Imperium

be maintained in perpetuity by the proceeds of extortion abroad.” He sat back and was silent for a long while, his arms folded, his chin on his chest.
    I was drained by what I had endured and longed only for sleep. Yet the early summer light now beginning to seep into the room showed we had worked right through the night and it was already election eve. I was aware of the dawn chorus starting up outside, and soon after that heard the tread of someone coming down the stairs. It was Terentia in her nightdress, her hair awry, her un-made-up face soft with sleep, a shawl drawn around her narrow shoulders. I stood respectfully and looked away in embarrassment. “Cicero!” she exclaimed, taking no notice of me. “What on earth are you doing down here at this hour?”
    He looked up at her and wearily explained what had happened. She had a very quick mind for anything political or financial—had she not been born a woman, and given her spirit, there is no telling what she might have done—and the moment she grasped it she was horrified, for Terentia was an aristocrat to her core, and to her the notion of privatizing state land and giving it to the plebs was a step on the road to the destruction of Rome.
    “You must lead the fight against it,” she urged Cicero. “This could win you the election. All the decent men will rally to you.”
    “Ah, but will they?” Cicero picked up one of my notebooks. “Outright opposition to this could rebound on me badly. A large faction in the Senate, half of them patriotic and the other half just plain greedy, has always favored seizing Egypt. And out on the streets, the cry of “Free farms for all!” is far more likely to gain Catilina and Hybrida votes than cost them. No, I am trapped.” He stared at the transcript of the conference and shook his head slowly, like an artist ruefully contemplating the work of some talented rival. “It really is an extraordinary scheme—a stroke of true political genius. Only Caesar could have dreamed it up. And as for Crassus—for a down payment of just twenty million, he can expect to gain control of most of Italy and the whole of Egypt. Even you would concede that that is a good return on your investment.”
    “But you have to do something, ” persisted Terentia. “You cannot simply allow it to happen.”
    “And what exactly would you have me do?”
    “And you are supposed to be the cleverest man in Rome?” she asked in exasperation. “Is it not obvious? Go to the Senate this morning and expose what they are plotting. Denounce them!”
    “A brilliant tactic, Terentia,” responded Cicero sarcastically. (I was beginning to find my position between them increasingly uncomfortable.) “I both reveal the existence of a popular measure and I denounce it at the same time. You are not listening to me: the people who stand to benefit the most from this are my supporters.”
    “Well, then, you have only yourself to blame for depending on such a rabble in the first place! This is the problem with your demagoguery, Cicero—you may think you can control the mob, but the mob will always end up devouring you. Did you seriously believe you could beat men like Crassus and Catilina when it came to a public auction of principles?” Cicero grunted irritably; however I noticed he did not argue with her. “But tell me,” she continued, needling away at him, “if this ‘extraordinary scheme,’ as you call it—or ‘criminal enterprise,’ as I should prefer it—really is as popular as you say, why all this skulking around at night? Why do they not come out with it openly?”
    “Because, my dear Terentia, the aristocrats think like you. They would never stand for it. First it will be the great public estates that are broken up and redistributed, next it will be their private domains. Every time Caesar and Crassus give a man a farm, they will create another client for themselves. And once the patricians start to lose control of the land, they are finished. Besides, how do you think Catulus or Hortensius would react to being ordered around by a ten-man commission elected by the people? The people! To them it would seem like a revolution—Tiberius Gracchus all over again.” Cicero threw the notebook back onto the dining table. “No, they would scheme and bribe and kill to preserve the status quo, just as they always have done.”
    “And they would be right!” Terentia glowered down at him. Her fists were clenched; I almost expected her to