Lustrum

still holding his arm, 'will you defend him?'
    'No, that is completely impossible.'
    'Why?'
    'Why?' Cicero gave an incredulous laugh. 'Any one of a thousand reasons.'
    'Is it because you believe he is guilty?'
    'My dear Clodia, the whole world
knows
he is guilty!'
    'But you defended Cornelius Sulla, and the whole world knew he was guilty, too.'
    'But this is different.'
    'Why?'
    'My wife, for one thing,' said Cicero softly, with another glance at the door. 'My wife was present. She witnessed the entire episode.'
    'You are saying your wife would divorce you if you defended my brother?'
    'Yes, I believe she would.'
    'Then take another wife,' said Clodia, and stepping back but still staring at him she quickly untied her cloak and let it fall from her shoulders. Beneath it she was naked. The dark smoothness of her oiled skin glistened in the candlelight. I was standing almost directly behind her. She knew I was watching, yet she no more minded my presence than if I had been a table or a footstool. The air seemed to thicken. Cicero stood perfectly still. Thinking back on it, I am reminded of that moment in the senate, in the chaos after the debate on the conspirators, when a single word or gesture of assent from him would have led to Caesar's death, and the world – our world – would have been entirely different. So it was now. After a long pause he gave the very slightest shake of his head, and, stooping, he retrieved her cloak and held it out to her.
    'Put it back on,' he said quietly.
    She ignored it. Instead she put her hands on her hips. 'You really prefer that pious old broomstick to me?'
    'Yes.' He sounded surprised by his own answer. 'When it comes to it, I believe I do.'
    'Then what a fool you are,' she said, and turned around so that Cicero could drape the cloak across her shoulders. The gesture was as casual as if she were going home after a dinner party. She caught me looking at her and her eyes flashed me such a look that I quickly dropped my gaze. 'You will think back on this moment,' she said, briskly fastening her cloak, 'and regret it for the rest of your life.'
    'No I won't, because I shall put it out of my mind, and I suggest you do the same.'
    'Why should I want to forget it?' She smiled and shook her head. 'How my brother will laugh when he hears about it.'
    'You'll tell him?'
    'Of course. It was his idea.'
    'Not a word,' said Cicero after Clodia had gone. He held up a warning hand. He did not want to discuss it, and we never did. Rumours that something had occurred between them circulated for many years, but I always refused to comment on the gossip. I have kept this secret for half a century.
    Ambition and lust are often intertwined. In some men, such as Caesar and Clodius, they are as tightly plaited as a rope. With Cicero it was the opposite case. I believe he had a passionate nature, but it frightened him. Like his stutter or his youthful illnesses or his unsteady nerves, he viewed passion as a handicap, to be overcome by discipline. He therefore learned to separate this strand in his nature, and to avoid it. But the gods are implacable, and despite his resolution not to have anything to do with Clodia and her brother, he soon found himself being sucked into the quickening whirlpool of the scandal.
    It is hard to comprehend at this great distance how completely the Good Goddess affair gripped public life in Rome, so that eventually all government business came to a halt. On the surface, Clodius's cause seemed hopeless. Plainly he had committed this ludicrous offence, and almost the whole of the senate was set on his punishment. But sometimes in politics a great weakness can be turned into a strength, and from the moment that Lucullus's motion was passed, the Roman people began to mutter against it. What was the young man guilty of, after all, except an excess of high spirits? Was a fellow to be beaten to deathmerely because of a lark? When Clodius ventured into the forum, he found that citizens, rather than wanting to pelt him with ordure, actually wished to shake his hand.
    There were still thousands of plebeians in Rome who were disaffected with the renewed authority of the senate and who looked back with nostalgia to the days when Catilina ruled the streets. Clodius attracted these people by the score. They would gather around him in crowds. He took to jumping up on to a nearby cart or trader's stall and inveighing against the senate. He had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political