Imperium

it off—cut it off and throw it out!” Renewed cheers. “But it will require quite a knife to sever this head, for it is an aristocratic head, and we all know what they are like!” Laughter. “It is a head swollen with the poison of corruption and bloated with pride and arrogance. And it will need a strong hand to wield that knife, and it will need a steady nerve, besides, because they have necks of brass, these aristocrats, I tell you: brassnecks, all of them!” Laughter. “But that man will come. He is not far away. Your powers will be restored, I promise you, however hard the struggle.” A few brighter sparks started shouting out Pompey’s name. Cicero held up his hand, three fingers outstretched. “To you now falls the great test of being worthy of this fight. Show courage, gentlemen. Make a start today. Strike a blow against tyranny. Free my client. And then free Rome!”
    Later, Cicero was so embarrassed by the rabble-rousing nature of this speech, he asked me to destroy the only copy, so I must confess I am writing here from memory. But I recollect it very clearly—the force of his words, the passion of his delivery, the excitement of the crowd as he whipped them up, the wink he exchanged with Palicanus as he left the tribunal, and Terentia not moving a muscle, simply staring straight ahead as the common people around her erupted in applause. Timarchides, who had been standing at the back, slipped out before the ovation ended, no doubt to ride at full gallop to Sicily and report to his master what had happened—for the motion, I need hardly add, was passed by ten votes to nil, and Sthenius, as long as he stayed in Rome, was safe.

Roll IV

    ANOTHER OF CICERO’S maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. Thus, although he had never previously expressed an opinion about Pompey or the tribunes, neither cause now had a more devoted adherent. And the Pompeians were delighted to welcome such a brilliant recruit to their ranks.
    That winter was long and cold in the city, and for no one, I suspect, more than Terentia. Her personal code of honor required her to support her husband against the enemies who had invaded her home. But having sat among the smelly poor, and listened to Cicero haranguing her own class, she now found her drawing room and dining room invaded at all hours by his new political cronies: men from the uncouth north, who spoke with ugly accents and who liked to put their feet up on her furniture and plot late into the night. Palicanus was the chief of these, and on his second visit to the house in January he brought with him one of the new praetors, Lucius Afranius, a fellow senator from Pompey’s homeland of Picenum. Cicero went out of his way to be charming, and in earlier years, Terentia, too, would have felt it an honor to have a praetor in her house. But Afranius had no decent family or breeding of any sort. He actually had the nerve to ask her if she liked dancing, and, when she drew back in horror, declared that personally he loved nothing more. He pulled up his toga and showed her his legs and demanded to know if she had ever seen a finer pair of calves.
    These men were Pompey’s representatives in Rome and they carried with them something of the smell and manners of the army camp. They were blunt to the point of brutality—but then, perhaps they had to be, given what they were planning. Palicanus’s daughter, Lollia—a blowsy young piece, very much not to Terentia’s taste—occasionally joined the menfolk, for she was married to Aulus Gabinius, another of Pompey’s Picenean lieutenants, currently serving with the general in Spain. Gabinius was a link with the legionary commanders, who in turn provided intelligence on the loyalty of the centuries—an important consideration, for, as Afranius put it, there was no point in bringing the army to Rome to restore the powers of the tribunes, only to find that the legions would happily go over to the aristocrats if they were offered a big enough bribe.
    At the end of January, Gabinius sent word that the final rebel strongholds of Uxama and Calagurris had been taken, and that Pompey was ready to march his legions home. Cicero had been active among the pedarii for weeks, drawing senators aside as they waited for debaes, convincing them that the rebel slaves in the Italian north posed a gathering threat to their businesses and