him of his own sense of guilt. Probably Cæsar was the cause of all Catalina’s troubles; the information that Curius had given Fulvia had doubtless been trivial and of no weight. This idea, while removing much of the remorse that twinged Curius, made him self-righteously enraged at Cæsar. It was one thing for Curius to provide information for his mistress with heart-rending scenes; but what excuse did Cæsar have?

When Cethegus received the message about Cæsar, he grew all the more convinced that he must build up with Lentulus a plot within a plot. Catalina had deliberately been misleading his men about Cæsar’s implication; he was not such a strong man after all; in fact he was an impostor. Cethegus and Lentulus would take charge of things and get rid of Catalina at the moment of opportune crisis.

Cethegus had a clear enough perception of men, and knew that Lentulus would be an easy tool. He began with flattery without overdoing it. “Who is Catalina after all?” he said. “It seems to me that someone with a greater name is necessary. Sulla may have been obscure at first, but surely a Cornelius is different from a Sergius?”

Lentulus watched him from under heavy eyelids. “Names are of value, my dear friend,” he agreed. “But what is the point of your remarks? I have never yet observed you waste rhetoric on a friend merely to lighten his boredom.”

“I was thinking it is as well Catalina has gone to Etruria. He’s the right man for a soldier’s job, but the way he bungled the negotiations with Cæsar shows his weakness. We need a proper statesman.”

Lentulus yawned. “I am no divine hero, as you very well know. If you think it fortunate I’m in charge here, it must be because it suits you.”

So they drifted to closer grips. Lentulus was excited by the overtures from Cethegus, for they seemed mysteriously to confirm the prophecies of the soothsayers! He listened with growing amiability, and Cethegus was encouraged to expose more of his plans. Lentulus also had a shrewd sense of men’s weaker spots, and he soon guessed that Cethegus had some grudge against Catalina. That did not matter. Rather, it was very lucky, and was not all luck the result of ruling stars? After all the prophets seemed to be getting the best of things. Cethegus had never known him so genial.

4

Sulpicius and Cato had decided to impeach Murena for bribery, and they went ahead despite all the protests of their friends. As it was necessary to make fully certain of Murena’s acquittal, Cicero, Hortensius and Crassus took up the defence. Crassus was pleased to give this help, which ensured the support of the Equites on the jury; for he wanted in every way now to dissociate himself from the radicals. Sometime before he had got together a large quantity of valuables and prepared to migrate to an estate in Asia if the revolution succeeded.

Cicero was living jubilantly from day to day; and when he stood in the court pleading for Murena, he felt himself indeed the complete statesman. It was all that he could do to keep from insulting his two friends the prosecutors, so ludicrous he felt their disregard for political expediency. He rated Sulpicius for being a legal theorist who had tied up his mind with phraseology, and Cato for being an abstract moralist who had attenuated his ethic to such a purity that it could not be applied anywhere to life. Then he spoke of the need for a worthy and strong consul like Murena. If Murena was disqualified there would have to be a new election and that would be an invitation to radical outbreaks. After the usual concluding touches of pathos, he waited for the verdict of acquittal and received it with no loss of time. The Republic was assured.

Cato gave one glance of scorn at the jurors and walked out. Sulpicius could not take things so easily; he had writhed under Cicero’s clumsy witticisms; he would abjure the world of politics where all kinds of fears twisted men from the plain facts; the consoling world of juridical analysis remained, and to that he would give himself wholly.

5

Lentulus found himself surrendering more and more to dreams. He would become King of Rome after Catalina was removed. The lucky antagonism of Cethegus would see to that removal, and Cethegus would be no rival for supreme power; he was the perfect colleague, aiming only at the satisfaction of certain wants and at slaking his emotions. Lentulus let his mind range over the Empire; he spent his time dividing the provinces, making and unmaking kings. Sometimes he awoke with a start from these fancies, and laughed at himself. Then he relapsed again. The impeachment of Lucius Murena brought to his mind the fact that Further Gaul was held by Gaius Murena, who would undoubtedly stand for the Senate; and Lentulus, feeling himself already the organiser and minister of far-flung schemes of combination and balance of forces, wondered how he could counterblast the conservatives in the Province. He recalled that among the men attached in varying degrees to his person there was one Publius Umbrenus, a merchant, who had traded in Gaul, and that some ambassadors from the tribe of the Allobroges were at present in Rome petitioning the Senate. What a fine coup, what an excellent revelation of his masterly sense of government, if he could arrange for the Allobroges to attack Gaius Murena simultaneously with the attack on Rome by Catalina. The Allobroges were a warlike people, and the ambassadors, despite their gifts, were receiving scant attention from the Senate. The chance was too good to be missed.

On instructions from Lentulus, Umbrenus accosted the deputies in the Forum, recalled himself to their acquaintance, and chatted about his memories of Gaul. Sympathetically he inquired about the province, commiserated with the deputies on the state of affairs in their district, and hinted that he knew where alone measures of relief could be gained.

As the deputies pressed him for his help, he took them to Sempronia’s house nearby and sent for Gabinius, the most capable of the financial experts in the conspiracy. Gabinius talked the matter over with the deputies, explained the aims of the conspiracy, and showed them how they could share in the economic benefits. To impress the men, Gabinius and Umbrenus boasted that practically every public man in Rome was behind the conspiracy. Strongly affected, the deputies left to consider the matter.

6

It was clear that someone had betrayed the meeting at Læca’s, so that now much greater care was taken. Only the heads of the conspiracy met for discussion, and Curius once more had nothing but meagre scraps of surmise for Fulvia. She began to lose something of her fear of him, and became neglectful again.

“How can you bear to be so unkind?” he complained. “Haven’t I spoiled my whole life for you, and smirched my honour? I would have killed anyone who’d even hinted a year ago that I’d have done the things I’ve done.”

“Then it’s time you killed yourself for having done them,” she remarked coldly.

“But wouldn’t you care? Surely a little?” he pleaded. “I did it all for you.”

“You didn’t. You did it for money.”

“Don’t you dare say that.” He grasped her in his arms and put his hand about her throat. “I can’t stand it. Take the words back.”

“I won’t.”

He pushed her down and tightened his grip, sobbing and complaining. “All for you. Tell me the truth. All for you.”

“Yes, yes,” she said hoarsely, tearing at his hands and feeling that her last hour was come. “It was for me.”

At once he relaxed and fell weeping in her lap. “I loathe money. It means nothing to me. How could you say that I betrayed my best friend for money. And it wasn’t me anyway. It was Cæsar.” He longed to win a fortune so that he could come and throw it contemptuously at Fulvia, ram the coins down her throat, pour them molten into the maw of her lying lust.

Fulvia slowly recovered herself and grew interested in what he had said. “What’s that about Cæsar?”

“Catalina told me Cæsar was in it but wriggled out.”

Fulvia considered. That was at least something to retail to her employers; she had had so little of late.

7

The closed door of Orestilla’s house was driving Cethegus insane with rage. He passed it by designedly, looking forward to the day when he would come with men armed with axes. Then she would not have time to think of plans to fool him, to lead him on and then turn him down. She was the vilest woman in Rome and he desired her. In desperation he succumbed to Chelidon’s importunate requests and met her again at the assignation-rooms.

“You’re more handsome than ever,” she said. “You look like a one-eyed wolf. Kiss me.”

His only consolation was to go home and beat Precia. How dare his mistress look so old. Her eyes were deep-sunken patches of raw skin. Though she was thin, her skin was loose. He drank deeply, and beat her.

Then he dominated all the meetings of the conspirators, demanding action. He had lost all sense of caution. When Lentulus first mentioned the Allobroges, his impulse had been to oppose any meddling with the foreign ambassadors; he saw the risk; but the wish to placate Lentulus and leave undisturbed his sense of great diplomacies, mixed with his own growing recklessness, stopped his tongue. Something, anything, must be done. It was imbecile to wait while the government completed preparations; there was no need to pause for Catalina. Call on the mob; they would do all the necessary work.

Lentulus was not displeased by this urgency, but he was unable to rouse himself from the lethargy of dreams. He wanted Cethegus to force the situation, as he wanted him to get rid of Catalina later on. The two men now had no pretences.

“Why do you hate Catalina?” asked Lentulus, when they were alone.

“That’s my concern. I’ll settle with him so that everyone will think he was killed in storming the city. That’s the best plan. He’ll leave a memory for the people to worship, and we’ll be able to use him better dead than we could alive.”

“Tell me what you want for your part in all this?”

“The second rank to you, and one other thing. I’ll tell you what it is when the time comes. But it’s nothing you’ll want.”

8

Orestilla scarcely knew her daughter when she saw her. Two years had made such a difference. The child, now eight years old, had shot up; instead of being rather dumpy, she was thin and lengthy. Frightened of her mother, she needed to be coaxed before she would even eat a mouthful, and she disliked her baby half-sister passionately. On the second day she sidled up to her mother and asked, “Where is he?”

Orestilla could not think for a moment who was meant, then she said, “Far away.”

“Is he ever coming back?”

“I don’t know. Of course he is. I suppose.”

The child buried her face in her mother’s lap until Orestilla raised it for fear that she was smothered. The child’s face was flushed and her eyes filmed. Orestilla shook her. “Wake up, you silly little thing.”

The child stole away and sat in a corner watching the cradle where her half-sister lay.

Next day Orestilla found the baby turned round with a swaddling-cloth wound round her face and a cushion placed over her head, stifled. Her heart bounded with a moment of abject misery and terror; she wailed, seized the dead child and hugged it in her arms, wailing wildly. The nurse rushed in and wailed in concert; she had done nothing; no one had passed through the door but the baby’s sister. These words struck Orestilla with a far greater pain than the discovery itself, but they quieted her. She handed the dead baby to the nurse and went in search of the elder child. She found her playing with some shells in the small courtyard.

Orestilla picked her up and held her face between two hands. “Why did you do it? Why?” She could scarcely whisper.

The child looked at her with innocent wide-open eyes. “What, mother?”

“How could you harm a little helpless baby?”

“I haven’t done anything, mother.”

Orestilla began to cry softly, and the child cried in sympathy, repeating, “But I haven’t done anything, mother, truly I haven’t.”

Orestilla felt guilty as she clasped the child to her breast, as if by the embrace she was condoning the death, provoking it. Had not her failure to give enough love to this child been the real provocation? She was the guilty one, not the poor child. She felt painfully, overwhelmingly drawn to her firstborn. More than ever something within her cried in blind persistence of pain and desire: Catalina will never return. And yet her love of Catalina was consumingly the reality of her life. She knew that if he returned she would send the child back to the country, forgetting about her after the first week of remorse. But as she held the child, there was an aching sweetness in the embrace which obliterated all else.

9

Innocence wears a bold face. If people show that they suspect you most unreasonably, the best way to show them their wrongness is to act twice as carelessly. That was how Mucia argued. It was quite ridiculous for such a scandal to have grown up over a Greek equerry, however handsome and although he did have hyacinthine hair and rode like a centaur. The best way to silence gossip was to show that she cared nothing for the equerry, and how could that be done better than by having twenty young men crowding about her? But the unpersuaded eye of her silent brother Metellus Nepos worried her, and, realising that he was working with Cæsar, she made great efforts to gain Cæsar’s help. He found it difficult to refuse to call on her when requested. She was the wife of Pompeius, and the last thing he wished was to quarrel with her or to come between her and Pompeius. But he had no choice. She made it clear that unless he gave her his support she would seek to embroil him with her husband.

“Of course you have my support,” said Cæsar, “in every way.”

She came close. “I’m so glad you love me, I was afraid you didn’t.”

He felt that the only way of escaping from the worst consequences of the liaison was a temporary submission. There could surely be no doubt that she would be divorced, and that meant Pompeius looking for another wife. Cæsar wondered if he could bring Pompeius to marry Iulia, and then drove out the thought. Iulia was young enough to be the man’s daughter; everything was as yet shadowy; but with masterful tact everything was possible. For the moment the main thing was to dispose of Mucia. Mucia for her part was determined to make the most of his partisanship, sending for him at the most inconvenient hours. She salved her conscience with one unfailing remark:

“There’s nothing I hate more in this world than infidelity. But fate’s different. Mortals can’t fight against fate. They simply can’t. I knew it was fate the moment that you told me you loved me.”

He did his best to remove her interest and confuse the vestiges of his own guilt by sending her on various pretexts some of the youths who worked for him, but she was not to be distracted. One day he sent Labienus, and, unknown to him, Labienus was successful on that one occasion; but immediately afterwards Mucia took a strong dislike to him and would not admit him to the house again. Labienus jested with Cæsar about it, but was deeply hurt and never confessed to the one successful afternoon, which had lifted him to a pinnacle of ambitious ecstasy. He was a snob; and the hope of being the known lover of the wife of Pompeius had meant far more to him than Cæsar guessed. But now he was left suspicious; he could not lose the feeling that Cæsar had planned the whole episode with Mucia to make a fool of him. Instead of being able to meet with sly grandiloquence the hints of his friends that he was Mucia’s lover, he found himself stiffening with outrage at the mention of her name, and that one successful afternoon became a horror-spot in his mind.

10

The Allobroges were powerfully swayed by the arguments of Gabinius and Umbrenus, but they had natural suspicions and fears as to involving themselves in a conspiracy in a foreign state where they had no means of properly evaluating the forces at work. They asked for another meeting at Sempronia’s house and decided that what they heard this time would make up their minds for them. Sempronia received them in her best matronly manner, and they presented her with some enamels from Bibracte.

“Where do they come from?” she asked, interested. “Sidon or Alexandria?”

“From our native land,” said Acco, one of the deputies, in his precise guttural Latin.

Sempronia considered the finish and grace of the designs. Before a nation could produce one such article it must have won its form of civilisation. “How small-minded we are,” she said. “Please excuse my lack of intelligence. Perhaps someday I will visit Bibracte.” Young men were striding along the streets of Bibracte, fair-haired and blue-eyed and dressed in woollen breeches bound about the legs. She felt dissatisfied with the enclosed revolving intrigues of Rome. There was a world outside, developing, stirring, emerging out of savagery, travailing into individuality. She would travel, not blinded by the lust for profit like the other Romans, who at the very best did no more than visit the spots famous in literature so as to be able to speak of having seen them. She would travel to observe, to feel and enjoy the difference of cultures, to learn the subtly diverging identities of Latin and Gallic and Lusitanian and Damascene.

Umbrenus and Gabinius arrived, full of plausible arguments and statistics. The Allobroges listened attentively. The Romans were very clever, but quite unaware of the plots that were going on among the Helvetian and Æduan tribes; they were so full of their own politics that they never imagined the Gallic tribes also had their parties. If the nationalist movement got the upper-hand among the Helvetii and then burst out in the Ædui, these Romans might yet regret the day of their absorbed arrogance. But of course the Gallic reactionaries might win and complete alliances with Rome and in any event something must be done about these debts with which the cursed Roman business-men were strangulating the states. The emotions of the deputies were nationalistic, but this they could not confess at Rome.

Craftily then the Gauls listened, and the Romans with much condescension explained the policy of the conspirators. Sempronia alone watched the deputies with penetration; she saw something of the stir of thought beneath their respectful countenances. The men whose people made enamels of such beauty could not be treated like children.

Cethegus arrived in a sweat of fury. He had promised to meet Chelidon this afternoon, and was afraid of what would happen when he did not meet her. But he was determined not to succumb to her again. Already she would have been two hours waiting. Vehemently he poured out to the Gauls the story of the preparations for the outbreak. The Gauls listened even more intently; this was something more real; the fury caught their interest more sharply than the economic arguments. Here was force. They began to incline strongly to the belief that the conspiracy represented a vital impulse, with which it would be advisable to come to terms.

11

Chelidon had not been waiting two hours. She had waited one and a half, had then smashed a chair against the couch, run downstairs, and told her chairmen to carry her to the house of Cethegus. The porter told her that Cethegus was out, but this time she refused to yield. The porter, obeying orders, called for aid. Chelidon struggled and screamed in the grasp of six strong-armed slaves, thoroughly enjoying her predicament. Precia heard the noise and hurried out. She bade the servants stand aside. “Where’s my lover?” asked Chelidon, resolved to wreck everybody and everything, including herself.

Precia looked round at each of the slaves in turn, and then said to Chelidon, “Come inside.” When they were alone, she went on, “You referred to Cethegus, I take it.” Chelidon nodded. “He’s at Sempronia’s on some matter of business.”

“Then that’s where I’m going,” said Chelidon. It was Precia’s turn to nod. The two women walked out of the house, looking like friends starting on some shopping expedition.

They entered Sempronia’s house arm in arm. Precia had taken Chelidon’s arm, and Chelidon did not repel the gesture. Cethegus, with his arm lifted in mid-declamation, saw the pair and blenched. It was his nightmare come true at last. He shook himself and paused irresolutely. The deputies stared at him and then at the newcomers. Chelidon threw off Precia’s arm, advanced towards Cethegus, and smacked him in the face. “How dare you treat poor Precia so badly, and why didn’t you turn up to make love to me this afternoon?”

Sempronia, despite her love of scenes, felt that she must carry out her duty as conspirator. She took hold of Chelidon and drew her, foully swearing, from the room. Precia followed after a long humiliating look at Cethegus.

Cethegus sought to find the train of his thoughts. “So you see,” he concluded lamely, “it’d be definitely to your advantage.” His brain would not function, and he motioned to Gabinius to take up the argument. The deputies exchanged sidelong hardly-perceptible glances; there was no safety in a conspiracy where women were such insubordinate partners; these Romans were in their second-childhood. Sempronia had impressed the Gauls, but these other two women, particularly the blaspheming Chelidon, had struck them with horror. They listened politely to all that Gabinius and Umbrenus had to say, then went.

“This brave Cethegus cannot lift his eyes before a noisy woman,” said Acco. “I take it that we visit our patron Sanga after all.”

