Imperium

Her temper, warm in the best of circumstances, was in these days permanently inflamed. As darkness fell and the candelabra were lit, she saw that Cicero was preparing to leave, and immediately demanded to know where he was going. When he gave a vague reply, she tearfully insisted that he must have taken a concubine and was visiting her, for why else would a respectable man go out of doors at this hour? And so, reluctantly, he told her the truth, that he was calling on Catilina. Of course this did not mollify her in the slightest, but only enraged her further. She demanded to know how he could bear to spend a moment in the company of the monster who had debauched her own sister, a vestal virgin, to which Cicero responded with some quip about Fabia having always been “more vestal than virgin.” Terentia struggled to rise but failed, and her furious invective pursued us all the way out of the house, much to Cicero’s amusement.
    It was a night very like the one on the eve of the elections for aedile when he had gone to see Pompey. There was the same oppressive heat and feverish moonlight; the same slight breeze stirred the smell of putrefaction from the burial fields beyond the Esquiline Gate and spread it over the city like an invisible moist dust. We went down into the Forum, where the slaves were lighting the streetlamps, past the silent, darkened temples, and up onto the Palatine, where Catilina had his house. I was carrying a document case, as usual, and Cicero had his hands clasped behind his back and was walking with his head bowed in thought. Back then the Palatine was less built up than it is today, and the buildings were spaced farther apart. I could hear the sound of a stream nearby and there was a scent of honeysuckle and dog rose. “This is the place to live, Tiro,” said Cicero, halting on the steps. “This is where we shall come when there are no more elections to be fought, and I need take less account of what the people think. A place with a garden to read in—imagine that—and where the children can play.” He glanced back in the direction of the Esquiline. “It will be a relief to all concerned when this baby arrives. It is like waiting for a storm to break.”
    Catilina’s house was easy to find, for it was close by the Temple of Luna, which was painted white and lit up at night by torches, in honor of the moon goddess. A slave was waiting in the street to guide us, and he took us straight into the vestibule of the mansion of the Sergii, where a most beautiful woman greeted Cicero. This was Aurelia Orestilla, the wife of Catilina, whose daughter he was supposed to have seduced initially, before moving on to the mother, and for whose sake, it was rumored, he had murdered his own son by his first marriage (the lad having threatened to kill Aurelia rather than accept such a notorious courtesan into the family). Cicero knew all about her and cut off her effusive greeting with a curt nod. “Madame,” he said, “it is your husband I have come to see, not you,” at which she bit her lip and fell silent. It was one of the most ancient houses in Rome, and its timbers creaked as we followed the slave into the interior, which smelled of dusty old drapes and incense. One curious feature I remember was that it had been stripped almost bare, and obviously recently, for one could see the blurred rectangular outlines of where pictures had once hung, and circles of dust on the floor marked the absence of statues. All that remained in the atrium were the dingy wax effigies of Catilina’s ancestors, jaundiced by generations of smoke. This was where Catilina himself was standing, and the first surprise was how tall he was when one got close up—at least a head higher than Cicero—and the second was the presence behind him of Clodius. This must have been a terrific shock to Cicero, but he was far too cool a lawyer to show it. He shook hands quickly with Catilina, then with Clodius, and politely refused an offer of wine; the three men then turned straight to business.
    Looking back, I am struck by how alike Catilina and Clodius were. This was the only time I ever saw them in a room together, and they might have been father and son, with their drawling voices, and the way they stood together so languidly, as if the world were theirs to own. I suppose this is what is called “breeding.” It had taken four hundred years of intermarriage between the finest families in Rome to produce those two