Imperium

menace of the pirates. He waved to them like a landlord to his tenants. But the moment the group entered the Senate House they were met by jeers from all sides, and a piece of rotten fruit flew across the chamber and splattered onto Pompey’s shoulder, leaving a rich brown stain. Such a thing had never happened to the great general before, and he halted and looked around him in stupefaction. Afranius, Palicanus, and Gabinius quickly closed ranks to protect him, just as if they were back on the battlefield, and I saw Cicero stretch out his arms to hustle all four to their places, no doubt reasoning that the sooner they sat down, the sooner the demonstration would be over. I was standing at the entrance to the chamber, held back with the other spectators by the familiar cordon of rope slung between the two doorposts. Of course, we were all supporters of Pompey, so the more the senators inside jeered him, the more we outside roared our approval, and it was a while before the presiding consul could bring the house to order.
    The new consuls in that year were Pompey’s old friend Glabrio and the aristocratic Calpurnius Piso (not to be confused with the other senator of that name, who will feature later in this story, if the gods give me the strength to finish it). A sign of how desperate the situation was for Pompey in the Senate was that Glabrio had chosen to absent himself, rather than be seen in open disagreement with the man who had given him back his son. That left Piso in the chair. I could see Hortensius, Catulus, Isauricus, Marcus Lucullus—the brother of the commander of the Eastern legions—and all the rest of the patrician faction, poised to attack. The only ones no longer present to offer opposition were the three Metellus brothers: Quintus was abroad, serving as the governor of Crete, while the younger two, as if to prove the indifference of fate to the petty ambitions of men, had both died of the fever not long after the Verres trial. But what was most disturbing was that the pedarii —the unassuming, patient, plodding mass of the Senate, whom Cicero had taken so much trouble to cultivate—even they were hostile, or at best sullenly unresponsive to Pompey’s megalomania. As for Crassus, he was sprawled on the consular front bench opposite, with his arms folded and his legs casually outstretched, regarding Pompey with an expression of ominous calm. The reason for his sangfroid was obvious. Sitting directly behind him, placed there like a pair of prize animals just bought at auction, were two of that year’s tribunes, Roscius and Trebellius. This was Crassus’s way of telling the world that he had used his wealth to purchase not just one but two vetoes, and that the lex Gabinia, whatever Pompey and Cicero chose to do, would never be allowed to pass.
    Piso exercised his privilege of speaking first. “An orator of the stationary or quiet type,” was how Cicero condescendingly described him many years later, but there was nothing stationary or quiet about him that day. “We know what you are doing!” he shouted at Pompey as he came to the end of his harangue. “You are defying your colleagues in the Senate and setting yourself up as a second Romulus—slaying your brother so that you may rule alone! But you would do well to remember the fate of Romulus, who was murdered in his turn by his own senators, who cut up his body and carried the mangled pieces back to their homes!” That brought the aristocrats to their feet, and I could just make out Pompey’s massive profile, stock-still and staring straight ahead, obviously unable to believe what was happening.
    Catulus spoke next, and then Isauricus. The most damaging was Hortensius. For almost a year, since the end of his consulship, he had hardly been seen in the Forum. His son-in-law, Caepio, the beloved elder brother of Cato, had recently died on army service in the East, leaving Hortensius’s daughter a widow, and the word was that the Dancing Master no longer had the strength in his legs for the struggle. But Pompey’s overreaching ambition seemed to have brought him back into the arena revitalized, and listening to him reminded one of just how formidable he could be on a big set-piece occasion such as this. He never ranted or stooped to vulgarity, but eloquently restated the old republican case: that power must always be divided, hedged around with limitations, and renewed by annual votes, and that while he had nothing personally against