12

Cethegus dawdled, talking aimlessly to the two men, dreading the exposures of himself that must be going on in the next room. His suspicions were correct. Chelidon was narrating with tireless exaggeration the full story of their relations. Precia said nothing except, “Certainly he has been very miserable of late.” Sempronia was not deceived by her quietness; she knew that she was writhing with anger. But Precia was determined to placate Chelidon; she took her in her arms and kissed her. “Don’t upset yourself.” Sempronia called for wine.

“He can’t get away with it,” Chelidon repeated to Precia. “I should never have given him away to you if he’d met me regularly.”

Cethegus tried to steal away with Gabinius, but Precia was listening. She appeared at the door in the passage. “Come here, dear.” Muttering an excuse to Gabinius, he entered the room.

“Have a glass of wine,” said Sempronia. “You look heated after your exertions.”

Chelidon rose and put her arm round his neck. “I’ll forgive you if you’ll promise to be kind always to Precia. I think she’s ever so much nicer than you made me think. You know it’s years since we met.”

Cethegus stood speechless. “Go away, you fool,” he said at last, and pushed her from him. She reeled and fell on the floor, where she lay tittering slightly and kicking her legs like a baby.

“Shall we go home now, dear?” asked Precia.

“As you like,” said Cethegus sullenly. “Anywhere away from that drunken fool of a woman.”

“He kissed the sole of my foot once,” said Chelidon, kicking in his direction. “Perhaps you won’t believe it, but I almost don’t love him anymore.”

Cethegus helped Precia into her litter. “You are coming straight home,” she said, half in question, half in command.

“Yes,” he answered, wondering why he would be so weak as to obey.

But Precia had no abuse for him when he stood alone before her at home. “Well, goodbye,” she said. “I’m going to pack now.”

The first emotion of Cethegus was one of incredulous relief, then he felt doubt and indecision. “What do you want to go for?” he said, vaguely realising what a gap there would be in his life without her capable attentions. What a pity her face had sagged and stained so badly. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

She turned and looked steadily at him, and he would have given all his possessions to be able to retract those words. “I won’t go, then,” she said.

He caught the hardening light in her eyes and flinched. “Oh go.”

“I won’t,” she replied angrily, “and now you’re going to explain yourself.”

He beat his head. Why on earth did a man shackle himself to undergo such misery? How everyone would be laughing at him. The ugliest wife and mistress in Rome, and yet he’s made a fool of. Poor lunatic Cethegus.

13

The Allobroges waited till nightfall and then called on the patron of their people Quintus Fabius Sanga, descendant of the general who had conquered them. They had finally decided to throw themselves on the mercy of the conservatives, who as a party now supported the rights of small nations, rather than to join with the radicals, who though promising debt-relief tended to imperialism. They told Sanga of the attempts to tamper with their loyalty to the government, and he congratulated them, saying that the matter was of the greatest importance and that he would report it at once to the proper authorities; meanwhile they were to allow the overtures to continue. Sanga next called on Cicero with the news. Cicero was delighted and bade him confirm his orders to the deputies. At all costs they were to obtain proof of treason. The Roman state would not forget its gratitude if they were instrumental in bringing traitors to book.

New energy was infused into Cicero. After Murena’s trial he had relapsed into a twilight state of anxiety; for it was obvious that the government was not strong enough to take measures against the conspiracy which was rapidly developing in its midst. The slightest success on the part of Catalina without the walls or of the conspirators within would be sufficient to fan insurrection into flame throughout Italy. Rome would fall at once, and the Republic be wiped out. Everything appeared so quiet and stable, despite Catalina’s angry gathering of forces round Fæsulæ; but no one knew better than Cicero how delusive was the appearance. He felt that he was walking a narrow mountain-path where one false step would send him crashing into an abyss, dragging down the Concord of Orders with him. Everyone resented his position and its honours, and yet ignored the terrible responsibilities. Never had so complex a set of choices devolved on any single official of the Republic.

But now things were clearing. Nothing could be more compromising for the conspirators than to be revealed as intriguing with the Gauls, the traditional foes of Rome. Once either Catalina or the revolutionary core at Rome was broken, the danger would fade away. While those two centres remained intact, anything might happen.

14

Lentulus, for all his backwardness, was being forced by Cethegus together with curt messages from Catalina to come to the point of action. He agreed to name the first day of the Saturnalia for the outbreak, and then, pressed by Cethegus, surrendered still further. The tenth of December was selected as the day of rebellion, since that was the day when the tribunes changed over. Bestia would call an assembly and vigorously denounce Cicero as the hireling of the oppressors and the trickster who had driven Catalina into exile. Then, while the mob was roused, the conspiracy should organise the seizure of Rome that night. Rome was divided into sections, and each man was allotted a section. Fires were to be started at various strategic points to cause confusion and aid Catalina with his storming force. Cethegus was to take a body of gladiators and besiege Cicero in his house, battering down the doors and, if need be, burning all therein. Several of the diehards were similarly marked down for massacre. By dawn the army of Catalina would be in the city, all temples and public buildings would be occupied, the champions of the republic would be exterminated, and the new dispensation would be proclaimed.

Cethegus, who though always given to violence had once had a keen sense of actualities, had now grown doubly reckless. The feeling that others were laughing at him urged him on to jeer at them and to counsel any excess. He cut short any man who talked beyond a few sentences. “Deeds not words,” he cried. “Give me a handful of good fighters and I’ll storm the Senate House while you’re all still trusting to words.”

Lentulus had long since silenced any doubts as to the wisdom of enrolling the Allobroges. Did not a Roman general enlist Gauls as cavalry? Lentulus by his diplomatic skill was already acting the full part of command; he was showing fate that it had not been mistaken.

15

On the second of December Clodius called after a long absence at Nacca’s house. That morning he had met Nacca in the Forum, and found the man for once visibly drunk. Nacca had annoyed him by grabbing the shoulder of his toga and breathing into his face. “You know how I love my little girl,” he said. “I’m afraid for her, master Clodius. If anything happened to her, I’d kill the man that did it. I’d cut slices out of him and make him eat them till he choked himself.”

Clodius had shaken him off, but the meeting had reawakened his curiosity and he could not keep away. He found Flaviola alone, and she poured him out some wine. She looked thinner and sadder, and he remarked on it. She made no effort to hide her feelings. “It’s because you don’t come to see me now.”

He tried to jest away his sinking heart. “But you’re such a busy little girl, what can it matter if an old bore like myself comes or doesn’t come.”

“I want you to come,” she answered.

He faltered. “I wouldn’t like you to meet any harm.” She put her arm round his neck. “How could I come to harm through you?”

Clodius felt that he could no longer be held guilty of whatever happened. He drank, and kissed her. She clung about him. “O thank you so much.” He kissed her again, and she kissed him back eagerly. “Why didn’t you kiss me like that long ago? I so hoped you would.”

Her frankness abashed Clodius, and he disengaged her arms. “I’m going to tell your father to get you married—”

Her eyes flashed and she beat at him with her fists. “You do, and I’ll never forgive you. I’ll hate you, I’ll kill you.”

He caught her to him and kissed her again. “I won’t then. Kiss me.” After she had kissed him, he asked, “Where can I see you so that we won’t be disturbed?” She took his hand, led him upstairs, and showed him her small room. Beneath the window there was a shed with a slanting roof; reached by the alley at the back of the hall. It would be quite easy for him to climb into her room; no windows overlooked the shed.

“We’d better go back now,” she said. “He’ll be home any moment now. But he’ll be away to-morrow evening a long time, and though he’ll lock the front door, you’ll be able to visit me through the window.”

They descended the stairs again and had hardly taken their seats when Nacca entered. He was now no more than normally drunk, sang a rebel-ditty, and talked of the great day when Catalina would enter the city again. Clodius listened, sweetly satisfied by the presence of Flaviola in the room without needing to look at her.

16

The people were aware that some tremendous event was mustering on the horizon, though no details were known. Rumours passed from mouth to mouth that Catalina was approaching. Always he was announced as a day’s march from the walls, and the people listened hopelessly for the crash of his assault on the gates. Clodius walked about the slum-streets drinking. He knew that if he stopped drinking between now and the next evening, remorse would intervene and he would never visit Flaviola; also, if he became too drunk, he would fall asleep and miss the appointment. He was determined to be there, and the only way was to wander about, drinking and preaching insurrection at intervals.

He stood by a sewer-hole and saw a boy dangling a line from a stick into it. “What’s the game?” he asked.

“Fishing,” said the boy. “The fish swim up from the Tiber. They’re a bit sodden in taste, but good eating all the same.”

Clodius shuddered at the thought that sewer-nourished fish could be good eating. He took the boy’s hand and led him to a cookshop where he fed him till his stomach could hold no more. Then he bought him a sack of pea-flour for his mother and wandered off down the streets again, talking to the men and women who lounged at the doors with children running in and out between their legs. He drank enough to keep his brain vaguely on fire. Turning a corner, he saw a man standing on an up-ended pavement-stone that was used by hucksters to rest their trays on. The man was dressed in rags, but cleanly; the deep-set eyes in a parchment-face shone with fervour as he spoke, gesticulating with slow evangelical agony. An itinerant Stoic preacher.

“The world of reality is within you,” the man was crying. “Be at peace with the world. In that lies all virtue. How can a man be virtuous if his life is a vain kicking against the pricks? Bear that which is put on your backs with a patient spirit, and its weight will be as nothing, be it mountain-high. Peace is within you. Woe therefore to those who seek it in the things of the world. There is no peace that way. There is only a crying hunger and a crying satiety. You shall be unhappy wanting and unhappy owning. There is no property in this world, for all that you call your own is the fruit of unhappiness. Unhappy in search, unhappy in achievement. No sooner achieved than forgotten.”

He spoke on, his dogmas given an emotional twist foreign to the cooler hypotheses of the Stoics proper; a touch of the asceticism of the Cynics, mingled with dimmer Oriental influences, made the preachers vowed to poverty more emphatic and tormented in their discourses. Clodius, who was standing in the rear of the circle of listeners, felt himself unpleasantly stirred by the words and therefore compelled to interrupt. “Liar,” he called out in a voice of hectoring jest.

“Who are you that speak so boldly?” asked the man in mild tones.

“One that knows there is greater peace in a full belly and wife-warmed bed than in any words of counsel. Woe unto you, I say, that preach peace with the world and set yourself up as an agent for the capitalists. Perhaps you don’t know it. Then all the worse for this wisdom of yours. A fine world for those on top if those below would sweat contented with your words. Woe unto you for a foolish old man.”

The debate went on, eagerly listened to by the crowd. At length Clodius tired. “Have your peace within, old man. I’m thirsty and want some wine where you keep your peace. Much good may it do you.”

He passed into a tavern, and, leaning against the table, cursed at the men for lazy fools who couldn’t take what they wanted. What did he want? Did he want Flaviola? Did he want her so much or so little that he had to drink for twenty-four hours before he took her? The greater contempt he felt for himself, the more he cursed his listeners for their weak submissions.

17

Curius, though excluded from the inner councils, heard that the Allobroges were being taken to visit the various heads of the conspiracy. He hastened to Fulvia, proud of having something more definite at last, but she had already learned the facts from the government-spies with whom she was dealing. When Clodius importantly broached the subject, she could not forbear crushing him, though she had not meant to tell him more than necessary. “I know all that, and a great deal more. Your wonderful conspiracy is going to end to-morrow. The deputies will be arrested at the Gate, and then all the other clever conspirators. You ought to be thankful that I’ve helped you out of the mess.” She was frightened at having said so much and followed it up with more scornful remarks about his fine hopes of the past. “You thought you were going to be a king, didn’t you. Where’s this great Catalina of yours now? Skulking in the hills, and after to-morrow all his accomplices in Rome will be done for. What have you got to say about that?”

Curius was dumfounded. Even after he had betrayed Catalina, he had continued to believe that Catalina would prevail. So deeply-rooted was his conviction of Catalina as an unshakeable force that he had never really envisaged the failure of the revolution. His own contribution to a failure he had not imagined as having the remotest power to affect the ultimate results. He could not have gone ahead with the betrayal if he had thought otherwise. Therefore the revelation of Fulvia overwhelmed him. For the first time he saw that the conspiracy would fail and that all his plans for humbling Fulvia were ruined for ever.

Fulvia felt an almost equal misgiving. She realised as she spoke what a blow she had given Curius, though she could not see why she had hurt him so deeply. But she feared that he would do something to upset the counter-coup, and that shook her with a profound desperation. She lay back yawning. “Darling Curius, do let us put politics aside. They’ve changed you ever so much. They’ve spoiled everything. Can’t we forget them all and start again?”

Curius tried to think. Was it politics that had poisoned their relations? Certainly politics had played a part. Perhaps she was right, but he still felt cautious and suspicious. She opened her arms; at all costs he must be deluded, drawn from the subject. Curius approached her fearfully, unable to understand. Her change was too good to be true. Once more his self-pitiful optimism rushed to the surface. Of course she must really love him, as he loved her. The world must be reasonable, and Fulvia must love him. She would always be kind now.

She was kind for several hours, and next morning was weak enough to lend him some money. She thus did the very thing she least wanted to do. He at once made excuses to get away and gamble, and she could find no way of stopping him without reawakening his suspicions and returning him to the ideas that she most dreaded. Anyway, while he was gambling, he would not worry about politics.

18

Cicero was staying at home, carefully completing all arrangements. The Gauls were instructed to press for letters as proof of good faith and to announce their departure from Rome. To give the matter the final touch of realism they would be arrested on the road.

At the last meeting between the Allobroges and the conspirators Lentulus could not forbear to utter some of his dreams. Of his colleagues only Cethegus, Gabinius, and Cassius were present, and he spoke with a furtive excitement unlike his usual manner:

“Remember,” he said, “that there are more than mortal forces involved. According to the Leaves of the Sibyl, Rome is destined to be ruled by three Cornelii. Cinna and Sulla have ruled already, and I shall be the third. The fate of Rome has always been directed by the words of the Sibyl. Moreover, this year is exactly twenty years since the burning of the Capitol, and the augurs then prophesied from the omens that this year would be bloody with revolution.”

Acco bowed deeply and spoke in his staccato Latin. “We see the finger of heaven clearly in all you say, and we are honoured to be of any aid, however small. But you will understand that it will be necessary for us to have proof other than our mere words to our countrymen who have not seen and heard you.”

After the deputies had gone with letters written and sealed by Lentulus and the others, Lentulus shifted in his chair and glanced at his three colleagues. “Of course I only said what I did to impress the barbarians. They’re very superstitious, as you know. I wished to lose no chance of moving them.”

Cassius sat beaming amicably round. He had been unable to take a coherent interest in affairs since he had received a garbled account of Chelidon’s arrival at Sempronia’s house. One thing only was certain; she had been seducing Cethegus. Against Cethegus he felt no anger, but was slowly accumulating a murderous rage against Chelidon. Since the day of exposure he had refused to speak with her, and she had kept to her room, drinking with some of her maids.

Cethegus was scowling fiercely. He dreaded that Cassius would attack him about Chelidon, because he would then feel lunatically foolish; and his nerves were tattered by the smiling malice of Precia. She said little, but what she did say had a devastating effect; she could locate the exact spot at which to prick the inflation of his ego. He longed for the outbreak, when there would be fire, noise, and slaughter, and when he would be able to mature his plans for the murder of Catalina. How Catalina could be killed he did not know; much depended on circumstances, but surely an opportunity would arise in the hurly-burly. No one would suspect Cethegus; they would be sure to blame the conservatives, and the death would be followed by violent massacres as a reprisal. All the better.

“Someone should be sent to Gaul to make sure that all arrangements are duly carried through,” said Lentulus. “But we can talk about that to-morrow.”

19

Curius came staggering out of the gambling-hell where he had lost all his money. He was drunk, and terror had redescended on him. He forgot Fulvia’s brief kindness and knew only that Catalina, his protection, was broken. As he wandered along the road, he saw Clodius dishevelled and heated, talking to a group of loafers outside a bakery. “The whole world should be as comforting as the smell outside a baker’s shop,” he was crying. “Don’t you feel your hungry stomachs turn inside-out with yearning at the thought?”

Curius remembered how Clodius had lent him money at the Games of Flora. The rhetoric of Clodius awoke his emotions as once that of Catalina; he felt the unhappiness of the world damp about him, and himself in the midst the most unhappy man. Clodius was a good fellow; he was in the conspiracy; he must be warned; Curius would do at least one good turn before he died. Waiting till the speech ended, Curius took Clodius by the arm as he lurched off.

“Who the hell are you?” said Clodius, drawing away. “O you. You’re hopeless like the rest.”

“I know I am,” replied Curius tearfully. “But I’ve got a good heart. I only want to be loved. But I’ve always liked you. You’re the same as I am, and I won’t see you ruined too. I’ve got something to tell you.”

Clodius wanted to pass the time. He allowed Curius to lead him into a tavern. There Curius chose the darkest corner and began making mysterious remarks about death and disaster and the horrors of a loveless world. “What are you driving at?” demanded Clodius.

“Don’t ask me how I know it! I couldn’t tell you that. It’s a secret that’ll go to the grave with me. It wouldn’t be fair to tell people how I’ve suffered. Let them all be happy, all except me. I’d rather it was that way. But I want to save you. Clear out of Rome.”

Curius gradually became definite in reply to questions. “There’ll be arrests to-night. The Allobrogian ambassadors at the Mulvian Bridge. Then everyone. Cicero means to murder us all—all except me, because I’m doomed already.”

Clodius sobered somewhat. He felt that there was more than drunken delirium in what Curius said, and his belated sense of responsibility towards the revolution awoke. Much as he resented Catalina, he preferred to see him succeed; and though he cared little for Lentulus and the others, if they fell the revolution fell too. They must be warned.

“You once gave me some money and all but saved my life,” said Curius. “Lend me a few sesterces more.”

