Imperium

always talk to him. He is probably in a position to forbid the marriage. Who is he?”
    “That would be me.”
    “You? You are the guardian of the woman you want to marry?”
    “I am. I’m her closest male relative.”
    Cicero rested his chin in his hand and scrutinized his prospective new client—the ragged hair, the filthy bare feet, the tunic unchanged for weeks. “So what do you wish me to do?”
    “I want you to bring legal proceedings against Scipio, and against Lepida if necessary, and put a stop to this whole thing.”
    “These proceedings—would they be brought by you in your role as rejected suitor, or as the girl’s guardian?”
    “Either.” Cato shrugged. “Both.”
    Cicero scratched his ear. “My experience of young women,” he said carefully, “is as limited as my faith in the rule of law is boundless. But even I, Cato, even I have to say that I doubt whether the best way to a girl’s heart is through litigation.”
    “A girl’s heart?” repeated Cato. “What has a girl’s heart got to do with anything? This is a matter of principle.”
    And money, one would have added, if he had been any other man. But Cato had that most luxurious prerogative of the very rich: little interest in money. He had inherited plenty and gave it away without even noticing. No: it was principle that always motivated Cato—the relentless desire never to compromise on principle.
    “We would have to go to the embezzlement court,” said Cicero, “and lay charges of breach of promise. We would have to prove the existence of a prior contract between you and the Lady Lepida, and that she was therefore a cheat and a liar. We would have to prove that Scipio was a double-dealing, money-grubbing knave. I would have to put them both on the witness stand and tear them to pieces.”
    “Do it,” said Cato, with a gleam in his eye.
    “And at the end of all that, we would probably still lose, for juries love nothing more than star-crossed lovers, save perhaps for orphans—and she is both—and you would have been made the laughingstock of Rome.”
    “What do I care what people think of me?” said Cato scornfully.
    “And even if we win—well, imagine it. You might end up having to drag Lepida kicking and screaming from the court through the streets of Rome, back to her new marital home. It would be the scandal of the year.”
    “So this is what we have descended to, is it?” demanded Cato bitterly. “The honest man is to step aside so that the rascal triumphs? And this is Roman justice?” He leapt to his feet. “I need a lawyer with steel in his bones, and if I cannot find anyone to help me, then I swear I shall lay the prosecution myself.”
    “Sit down, Cato,” said Cicero gently, and when Cato did not move, he repeated it: “Sit, Cato, and I shall tell you something about the law.” Cato hesitated, frowned, and sat, but only on the edge of his chair, so that he could leap up again at the first hint that he should moderate his convictions. “A word of advice, if I may, from a man ten years your senior. You must not take everything head-on. Very often the best and most important cases never even come to court. This looks to me like one of them. Let me see what I can do.”
    “And if you fail?”
    “Then you can proceed however you like.”
    After he had gone, Cicero said to me: “That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar.” Nevertheless, Cato had agreed to let Cicero approach Scipio on his behalf, and I could tell that Cicero relished the opportunity this would give him to scrutinize the aristocracy at first hand. There was literally no man in Rome with grander lineage than Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Cornelius Scipio Nasica—Nasica meaning “pointed nose,” which he carried very firmly in the air—for he was not only the natural son of a Scipio but the adopted son of Metellus Pius, pontifex maximus, and the titular head of the Metelli clan. Father and adopted son were currently on Pius’s immense country estate at Tibur. They were expected to enter the city on the twenty-ninth day of December, riding behind Pompey in his triumph. Cicero decided to arrange a meeting for the thirtieth.
    The twenty-ninth duly arrived, and what a day it was! Rome had not seen such a spectacle since the days of Sulla. As I waited by the Triumphal Gate it seemed that everyone had turned out to line the route. First to pass through the gate from the