Imperium

for some more severe tribunal, and some more fearful punishment!”
    This would have been too much even for an equable man to sit through, but in Catilina it induced nothing short of murderous insanity. He gave an animal’s bellow of primitive rage and launched himself over the bench in front of him, crashing between Hortensius and Catulus, and diving across the aisle in an effort to reach his tormentor. But of course this was precisely the reaction Cicero had been trying to goad him into. He flinched but stood his ground as Quintus and a few other ex-soldiers scrambled to form a cordon around him—not that there was any need, for Catilina, big though he was, had been seized at once by the consul’s lictors. His friends, among them Crassus and Caesar, quickly had him by the arms and started dragging him back to his seat as he writhed and roared and kicked in fury. The whole of the Senate was on its feet, trying to see what was happening, and Figulus had to suspend the session until order was restored.
    When the sitting resumed, Hybrida and Catilina, as custom dictated, were given the opportunity to respond, and each man, quivering with outrage, tipped a bucketful of the usual insults over Cicero’s head—ambitious, untrustworthy, scheming, “new man,” foreigner, evader of military service, coward—while their supporters cheered them dutifully. But neither had Cicero’s flair for invective, and even their most dedicated partisans must have been dismayed by their failure to answer his central charge: that their candidacies were based on bribery by a mysterious third party. It was noticeable that Hortensius and even Catulus offered them only the most halfhearted applause. As for Cicero, he put on a professional mask and sat smiling and unconcerned throughout their shrill tirades, seemingly no more discomfited than a duck in a rainstorm. Only afterwards—after Quintus and his military friends had escorted him rapidly out of the chamber to prevent a further assault by Catilina, and only after we had reached the safety of Atticus’s house on the Quirinal and the door had been locked and barred—only then did he appear to realize the enormity of what he had done.

Roll XVIII

    THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT for Cicero now except to wait for the reaction of Hortensius. We passed the hours in the dry stillness of Atticus’s library, surrounded by all that ancient wisdom, under the gaze of the great philosophers, while beyond the terrace the day ripened and faded and the view over the city became yellower and dustier in the heat of the July afternoon. I should like to record that we took down the occasional volume and spent the time swapping the thoughts of Epicurus or Zeno or Aristotle, or that Cicero said something profound about democracy. But in truth no one was much in the mood for political theory, least of all Quintus, who had scheduled a campaign appearance in the busy Porticus Aemilia and fretted that his brother was losing valuable canvassing time. We relived the drama of Cicero’s speech—” You should have seen Crassus’s face when he thought I was about to name him!”—and pondered the likely response of the aristocrats. If they did not take the bait, Cicero had placed himself in a highly dangerous position. Every so often, he would ask me if I was absolutely certain that Hortensius had read his letter, and yet again I would reply that I had no doubt, for he had done so right in front of me. “Then we shall give him another hour,” Cicero would say, and resume his restless pacing, occasionally stopping to make some cutting remark to Atticus: “Are they always this punctual, these smart friends of yours?” or “Tell me, is it considered a crime against good breeding to consult a clock?”
    It was the tenth hour by Atticus’s exquisite sundial when at last one of his slaves came into the library to announce that Hortensius’s steward had arrived.
    “So now we are supposed to negotiate with his servants?” muttered Cicero. But he was so anxious for news that he hurried out into the atrium himself, and we all went with him. Waiting there was the same bony, supercilious fellow whom I had encountered at Hortensius’s house that morning; he was not much more polite now. His message was that he had come in Hortensius’s two-seater carriage to collect Cicero and convey him to a meeting with his master.
    “But I must accompany him,” protested Quintus.
    “My orders are simply to bring Senator