Clodius threw some coins on the table. “There you are.” He hurried out. Curius picked up the coins. What a miserably small sum. He had been mistaken in this man also. The whole world was decayed with selfishness, and now Fulvia was to have everything her own way. It was all Cæsar’s fault. Catalina had said so, and Catalina was the only man who might have saved things. Curius decided that he must ruin Cæsar and assert himself against Fulvia. It was the only way. Catalina would love him in the end, and so would Fulvia.

20

Clodius stood swaying in the street. He had been hastily shaved and washed at a barber’s, and now was the time that he should be keeping his appointment.

Dusk was washing faintly through the sky. What had Curius said? The Allobroges wouldn’t be leaving for hours yet; there would be lots of time to see Flaviola and then warn Cethegus. Clodius was angrily pleased at being able to bring the warning; the leaders had dropped him from their councils; they would be surprised to find him the man to save them from their fool-hardiness. But first Flaviola must be visited, if only for a few moments.

He found the backlane and clambered, clumsy with drink, upon the roof of the shed. How disgraceful to be making a love-visit in such a condition. He might at least have found time for a proper bath; he felt heavy with tiredness. What would Flaviola think?

Her face appeared, gay with mischievous pleasure, at the window. She leaned out and helped him in, not noticing in the dim light the weary lines of his face; but she could not help smelling the sour aroma of wine. “O you’ve been drinking,” she cried, and recoiled.

“Yes,” he answered sadly. “Do forgive me, Flaviola. I was so worried that something would come between us. I couldn’t bear the waiting.”

At once she loved him more than ever for having drunk. “Of course I forgive you.” She kissed his mouth. “I don’t mind it in the slightest. I love it now you’ve told me why.”

The dusk deepened, and at last quiet resumed the room. Out of a warm submission of happiness Clodius drifted into sleep, forgetting everything. The walls dissolved, and he was asleep in cradles of appeased blood. Flaviola lay with her arms about him; she would never let him go now. For the first time she thought of the future and feared; but her fear continually faded back into a sweet sense of possession. She had her arms about her lover and she would never let him go. Surely that was the solution. She was his, and she would never let him go because she was his forever. What was true for her must be true for him.

There was a noise on the stairs. Clodius shivered awake, startled by the enclasping arms. He struggled in the vaguely vast fears of half-sleep, and Flaviola, frightened in turn, clasped him tighter. Reaching out, he knocked over a small table that stood beside her bed. There was a crash that sounded earth-shaking in the quiet house.

“What is it?” came the voice of Nacca from outside the door.

Clodius struggled up, and Flaviola placed a finger to his lip. “What is it?” called Nacca again. Clodius wanted to tell Flaviola to say something reassuring, but feared that Nacca would hear him through the door. Flaviola could not think at all as she cowered at the foot of the bed. “What is it?” called Nacca again. Was it sickness, robbers, death? He was tormented with apprehension. “I’ll break the door down if you don’t answer me.”

Clodius felt nothing but a desire to escape Nacca and irritation at Flaviola for not saying something. He did not fear violence, but could not bear to face the man’s horrified reproaches. “Don’t say who it was,” he managed to whisper. “I’ll see you later.”

He scrambled out of the window, careless of the situation in which he was leaving the girl. The door burst open, and Nacca swung noisily into the room. “What is it?” With relief he saw the pale tousled face of Flaviola; then his eye took in the disordered room and he heard the scratch of the shoes of Clodius on the roof outside. Rushing to the window, he saw a man disappear round the corner of the building. With a last hope he turned again to Flaviola. Could it have been a robber? But the girl’s helpless fear robbed him of that hope. “You dirty little slut,” he cried. “So that’s why you wouldn’t marry a decent man.”

He tore at one of the bed-thongs while Flaviola cowered closer against the wall. “I’ll teach you,” he howled. “Who was it?” She did not answer. Nacca got the thong loose and whirled it in the air. “Who was it?”

Flaviola found her powers of speech. Clodius had told her that she mustn’t tell, and what he said must be right; everything would come out if she obeyed him. “It wasn’t anyone,” she said with defiant appeal.

Nacca’s rage became intolerable. “You’ve had your last chance. I see how I’ve been deceived in you. I’ll make you a good girl or die for it.” He swung the leathern thong.

21

Volturcius was with the ambassadorial party, pleased to be off at last to join Catalina in Etruria. Lentulus had given them both a note and a verbal message urgently requesting that Catalina should enrol slaves. Cethegus had stirred Lentulus to this, knowing that Catalina would not agree, and objecting to such dainty-handed methods. More importantly, the subject might be used later as the basis of a quarrel; perhaps Cethegus would put himself at the head of a slave-movement; in any event it would notify Catalina that the rebels at Rome had minds of their own.

The note ran: “The bearer of this will tell you who writes. Consider seriously how desperately you are placed, and remember you are a man. Reflect on what is necessary, and accept help wherever available, even from the lowest.” And Volturcius had been told to add: “You are declared an outlaw by the Senate. Why then do you refuse to enrol slaves? All arrangements at Rome are finalised. Be sure to march as quickly as possible.”

Volturcius whistled as he rode. He was to pick up the ambassadors at their lodgings. For some reason he did not expect them to be ready promptly and was surprised to see the horses standing ready saddled at the door. The baggage had been sent ahead. A few words were exchanged. The Gauls mounted their horses and the cavalcade set off, Volturcius riding first.

22

Clodius stood dazed in the street near Nacca’s house, lost between a sense of danger narrowly avoided and a sense of some grievous responsibility. Then he remembered. The ambassadors were to be arrested at the Mulvian Bridge. Curius had not mentioned that the deputies were conniving with the government, since he had not known that point; and as Clodius distractedly surveyed the issues, it seemed better to go straight off and intercept the deputies than to warn Cethegus. There were some carriers’ stables in the next street, where he had sometimes left a horse; and he hurried to the long shed, in one corner of which stood a blacksmith’s forge for mending wheels and chains. Hiring a horse on credit after some trouble in establishing his identity, he rode off towards the gate.

23

No chance was being taken. Cicero had commissioned two of the lesser prætors, reliable men with military experience, Flaccus and Pomptinus, to take a number of soldiers, picked fellows from Reate, and invest the bridge as for a pitched battle. Volturcius as well as the deputies must be caught. The two officers stationed men under the bridge at either end, in all the neighbouring houses, and at each turning of the road beyond. When the cavalcade came jogging up, Pomptinus stood forth and bade them halt.

“What is it?” called Volturcius, suspecting robbers and surprised at an attempt so near the city. “Get out of our way.”

“In the name of the Senate and the Roman People I bid you all to halt, dismount, and surrender yourselves,” cried Pomptinus, drawing his sword. Volturcius at once tugged at his sword-hilt, shouting to the deputies to assist him, and rode straight at Pomptinus, who stepped aside, avoiding the slash that Volturcius made at his head. Instantly Flaccus on the other side of the road signalled and shrill trumpet-blasts broke out. The moonlit space was thronged with men, starting out of the very earth. Volturcius looked round in astonishment. Soldiers poured from the houses, from under the bridge, from across the bridge, from the door of the old toll-box. Soldiers everywhere.

Volturcius made one last effort to break through. Leaving Pomptinus, he lashed at his horse with the bridle-end and charged at the soldiers on the bridge, swinging his sword to right and left. But the soldiers did not scatter, and he had no hope of leaping over them, for he saw spearmen several ranks deep. There was no point in having his horse killed. He reined up and dismounted flinging his sword in fury over the bridge. It glittered through the air and disappeared with a milky splash.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?” he cried, fumbling about in his bosom to find the letter and send it after the sword, but the soldiers grabbed him and led him before Pomptinus.

“You have a letter somewhere about you,” said Pomptinus. “Will you hand it over or be searched.”

“Here it is,” said Volturcius, handing him a note which he had been given by a girl for Munatius.

Pomptinus glanced at it. “This is not what I want.” He signed to the men. They began the search, and, pleased at the chance to handle Volturcius roughly, wrenched and poked at his tunic and shift. The letter was found and presented to Pomptinus. “Good,” he said. “Now bring the prisoners along.” The deputies, acting their part, had dismounted. They allowed themselves to be searched and herded by the soldiers. Volturcius ground his teeth. Someone had told tales, and he was caught in the snares, without a chance to fight decently. He wasn’t afraid of a fight, but this kind of thing made him feel that he was sweating blood.

24

As the procession began to move off, there was a clip-clop of horseshoes and Pomptinus quickly called a halt, issued orders, and set some of the spearmen across the road. Clodius appeared, belting at the old hack that he had hired. Seeing the line of soldiers, he slackened and stopped. Pomptinus recognised him. “What are you doing abroad at this time of the night, Publius Clodius?”

“At least I’m respectably alone,” replied Clodius. “Not brigandising about.” He had seen at a glance that he was too late and wanted to get himself free.

“Dismount,” said Pomptinus sternly.

“Certainly,” replied Clodius. “Can I have a word apart with you.” He took Pomptinus aside and said with a confidential leer, “I have come from the limbs of a married lady who at this moment is in imminent expectation of divorce. As proof of it I merely ask you to bed me beside the prettiest wench that your men can harry awake in the neighbourhood. If you can detect in me the slightest signs of interest in her proximity, then call me a liar. But tell me since when it is that the prætors have taken on the work of the nocturnal triumvirs?”

Pomptinus scrutinised him closely. There was something in the air of wildness, the bragging speech, which corroborated the words. “Where are you going then?”

“Out into the country. Anywhere to hide myself for a while.”

Pomptinus considered. “If you will allow yourself to be searched, you can go on.”

“With pleasure.”

The search produced neither document nor weapon, and Pomptinus saw that there was no point in an arrest. Whether or not Clodius was implicated, there was no direct proof, and his arrest would merely complicate, perhaps distract from the main issues. “You can go,” he said.

Clodius leaped on his horse and with a wild cheer rode on. He felt mad. He wanted to ride on away from Flaviola until she was outdistanced in memory. What would Nacca be saying now? Surely he would not hurt the girl whom he loved so much. But what was Clodius to do? He could not bear to return to Rome. There was no course but to ride on and join Catalina. That was what he must do.

By the time he had reached the first village, he was tired. He threw himself off the horse, banged on the door, thrust aside the surly innkeeper, and demanded a bed and a flagon of wine. The innkeeper called a drowsy girl, who led the way upstairs, showed Clodius the bed, and fetched the wine.

“The night’s cold,” she said, dawdling for at least a tip.

“Wine’s warm enough,” said Clodius. “Get out.” He never wanted another woman near him after Flaviola. She was all he could have wanted, and now he had spoiled everything. He would fight and die with Catalina.

He lay drinking and dreaming, and at last dozed off. Some hours later he woke with a hideous oppression of nightmare-anguish on his chest. The world was spiralling blackly round him, grimly bubbling with distorted faces that looked in upon him and then in upon themselves, until they faded in a whirl of dull amorphous flame. He was going to destruction; nothing could save him. Catalina was betrayed, the scene at the bridge had proved it. The world was foul with envy. The enemy of men stirred in the thick darkness of the room like an assassin behind a curtain. Loneliness was unbearable.

He hammered on the floor. The landlord shuffled wheezingly upstairs. “What is it now?”

“Send up that girl,” shouted Clodius. It wasn’t the girl he wanted; he couldn’t bear to be alone a moment longer in the darkness. The terror of death came close to him when he lay alone.

25

When Cassius reached home after the meeting with Cethegus, he could stand things no longer. He drank for three hours, meditating on his lot as the man whom no women appreciated and who had all his friendships perverted by their antics. Then he sent for Chelidon. She entered, as drunk as himself. “Are you sorry?” he asked with ponderous rage.

Chelidon regarded him blankly. “For what? I’m sorry I lost him.”

“Well, that settles it,” he said with lordly calm. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to kill you. For your own good.”

“All right,” said Chelidon, lying down on the couch. “Get it over quickly.”

Cassius rose with a waddle and gazed at her prostrate body, considering the mechanics of the problem. Then he picked up a cushion and put it across her face. She made no effort to move, and he held the cushion down for a while. Tiring, he lifted it. “Are you dead yet?”

“No,” she answered with lack of interest. Then she awoke to his intentions and clung about him. “Don’t kill me.”

“I must,” he answered. “I loved you so much, and you only took advantage of it. I’m finished. The only way I can stop people laughing is to kill you. But don’t think that it won’t hurt me more than you.”

She burst into tears. “It’s you that I loved all this while, and I never knew it till now. I only deserve to be killed. Come on, kill me.”

“That’s what I mean to do,” He took up a small fruit-knife from the table and held it against her throat, sawing away ineffectively. “The damned thing’s blunt. Why doesn’t it cut? I’ll hang you then.” He tore down some silken cord from the hangings and climbing on a chair threw them over an iron hook placed on a rafter for a hanging-lamp. “Hurry up.”

She rose meekly. He placed the cords round her neck and tried to hoist her up. She rose a foot from the ground and then the cord broke. She dropped, collapsing, to the floor. “Please get it over. I don’t deserve to live.”

Cassius again considered the problem, which was more difficult than he had thought. Was there any poison in the house or would he try pushing her down the stairs? Then he noticed that she was crying. “What are you crying about?”

“Because I love you. I never knew it till now.”

Cassius meditated on the words, knelt beside her, raised her up, and looked into her face. Without a doubt she was crying. What was she crying about? There was no reason for her to cry; it was he that was wronged. “Stop crying,” he said irritably, shaking her. “You mustn’t cry. I can’t bear to see you crying.” That made her cry more than ever. Cassius shook her again, and then became demented with tenderness. “You poor darling,” he sobbed. “Why are you crying? There’s no need for you to cry. I’d never do anything to make you cry.”

They lay weeping in each other’s arms. At last he understood what she was saying. She loved him. But that made the situation impossibly complex. “I can’t stay in Rome any longer,” he said. “It’s too late.” How sad everything was. They both wept for the lost chances, locked in a wet embrace.

Then they lay exhausted and Cassius had an idea. “I’d do anything for you. I’ll leave Rome, even though they’ve given me the best job of all—looking after the fires and keeping people from the fountains. But I’ll go. We’ll both go to Gaul. Somebody has to go there on keep an eye on things. We’ll go to-night. It’s the only way so that I won’t have to kill you.”

Chelidon wiped her tears away. “How happy we’ll be. You’re the loveliest man in the world. I only wish you were twice as fat so that I could love you all the more.”

Cassius took another drink and waddled to the door. He must have horses and mules saddled at once; he must be off before dawn. He would send a note to Lentulus explaining what he was doing. The Gauls were simple people who didn’t hear the gossip from Rome; he and Chelidon would be happy at last.

XI - THE TRIAL

I

Cicero sat anxiously waiting for Pomptinus. If the arrests were successful, he had at last beaten Catalina, and he had done it because he had driven Catalina from Rome. Whatever happened now to Lentulus and the others, there would be no serious outbreak; the forces in the city would be capable of keeping order. He heard voices in the porch and gripped the table. Steps down the Atrium. Then the face of Pomptinus. Smiles on the face. All was well.

“You have them?”

“I have them.”

Cicero felt a great gratitude for the fate that had not cheated him after all. Life was good, and the concord of orders would prevail. It was ridiculous to think that the cheap sneers of a few jaundiced persons could deafen the enormous chorus of praise that would ring through the centuries. Fate had spoken. He must school himself and remember that always. He would hear the continuing boom of fate and feel unconcerned at the most strident tones of Domitius, the filthiest abuse of the starveling mob. He was trampling over the patricians, Catalina and Lentulus and all their hangers-on. A plain man with a plain sense of right and wrong, he had shamed the supercilious noble and foiled the ruffians of high birth. What could be better?

“Keep the whole matter as quiet as possible, Pomptinus.”

“I have done so.”

2

Before dawn Cicero sent messages to Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius and Gabinius, and gave orders for the arrest of Cassius, Cæparius, Furius and other conspirators. The senators and Equites who had merely promised support to the conspiracy he decided to leave alone for the moment; perhaps later they would be arrested; first it was necessary to arrest the active plotters and accustom the public to strong measures. Word was sent round for an assembly of the Senate in the Temple of Concord.

Gabinius arrived first at the house, than Statilius, then Cethegus; there was a wait of some half an hour for Lentulus who had overslept himself. As each man entered, Cicero smiled pleasantly at him and said, “A little matter of imperative investigation. Of course do not concern yourself more than your conscience bids you. I am glad to see you take the matter so well.” Then he told the guard to remove them and see that they held speech with no one. Some of the senators, who had come to the house and learned of the discovery, suggested that the letters should be opened forthwith lest Cicero should make a fool of himself before the Senate with a false alarm. But Cicero smiled and said that he would take the risk; the seals should only be broken in the presence of the full Senate.

Lentulus, as still an officer of the state, was not arrested on arrival. Cicero took him friendlily by the hand and suggested that they should walk together to the Temple. He held the hand of Lentulus fast all the way, surrounded by the other senators, and Lentulus regarded him with his small heavy-lidded eyes. As they passed through the Forum, Cicero stopped, and, pausing till all chatter had ceased, he pointed up towards the Temple on the Capitoline top. Fleecy dawn-clouds surrounded it, and the stone was bathed in an unearthly pearl-grey.

“At this very moment,” said Cicero in a solemn voice saturated with a sense of the moment’s unique importance, “Iuppiter looks upon the light of a new era. Three years ago the Capitol was struck with lightning and the statues of many ancient men were flung down and the brazen tablets of the laws were melted. Then the sooth-sayers were summoned out of Etruria, and they prophesied the horrors of civil war and the end of the Empire unless the god was rightly placated. So Games were celebrated for ten days and all things done as the soothsayers bade; and they bade us make a greater statue of Iuppiter and place it high up and facing the east. For when the god looked on the rising sun there would be an end to all the conspiracies aimed against Rome and her empire. And on this morning after three years the god is ready and raised on high in his place and looking upon the rising sun.”

