Dictator

‘The man’s ingratitude is unbelievable! Do you remember how he used to be so frightened of Clodius and his gang that he daren’t even set foot out of doors until I brought in my gladiators to clear the streets? And now he has taken that snake under his roof, yet he won’t even bid me good morning!’

I sympathised – we all knew what Pompey was like: a great man, but entirely preoccupied with himself – and then tried tactfully to steer the conversation back to Milo’s campaign. There was not long until polling day. Where did he plan to spend these precious final hours?

‘Today,’ he announced, ‘I am going to Lanuvium, my adopted grandfather’s ancestral home.’

I could scarcely believe it. ‘You’re leaving Rome, this close to the actual vote?’

‘It’s only twenty miles. A new priest is to be nominated for the Temple of Juno the Saviour. She is the municipal deity, which means that the ceremony will be huge – you’ll see, hundreds of voters will be there.’

‘Even so, surely these voters are already committed to you, given your family connection to the town? Wouldn’t your time be better spent pursuing voters who are undecided?’

But Milo refused to discuss it further. Indeed his refusal was so absolute that now, when I look back on it, I wonder if he hadn’t already given up hope of winning the election in the voting pens and decided to go looking for trouble instead. After all, Lanuvium is also in the Alban Hills, and the road to it would take us practically past Pompey’s gates. He must have calculated there was a good chance we would meet Clodius on the way. It would have been just the sort of opportunity for a fight he relished.

By the time we set out that afternoon he had gathered together a considerable wagon train of luggage and servants, protected by his usual small private army of slaves and gladiators armed with swords and javelins. Milo rode in a carriage at the head of this menacing column together with his wife, Fausta. He invited me to join them but I preferred the discomfort of horseback to sharing a carriage with those two, whose tempestuous relationship was notorious. We clattered off down the Via Appia, arrogantly forcing all the other traffic out of our way – again, I noted, poor electoral tactics – and had been going for about two hours when of course, on the outskirts of Bovillae, we duly encountered Clodius heading in the opposite direction, back to Rome.

Clodius was on horseback with perhaps thirty attendants – less well armed than Milo’s, and far less numerous. I was in the middle of our column. As he passed, he caught my eye. He knew me pretty well as Cicero’s secretary. He certainly gave me a foul look.

The rest of his party followed him. I averted my gaze. I wanted no trouble. But moments later, from behind me, there was a shout and then the clash of steel hitting steel. I turned and saw that a fight had broken out between our gladiators, who were bringing up the rear, and some of Clodius’s men. Clodius himself had already gone a little way further along the road. He drew up his horse and turned, and at that moment Birria, the gladiator who had sometimes acted as a bodyguard to Cicero, hurled a javelin at him. It did not hit him full on, but rather in his side as he was in the act of turning, and the force of it almost knocked him from his saddle. The barbed tip buried itself deep in his flesh. He looked at it in astonishment, and screamed and clutched at the shaft with both hands, his whitened toga turning crimson with blood.

His bodyguards spurred their horses and surrounded him. Our convoy halted. I noticed we were close to a tavern – the same place, by bizarre coincidence, where we had stopped to pick up our horses on the night Cicero fled Rome. Milo jumped out of his carriage with his sword drawn and walked down the side of the road to see what was going on. All along the column men were dismounting. By now Clodius’s attendants had pulled the javelin from his ribs and were helping him towards the tavern. He was sufficiently conscious to be able to half walk supported on the arms of his companions. Meanwhile small groups of men were fighting hand-to-hand along the road and in the fields next to it – desperate, hacking struggles, some on horseback, some on foot – such a confused melee that I could not at first distinguish our men from theirs. But gradually I perceived that ours were winning, for we outnumbered them three to one. I saw several of Clodius’s men, despairing of victory, fling up their arms in surrender or fall to their knees. Others simply threw aside their weapons, turned and ran, or galloped off. No one bothered to pursue them.

The struggle over, Milo, with his arms akimbo, surveyed the carnage, then gestured to Birria and a few others to go and fetch Clodius from the tavern.