Dictator

Epiphanes! For a man who made his living by lying, he was remarkably bad at it. I turned and ran out of that room and down those steps and didn’t stop running until I was within sight of our villa, where a pair of rough-looking villains were loitering in the street. My footsteps slowed as the two strangers turned to look at me and I knew in my bones they had been sent to kill Cicero. One had a puckered scar that split the side of his face from his eyebrow to his jaw (Epiphanes was right: he was a fighter straight from the gladiator barracks), while the other could have been a blacksmith – given his swagger, he could have been Vulcan himself – with bulging sunburnt calves and forearms and a face as black as a Negro’s. He called out to me, ‘We’re looking for the house where Cicero is living!’ And when I started to plead ignorance, he cut me off and added, ‘Tell him Titus Annius Milo has come to pay his compliments, all the way from Rome.’

Cicero’s room was dark, his candle expiring for want of air. He lay on his side, facing the wall.

‘Milo?’ he repeated in a monotone. ‘What sort of a name is that? Is he Greek, or what?’ But then he rolled over on to his back and raised himself up on his elbows. ‘Wait – hasn’t a candidate of that name just been elected tribune?’

‘It’s the same man. He’s here.’

‘But if he’s a tribune-elect, why isn’t he in Rome? His term of office begins in three months.’

‘He says he wants to talk to you.’

‘It’s a long way to come just for a chat. What do we know of him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Maybe he’s come to kill me?’

‘Maybe – he has a gladiator with him.’

‘That doesn’t inspire confidence.’ Cicero lay back and thought it over. ‘Well, what does it matter? I might as well be dead in any case.’

He had skulked in his room so long that when I opened the door, the daylight blinded him and he had to put up his hand to protect his eyes. Stiff-limbed and waxen, half starved, with straggling grey hair and beard, he looked like a corpse freshly risen from its tomb. It was scarcely surprising that when he first came into the room, supported on my arm, Milo failed to recognise him. It was only when he heard that familiar voice bidding him good day that our visitor gasped, pressed his hand to his heart, bowed his head and declared this to be the greatest moment and the greatest honour of his life, that he had heard Cicero speak countless times in the law courts and from the rostra but had never thought to meet him, the Father of the Nation, in person, let alone be in a position (he dared to hope) to render him some service …

There was a lot more in this vein, and eventually it elicited from Cicero something I had not seen from him in months: laughter. ‘Yes, very well, young man, that’s enough. I understand: you’re pleased to see me! Come.’ And with that he stepped forward, arms open, and the two men embraced.

In later years, Cicero was to be much criticised for his friendship with Milo. And it is true that the young tribune-elect was headstrong, violent and reckless, but there are times when these traits are more to be prized than prudence, calmness and caution – and these were such times. Besides, Cicero was touched that Milo should have come so far to see him; it made him feel he was not entirely finished. He invited him to stay for dinner and to save whatever he had to say until then. He even tidied himself up a little for the occasion, combing his hair and changing into less funereal garb.

Plancius was away upcountry in Tauriana, judging the local assizes, so therefore only the three of us gathered to eat. (Milo’s gladiator, a murmillo named Birria, took his meal in the kitchen; even a man as easy-going as Cicero, who had been known occasionally to tolerate the presence of an actor at his dinner table, drew the line at a gladiator.) We lay in the garden in a kind of fine-mesh tent designed to keep out the mosquitoes, and over the next few hours we learned something of Milo, and why he had made such an arduous journey of seven hundred miles. He came, he said, of a noble but hard-up family. He had been adopted by his maternal grandfather. Even so, there was little money and he had been obliged to earn a living as the owner of a gladiator school in Campania, supplying fighters for funeral games in Rome. (‘No wonder we’ve never heard of him,’ Cicero remarked to me afterwards.) His work brought him often to the city. He had been appalled, he claimed, by the violence and intimidation unleashed by Clodius. He had wept to see Cicero harried and pilloried and eventually driven from Rome. Given his occupation, he fancied himself to be in a unique position to help restore order, and through intermediaries he had approached Pompey with an offer.

‘What I am about to disclose is in the strictest confidence,’ he said, with a sideways glance at me. ‘No word of it must go beyond us three.’

‘Who am I to tell?’ retorted Cicero. ‘The slave who empties my chamber pot? The cook who brings my meals? I assure you I see no one else.’