Lentulus lifted his heavy lids. “I trust the god is not such a strong sleeper as I am, or he will resent being awakened with such early regularity.”

The group moved on quietly; but in the porch of the Temple of Concord Cicero changed his attitude. “I have heard some unpleasant news,” he said, “and I must trouble you to wait here awhile. These men will see that no harm comes to you.” He signed to the armed guards, who closed round. Lentulus made no protest.

Cicero entered the Temple and completed the religious formalities. Briefly then he informed the Senate that proof of a vile treason had been laid before him and that he wished the senators to hear and see the full evidence. Volturcius was led in, guarded.

Volturcius lounged imperturbably on the slabbed floor, aware of all the eyes turned on him; but he was deeply troubled. He knew the contents of all the letters that had been seized, and he had guessed from the demeanour of the Gauls that they had betrayed the conspiracy. Nothing therefore was to be gained by a blank denial, and he was angered at the ease with which Lentulus had allowed the betrayal to occur. Why should he sacrifice himself to incapable plotters? After a glance round the temple, he decided to save his own life.

“You were taking letters to Catalina the rebel?” asked Cicero.

Volturcius answered that the letter had been taken from him and that he knew very little about the conspiracy, but what he knew he would tell. He was a friend of Gabinius and Cæparius; they had persuaded him to join the plot. He admitted that fire and slaughter had been prepared against the conservatives, but kept from mentioning Catalina’s name.

Cicero, satisfied, bade him be taken out. The Allobroges were introduced. They told the full tale of their temptation and of the discussions at which they had been present. Cicero conducted the cross-examination with eager skill, building up each detail of the plot and emphasising the arrangements made for rapine and massacre. The senators listened rapt in awe and horror. This was the real thing at last. They had joked and chafed at Cicero’s earnest warnings, even after the day when Catalina was driven from Rome; there had always been someone ready to say that Cicero was the provocateur, the agent deliberately pushing men to extremes in order to reap the benefit of their discomfiture. But this revelation was too exhaustively terrifying, the result of long-scheming revolutionary malice, not a mere explosion of talk ending in a feeble inaction that exposed the insincerity of the bombast.

The Gauls were asked to stand aside, and the prisoners were introduced separately. First Cethegus. He was asked to explain the quantities of arms which a search had found in his house. He replied that he was a collector of fine weapons as he could easily prove. Next, he was shown a letter, which he had to admit as his. Cicero cut the seal-thread and read the words aloud. They were addressed to the Senate and People of the Allobroges; they stated that Cethegus would fulfil all his promises to the deputies, and urged the Allobroges to act on the understanding established with the deputies. Asked to explain the letter, he stood silent.

Statilius was introduced and similarly questioned. He also admitted his own handwriting and refused to plead. Next came Lentulus. Cicero pointed to the seal which showed the head of an ancestor of Lentulus, and spoke gravely, “You recognise the seal. You see the likeness of your grandfather, an illustrious man who once took up arms against the revolutionaries of his day; and it, though silent, should have been eloquent to rebuke you from wickedness.”

Lentulus said nothing as the letters were read. Then he denied that any dishonest interpretation could be put on the words, and asked leave to question the witnesses. For a while he treated the matter with calm contempt and succeeded in making an impression even on his hostile audience, till at last Acco replied to one of his jeering questions, “You said that the Sibyl had named you as third ruler of Rome.”

At once something snapped inside Lentulus. He saw himself baited and despised, cornered hopelessly by his enemies. The deep-throated voice of Matthias, uttering with such plausible passion a belief in the star-prefigured greatness of his patron, sounded above the guttural voice of the Gaul. Lentulus realised that he was beaten, that all struggle was futile. He turned to Cicero with dignity.

“That is enough. I admit everything. All that they have said is true.”

There was a hum and then a hush of astonishment. Cicero could not believe his own success. Surely heaven had suddenly plucked at the man’s guilty conscience. The evidence was already decisive; but while persons fought stubbornly for their innocence, there was always someone who for his own purposes believed or feigned belief. Now Lentulus had confessed everything.

Statilius and Cethegus stared in despairing rage. They felt that Lentulus had wantonly torn away from them their last hope of safety. But Lentulus stood in the centre of the temple-floor, a broken old man, his lips moving silently. Star-mathematics were indeed a commentary, not an explanation; their imbecility was parallel with the imbecility of life. If only he could have his choice again, he would live such a simple sane life, a Cynic in a tub of puritan mockery. That was what life had meant him to be, and he had never realised it. Supremely sane, the only sane man on earth, he had made himself the tool of soothsayers. Tears blinked from his eyes.

Cicero continued with the examination. Volturcius was recalled and made to repeat his message. Lentulus shook as he was asked to identify the note, but not from fear or concern. He wanted only to ask Cicero if he might address the Senate and explain how he had been led astray, how he had erred from his true course of sanity. He wanted to prove to everyone that he was really sane, not a fool who wrote letters like that and dreamed of being a king. He had desired to be a Cynic King, the sane man who owned everything because he laughed at appetite; and maddeningly, he had never guessed it. Surely it was not too late—if he could only speak eloquently enough and explain things.

Gabinius was introduced; and ignorant of what had occurred, he denied everything like Cethegus and Statilius, though upset by the stealthily depressed faces of the others. Cicero however was not concerned with his superfluous testimony; he obtained from the broken Lentulus a ready resignation from the prætorship, and then ordered the prisoners to be taken outside. The debate began. Senator after senator rose to express gratitude for the consul’s great foresight and energy, his valour, wisdom, and prudence. Cicero sat trying not to look unduly proud, though he knew that he deserved every epithet. The fight had been long and one slip would have meant failure. It was right that these men should express gratitude when they had done so much to belittle and impede. A vote of thanks was passed. Then the two prætors were praised, and the four prisoners were ordered into private custody, together with a fifth, Cæparius, who had been arrested on his way to Appulia. Cassius had left the night before and escaped, but orders were issued for his arrest. Finally a Supplication, a solemn thanksgiving to the gods, was voted for Cicero, the first such honour paid to a civil official.

The five prisoners were distributed among five men of standing who stood as bail for their appearance. This step was taken because it was feared that a concerted attack might be made by the populace on a single jail. There was also a covert hope that Cæsar and Crassius, to whom Statilius and Gabinius were respectively committed, might incriminate themselves by an escape of the prisoners. The Senate broke up, and Cicero with a large guard proceeded to the Forum to address a strongly-policed gathering and acquaint the burgesses of the perils from which he had rescued them. After unfolding all the details of arson and pillage, and narrating the story of the arrests, he could not hold back his cry of triumph over the real enemy, Catalina, baffled by the distance of his exile.

“When I drove him out, I foresaw, Romans, that I need have no fear of drowsy Lentulus or fat Cassius or wild-blooded Cethegus. Catalina alone is the man to be dreaded, and dreadful only within these walls. He knew everything, he had access to everyone. He had the skill and the boldness to speak, to tempt, to tamper. He had the right villain’s acuteness and a tongue and a hand that never failed with their support. Already he had men to rely on, chosen for the execution of all his plans; and he did not merely issue orders. There was nothing to which he did not himself attend, for which he did not work and toil. He could endure cold and thirst and hunger. He is the enemy, and I saved you, Romans, when I drove him out.”

3

Cæsar had been keeping in the background the last few months, consolidating his position with Metellus Nepos and seeking to manage Mucia; but he had closely watched Catalina’s movements, convinced more every day of the nearing collapse. When Arrius, a friend, mentioned to him that he was about to attack Catalina in the Senate, Cæsar had not tried to dissuade him. When Arrius went, Cæsar suffered, but emerged from the suffering more determined than ever to go his own way. Catalina was for him the tempter to destruction, however much he might have given. The more Cæsar felt stirring in him a sense of purpose that this year of Catalina had finally liberated, the more he felt he must jealously guard that sense from the temptation of sharing Catalina’s rush into death. He must be hard. Hardness had been easy when he was dealing with people who meant little to him; now was the test. He waited for the debacle, considering how best he could protect himself from the efforts which his enemies would make to draw him into the whirlpool.

When Catalina left Rome, Cæsar decided that his first duty was self-preservation. He called on Cicero and handed him some trivial evidences dealing with the conspiracy. He was not harming Catalina; but he knew that Cicero, in the maze of his difficulties, would gratefully snatch at any suggestion of support, and Cicero had indeed been pleased by Cæsar’s show of suavely deferential interest. Cæsar knew that Cicero would not fail to stand by him to the extent of admitting, if challenged, this small aid.

As he sat at dinner with his prisoner Statilius, Cæsar saw another reason why he could probably rely on Cicero’s good will. The last thing that Cicero wanted was to cause riots. That was why he had feared Catalina. Cæsar had detected beneath Cicero’s moralising flamboyance a sound grasp of situations; and though the diehards would press for general proscription, Cicero would not consent unless things grew much more menacing. He would fear to arouse the populace; he knew how far he could go. The people would not rise to defend the five men who had been arrested, as they would have risen for Catalina or as they would rise for Cæsar. Cicero would work for compromise; he would go so far and no farther. The five arrested men were doomed, but Cicero would fear to arrest others on general suspicion.

“You are eating very little,” he said to Statilius. “Would you like some amusement? dancers or music or a reading?”

“No,” said Statilius, a short round-faced man. “I don’t feel like any of those things. What I would like is a horse and an open road.”

“I fear I can’t oblige, much as I sympathise.”

“I thought you were in it. How did you manage to get out at the right moment?”

“That is a subject you can scarcely expect me to discuss.”

Statilius regarded his host with enviously narrowed eyes. He wondered, if he were to snatch up one of the knives and stab Cæsar, would he have any chance of escape. Cæsar caught the glance and shook his head gently. “There are men at every door of the house.” Statilius still considered the project. At least he could kill Cæsar, or try … Would that be any satisfaction? If he were sure of a death-sentence in the Senate, he would leap at Cæsar now; but what unnerved him was the faint hope that the sentence would be exile. He thought of his dark-eyed wife with the little redly pouted mouth. She would marry again and forget him except for the pleasant scandal of having been a conspirator’s wife. He would die only to give his wife that small excitement. That was all he had been sweating at for the last two years.

“I suppose, whatever happens, they’ll confiscate all my goods and my wife’s as well,” he said.

“I fear so,” replied Cæsar, and wondered why Statilius looked so pleased.

4

Curius wandered disconsolately about all day, listening to the agitated rumours that filled the city-streets. His encounter with Clodius had convinced him even more deeply than ever that Cæsar was to blame for everything. The incredible failure of Catalina was the result of Cæsar’s betrayal; and that failure had ended all the hopes of Curius. He was frightened to return to Fulvia. If only he could do something to get his own back on Cæsar, life would be different.

Searching his mind, he remembered that Catulus was a bitter enemy of Cæsar on account of the elections for high priest, and, clutching at this hope, climbed up the steep road to the house on the Palatine. For a time he walked up and down the road in uncertainty, and then, in fear that he had made himself conspicuous, ran into the portico and asked breathlessly to see Catulus. The porter perceived that the visitor belonged to the upper classes, but his clothes were so shabby and dirtied, his face so smeared with dust and sweat, that he did not seem a suitable person, particularly in these violent days, to make a peremptory demand for an audience. He grumbled, and sent in the name. Catulus was on the point of going out, but decided from curiosity to see the visitor.

Curius twisted and stammered under the inquisition of the coldly commanding eyes. “It’s something about Cæsar,” he said.

Catulus was interested but did not show it. “What do you know of Cæsar and why should it concern me?”

“He gave Catalina away,” blurted Curius. “He was in it all. Worse than Catalina. He was the man to blame.” He became incoherent, realising that Catulus would not feel the least objection to Cæsar for having turned on Catalina.

Catulus selected the only comprehensible part of the diatribe. “Cæsar was allied with Catalina?”

“Yes, he was. Catalina told me. I know all about it.”

Catulus reflected. “Would you swear to that in public?”

“I would. I hate him—” Curius checked himself in time. Clearly all Catulus wanted to know was Cæsar’s complicity. “Someone’s shielding him. That’s why I came to you. You’ll be just, I know.”

Catulus digested the compliment. “Have you any proofs?” Curius shook his head vaguely. “See what you can get, and don’t forget what you have promised. I am going out now, but I shall be pleased if you will excuse me and remain for some refreshments.”

“I don’t want any refreshments,” said Curius, “and it’s no use offering money-rewards, for I wouldn’t take them. But I thought that as one friend to another you might advance me a loan. I know how to lay it out to advantage. Nothing to do with that other matter of course. Purely between you and me.” He hesitated before the cold inquiring eye.

“Very well,” said Catulus and beckoned to a slave.

5

That night, December the third, was fixed for the yearly winter-sacrifices to Bona Dea. This was not a public festival, but took place at the home of one of the higher officials, superintended by the Vestals. This year Cicero’s house had been honoured, so that he was unable to invite his council there. The stirring events of the day however required discussion, and he was offered the use of Clodia’s house. There he went to meet his council and some other eminent senators such as Cato and Catulus.

At home Terentia had busily prepared the main room for the religious service. Tullia, now a wife, was present; and her well-meant advice or criticism was deeply resented by her mother. Her suggestions were rudely ignored; and if she moved an ornament, Terentia at once replaced it in its original position. Tullia was not annoyed. She felt at last her mother’s equal and was already at ease with Piso who, overcoming the unfamiliarity of a youthful wife, talked to her in long periods modelled on her father’s style.

The room was hung with curtains and garlands, and the brazen utensils for the sacrifice were grouped round the hearth, before which stood a moveable altar of bronze and silver. Some matrons, wives of officials, had arrived, and Tullia was looking forward to the appearance of the Vestals. To put in time she approached a large-bosomed woman, an ædile’s wife, and said in a piping voice, “How many children have you, may I ask?” That seemed a proper matronly remark.

“None,” said the woman exasperatedly.

Tullia eyed the bosom with disbelief and tried again. “I haven’t any yet either. But I’m not giving up hope, are you? I believe the doctors say you never know.”

Terentia stamped up, one of her shoes loose. She would have liked to cuff Tullia, but somehow feared her in her novel wifehood. “I found one of the dolls that you forgot to burn,” she said gleefully. “Perhaps you’d like to take it with you.”

This remark beat Tullia, who withdrew into a corner where she remained till the Vestals trooped in behind their Abbess, followed by the Flaminica. Tullia was very keen to ask the Vestals all kinds of questions and inform them that she was a married woman. Selecting the robust-looking girl, she stole up to her; but the proceedings had begun, and she did not want to make a scene by giving Terentia the right to rebuke her.

Sacrifices and entrail-inspections were made, and Tullia came to the conclusion that the ceremony was very uninteresting after all. The room had grown stuffy with the incense-fumes, and she despaired of ever having a heart-to-heart talk with the plump Vestal. At last, however, she saw her chance of making the evening a success. Terentia was standing beside the altar with her back turned to a brazier in which the flame had almost gone out. From the front only ashes could be seen; but Tullia, viewing it from the side, saw that there was a lump of wood still steadily glowing. Taking some of the specially inflammable incense, she screwed it up in a small sheet of paper, mixing it with some resin and oil, and then quietly returned to the tripod. Terentia still stood with her back to the apparently extinct fire. Tullia waited till the others were taken up by a prayer that the Flaminica recited, and then she adroitly tossed the medicated incense upon the glowing piece of wood. For a moment the paper-ball rested on the wood, then there was a shooting tongue of flame. Terentia leaped away with a scream, beating at some sparks which had lodged in her hair. Tullia had discreetly retired to the rear of the room. The sudden flame died down again, and all looked with awe at the tripod. Such an unexpected manifestation, a great flame bursting out of ashes, must betoken something. The abbess felt it incumbent on her to interpret.

“It is a sign of great and good fortune,” she said with benign gravity. “The plan that now lightens in the head of the consul Cicero is indeed that which will redeem and prosper the state. The Goddess has spoken.”

“He should be informed at once,” said Terentia, who had already expressed to her husband at length the opinion that all conspirators should be put to death on the spot. The abbess agreed that a message should be sent to the consul and his councillors; and since all males had been banished from the house for the night, Terentia decided herself to carry Cicero word of the heaven-sent encouragement. Tullia was feeling scared. Surely the goddess would be angered that a mortal’s jest had been interpreted as destiny’s express utterance. How awful if Cicero and Rome were ruined by bad advice through Tullia’s jest. Tullia herself realised for the first time the responsibilities of a wife.

6

The consul and his councillors sat over their wine and congratulated themselves on an historical event. They were a little uneasy in approaching the real question. What was to be done with the prisoners? One and all they had decided for a death-penalty, but no one wanted to be the first to mention it. Beside the old Porcian Law that forbade a death-penalty without appeal to the assembled people, there was a special Sempronian Law which forbade the Ultimate Decree to be used politically for the infliction of death. There was in consequence a constitutional tangle which could always be analysed according to preconceived views. The radicals said that the Sempronian Law limited the Ultimate Decree; the conservatives said that the Ultimate Decree in suspending all ordinary legal limitations suspended the explicit limitation of the Sempronian Law as well. Argument went round in vicious circles; the problem was accentuated by the strong prejudice that had grown up, despite the bloody times through which society had passed, against any death-sentences for a Roman citizen. The reason for this was that none of the law-courts could inflict a death-penalty, since they were creations not of the assembled people but of the tribal comitia. Men had thus grown accustomed to seeing fines or exile the sole punishments imposed on criminal citizens.

