Imperium

sausages, dice and parasols, and all else that was necessary to enjoy a good election. Pompey, as senior consul, in accordance with the ancient custom, was already standing at the entrance to the returning officer’s tent, with an augur beside him. The moment all the candidates for consul and praetor, perhaps twenty senators, had lined up in their whitened togas, he mounted the platform and read out the traditional prayer. Soon afterwards the voting started and there was nothing for the thousands of electors to do except mill around and gossip until it was their turn to enter the enclosures.
    This was the old republic in action, the men all voting in their allotted centuries, just as they had in ancient times, when as soldiers they elected their commander. Now that the ritual has become meaningless, it is hard to convey how moving a spectacle it was, even for a slave such as I, who did not have the franchise. It embodied something marvelous—some impulse of the human spirit that had sparked into life half a millennium before among that indomitable race who dwelled amid the hard rocks and soft marshland of the Seven Hills: some impulse toward the light of dignity and freedom, and away from the darkness of brute subservience. This is what we have lost. Not that it was a pure, Aristotelean democracy, by any means. Precedence among the centuries—of which there were 193—was determined by wealth, and the richest classes always voted earliest and declared first: a significant advantage. These centuries also benefited by having fewer members, whereas the centuries of the poor, like the slums of Subura, were vast and teeming; as a consequence, a rich man’s vote counted for more. Still, it was freedom, as it had been practiced for hundreds of years, and no man on the Field of Mars that day would have dreamed that he might live to see it taken away.
    Cicero’s century, one of the twelve consisting entirely of members of the equestrian order, was called around mid-morning, just as it was starting to get hot. He strolled with his fellows into the roped-off enclosure and proceeded to work the throng in his usual way—a word here, a touch of the elbow there. Then they formed themselves into a line and filed by the table at which sat the clerks, who checked their names and handed them their voting counters. If there was to be intimidation, this was generally the place where it occurred, for the partisans of each candidate could get up close to the voters and whisper their threats or promises. But on this day all was quiet, and I watched Cicero step across the narrow wooden bridge and disappear behind the boards to cast his ballot. Emerging on the other side, he passed along the line of candidates and their friends, who were standing beneath an awning, paused briefly to talk to Palicanus—the rough-spoken former tribune was standing for a praetorship—and then exited without giving Hortensius or Metellus a second glance.
    Like all those before it, Cicero’s century backed the official slate—Hortensius and Quintus Metellus for consul; Marcus Metellus and Palicanus for praetor—and now it was merely a question of going on until an absolute majority was reached. The poorer men must have known they could not affect the outcome, but such was the dignity conveyed by the franchise that they stood all afternoon in the heat, waiting their turn to collect their ballots and shuffle over the bridge. Cicero and I went up and down the lines as he canvassed support for the aedileship, and it was marvelous how many he knew personally—not just the voters’ names, but their wives’ names and the numbers of their children, and the nature of their employment: all done without any prompting from me. At the eleventh hour, when the sun was just starting to dip toward the Janiculum, a halt was called at last and Pompey proclaimed the winners. Hortensius had topped the poll for consul, with Quintus Metellus second; Marcus Metellus had won most votes for praetor. Their jubilant supporters crowded around them, and now for the first time we saw the red-headed figure of Gaius Verres slip into the front rank—“The puppet-master comes to take his bow,” observed Cicero—and one would have thought that he had won the consulship by the way the aristocrats shook his hand and pounded him on the back. One of them, a former consul, Scribonius Curio, embraced Verres and said, loud enough for all to hear, “I hereby inform you that today’s