Imperium

Galba and Gallus. But Galba was so aristocratic, he would have nothing to do with Cicero, and Gallus—despite all Cicero’s pleadings—had said firmly that he had no interest in becoming consul.
    “Can you believe it?” complained Cicero as we huddled around his desk, studying the list of likely runners. “I offer the man the greatest job in the world, and he has to give me nothing in return except to stand at my side for a day or two. Yet he still says he would prefer to concentrate on jurisprudence!” He took up his pen and crossed out Gallus’s name, then added Catilina’s to the bottom of the list. He tapped his pen beside it idly, underlined it, circled it, then glanced at each of us. “Of course, there is one other potential partner we have not mentioned.”
    “And who is that?” asked Quintus.
    “Catilina.”
    “Marcus!”
    “I am perfectly serious,” said Cicero. “Let’s think it through. Suppose, instead of attempting to prosecute him, I offer to defend him. If I secure his acquittal, he will be under an obligation to support me for consul. On the other hand, if he is found guilty and goes into exile—then that is the end of him. Either outcome is acceptable as far as I am concerned.”
    “You would defend Catilina ?” Quintus was well used to his brother, and it took a great deal to shock him, but on that day he was almost speechless.
    “I would defend the blackest devil in hell if he was in need of an advocate. That is our system of law.” Cicero frowned and shook his head irritably. “But we went over all this with poor Lucius just before he died. Come on, brother—spare me the reproachful face! You wrote the book: ‘I am a new man. I seek the consulship. This is Rome.’ Those three things—they say it all. I am a new man, therefore there is no one to help me but myself, and you few friends. I seek the consulship, which is immortality—a prize worth fighting for, yes? And this is Rome— Rome —not some abstract place in a work of philosophy, but a city of glory built on a river of filth. So yes, I will defend Catilina, if that is what is necessary, and then I will break with him as soon as I can. And he would do the same to me. That is the world we live in.” Cicero sat back in his chair and raised his hands. “Rome.”

    CICERO DID NOT MAKE A MOVE immediately, preferring to wait and see whether the prosecution of Catilina would definitely go ahead. There was a widespread view that Clodius was simply showing off, or perhaps trying to distract attention from the shame of his sister’s divorce. But in the lumbering way of the law, as the summer came on, the process passed through all its various stages—the postulatio, divinatio, and nominas delatio —a jury was selected and a date was fixed for the start of the trial in the last week of July. There was no chance now that Catilina would be free of litigation in time for the consular elections; nominations had already closed.
    At this point, Cicero decided to let Catilina know that he might be interested in acting as his advocate. He gave much thought as to how to convey the offer, for he did not wish to lose face by being rebuffed, and also wanted to be able to deny ever making an approach in case he was challenged in the Senate. In the end he hit upon a characteristically subtle scheme. He called Caelius to his study, swore him to secrecy, and announced that he had it in mind to defend Catilina: what did he think? (“But not a word to anyone, mind!”) This was exactly the sort of gossip which Caelius most delighted in, and naturally he could not resist sharing the confidence with his friends, among them Mark Antony—who, as well as being the nephew of Hybrida, was also the adopted son of Catilina’s close friend Lentulus Sura.
    I guess it must have taken all of a day and a half for a messenger to turn up on Cicero’s doorstep, bearing a letter from Catilina, asking him if he would care to visit, and proposing—in the interests of confidentiality—that the rendezvous be conducted after dusk. “And so the fish bites,” said Cicero, showing me the letter, and he sent back with the slave a verbal reply that he would attend on Catilina in his house that same night.
    Terentia was now very close to parturition and was finding the heat of Rome in July insufferable. She lay, restless and groaning, on a couch in the stifling dining room, Tullia on one side reading to her in a piping voice, a maid with a fan on the other.