All the men present round the council-table took the conservative viewpoint about the powers of the Ultimate Decree to denounce a public enemy, but all dreaded the obloquy of proposing or backing a death-penalty; and Cicero, as he listened to the shifting arguments, felt return to him his old suspicion that the conservatives wanted to use him only for their dirty work. He was to take the responsibility, so that, if it ever suited them, they could repudiate him. Yet he too was set on the death-penalty; his work would be incomplete without it; he would not be able to dominate Catalina utterly unless he demonstrated by this impressive punishment the full monstrosity of the men’s conspiratorial acts. But the fact that he would have to do for his own patriotic purposes what others wished him to do through their selfish pusillanimity, made him miserable; it robbed him of the real enjoyment of his deed. If only he could once for all tell these men that he meant to do what they wanted, but that he was doing it entirely for himself and that he knew they imagined they were cunningly using him! But he would never have that pleasure. He would do his duty and no one would know how subtle was the battle he had to fight. Perhaps six hundred years ahead the boom of fate and fame would have drowned all the carping voices; only the broad fact of duty done would be visible. Yet that scarcely pleased him more. He wanted the full struggle to be realised and praised. Lots of men had done their duty, but only Cicero had borne so much.

Cato at last routed the half-hearted talkers. “The men must die.”

Cicero roused himself. Cato was certainly a magnificent fellow sometimes. He, Cicero, loved Cato and forgave him all his austere absurdities; but Catulus broke in with placid urgency, “What of the other guilty men? These five are ludicrously unrepresentative. There are scores, hundreds as guilty. And one perhaps more guilty than all—more guilty because he encourages the others and yet manages to escape implication—”

“What do you mean?” asked Cicero more sharply than he liked to speak to a man of the age and rank of Catulus; for one dreadful moment he had thought the reference to himself; and he felt all his antagonism to the aristocrats flood back into his veins. “We are all friends here. Let us have names.”

Catulus drew back slightly, his face hardening. “I refer to Gaius Cæsar.”

There was a pause. Cicero set his jaw. Now the secret was out. These nobles meant to drive him into the proscription of hundreds of men. He wouldn’t have it; it was unnecessary; the execution of the five prisoners would demoralise the conspiracy, and Catalina would soon be defeated. The nobles wanted to stampede him into a massacre; they were all as bad as Catalina underneath. “If anyone brings me absolute proof of Cæsar’s guilt, I shall of course have him arrested. But not till then.”

“I have already an important witness,” said Catulus, “and I hope for further evidence.”

“We can’t consider any such matters until the five men now in custody are dealt with,” said Cicero finally. Everyone agreed with that—both those who wanted through timidity to keep the senatorial acts of aggression as small as possible, and those who hoped to make a small start the precedent of an attack on the whole radical movement: if the public accepted five deaths, why not fifty or five hundred?

The council was rather taken aback by Cicero’s gruff treatment of Catulus; and a senator named Nigidulus Figulus, a learned student of Pythagoreanism, took the opportunity to interpose with some sage comments on the mystic significances of Five and its relation to the Cosmic Egg; from this he branched into an account of the last séance held at his house when a spirit had appeared and spoken by table-raps, prophesying exactly what had now happened. “In short,” said Figulus, “the fact that we shall probably be trying the five men on the fifth day of the month completely settles the matter.”

At this moment Terentia arrived and sent in a message that she would like to speak with her husband. Cicero retired and heard the tale of the omen sent by the good Goddess. His facile religious sense was at once stimulated and he forgot all personal resentments. Hurrying back to the council, he related the story. The senators were pleased. It was one more step towards easing their consciences for the step on which they had decided; for in the exciting pleasure of the moment no one noticed that the message from the Goddess had no application. The Goddess had declared that that on which they had decided would be best; but as councillors they had yet decided on nothing. Tacitly, however, they all considered that the omen signified the will of the Goddess that the men should die.

Cicero’s first joy was a little dashed. He wondered if Terentia, in her hatred of Catalina, had faked the manifestation. He would never ask her; for if she had faked, she would naturally lie, and he wanted in any case to believe. So much he wanted to believe without a doubt that the Good Goddess had bidden the consul to put the five prisoners to death.

7

Next day, when the Senate met, there was not quite the same exhilaration of fury. Cicero’s partial revulsion seemed to communicate itself to all the weaker members. There was a feeling that everything had gone too smoothly. Surely there would arise some sudden retort from an unexpected quarter; the mob would rise in irresistible hordes or Catalina would appear like an avalanche at the Gates. Slowly however, the familiar ceremonies warmed the senatorial hearts. Volturcius and the Allobroges were summoned, thanked for their testimony, and liberated with presents. Then, while the House was fumbling towards the crucial debate, officers arrived with news that one Lucius Tarquinius, captured on the way to Catalina and now guarded in the porch, had volunteered to confess. Tarquinius was at once introduced, a small man with large eyebrows and a bald head. On being asked what he had to say, he burst into a torrential description of intended massacres and burnings, and said that Crassus had sent him to Catalina.

“He told me to say that the arrests meant nothing and that he ought to march at once to sack Rome and rescue his friends.”

The Senate broke into hubbub. Almost everyone disliked the mention of Crassus, who was not present. The men who owed him money shouted Tarquinius down to show their zeal; the timid saw in the accusation the first hint for wholesale proscription; some considered the whole thing a trick of Cicero, who hated Crassus; some considered Tarquinius to have been put up by Autrotinus to use Crassus as a screen to scare away further investigations; some considered the accusation as meant to frighten Crassus from supporting the radicals; and Cicero himself thought Tarquinius to be the tool of Catulus and the diehards.

The Senate therefore was vociferous in calling Tarquinius a false witness and demanding a vote. Cicero took the opinions and it was decreed that Tarquinius was a liar, that he should be imprisoned, and that he should not be allowed to speak again until he confessed the name of his instigator. Tarquinius was hustled out, but the episode had shaken the nerves of the Senate and disturbed the simplicity of the action against the conspirators. All felt that something huge had been set into motion and that no brain could tell where the effect would end. Things were made worse by reports of inflammatory speeches and mob-movements in the city. The senate was dismissed till next morning, and Cicero applied himself to strengthening the guards and making it impossible for any mob to spoil the morrow’s deliberations.

8

Cicero’s revelations in the Forum had shocked the middle-classes but aroused the hopes of the proletariat. The poorer people prowled in the streets, eyeing shops that they would like to plunder, and noting fences and stalls that would yield batons for a fray. But something was lacking, the coherence that could be given only by an endeared name as rallying-cry. The people talked wistfully of Catalina, now vanished over the horizon of their lives; others asked what Cæsar was doing, and got no answer. Those two names alone had the potency required for an insurrection. The people were angered at the arrests and high-handed attitude of the authorities, but felt fettered by lack of leaders.

The slaves and freedmen of Lentulus and Cethegus were doing their best, canvassing in all the likeliest areas and trying to put heart into their listeners. Any insurrection, they said, would bring Catalina at once to its aid. The people listened hopefully, but felt no conviction. Why did Catalina not come? If they could see his watch-fires by night or his spears on the hills by days, things would be different.

The freedman who called at Nacca’s hall felt that here was the last chance. Nacca had never yet failed to supply the core of a riot. He was a fearless man, and might, if properly aroused, stand forth as a popular hero, a stop-gap till Catalina’s arrival. But when the freedman entered the hall, he found to his dismay that Nacca was sitting dumbly in a corner with a ring of sympathisers kept at a distance by his glowering eyes.

“I come from Cethegus,” the man announced.

“I don’t care,” said Nacca, looking up with red-rimmed eyes. “Let Cethegus stay where he is till he stinks. I’ve washed my hands of a dirty world. Get out or shut up.”

The man fell back and conversed in whispers with some men about the door. “It’s his girl,” said one. “Someone plucked her on the sly, and it’s broken the old lad. She won’t tell who it was, and it’s killing him that he can’t cut out the fellow’s heart and make her eat it. She’s a nice little thing too. But I can’t see why he takes it so bad. What did he expect, I’d like to know. Did he think a woman was a door post?”

9

Curius lost the money given him by Catulus. He wandered unhappily about, unable to return to Fulvia until he had achieved his mission in life, the denunciation of Cæsar. He racked his brains for some means of finding the wanted proofs. Then he recalled the meeting at Sempronia’s house. That at least was a further detail; perhaps he would discover something more if he called on Sempronia.

Sempronia was at home. He was admitted, and she sat waiting to hear what he could possibly want with her. “I came here with Catalina,” he said at last, “that night he met Cæsar.” She nodded and he went on. “I’m the avenger of Catalina. I’m going to ruin Cæsar. He’s the man who betrayed everything.”

Sempronia looked at him with sharp interest. Was he mad or had he blundered on some net of intrigue that had escaped even her notice? She showed no surprise, but nodded again. “Will you help me?” asked Curius. “I think you loved Catalina like I did. Surely you’d like to see Cæsar pay for what he did?” He felt very cunning as he stared piteously at her; he was becoming used to handling people.

“But how can you injure him?”

Curius answered eagerly. “He betrayed Catalina, but he has many enemies on the other side. Cicero’s shielding him, but there’s some true men like Catulus who want to see justice done. If I can supply them with proof, they’ll bring Cæsar to trial.”

Sempronia considered. The man was undoubtedly somewhat unhinged, but his meaning was clear and feasible. He was so exactly the instrument for her animosity against Cæsar that she felt suspicious. “Why do you come to me?”

“I can’t go home,” burst out Curius. “Not until I’ve got something definite. I thought you might be able to help. Will you come forward and swear Cæsar met Catalina here?”

“I certainly will not,” replied Sempronia, “and if you mention me at any point, I shall have you not merely branded as a liar but flung out of Rome. I possess much influence, let me remind you.”

Curius sank back, a beaten man. He was so utterly crushed that she saw him precisely as he was, a man crazed with drink and nervous exacerbation into an obsession. At once she decided to use him. “But I can help you in another way.” He shivered, a little life crept back into his clayey face, his hands jumped nervously. “I shall give you the letter Cæsar wrote to Catalina. It was dropped here. But my name must not be mentioned.”

She rose and left the room. Curius sat with burning head. It couldn’t be true. If it was true, it meant that his luck was turning; he would soon be rich and then he could deal with Fulvia. Sempronia returned and threw a scrap of paper into his lap. “There you are, and don’t forget what I said, or it will be the worse for you.”

Curius read the paper with trembling hands. His eyes swam, and he could scarcely read. It was too good to be true. He felt life warming back into his veins. Seizing Sempronia’s hand, he covered it with kisses.

10

He went straight to the Palatine and was distressed to find Catulus absent. In his fascinated search he could not imagine that anyone else in the world had any other form of activity. But he scribbled a note. “I have what you want. Send me another personal loan to the Three Cranes Tavern and tell me when you want me to appear before the Senate.” He read this through again and underlined the word personal. Then he retired to the tavern, hugging Cæsar’s letter in his bosom. He would give that letter up only to Catulus; he would hold it against his flesh till he produced it before the gaping Senate. Ah, what a glory. Fulvia would admire him then, and perhaps the Senate would readmit him to their ranks.

Two hours later a messenger arrived with money and a message that he was to meet Catulus in the porch of the Senate’s meeting-place on the sixth, the day after the morrow.

Catulus had received the note from Curius as he was talking with some friends in the cool portico of the Temple of Concord. He read the note through with delight and could not forbear from an exclamation of triumph to the group, particular friends and confidants whom he could trust. “Gentlemen, the matter we were discussing is fixed. Cæsar’s doom is sealed. Let Cicero have his way to-morrow. On the sixth I shall introduce the impeachment of Cæsar.”

He passed the note round. Gaius Piso, whom Cæsar had charged at his extortion-trial with illegally putting to death a Transpadane Gaul, smiled as he read. “Nothing could be better. I have already offered Cicero more money than he’s worth, but he pretends not to understand. This will make him understand.”

Piso was a talkative man. He held forth at great length to his wife that evening on the fate awaiting Cæsar, and she was properly excited at being the recipient of such exclusive information. When next morning she met Clodia in the rooms of a beauty specialist, she took her aside, as she had already taken six other friends, and gave her this latest piece of inside-politics. “Don’t breathe a word about it, my dear. I haven’t said a thing to anyone else, but I can rely on you, I know.” Clodia was not very interested; her only internal comment was that the woman would be well-advised to think more of her teeth than secret political reports. Probably the whole story was an invention; Clodia remembered having invented several such stories in the past.

11

Clodius had ridden back to Rome on the morning of the third, having decided that Catalina would have no hope. There was nothing to do except to keep quiet. As brother-in-law of Metellus Celer he would be reasonably safe. After all he had played a very small part in the conspiracy. But how was he to obliterate the memory of Flaviola? He spent the next two days in a dull agony of recovery from drunkenness, lying in his room, trying to read, and talking with his little Greek page Amphion. The boy was very quick-witted and graceful. Clodius resolved to foreswear the company of women.

But on the morning of the fifth he felt physically recovered. He had argued himself into the belief that Nacca loved Flaviola too much to hurt her and that the best thing for all concerned would be for him, Clodius, to stay away. Tiring of books, he set out to visit his sister. As he passed along the streets, he looked at the women and felt his blood quicken. Appetite was god-implanted after all; a man must not deny his genius and its love of all that warms and fructifies. In a reaction from Flaviola he wanted a full-grown woman, generously limbed, full of sleek contentment, hidden behind her enduring smile like the earth under the harvest-haze. Who among his women-friends answered that description?

As he entered Clodia’s portico he recalled the escapade in the Temple of the Good Goddess. At once the memory of the tall well-built Pompeia returned. She was the kind of woman he wanted. How had he forgotten her after that splendid chance to impress her with his adventuresome passion? What could she be thinking of him after his failure to follow up such an opening? He felt curious about her. She had promised at the time to write, but had done nothing himself.

“Have you seen Cæsar’s wife lately?” he asked Clodia.

“She was here a few weeks ago. Why?”

Clodius made up his mind. It was disgraceful to let the woman down; she must have come in the hope of meeting him. “I want to see her.”

“Rather belated of you. She’s rather empty-headed, but not unattractive. One of the baby-kind, very serious. Might become a problem.”

“Will you invite her along this afternoon?”

Clodia pondered. She remembered what Piso’s wife had told her a few hours previously. Perhaps Cæsar was truly in danger. It would be a shameful trick to help the seduction of a man’s wife while foes were plotting to destroy the man himself. There must be a balance somewhere. “Certainly. I will,” she said thoughtfully. “But first I have a letter to write to Servilia.”

12

There was a crowded Senate although some faint-hearts had stayed away. The senators had spent much of the preceding day talking among themselves; and though they felt exhausted, drained of words, they had gained a mounting encouragement from the unanimity of all the propertied classes. The men must die. Silanus found himself in a difficult position. As Consul-elect, he would probably be the first man called on for an opinion; and in the past he had resolutely attacked the right of the Senate to inflict a death-penalty. But that was not in days of revolution, and now that revolution had come he found his views changing. What the world needed was a strong man, but a man entirely without sordid ambition. He re-read the political treatises of Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics, and came more and more to the conclusion that the saviour of society must be a man perfectly able to order because perfectly able to obey. That concise statement, so satisfactory on paper, was however not so easy to apply to life. Silanus began to believe that he alone of mankind could understand that simple epigram.

Cicero rose, and there was a profound silence of anticipation. He called on Decimus Iunius Silanus.

Silanus paled. It was a moment of great responsibility. He meditated the words of wisdom which he had prepared. Certainly the old constitution would no longer serve; the man whose will was service must be king. But how to explain that? He felt the rows of faces pressing in upon him, squeezing out his breath. They were demanding victims, not a king. They did not understand. Quickly reshuffling his thoughts, he decided that order must be preserved at all costs. The men must die.

Silanus moved that the prisoners in custody and those named in the warrants should be condemned to death as public enemies.

The hush deepened, then rippled and flustered in a murmur of wordless satisfaction along the rows of faces. Silanus sat down. He had done the best under the circumstances. He must write a pamphlet to explain. The finer points could not possibly be appreciated at such a moment of stress as this. One could deal only with the wider issues. Property was sacred, and the paramount state must assert itself. In other respects, of course, the proceedings were all wrong, a mere compromise, unpleasant to men of sensitive views. He wiped the sweat from his brow.

Cicero was pleased. To call on Silanus first had been a risk, but he had judged rightly in believing that Silanus after a shiver would make the plunge with the majority. And the conversion of Silanus incomparably strengthened and eased the others. Man after man arose and voted for death in tones of implacable certainty. Here at last was moral cohesion.

Cæsar had been sitting quietly in his seat, taking the measure of the House. He knew well enough what schemes were afoot against him, and he knew also that if he went abjectly with the tide he would lose his hold on the popular imagination. He felt strong at last and realised with full confidence that he had not abandoned Catalina through cowardice. Under the show of strength he sensed the weakness of the gathering before him. Once this moment of fear and conquest was past the Senate would break up again into quarrelling factions; what assurance it gained would help to destroy rather than rebuild. He must weather this one dangerous moment with fearless dignity, and then he must take up the popular leadership with apparent recklessness. Then he would dominate Rome at last. The Senate was basically uneasy; they would condemn the prisoners and then grow afraid of their act. Cæsar would take his chance on the margin of doubt whether they relapsed into worse febrility or were panicked by the diehards into proscription.

“Your opinion, Gaius Iulius.”

All turned to watch. The senators were surprised that he should dare the meeting where to vote for the death would incur the odium of the people and to vote against it would aid the allegations of his enemies. Crassus had stayed away.

Cæsar began calmly, “Conscript Fathers, it is right that men who are faced with complex and dark issues should be influenced neither by hatred nor by love, neither by anger nor by pity. Such emotions discolour the mind and obstruct its view of the problem that it wishes to contemplate.” He passed on in equable tones to deprecate all excesses of act or thought. Admitting to the full the guilt of the prisoners, he urged that the guilt must be considered coolly and that there was no need for the rhetoric of horror employed by the previous speakers. Why did they need to infuriate themselves with descriptions of rapine and lust?

With sceptical ease he continued to deflate the excitement generated by the windy words of the others. Cicero could not stop from furrowing his brows. At what did the man aim? The senators felt uncomfortable. There was nothing in Cæsar’s speech to which they could object, but it hurt them in the delicate way whereby it pricked the bubbles of moral orgasm. Cæsar went on in his softly pitched voice with its hint of a high bird-note of violence, inculcating the virtues of an outlook based on freedom from passion. Subtly he conveyed the effect that all the speeches with their appeal to rage and revenge were somehow a justification of the very plot which they attacked —that those who thus exposed a lust for bloody retorts had precipitated bloody issues.

