Imperium

bodyguards. We left by the Fontinalian Gate, with no one to see us off. In those days, the hills to the north of Rome were still pine-clad, apart from the one on which Lucullus was just completing his notorious palace. The patrician general had now come back from the East, but was unable to enter the city proper without forfeiting his military imperium, and with it his right to a triumph. So he was lingering out here amid his spoils of war, waiting for his aristocratic cronies to assemble a majority in the Senate to vote him triumphator, but the supporters of Pompey, among them Cicero, kept blocking it. Mind you, even Cicero glanced up from his letters long enough to take a look at this colossal structure, the roof of which was just visible over the treetops, and I secretly hoped that we might catch a glimpse of the great man himself, but of course he was nowhere to be seen. (Incidentally, Quintus Metellus, the sole survivor of the three Metelli brothers, had also recently returned from Crete, and was also holed up outside the city in anticipation of a triumph which, again, the ever-jealous Pompey would not allow. The plight of Lucullus and Metellus was a source of endless amusement to Cicero: “a traffic jam of generals,” he called them, “all trying to get into Rome through the Triumphal Gate!”) At the Mulvian Bridge we paused while Cicero dashed off a final note of farewell to Terentia. Then we crossed the swollen waters of the Tiber and turned north onto the Flaminian Way.
    We made extremely good time on that first day, and shortly before nightfall we reached Ocriculum, about thirty miles north of the city. Here we were met by a prominent local citizen who had agreed to give Cicero hospitality, and the following morning the senator went into the forum to begin his canvass. The secret of effective electioneering lies in the quality of the staff work done in advance, and here Cicero was very fortunate to have attached to his campaign two professional agents, Ranunculus and Filum, who traveled ahead of the candidate to ensure that a decent crowd of supporters would always be waiting in each town when we arrived. There was nothing about the electoral map of Italy which these two rascals did not know: who among the local knights would be offended if Cicero did not stop to pay his respects, and who should be avoided; which were the most important tribes and centuries in each particular district, and which were most likely to come his way; what were the issues which most concerned the citizens, and what were the promises they expected in return for their votes. They had no other topic of conversation except politics, yet Cicero could sit with them late into the night, swapping facts and stories, as happily as he could converse with a philosopher or a wit.
    I would not weary you with all the details of the campaign, even if I could remember them. Dear gods, what a heap of ash most political careers amount to when one really stops to consider them! I used to be able to name every consul for the past one hundred years, and most praetors for the past forty. Now they have almost entirely faded out of my memory, quenched like lights at midnight around the Bay of Naples. Little wonder that the towns and crowds of Cicero’s consular campaign have all merged into one generalized impression of hands shaken, stories listened to, bores endured, petitions received, jokes told, undertakings given, and local worthies smoothed and flattered. The name of Cicero was famous by this time, even outside Rome, and people turned out to see him en masse, especially in the larger towns where law was practiced, for the speeches he had prepared for the prosecution of Verres—even those he had not delivered—had been extensively copied and circulated. He was a hero to both the lower classes and the respectable knights, who saw him as a champion against the rapacity and snobbery of the aristocracy. For this reason, not many grand houses opened their doors to him, and we had to endure taunts and even, occasionally, missiles whenever we passed close to the estates of one or other of the great patricians.
    We pressed on up the Flaminian Way, devoting a day to each of the decent-sized towns—Narnia, Carsulae, Mevania, Fulginiae, Nuceria, Tadinae, and Cales—before finally reaching the Adriatic coast about two weeks after leaving Rome. It was some years since I had gazed upon the sea, and when that line of glittering blue appeared above the