Lustrum

matter of fact. I'm told Cato is a force in the senate these days, and Cato has nieces and daughters of marriageable age. My plan is that I should take one of these girls as my wife and my eldest son should take another. There.' He sat back contentedly. 'How does that strike you?'
    'It strikes us very well,' responded Cicero, again after a quick glance around his colleagues. 'An alliance between the houses of Cato and Pompey will secure peace for a generation. The populists will all be prostrated with shock and the good men will all rejoice.' He smiled. 'I congratulate you on a brilliant stroke, Imperator. What does Cato say?'
    'Oh, he doesn't know of it yet.'
    Cicero's smile became fixed. 'You have divorced Mucia and severed your connections with the Metelli in order to marry a connection of Cato – but you have not yet enquired what Cato's reaction might be?'
    'I suppose you could put it that way. Why? Do you think there'll be a problem?'
    'With most men I would say no, but with Cato – well, one can never be sure where the undeviating arrow flight of his logic may lead him. Have you told many other people of your intentions?'
    'A few.'
    'In that case, might I suggest, Imperator, that we suspend our discussions for the time being, while you send an emissary to Cato as quickly as possible?'
    A dark cloud had passed over Pompey's hitherto sunny expression – it had obviously never entered his mind that Cato might refuse him: if he did, it would mean a terrible loss of face – and in a distracted tone he agreed to Cicero's suggestion. By the time we left, he was already holding an urgent consultation with Lucius Afranius, his closest confidant. Outside, the crowds were as dense as ever, and even though Pompey's guards opened the gates only just wide enough to let us depart, they very nearly found themselves overwhelmed by the numbers pressing to get in. People shouted out to Cicero and the consuls as they struggled back towards the city: 'Have you spoken to him?' 'What does he say?' 'Is it true he has become a god?'
    'He was not a god the last time I looked,' replied Cicero cheerfully, 'although he is not far off it! He is looking forward to rejoining us in the senate. What a farce,' he added to me, out of the corner of his mouth. 'Plautus could not have come up with a more absurd scenario.'
    It did indeed turn out exactly as Cicero had feared. Pompey sent that very day for Cato's friend Munatius, who conveyed the great man's offer of a double marriage to Cato's house, where as it happened his family were all gathered for a feast. Thewomenfolk were overjoyed at the prospect, such was the status of Pompey as Rome's greatest war hero, and the renown of his magnificent physique. But Cato flew into an immediate rage, and without pausing for thought or consulting anyone made the following reply: 'Go, Munatius: go and tell Pompey that Cato is not to be captured by way of women's apartments. He greatly prizes Pompey's goodwill, and if Pompey behaves properly will grant him a friendship more to be relied upon than any marriage connection. But he will not give hostages for the glory of Pompey to the detriment of his country!'
    Pompey, by all accounts, was stunned by the rudeness of the reply ('if Pompey behaves properly'!) and quit the Villa Publica at once in a very ill humour to go to his house in the Alban Hills. But even here he was pursued by tormenting demons determined to puncture his dignity. His daughter, then aged nine, whom he had not seen since she could barely speak, had been coached by her tutor, the famous grammarian Aristodemus of Nyssa, to greet her father with some passages from Homer. Unfortunately, the first line she spoke as he came through the door was that of Helen to Paris: 'You came back from the war; I wish you had died there.' Too many people witnessed the episode for it not to become public, and I am afraid that Cicero found it so funny he too played his part in spreading the story across Rome.
    In the midst of all this tumult it was possible to believe that the affair of the Good Goddess might be forgotten. More than a month had now passed since the outrage, and Clodius had been careful to keep out of public view. People had started to talk of other things. But a day or two after the return of Pompey, theCollege of Priests finally handed its judgement on the incident to the senate. Pupius, who was the leading consul, was a friend of Clodius, and keen to hush up the scandal. Nevertheless, he was