Then he came to the question of penalty. It was necessary for him to oppose the death-penalty. It did not matter what terms he used for the purpose. People would merely remember that he alone had spoken against the death-vote. Yet he must not give a handle to his enemies. He therefore spoke of the inexpiable guilt of the prisoners and broke the ground for an assault on the death-sentence by pointing out its doubtful legality. This he knew would awaken the slumbering fears of the minor senators. Then he declared that the death-sentence was too weak. It was bad policy, an admission of fear; and why should the Senate fear when such an active and illustrious consul was guarding the welfare of Rome? Surely to kill the men was to rouse unnecessary constitutional problems, to give a false appearance of weakness and panic, and to release the prisoners from the torment of their consciences. Death was the end of all things.

He developed these points, losing no opportunity to work on the suppressed fears of his audience and to edge them from the death-sentence. Why had Silanus not proposed scourging? Because the Porcian Law forbade it? But the Sempronian Law forbade death without appeal. Was scourging omitted as crueller than death? Yet what could be too cruel for such men? And if scourging was milder than death, why should the law be observed in the milder issue and disregarded in the greater? Moreover precedents were dangerous things. Behind his words loomed the threat of revolutionary reprisals. Without overemphasis he unfolded this thesis, while the senators, hating all that he said, were yet compelled into attention. Cicero felt a slow misery steal over him. Would the prize be snatched from his grasp at the last moment? That was unthinkable, and yet Cæsar’s voice was quietly eating through the morale which had seemed so indestructible a few moments before.

The senators rustled like a forest in the first breath of a storm. They wanted to howl and rage, but the quiet voice dominated them. They felt behind it the threat of a revengeful world, the accusation of their own hatreds. Quietly Cæsar drew to the summing-up:

“I propose therefore that the property of the prisoners be confiscated, that they be kept in custody at such of the municipalities as can best bear the expenses, and that it be illegal for anyone to bring their case before the Senate or the People henceforth.”

He sat down. Sweat broke from the pores of his entire body; for it had needed a great effort to preserve his quietly forcible accent throughout the speech in that room of hostile faces. But he had done it and knew that he had done it well. From this moment he would stand on his own feet. To-morrow he would begin reorganising the popular movement. He would lead attacks on the death-sentence which he knew would be inflicted. He would harry Cicero and the conservatives. He had no fear.

The next speakers were despondent. For the first time the voices wavered and sought compromise. Cicero saw the rot setting in and felt unable to stop it. A senator, Tiberius Nero, even proposed that the prisoners should be kept in the state-prison with increased guards until the tumults lessened and a regular trial for Treason could be instituted. Only thus, he said, could the state express its stability and lack of fear. The effect would be far greater than a hurried execution of which the legality could be questioned.

Silanus had listened to Cæsar’s speech with an envy that faded into something between despair and indignation. The man had the audacity to say the very things that Silanus had meant to say, but which had been crowded out by a recognition of the exigencies of the situation. The speech was a kind of malignant plagiarism. Silanus almost groaned as he heard each point that he would have loved to enunciate. After Nero’s speech he could bear it no more. He took the unusual step of rising to explain. His proposal had been completely misunderstood; he had not meant the death-penalty but “the full rigour of the law.” To support Cæsar was more than his feelings could tolerate; so he declared that the only man who had made a sensible speech was Nero. Nero’s speech was the correct commentary on the speech of Silanus.

Cæsar saw that his words were having far more effect than he had expected or even intended. Cicero sat helpless. He had lost heart. What was the use of fighting to help such feeble creatures? Then as a last effort he called on Cato.

Cato rose with a sour smile. He at once demolished the whole of the preceding debate by positing the realistic issue. All the speakers had missed the entire meaning of the problem. The quibblers about legality were fools who couldn’t value their own existences. There was only one question: Who was to wield the power of the state? Cynically, Cato mocked at the men who could not even in their hour of danger face the facts of a situation.

He enjoyed thoroughly the spectacle of these cowards who could be demoralised by the side-stepping tactics of Cæsar; they would plot and oppress and murder for money; and yet when they were brought into the open as here, a legalistic dilemma could make them wander and doubt and fall into the trap. Fools. Cicero listened with growing fear; he had felt at home in the early moral fulminations, but this speech of Cato was crudely candid. Cato was insulting the very men on whom the authorities had to rely, and he was exposing their motives at the lowest possible evaluation.

But, curiously, Cato’s speech stirred the senators, like a drench of cold water. Further fulminations would only have intensified the sense of moral confusion shrewdly introduced by Cæsar, but Cato’s realism brought the Senate back to an actual sense of conflict. The men squirmed under his abuse, but they were enlivened. What he said was true. Either they or the enemy struck first. That was the whole issue. They sat up straight, lashed into activity. They wanted him to cease so that they could get at once to the voting. They wanted to show him that they were men who could stand up for their own rights.

But Cato was not inclined to let them off so easily. He described the decay of the Republic, roundly charging his audience as the real criminals. Then he sneered at his own outburst. “But the question under discussion is not whether we live under a good or bad state of morals, nor how great or splendid is the Empire of the Romans, but whether our properties, large and small, are to continue ours or to fall with ourselves into the hands of our enemies.” He laughed at Cæsar’s proposal and showed it for what it was. The safeguards were meaningless; rescues could be made without difficulty in the townships. There was only one way for the state to assert itself, and that was by the execution of the traitors.

The response was tumultuous. The senators rose as one and showered applause upon him. Cato sat back, sneering; the two deep cheek-furrows that ran down each side of his long nose were deeper than usual. Why did he take the trouble to save this worthless pack? Only because they happened to have attached to them the ancient name of Rome. The Senate must stand because it had once been great and good. It was unfortunate that to keep it standing he had to buttress a pack of thieves and guzzling vulgarians.

Cicero waited for the applause to subside, and then himself spoke. He was deeply thankful to Cato, but, even so, he felt something of his old suspicion of the diehards. He spoke in his most elevated and circumlocutious manner, seeking to palliate the frankness of Cato and regain for himself the conviction of glorious work well performed. But he had an inattentive audience. The speech which would have roused them to the greatest enthusiasm early in the day now left them unaffected. They wanted action, the vote for death. Cato’s spell was on them. It was, however, impossible for Cicero to cease until he had at least partially pacified his own emotions. With dismay he noted the strained interest, the whispers and movements; but he plodded on, elucidating the proposals and cogently arguing out the various ideas involved. The whole bias of his speech was for the death-penalty, but nowhere did he explicitly declare for it.

Still, no senator doubted the meaning of his peroration: “Therefore, Conscript Fathers, decide with care, as you have begun, and boldly, concerning your own safety and the safety of the Roman People, your wives and children, your altars and hearths and shrines and temples, the houses and homes of all Rome, your lordship and liberty, the salvation of Italy and the Republic. For you have a consul who will not hesitate to obey your decrees, and who will be able, as long as he lives, to defend your decisions and of his own power to execute them.”

A division was taken. Overwhelmingly the death-penalty was carried. In the agitation of the moment even Silanus cast his vote for it, explaining afterwards that “the full rigours of the law” did not exclude death, though as far as he was concerned he left the responsibility of interpretation to the consul.

13

During Cicero’s speech uproars had begun in the square outside, but precautions had been taken and the guards were continuously strengthened; the populace did nothing but shout and throw occasional stones. As the business connected with the decree was being wound up and Cæsar was protesting against the clause of confiscation being taken from his motion and added to the death-vote, a sealed note was handed up to him. He broke the seal-string and read. Cato with his watchful eye had noted the delivery, and, standing up, challenged Cæsar to have the note read aloud.

“It is a private note,” replied Cæsar, “but I have no objection to my friend reading it in confidence.” He handed it to be carried to Cato.

Cato opened the paper, and stared at the handwriting of his half-sister Servilia. “Gaius, take care, Catulus and others are planning to incriminate you falsely. They are bribing Quintus Curius to manufacture evidence. My love. A kiss. S.”

This final proof of the world’s knavery smote Cato to the heart. First one sister, then the other, a wanton. Lucullus, a philosophic glutton. A world fungused with gold. Cowards and fools. He flung the note across the benches at Cæsar. “Take it, drunkard!” he cried, and sat back, his head bitterly bowed.

The note, which fell short, was returned to Cæsar. Its contents were worrying, but what could Curius have to say? Cæsar remembered the man vaguely, a waster. He gave a glance at the dejected face of Cato; he did not fear that Cato would betray the confidence even of a foe; the important thing was to find and muzzle this Curius. But Cæsar did not stir till Cicero, announcing that all arrangements for the execution of the decree had been made, dismissed the meeting. Then he rose and walked in his turn towards the temple-door, his mind busy about Curius. The man was notorious for his gambling. Where could he be found?

As Cæsar entered the porch, he looked up to find himself surrounded by rings of the young Equites, all armed with short swords. Those behind were pushing and the front-ranks were pressed up close against him. He could feel their breath on his face, and, though he did not lower his eyes, he knew that the swords were levelled at his ribs. The youths hurled insults at him; for the rumours started by Catulus, his own past reputation and the accounts that had already filtered out of his speech, made him at the moment even more hated among the middle classes than Catalina. He moved steadily forwards. One cry, one word of command, and he was a dead man. As Catalina had passed through the swords a month ago, now Cæsar passed through them. Although he did not know it, Cicero had come up to the door behind him, and the youths now looked respectfully towards the patriot-consul and gestured for a nod of encouragement. Cicero felt weak and sick; the bloodlust which he reprobated in Catalina swept over him in a pulsation of convulsive horror. He had but to nod, and Cæsar would be murdered. Cæsar’s death would be the signal for a wide proscription, for a bloody triumph of the capitalists. Perhaps it was the right course. What was the use of five deaths? One could not fight a lawless generation with a single gesture of power; they were calling for blood, and only blood could decide the day.

But he fought off the temptation. He was a man of peace. He stared at the youths, terrified that one winking of the eyelids would be interpreted as an order to slay. He did not even dare to breathe, but stood as a man of stone staring down the wild appeals of the blood. Let Cæsar go.

Cæsar passed safely through the yelling ranks. Perhaps that moment was Cicero’s great peace-triumph, dooming the Republic of his myopic aspirations and giving breathing-space for the world.

14

As soon as Cæsar was clear, he issued rapid orders to his bodyguard of slaves and freedmen. They were to collect other men and search everywhere for Curius, particularly in all the gambling-dens and taverns. Once they found him, they were to stick fast and lure him to some out-of-the-way house where he could be kept drunk, imprisoned if necessary, or as a last resort murdered. Any papers that he had must be gained and brought to Cæsar. The men scattered, and, passing on the task to others, began combing the streets.

It was a Greek slave named Lycon who found Curius. Curius was half-drunk, tossing coins with an inn-hostler. Lycon brought some drinks and talked about a fine gambling-establishment down by the docks. Curius was interested and asked to be taken along. He still had a few coins left, and felt that a new house might mean a change of luck. “I thought I knew every house in Rome,” he complained with a whine. Lycon led the way, keeping Curius excited by the story of an astonishing win at the house two nights ago. He had chosen the place because it was known to him as a refuge for runaway-slaves; the ugliest types of Rome congregated there; he had found it while doing work for Cæsar among the dock-labourers and knew the proprietor well now.

They walked on through some dark lanes of the Aventine district, Curius objecting all the while at the distance, until they reached the blackened door with a phallus scrawled on either post, partly as a trade-sign, partly as a magical protection. Lycon gave the special knock and they were let in by a toothless old woman. In a large room, thick with foul air, lay and sat scores of men and women, all dirty and ragged, dicing, drinking, and hugging unashamedly. Curius had eyes only for the dicers.

They joined some men who were sprawled on the floor tossing knucklebones, four at a time, out of a dice-box. Curius laid out some silver coins and took his turn. But his bad luck held. Lycon on the contrary, who had tipped the dice-master, made high throws every time; and the other gamblers dropped out to leave the way clear for the frenzied Curius and his adversary. Curius kissed his last coin and laid it down.

“What’s the use of throwing against that?” Lycon mocked at him. “Haven’t you anything else?” Curius groaned and Lycon goaded him. “Not a single thing. Come on now. Haven’t you a lover’s keepsake? If you have one of your wench’s short-curls tied with a bit of silk, I’ll count it a whole sesterce. I want to be kind to you. A love-letter? You won’t find many men who’d rate someone else’s love-letter at five sesterces. I’m a collector of curiosities. What’s that you’re holding in your breast?”

Curius half-pulled out the precious letter. “It isn’t a love-letter. It’s business.” He was seized with a mad belief that the letter represented his whole new life and that therefore it would be invincible as a gambling-stake. With it he would gain Fulvia; obviously he could not lose with it at dicing. The queer chance that had made this fellow offer to take it unread as a stake must mean something. Venus had bewitched the man and was trying Curius to see if he could perceive the turning-point of his fate.

“I don’t care what it is. There’s fifty sesterces against it. Call me mad if you like, but when I have a whim I like to indulge it.” Lycon rattled the box.

Curius took out the letter and put it back again. “I can’t do it.” For reply Lycon continued rattling the box. He threw out the dice, which on account of the two small ends were marked on four sides only. His throw was a poor one, two ones, a three and a four. Curius could not resist. “I could do better than that in the dark,” he muttered. “Here you are.” He placed the paper opposite the fifty sesterces, took up the dice-box, rattled it, mumbling prayers, and threw. He groaned deeply and all colour ebbed from his smutted face. He had thrown the four ones. “The Dog!” shouted the lookers-on. Lycon gathered up his coins and the letter.

“Here, you can’t take it,” said Curius, grabbing. “It’s mine.”

“You lost fair,” retorted Lycon with assumed savagery of manner. “Take your hand away.” He appealed to the onlookers. “Who could have given him a fairer last chance?”

“You lost,” said one of the men to Curius. “Let go that paper or I’ll kick you in the guts.”

Curius groaned and let go. This was the end. In blind despair he took the wine that was offered him, and drank. He had nothing left to wager in the hopes of regaining the letter. O why had he done it? “Give me another throw,” he pleaded. “I can raise lots of money if you give me time. That letter’s no use to you, but I’ll die without it.”

“I always play fair,” said Lycon, who had glanced at the paper and seen that it was what he wanted. “I’ll be back here later on.”

“Promise,” cried Curius, weeping and wringing his hands.

Lycon, who prided himself on his artistry, and who could have got the paper by the simple expedient of having Curius hit on the head, took the proprietor aside and told him that Curius must not be let outside the door till further notice; no harm was to come him, but he was to be kept drunk. “Hold him down and pour the liquor into his mouth if need be.”

The proprietor called over a slatternly and squat Spanish girl with vermillioned cheeks and breasts. “Look after that swine there. Keep him drunk. Do what you like with him, but don’t let him out till I say so. Our friend here has guaranteed you a gold piece for the trouble.”

“He shan’t get out,” said the girl. “Not if all the ropes break and I have to tie myself into knots to hold him.”

15

All young men of loyal heart were summoned to guard the streets and squares while the execution of the traitors was carried out. Clodius decided that he would join Cicero’s train as a protection against possible accusations. His afternoon with Pompeia had made him feel more kindly towards the social system. She had been so ordinary, yet so fresh; she had shown such timid surprise when Clodia had gone unexpectedly out and left her alone with Clodius, and she had surrendered with such self-reproachful tenderness; then she had become so full of words, so playful, and so frightened of seeming foolish, and finally so peacefully gentle. Rightly had he met her in the shrine of the Good Goddess. Clodius decided to get married and go ahead with his building schemes on the Palatine.

Amusedly he listened to the accounts of Cæsar’s fight in the Senate and wondered if he would have fought so ably, could he have seen his wife at that moment on the cushioned couch of Clodia’s second drawing-room.

Dusk was closing in as Cicero, headed by his lictors and followed by a large band of officials and armed youths, among whom Clodius had taken his place, set out to claim the body of Lentulus from the house of his kinsman where he had been committed. Four prætors were despatched to bring the four other prisoners. Armed men lined the streets, and the sporadic outbursts of the day had been well suppressed. The mob were cowed and dispersed to their haunts. Hardly anyone but the tradesmen and the lower middle class showed in the streets to cheer the defenders of the state, though down some of the lanes and dives there stirred groups of sullen and disheartened labourers. Torches were lighted and placed in the walls; in the better class streets through which the processions wound the matrons had stuck lamps on the roofs and windows; and bonfires were heaped on the hills and in the squares. Torches also were brandished overhead by the guardsmen. The yellow flames whistled and flapped in the air, picking out the highlights on helm and corselet. But there was little noise except the measured tramp of feet. That increased the solemnity of the moment, and the tramp of feet sounded like a heartbeat.

Rome was coming to life at last, thought Cicero as he marched ahead. He was the priest leading the way in the celebration of a great Mystery; and henceforth the civic energy of Rome would march to this measured beat. Other consuls had organised for war. Cicero was the first who had organised for peace; he would bring into daily life the concentrated impulse which had so far flashed out only in courage and battle-virtues. Cato, close behind him, felt otherwise. He was pleased at the martial show. It was the last pageant of a dying world; for a moment, too great to continue, the ancient discipline was walking the sullen streets of modern life. Let the mob look on and fear. They too were being haled to death and contumely. This execution mirrored the period’s self-willed fate: selfishness strangling itself in its coils of vanity.

Slowly the procession tramped through the city that was garnished with light as if for some extraordinary festival, and yet funereally silent. At last the house was reached, and the crier knocked on the door. Lentulus was led forth, still looking dazed and old and uncertain. He gazed round hesitantly. Why had such a great procession come to claim his body? He was merely a man who had made a mistake, who had failed for some incomprehensible reason to follow his own gigantically sane intellect. If only Matthias were to die also, there would be some justice in things. Where was Matthias, and the woman who had had three children at a birth in honour of the three Cornelii?

