Imperium

across the city. “Villain!” exclaimed Cicero as he walked away down the hill. He clenched and unclenched his fists in impotent fury. “Villain, villain, villain !” It was fair to assume that if Verres had given a Myron to young Scipio, then Hortensius, the Metellus brothers, and all his other prominent allies in the Senate would have received even heftier bribes—and it was precisely from among such men that the jury at any future trial would be drawn. A secondary blow was the discovery that Pompey had been present at Scipio’s wedding feast along with Verres and the leading aristocrats. Pompey had always had strong links with Sicily—as a young general he had restored order on the island, and had even stayed overnight in the house of Sthenius. Cicero had looked to him, if not exactly for support—he had learned his lesson there—then at least for benign neutrality. But Cicero saw the awful possibility that if he went ahead with the prosecution he might have every powerful faction in Rome united against him.
    But there was no time to ponder the implications of that now. Cato had insisted on hearing the results of Cicero’s interview immediately and was waiting for him at the house of his half sister, Servilia, which was also on the Via Sacra, only a few doors down from Scipio’s residence. As we entered, three young girls—none, I would guess, more than five years old—came running out into the atrium, followed by their mother. This was the first occasion, I believe, on which Cicero met Servilia, who was later to become the most formidable of Rome’s many formidable women. She was nearly thirty, about five years older than Cato, handsome but not at all pretty. By her late first husband, Marcus Brutus, she had given birth to a son when she was still only fifteen; by her second, the feeble Junius Silanus, she had produced these three daughters in quick succession. Cicero greeted them as if he had not a care in the world, squatting on his haunches to talk to them while Servilia looked on. She insisted that they meet every caller, and so become familiar with adult ways, for they were her great hope for the future, and she wished them to be sophisticated.
    A nurse came and took the girls away, and Servilia showed us through to the tablinum. Here Cato was waiting with Antipater the Tyrian, a Stoic philosopher who seldom left his side. Cato took the news of Lepida’s marriage as badly as one would have predicted, stamping around and swearing, which reminds me of another of Cicero’s witticisms—that Cato was always the perfect Stoic, as long as nothing went wrong.
    “Do calm yourself, Cato,” said Servilia after a while. “It is perfectly obvious the matter is finished, and you might as well get used to it. You did not love her—you do not know what love is. You do not need her money—you have plenty of your own. She is a drippy little thing. You can find a hundred better.”
    “She asked me to bring you her best wishes,” said Cicero, which provoked another outpouring of abuse from Cato.
    “I shall not put up with it!” he shouted.
    “Yes you will,” said Servilia. She pointed at Antipater, who quailed. “You tell him, philosopher. My brother thinks his fine principles are all the product of his intellect, when they are simply girlish emotions tricked out by false philosophers as manly points of honor.” And then, to Cicero again: “If he had had more experience of the female sex, Senator, he would see how foolish he is being. But you have never even lain with a woman, have you, Cato?”
    Cicero looked embarrassed, for he always had the equestrian class’s slight prudishness about sexual matters and was unused to the free ways of the aristocrats.
    “I believe it weakens the male essence and dulls the power of thought,” said Cato sulkily, producing such a shriek of laughter from his sister that his face turned as red as Pompey’s had been painted the previous day, and he stamped out of the room, trailing his Stoic after him.
    “I apologize,” said Servilia, turning to Cicero. “Sometimes I almost think he is slow-witted. But then, when he does get hold of a thing, he will never let go of it, which is a quality of sorts, I suppose. He praised your speech to the tribunes about Verres. He made you sound a very dangerous fellow. I rather like dangerous fellows. We should meet again.” She held out her hand to bid Cicero good-bye. He took it, and it seemed to me that she held it rather