Imperium

prepared to walk home, “at any rate, I believe that now he knows who I am.”
    I shall not mention every case which Cicero took on at this time because there were dozens, all part of his strategy to place as many influential men as possible under an obligation to support him at the consular election, and to keep his name constantly in the voters’ minds. He certainly chose his clients carefully, and four of them at least were senators: Fundanius, who controlled a big voting syndicate; Orchivius, who had been one of his colleagues as praetor; Gallius, who was planning to run for a praetorship; and Mucius Orestinus, charged with robbery, who was hoping to become tribune, and whose case tied up the practice for many days.
    I believe that never before had any candidate approached the business of politics as exactly that—a business—and every week a meeting was convened in Cicero’s study to review the campaign’s progress. Participants came and went, but the inner core consisted of five: Cicero himself, Quintus, Frugi, myself, and Cicero’s legal apprentice, Caelius, who, although still very young (or perhaps because of it), was adept at picking up gossip around the city. Quintus was once again the campaign manager and insisted on presiding. He liked to suggest, by the occasional indulgent smile or raised eyebrow, that Cicero, genius though he was, could be something of an airy-fairy intellectual, and needed the blunt common sense of his brother to keep his feet on the earth; and Cicero, with a reasonably good grace, played along.
    It would make an interesting study, if only I had the life left in me to write it: the story of brothers in politics. There were the Gracchi, of course, Tiberius and Caius, who devoted themselves to distributing wealth from the rich to the poor, and who both perished violently as a result. And then in my own time there were Marcus and Lucius Lucullus, patrician consuls in successive years, as well as any number of siblings from the Metellus and Marcellus clans. In a sphere of human activity in which friendships are transitory and alliances made to be broken, the knowledge that another man’s name is forever linked to yours, however the fates may play, must be a powerful source of strength. The relationship between the Ciceros, like that between most brothers, I expect, was a complicated mixture of fondness and resentment, jealousy and loyalty. Without Cicero, Quintus would have been a dull and competent officer in the army, and then a dull and competent farmer in Arpinum, whereas Cicero without Quintus would still have been Cicero. Knowing this, and knowing that his brother knew it, too, Cicero went out of his way to conciliate him, generously wrapping him in the glittering mantle of his fame.
    Quintus spent a long time that winter compiling an Election Handbook, a distillation of his fraternal advice to Cicero, which he liked to quote from whenever possible, as if it were Plato’s Republic . “Consider what city this is,” it began, “what it is you seek, and who you are. Every day, when you go down to the Forum, repeat to yourself: ‘I am a new man. I seek the consulship. This is Rome.’” I can still recall some of the other little homilies it preached. “All things are full of deceit, snares, and treachery. Hold fast to the saying of Epicharmus, that the bone and sinew of wisdom is ‘Never trust rashly.’” “See to it that you show off both the variety and number of your friends.” “I am very anxious that you should always have a crowd about you.” “If someone asks you to do something, do not decline, even if you cannot do it.” “Lastly, see that your canvass is a fine show, brilliant, resplendent, and popular; and also, if it can be managed, that there should be scandalous talk about the crimes, lusts, and briberies of your competitors.”
    Quintus was very proud of his Handbook, and many years later he actually had it published, much to the horror of Cicero, who believed that political mastery, like great art, depends for its effects on the concealment of all the cunning which lies behind it.

    IN THE SPRING TERENTIA celebrated her thirtieth birthday and Cicero arranged a small dinner party in her honor. Quintus and Pomponia came, and Frugi and his parents, and fussy Servius Sulpicius and his unexpectedly pretty wife, Postumia; there must have been others, but the flow of time has washed them from my memory. The household was assembled briefly by Eros the