Lentulus bowed his head and was led away.

The procession wound back to the Forum, where in the corner under the Capitol stood the state-prison and the Tullian dungeon. Cicero shivered as he recalled, the interior of the dungeon, originally a well-head. What obscurely jesting fate had named it Tullian as if prefiguring its supreme use by Marcus Tullius Cicero? The procession entered the prison-precincts and then halted. Cicero with the police-officers took Lentulus up the slight ascent on the left to the spot where the cell was sunk some twelve feet underground. Heavy walls rose up over the cell, which dated from early days when the roof was made by overlapping layers of stone, closed on top by a broad stone cover. Within was a pit of filthy mud. Cicero felt the cold stench strike his face like a clammy blow as he stood before the opened hole. He stepped back, and Lentulus was led up the slope by an officer. He came without protest. Two men caught him under the arms, lifted him up and lowered him down into the dank pit. His voice was heard demurring politely, and then he disappeared. The hangman and his assistant below with the strangling-cord had grasped him.

Cicero turned and looked down the slope to the rows of armed men glittering in the moonlight. “He has lived,” he said sonorously. There was a groan of glee, and the men clashed their weapons. The groan was repeated echoing infinitely across the city, half a wail, half a cry of animal joy; but the moment was felt as too great for any ordinary outcry.

Cicero now stood aside, and the four other trains marched up in turn. He was glad that the business was nearing its end. The reaction was coming, and he felt that he would never be able to sleep again. Voices of glamoured delight and remorse quarrelled across his brain. Who was he to judge a fellow-man? He that takes the sword shall perish by the sword. Statilius, Gabinius, Cæparius, each in turn disappeared down the dark hole. Last came Cethegus. He stood upright, his eyes mad with suffering. It was not the death from which he shrank; it was the loss of Orestilla, the woman whom he had never possessed. He had given his life to bickering drabs and lost the only woman worth possessing.

As he neared the cell, he broke from his captors, ran to the hole, and leaped down. Those who stood above could hear him fighting dementedly with the executioners below.

The conspiracy had failed.

XII - THE END OF CATALINA’S YEAR

I

When the news of December the fifth reached Catalina, he was completing his preparations for the march on Rome. The army of Gaius Antonius lay in the road, but he had no doubt of his capacity to break through. The fiasco of the conspiracy, however, changed everything; no longer would he have the sense of an objective. Before, he had known that he could sweep the government-levies aside, drawn onwards by the knowledge that Rome was there for the taking. Now Rome was lost and the heart would go out of his men. Sitting in his tent with Manlius that night, he realised how great an error he had made in leaving Rome.

“I ran away.”

Manlius scratched his head. “I don’t understand. You came to fight. If I ever heard a man say you’d run away, I’d knock him down.”

“Still, I ran away.”

There was a thin rain falling outside the tent. The winter-chills were arriving, and though the farmer-troops did not complain the men from the cities were finding the weather hard to bear on the uplands.

Catalina continued, “If only the men were fully armed, I’d march straight down on Antonius. It’s hard for a man with a pointed stake to stand up against a legionary. It would have been different if we’d been marching on Rome.”

Cæsar was in Rome; he too, had run away. For a moment Catalina felt his life desolated, a snare. Had Cæsar perceived this? How could he be blamed for having chosen safety and a clear road? But Catalina could not put away the thought that if Cæsar had remained true things would have been different.

“We’ve done the right thing. We’re fighting against injustice. Nothing matters but that.”

Outside lay the winter-earth under a grey winter-sky. Rain ceaselessly, silently falling. Men shivering under the dripping tents and girls too tired now to paint their faces, doubled up with coughs. The women ought to be sent back to Fæsulæ and the other towns. Harvest-times were over, and those without store of golden food must starve on the barren hillside. The only hope was to keep to the Appenines and wait for further insurrections in the towns. But there was Murena in Gaul, Metellus Celer closing the Appenine passes, Gaius Antonius across South Etruria. Catalina was shut in.

“How are the men taking it?”

Manlius snorted. “My men know their minds. But the later recruits are upset, I’ll admit. I saw a party trying to sneak off this afternoon, but I soon had them rounded up.”

“We can’t keep an army that way. Let all go who wish to go.”

Manlius nodded and emptied the dregs of his cup as an oblation at the foot of the silver standard that stood planted beside the centre tent-pole. “She’ll sniff the scent of blood yet again before she dies. Eh, old girl?”

“Where’s your wife?” asked Catalina with a sudden remembrance and regret.

“Oh, she’s all right. Somewhere or other. Breeding in someone’s bed, I suppose, and good luck to her.”

Catalina yearned for the touch of Orestilla. He would never see her again. So be it. But winter had its virtues, the rigid shape of life frozen and blackened to its bare tensions, fortitude and patience and hardness. He had desired to be hard. Let him rejoice that he owned the winter. Grey sky, grey earth, the noiseless fall of rain. Would not these winter-rills feed the earth of spring?

2

On the tenth of December the new tribunes came into office at Rome. Immediately Bestia and Nepos held assemblies and attacked Cicero for perverting the constitution for party-purposes. Cæsar, assured that the energy of the conservatives had spent itself, made no effort to hide his hand. Cato, now also a tribune, fought against his colleagues, but could do little. Sestius arrived back from Capua with soldiers and overawed the populace, and then went off to join Antonius. Curius had been let loose from his dockside-prison and was pestering Catulus, who in turn was pestering Cicero; but it was too late to do anything effective, and when at last Curius did appear before the Senate to accuse Cæsar he was hardly listened to.

Cæsar had recognised that the collapse of Catalina’s effort marked a period in politics, and he put all his powers into gaining the support of the populace. Alone, the mob had no power; the last word was with the man in military control; but some day the proletarian movement and the military control would coincide, and then would come the real reorientation for which everyone was confusedly seeking. That much at least was clear. Meanwhile, there was the prophecy of Crassus to come true. Wealth would flow in from the East; not till the empire ceased its expansion would the final day of reckoning come.

Cæsar had no great fears that Pompeius would set up a military dictatorship. The man had too unwieldy a mind. Even if he did make the leap, he would not hold his position for long; but he would not make the leap; he wanted to be the first man of the state, courted by all, but he could never face entire responsibility. Treated carefully, he could be used. The first problems for Cæsar were to get rid of Mucia and consolidate his position with the people. In two years he would be standing for the consulship. Then would be the time for wider plans.

The conflict of the tribunes continued. To everyone’s surprise Cato proposed the full re-establishment of the food-dole. But though he objected to the principle of doles, he was not without his care for the populace and acceded to the request that he should anticipate a similar move by Bestia. When the Saturnalia opened, the authorities were fearful of riots, but there was only the usual uproar, carnival and brawling. As Cæsar had foreseen, the revolutionary spirit at Rome, though still uncrushed, needed careful nursing before it would recover the passion with which Catalina had infected it.

In December some small storage-rites led up to the great outburst of winter-thanksgiving, the Saturnalia, the feast of the rich food-cupboard and the prosperous state. Schools, courts and public offices were closed; slaves were allowed to wear the freedman’s cap, and, dressed gaily, they sat at banquets waited on by their masters. There was a sacrifice before the Temple of Saturn in the Forum, and a public dinner of senators and Equites. The dinner ended with the cry to Saturnalia, and that was the carnival-cry throughout the next week. The private citizen had an early bath, made a family-sacrifice of a sucking-pig, and then visited friends and relations, offering congratulations, games, and gifts. Chief among the gifts were little paste or earthen images or wax candles whose light aided the sun to round the difficult moment of the solstice.

The Saturnalia was followed by other rites of storing and sun-aid, and on the twenty-third there was a festival of All the Dead.

3

Curio and Marcus Antonius were roistering in the taverns. Curio the elder had locked up his son in desperation, and Antonius had effected a rescue by means of a ladder and a hole torn in the tiled roof. The loosened tiles he had used as missiles to keep off some slaves who interrupted the escape. Now the two friends were happy again. “Let’s go and join somebody’s army,” said Antonius. “Don’t forget that my rat-faced uncle is in command of one side, I forget which. Do you think we could bleed him?”

“I’m sure we couldn’t. Don’t forget it’s winter-time.”

“I’ve got an idea. We’ll go to his country-villa with two girls and say that he sent us. The steward knows me and he won’t like to throw us out. It will be weeks before he gets a message through to the army and learns we’re imposters as he’ll rightly suspect.”

“I’m with you. Where’s the girls?”

“Here, there, everywhere. Round the corner, on the floor above us, walking, talking, and rubbing the dirt off the soles of their feet.”

“How omnivorous you are,” sighed Curio. “But can’t we do it in style. Now, two twin sisters would make it look really nice.”

They set off down the streets of carnival, bumping through the masqueraders and the music, asking all the women if they had twin-sisters. “I hear the wife of Cethegus had twins,” said Curio. “Someone told me that she’d come up from the country to claim her house and refuses to vacate to the government-auctioneer.”

“Poor old Catalina,” said Antonius, stopping short. “What’s happened to him? Oh, he’s at the wars of course. Someday I’ll pay this bully Cicero back for killing old Lentulus, a decent old sleepy chap like that. I say, let’s call on Orestilla and see if we can do anything for her.”

They found the house, where Orestilla had been allowed to remain unmolested. Admitted, they stood abashed before her sorrowful face.

“I’m ashamed,” said Curio, “of having come along to worry you. We’re drunk, I fear. But we did really think of you all of a sudden and wonder if we could do anything to make things easier. I’m so afraid now that we stand here you’ll think us rude.”

“I think it’s very good of you,” said Orestilla, “but I’m afraid that no one can help me.” She spoke without any appeal for pity. “No, that isn’t true. It has made me happy to hear your kindness, but there’s nothing else you can do.”

Antonius noticed the girl leaning against her side. “A big girl. Not yours? I’m so sorry.” He pinched the girl’s cheeks. “I would have brought an apple if I’d only known. Always bring an apple.”

Orestilla showed them out and gave them a quiet smile. The two youths stood sobered by her presence. She seemed curiously at peace. Then they set off down the road. “Who’s that ahead?” asked Antonius. “Isn’t it Marcus Brutus, the serious lad that Servilia got one dark night in the dumps? He cheated me out of five coppers once over a game of draughts, the mean hound. Watch me now.”

He ran swiftly on tiptoe, caught up with the young Brutus, thumped him, and then leap-frogged over his back, disappearing with a shout round the corner before Brutus could raise himself and recognise the aggressor. Curio had followed close behind and sped round the corner after Antonius. They peeped back. Brutus had risen, shaking himself angrily and searching for something that he’d dropped. “I bet it’s a copper farthing,” said Antonius, “that he meant to lay out at interest for a thousand years or so. Come along, we’ve got to find our twins. Who would have thought there were so few presentable twins in Rome. Disgraceful. Who’s going to remedy it?”

4

On the first of January when Cicero, laying down his office, came forwards to address the people, Metellus Nepos vetoed the address; and though the conservative supporters raised a loud cheer in response to Cicero’s oath that he had saved his country, the rebuff was felt as the first decisive step of the reaction. A crowd of friends accompanied Cicero home, but the insult continued to rankle and Cicero used all his influence to create annoyances for Nepos. Nepos wrote in complaint to Metellus Celer in Picenum, and Metellus wrote indignantly to protest. Cicero sat in his study re-reading the letter and meditating the reply. Anxious to stay in Rome and to show his lack of mercenary motive, he had surrendered the province of Cisalpine Gaul to Metellus, and expected at least a show of gratitude. Moreover, the compact assured style of Metellus irritated him. Again the remark about “our ancestors.” Did the man have nothing else to think about?

Cicero took a reed-pen and laid it down again. He had begun the first draft of a poem celebrating his consulship. It was hard to recapture the joyous emotion, but it came after labouring a while at the lines; the noisy world retreated, and the great man stood amid the respectful murmurs of posterity. Certainly things were going well socially. Crassus had promised to sell that house on the Palatine in Clodia’s street. Two million sesterces. More than Cicero could strictly afford, but he must keep up appearances and leave the old family-house on the Oppian. Everyone was so eager to help, to give business-tips or lend money; he would have to take fees for his court-work, though it was illegal. Publius Sulla had already retained him in fear of a prosecution over the conspiracy. Of course he had been implicated, but so had so many people; and he at least had the decency to speak admiringly of Cicero’s work as consul; also he had hinted at his readiness with a loan. Well, why shouldn’t he, a rich man who wasted his money? Undoubtedly the case would eventuate. Cicero would suggest a loan of two million. If only news would come of the defeat and death of Catalina …

Perhaps it was lack of that news which still made things so flat. Though the two consuls were zealous men, they didn’t have much of a political grasp, and Cæsar was causing trouble; the tribunes were more insolent than ever; they were even talking of placing Cicero on his trial for illegally putting citizens to death. Cato too was a nuisance; he had already caused rifts in the concord of orders that had seemed so perdurable. No statesmen could build for eternity perhaps, but two or three months was a very slight length of time for the survival of the structure into the cementing of which Cicero had dripped so much sweat and blood. It was hard to take the long view. Meanwhile this irritably self-righteous Metellus must be answered.

Cicero carefully drove from his mind all the splendidly satisfying sarcasms and set to work justifying himself. “What you mean exactly by your letter I cannot quite comprehend; I suspect however you have been informed that, when maintaining that there was quite a number of men who resented my having saved the state, I asserted in the Senate that your relations, whose request you could not have refused, had prevailed on you to suppress the compliments you had already decided it was incumbent …” These long sentences that started uncoiling themselves when a man couldn’t write the truth of what was in his head! Cicero lost his train of thought and had to re-read what he had written.

5

Cæsar was giving a dinner. Bestia, Labienus, and Metellus Nepos were there, also Gaius Memmius, a freelance politician who had brought a friend named Lucretius whom no one knew. Memmius, a cultured and sceptical man with a veering enthusiasm for the humanities, fancied himself as an amorist, and Cæsar meant to egg him on to make love to Mucia. After the meal Cæsar drew Memmius aside, and in the course of a general discussion on women managed to convey to Memmius that Mucia was languishing for his acquaintance. Before long Memmius had asked with an air of casualness, “You were suggesting that I might see to some of these eastern matters for you. Would you like me to call on Mucia for further information?”

“Nothing would please me better,” said Cæsar heartily. Labienus, who had come up quietly behind Cæsar, stood listening in a rage that robbed him of the power to stir. So Cæsar had been playing with him like this when he had sent him to Mucia. Without a doubt Cæsar and Mucia had laughed together over his behaviour. Two damned aristocrats jeering at the snob. What had given them the right? He was as well dressed, mannered and educated, as much at ease in the world: if not as clever as Cæsar he outdistanced most of the patricians. What did he lack? Was it that insolent sense of security, that pretentious effect of frankness that hid the cold heart? He felt hatred for Cæsar, and would have broken with him then and there; but behind his hatred there woke a cry of caution. He had built his career on Cæsar; if he left now, he would have to start all over again. Whereas, later on, when real position was his, he would find time to repay. With an effort he tore himself away from the conversationalists; he must not let his face be seen till he had regained self-control.

Nepos and Bestia came up, and the talk became political. Cæsar explained his scheme to humble Catulus. For many years now Catulus had had charge of the funds for restoration of the Capitoline Temple; he had lingered unconscionably with the task and made no statement of his use of the funds; he liked the authority of the Capitoline Curator and had shown no haste to set up the bronze tablet inscribed with his name and declaring the completion of the work. He and his class needed a blow. Let the tribunes propose that he be deposed from his office, that a strict enquiry be made into his accounts, and that the honour of completing the work and leaving a name on the Temple be transferred to Pompeius.

Labienus, keeping at a distance where his face would not be scrutinised, could not but feel admiration for the scheme. The conservatives could not desert their great man; and once the struggle began, Pompeius would feel strongly affronted by their refusal to hand over the curatorship. Labienus recognised in this suggestion of Cæsar the first movement of forces that must end by driving a wedge between Pompeius and the Senate. To whom then could Pompeius turn but to Cæsar? Assuredly Labienus must not sever his connection with Cæsar, whatever he felt. The triumphant return of Pompeius from the east would merely pave the way for Cæsar’s passage to power.

6

No one noticed the obscure individual whom Memmius had brought along. Lucretius lay on a side-couch, with a wine-glass beside him. He watched with interest, concerned not with the words but with the faces and the configurations of emotion behind the faces. These men were fighting for political ends or social status, but they had no sense of the great web of energies of which they were part. Their politics and social status had no reality; such things were words, knots in the striving purpose, alien to that purpose. There was something miserably grand in the intent faces; through the eyes peered human greatness as through the bars of a dungeon-window. They hid from their fear, and failed. Lucretius felt his head swimming from the wine and the excitement that stirred within him. The couch was sinking and he was lost in elemental forces, crying out in a world that did not know the meaning of his words.

O troubled humanity, why do you fail? You have come so far, out of the dark forests, refusing the acorn-appetites and bringing the stars to earth with the magic of fire. You lay cold or burning in the woodlands and the open hillsides, a lumbering creature yearning to stand upright and reach at the sun and moon. Male and female, you lay on the ground and coupled, and the hunger of sex awoke in you like a great hollow bell, screaming through the night. Your senses heard it, and you yearned. You have fought upwards, out of the dark tunnels, dreaming of a clean naked body. Upwards the urge drives, one in the myriad cells of the human brain and the tangled skein of starlight. Poor man, frightened of the dark, bringing nightmares from the forest to fill the marble palaces of the sun. When will you be able to desire with wholeness, man? When will you cast out the gods and demons that madden you? When will you use religion to free yourself from religion and stand entire in a realised world?

