Imperium

convince, reading his face, trying to find within it clues to the right words and arguments which would unlock his support.
    “But Pompey, ” said Lucius bitterly. “After what he did to you before!”
    “All I needed, Lucius, was one thing—one tiny, tiny favor—and that was the assurance that I could proceed as I wished and call my witnesses straightaway. No bribery was involved; no corruption. I just knew I had to be sure to secure Glabrio’s consent beforehand. But I could hardly, as the prosecutor, approach the praetor of the court myself. So I racked my brains: who could?”
    Quintus said, “There was only one man in Rome, Lucius.”
    “Exactly. Only one man to whom Glabrio was honor-bound to listen. The man who had given him his son back, when his divorced wife died—Pompey.”
    “But it was not a tiny favor,” said Lucius. “It was a massive interference. And now there is a massive price to be paid for it—and not by you, but by the people of Sicily.”
    “The people of Sicily?” repeated Cicero, beginning to lose his temper. “The people of Sicily have never had a truer friend than me. There would never have been a prosecution without me. There would never have been an offer of one and a half million without me. By heaven, Gaius Verres would have been consul in two years’ time but for me! You cannot reproach me for abandoning the people of Sicily!”
    “Then refuse his rent,” said Lucius, seizing hold of his hand. “Tomorrow, in court, press for the maximum damages, and to hell with Pompey. You have the whole of Rome on your side. That jury will not dare to go against you. Who cares about Pompey? In five months’ time, as he says himself, he will not even be consul. Promise me.”
    Cicero clasped Lucius’s hand fervently in both of his and gazed deep into his eyes—the old double-grip sincere routine, which I had seen so often in this very room. “I promise you,” he said. “I promise you I shall think about it.”

    PERHAPS HE DID THINK ABOUT IT. Who am I to judge? But I doubt it can have occupied his thoughts for more than an instant. Cicero was no revolutionary. He never desired to set himself at the head of a mob, tearing down the state: and that would have been his only hope of survival, if he had turned Pompey against him as well as the aristocracy. “The trouble with Lucius,” he said, putting his feet up on the desk after his cousin had gone, “is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.”
    “Do you think Verres bribed Pompey to intervene, to lower the damages?” asked Quintus, voicing exactly the possibility that had occurred to me.
    “It could be. More likely he simply wants to avoid being caught in the middle of a civil war between the people and the Senate. Speaking for myself, I would be happy to seize everything Verres possesses, and leave the wretch to live on Gaulish grass. But that is not going to happen, so we had better see how far we can make this one and a half million stretch.”
    The three of us spent the rest of the evening compiling a list of the most worthy claimants, and after Cicero had deducted his own costs, of close to one hundred thousand, we reckoned he could just about manage to fulfill his obligations, at least to the likes of Sthenius, and to those witnesses who had traveled all the way to Rome. But what could one say to the priests? How could one put a price on looted temple statues made of gems and precious metals, long since broken up and melted down by Verres’s goldsmiths? And what payment could ever recompense the families and friends of Gavius and Herennius and the other innocents he had murdered? The work gave Cicero his first real taste of what it is like to have power—which is usually, when it comes down to it, a matter of choosing between equally unpalatable options—and fairly bitter he found it.
    We went down to court in the usual manner the following morning, and there were the usual big crowds in their usual places—everything the same, in fact, except for the absence of Verres, and the presence of twenty or thirty men of the magistrates’ patrol, stationed around the perimeter of the tribunal. Glabrio made a short speech, opening the session and warning that he would not tolerate any disturbances similar to those which had occurred the previous day. Then he called on Hortensius to make a statement.
    “Due to ill health,” he began, and there was the most wonderful shout of laughter