Sad questions for a sick man lying forgotten on a couch in that small Roman room. What remains? Only the hunger of sex crying in the night, the plangent moon-voice, the hunger that drives upwards for ever. Ah, if that hunger could only drive out the terrors that it has brought from the dark forests of time. Every rustle of the curtain of darkness reawakens the human past, aeons of lying frightened under the dark boughs, frightened of the great cats that slouched through the undergrowth. Who will cleanse the blood of birth?

7

As the guests were leaving, Cæsar noticed Lucretius. The man’s rapt face interested him and he spoke aside to Memmius. “Who is your friend? I don’t think he uttered a word all the evening. Please ask him to excuse our barbarous obsession with politics.”

“He’s a poet,” said Memmius, who was comfortably drunk. “Poor fellow. Quite a good one too. I’ll go over and see Mucia to-morrow.”

Cæsar moved from the hall into the courtyard at the rear. Something in the face of Lucretius had troubled him. As he stood in the small space visited by a gust wind that was blowing rainclouds down from the north, he tried to draw himself up out of the confusion of events and consider what he had gained from the last year. Something had deepened within him. The world had more meaning. His ambition had opened its arms and taken the earth to its breast. He had felt the call of suffering life and had not succumbed to the desire to throw his own life away as a hostage, a redemption, for that suffering. Was that where the depth in will lay?—to come as close as possible to that suffering and yet to remain individual, intact without pity?

8

Early in January had come the Compital Games, which the Senate were continually trying to suppress; for they were the festival of the District-associations, and slaves as well as free men took part in them. The Games were therefore uproariously celebrated by the populace, and this year they made a great show of force against the authorities. There were further rites of awakening life, and then February took up the rites of purification and placation. There was a sacramental Feast of the Ovens and a Rite of the Dead; processions to graves and meals partaken with the dead and the Feast of Dear Recognition, a love-feast of the family. On the Ides the Race of the Lupercal would be run once more.

The Salian Hymns of Mars were murmuring in the first winds of spring. The voice of Mars was speaking. The arduous return of the Year must still be charmed with power and forethought. Build for the future, Romans.

9

Catalina had continued his series of forced marches among the foothills, hoping to break through northwards into Gaul; but Metellus Celer had fortified the passes too well. Baffled, Catalina fell back towards Pestoria, now followed closely by the government-army. His troops had once numbered 12,000, but the ranks were weakened by desertion though the core of 4,000 veterans were entirely trustworthy. One day as he was reconnoitring with his officers, he saw a bearded man, splashed with mud, come riding towards him. Reining up, he waited to see who it was, and recognised Volturcius.

Volturcius leaped from his horse and stood humbly before Catalina, unable to speak first.

“I am glad you have come,” said Catalina.

“You heard what I did? “ answered Volturcius in a stubborn voice of appeal.

“That does not matter now you are here.”

“They could have torn me to pieces before I’d have spoken if it meant doing any real harm. But I couldn’t help by not speaking.”

“I believe you,” said Catalina, wanting to end the subject. “We are riding back now. Come with us. You need food and clothes.”

Over a flask of wine Volturcius could not restrain his effort to excuse himself and explain. “I couldn’t bear to stay in Rome after what I did. I came to die with you. I suppose it must be dying.”

Catalina smiled sadly. “I feel there would yet be a chance if I could feel as I used to feel. But something has drained away. I feel like this winter-earth. Perhaps if I can keep from a battle till the spring, I shall feel different. After all, why shouldn’t I win? One victory will bring out thousands on our side.”

“Get back your heart,” pleaded Volturcius. “But I’m with you now whatever happens.”

Catalina was comforted. Why should he not regain his old certainty? He had lost it by leaving Rome, but he felt it flowing back as he looked at Volturcius. What was that certainty except the knowledge that he was loyal to his cause and his friends? “What was Cæsar doing?” he asked.

Volturcius retold the story of the fifth of December and gave details of the fight that Cæsar was putting up through Bestia and Nepos. Catalina warmed still more. If he won his battle, he would have Cæsar on his side; but why had Cæsar not written or at least sent a message during the days at Rome, something to show where his heart lay?

“My courage is coming back,” Catalina told Volturcius, “and you’ve brought it to me. Here, let’s call Manlius and Furius and Munatius, and have a banquet of aged fowls boiled in milk, with a few rissoles of horse-flesh. And wine.”

10

They had their banquet; and resting on the rough couches covered with skins and coarse wool, Catalina felt his confidence returning. He had four good men about him, and two legions camped in the fields outside. What more could he want? On the morrow he would fight. They were near the mountains and could not retreat much farther north without losing all order. “Sing us your songs,” he told Manlius, and Manlius sang in a strong peasant voice the songs which he had learned in taverns and army-tents. Once more the spirit of Etruscan earth was coming to Catalina, despite the loss of Cæsar, despite the death of his son, despite the triumph of Cicero with words. The winter-pall had draped the ruins of old palaces and of later farmhouses with equal bareness and charity. Desolation became part of the earth, and man’s desolated efforts lost their pathos. All that Catalina had planned was reduced to this windswept tent on the bleak hillside; this was the earth that he had inherited; but why should he complain? It was earth, and therefore he had no complaint. There was a richer culture in the strong peasant-voice of Manlius singing these old songs than in the prettily modulated voice of any poet of the salons. Deeper back it went, closer to the comfort and endurance that was all life could give.

Endure and take what warmth you can gain. That was all wisdom. First learn to endure. The voice of Manlius came out of the winter-earth, pledge of the returning sap of spring. Men walked the earth, and the spirit within did not wither with the change of seasons. It could endure more than a tree. The weakest man was stronger than an oak.

“Do you remember when Sulla took Præneste?”

“I remember …”

“The slaves in the crowded workhouse-cell. The man hung up by his wrist because he’d tried to stab the foreman.”

“That ship launched at Puteoli.”

“I’ve never made a long sea voyage. Let’s find a ship and sail out through the Pillars of Hercules, westwards.”

The voices were happy, reliving the past, charming the future with confidence. Life was worth living. Learn to endure, and all is easy. Then the warmth of comfort is known at its true worth. No luxuries are needed by the man who possesses his hearth and the bosom of his wife. But such knowledge comes only from endurance. The voices faded away across the pleasant warmth of wine into the padding silence of the rain.

11

As he lay in the darkness near the end of the night-hours, he was awakened by a shrill yelping cry. He started up, for the noise sounded from under his own brows. Then he heard it again. It was the cry of some mountain-eagle. He had heard before the cry of hunting-birds, but had never asked himself their meaning. Now to his flocking pulses the cry sounded shrill with terror, not with menace. Was the creature of prey then driven by a sheer unreasoning terror? It must be so; otherwise, why did it declare thus to the world its hunger-pang, its ruthless determination to kill and to feed on the blood of other life?

The eagle was alone. Its life was a crag. It knew the loneliness of sheer light, and it feared its own existence of stark appetite. It cried in its despair, asking its prey to forgive and to understand. It warned in its terror, it cried out its cruelty, asking the earth the riddle of its birth. Why am I made to kill and to be lonely? Pity me, you creatures that I kill. I kill only out of my need, and thus deepen the loneliness that creates my terror. Fear and pity cried in the voice of the eagle and all other creatures of prey.

The awakened man trembled as he lay on his camp-pallet, praying that the eagle would not again rend the air with that beseeching cry.

12

Before dawn Catalina rode out with his officers to survey the country. The enemy were pressing close, enabled by superior equipment and commissariat to march at a pace equal to that of the lighter armed rebels. Catalina had camped on some strong foothills looking down the river-valley; and the enemy showed the square and regularly laid-out Roman camp about three miles farther south. The rain had stopped and the day was austerely bright. Behind, there rose sparsely-wooded gullies, then pine-forests, then the snow-capped Appenines. It was good ground for a straightforward battle, without any features calling for particular strategy. Catalina had already tried to lure the enemy into ambushes, but had learned that Petreius was too canny a soldier; the scouts and advance-guards were too well instructed. And since Petreius had the advantage in supplies, he would never risk battle on a ground obviously adverse to himself. Catalina would have to offer an open clash or dodge further into the mountains till his troops were whittled to a mere brigand-band.

The sharp morning air sparkled in the senses. As Catalina, from a hillock of firs, looked down on the two armies, he felt the distant sweetness which the view from above the Volsinian Lake had yielded him. How far he had gone from his hatreds and petty greeds. It seemed to him that he had begun his adventure out of mere thwarted vanity and resentment; he had wanted to break and devour, and yet somehow he had gradually wanted other things. These armies below, thousands of men, were only instruments in the purification of his will. There was something holy and yet blasphemous in the thought. Who was he to cause death and destruction and tears in a thousand homes only that he should feel mastery on a hilltop in the dawn? Yet there was the fact. Would men have joined his standard and forced other men to come armoured out against them, unless there was a reality greater than any mere egoistic gesture in Catalina’s arrogant dreams? The men were part of him, even the enemy, and he was part of them. The vision of the armies encamped in the dawn was sacrament of his hunger.

Smoke was rising from the cook-tents in both armies. Trumpets pealed. Soldiers lounged on the rough ramparts thrown up overnight according to the rigid regulations of military service. The river glistened along its reedy bed, and men from either camp were drawing buckets of water from the nearest points. There was still a disquiet in Catalina’s heart, but something had been solved. Beyond his own troubles he had found a comfort and an enigma in the awareness that southwards, at Rome, Cæsar was regathering the forces of the people. Did not that prove that nothing could check the progress of the revolution? The Republic must be ended, and a man must rule the earth.

“It will serve,” said Manlius, who had been studying the ground. “We shall have a slight rise to help us. But it will be a clear fight with no flanking movements.”

They rode back to the camp and Catalina gave orders for his two legions to be drawn up in battle-line before the camp. Then he rode out in full uniform of a general, a plumed helmet fastened with bronze flaps under his chin, a heavy scarlet cloak hanging from his shoulders. Manlius and Furius, who had charge of either wing, were also cloaked in scarlet; and with the other officers they ranged themselves behind the general as he turned to address the men.

“I know well enough, soldiers,” said Catalina, “that words cannot bring courage. What courage a man has in his heart, he will show on the field, and no more. But I have thought it best to say a few words to you all. You know what has happened at Rome. You know the passes to the north are blocked. We stand between two armies on a mountain-ridge without corn. Whatever road we take must be a road cut by our swords. There is only battle. Yet things are not so dark. If we lose, we perish utterly. But if we win, there will be aid and supplies sent from every side. Rome will rise and open her gates to us.

“Therefore our very despair should rouse us. With us it is all or nothing, while our enemies have no such pressure upon them. We have a good battle-ground where we cannot be surrounded. Lift up your hearts then, and remember who you are, men harried from the earth by an injustice that you are sworn to break. And if it is not fated that we should conquer, see to it that you die in such a way that only a bloody and mournful victory will be left to our enemies, a warning of the day of our avengers. For whether the last blow is struck by our hands or by the hands of those that come after us, the day must arrive when our persecutors will be broken. Fight, therefore, like men who cannot lose. For that is the truth.”

The men broke into a cheer which was half a cry of lamentation and fury. Catalina raised his arm, glad at the sound. The men would fight well with that cry ringing in their ears, bringing memories of lost homes and starving children. This was to be no fight of loose optimisms. Unless his men could first despair, they would never win.

13

Petreius ordered his men out as soon as he saw that Catalina meant battle. Gaius Antonius, on receiving the news, had discovered an acute attack of gout, deputed full command to Petreius, and ridden off actively towards Pestoria. Petreius watched him go with a scowling pleased grin; then he set to work strenuously.

Trumpets sounded; and Catalina, having sent all horses to the rear so that the men might be encouraged by fighting beside the officers, led his legions down the slope in regular formation and placed them in battle array along the first level ground. There was a wide space on the left, above which the hills ascended, and on the right there rose rugged masses of rock. Eight cohorts he stationed in front, and the rest in compact order in the rear. All the ablest veterans and best armed men he had had selected for the vanguard. Issuing his final instructions, he directed Manlius to the right wing and Furius to the left; then with his own bodyguard he took his stand in the foremost rank of the veterans. At his side stood Volturcius with the silver eagle, wearing over his helm the customary panther-skin with head complete to increase stature and make him look more formidable.

Petreius also had massed his veterans in front and placed the other troops behind in relieving lines. He gave no formal speech like Catalina, but rode through the ranks, speaking to the men by name and bidding them remember that they were fighting against half-armed brigands in defence of their homes and country. He was a coarse, jovial man, an old campaigner, and knew exactly how to talk with the men, how to rouse them with a jest or a sentiment. When he had ended these preliminaries and assured himself that the centurions had received their orders correctly, he bade the trumpets sound and the cohorts advance at a slow pace. Catalina also gave the word for the advance. Skirmishers, clad in leather jerkins and carrying slings or light spears, passed through the ranks and ran up to throw their weapons and hastily retreat. But both sides were anxious for hand-to-hand fighting; the skirmishers ran back through the ranks and retired to the rear, or slipped away round the flanks, leaving a few dead between the nearing lines.

Then the lines met. The centres moved outwards a little, and the clash occurred there first. Spears were thrown, and the battle henceforth was fought out with swords. Catalina stood in the front rank with his bodyguard, moving up and down among the soldiers and cheering them with his voice. Volturcius with the eagle and a tall fellow named Sergius who acted as his armour-bearer kept closely to his side. The shouts and grinding tumult filled the valley-space as if with a tempest of waters, and the two long battle-lines swayed and heaved and clanged like a huge animal writhing in its death-agonies across the plain.

14

In the midst leaped Catalina. With the first blow struck by his sword he felt a tremendous strength flow into him. The blow had landed on a man’s shield. He swung to the left and caught the man in the throat. The man fell to the ground, his shield under him, blood spirting from the wound. The wind of exultation stirred in Catalina’s hair-roots. He shouted, and the whole roar of battle seemed a faint echo of that shout. At last he was at grips with the monster slimed from his fear. He would conquer, or if he died his death would be indistinguishable from victory. He was the hero in whom the race lived, and he could not die. His death would be only another altar of piety in the unchanging temple.

But his mood of violent joy did not dull his sense of generalship. It towered above him, an eagle, while he directed the operations, sustaining each section that was hardly pressed, bringing up fresh men to take the place of the wounded, issuing orders for each centurion along the lines, leading the charges. He had killed many men, but felt no fatigue. Nothing could stop the wind of exultation rushing along his blood. Although the battle broke and twisted across the same area, he felt as if they were charging forwards at headlong speed, careering to the shores of the world where space became endless waters.

Petreius was surprised by the fury of the onslaught. He brought up the prætorian cohort of picked men and led them in person against the enemy-centre. The charge of well-disciplined troops drove back Catalina’s men, who fought hard, angrily resisting. At the same time the commanders of the two wings, following the word of Petreius, launched an offensive with fresh men. The rebel-lines, already pushed back at the centre, now found the ends suddenly turned in. The wings were forced inwards, creating confusion among the centre-veterans. Manlius and Furius, both fighting strongly, fell in the effort to rally their men.

Catalina saw that there was no time to carry back the centre in a counter-charge. The wings were giving way further, and the centre would soon be attacked from the flanks and rear. The superior weight of the regular troops had won. Catalina called to the men about him and led a last charge of desperate despair. He saw the eagle glittering silver in the sunlight overhead, and something in him rose clear to the winter-sky. Exultation closed in about him with the sound of great waters suddenly unloosed. He was swept in the tide. The waters of life were unloosed and he had broken down the barriers. The past was down and the future lay before him, a dominion of justice and self-delighted power.

The sword in his hand thrilled and woke to life. Death and destruction hemmed him in. His dream had ended in madness and bestial deaths of hate. But he did not know it. He beheld only the other thing, the hole which he had broken for the imprisoned waters on which he was lifted gloriously towards the cataracts.

He saw a face grinning with passionate fear and rage. He drove at it with his sword and the face disappeared.

The eagle wheeled and swung across the sky. Volturcius was down. The throat of Sergius gave its last whoop.

Tongillus had been killed in the first charge, a spear through his heart. Catalina saw the many swords, the tumult closing over his head. Faces burned and leaped before the hurrying lights of his blade. Something jarred his arm. His helm clashed with deafening noises. Blinded he fell to his knee, still striking out. Then a blade slid across his corselet. A numbing pain severed his thigh. His body awoke to a thousand fiery points of agony. Above the flames and the darkness he saw the silver eagle soaring.

15

When Petreius stood looking over the stricken battlefield, he saw plainly revealed what a stubborn spirit had prevailed through Catalina’s army. Never had he seen an army that fell so closely in the lines where they had fought. Almost all the soldiers lay dead in the spots where they had stood in the ranks; a few, dispersed by the prætorian cohort, lay further back in the field; but all alike they had their wounds in front. Catalina himself was found, far in advance of his men, among the dead bodies of his enemies. Not a single freeborn prisoner was made, and a heavy toll of men was taken from the government-army.

Petreius sought out the body of Catalina and stood looking down at his defeated foe. The man was not quite breathless but, as he lay unconscious, he still showed on his face the set expression of fierce determination that had made him so well known at Rome during the last few years. Petreius bent down and straightened the limbs. After all, what were politics between soldiers? The man was a brave fighter. Petreius had seen so many dead men.

But Catalina’s blood was draining into the earth that Catalina had loved, the earth that the feet of the priests of Mars would soon be reawakening to life. Catalina was dead, but his blood was living in the earth.

Table of Contents

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

FOREWORD

I - CATALINA RETURNS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

II - CÆSAR AS CHIEF PRIEST

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

III - CATALINA IN ETRURIA

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

IV - THE TURMOIL

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

V - BEFORE THE ELECTIONS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

VI - THE ELECTIONS

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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13

14

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18

19

VII - THE CONSPIRACY

I

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

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13

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17

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19

20

VIII - THE DUEL AT LAST

I

2

3

4

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6

7

8

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IX - AMONG THE REBELS

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X - THE BETRAYAL

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XI - THE TRIAL

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XII - THE END OF CATALINA’S YEAR

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