Lustrum

strong impression, as she pointed her talon-like finger at the accused, sitting no more than ten feet from her, and insisted in her hard voice that the Good Goddess must be placated by his exile or disaster would descend on Rome. That was the first day.
    On the second, Caesar followed her on to the witness stand, and I was struck again by the similarities between mother and son – tough and sinewy, and confident beyond mere arrogance, to a point where all men, aristocrat or plebeian, were deemed equally beneath them in their gaze. (This, I think, was why he was always so popular with the people: he was far too superior to be a snob.) Under cross-examination he responded that he could not say what had happened that night, as he had not been present. He added, very coldly, that he bore no particular ill will towards Clodius – in whose direction, however, he did not once look – because he had no idea whether he was guilty or not; clearly, he loathed him. As to his divorce, he could only repeat the answer he had given Cicero in the senate: he had set Pompeia aside not necessarily because she was guilty but because, as the chief priest's wife, she could not be tainted by suspicion. As everyone in Rome knew of Caesar's own reputation, not least his conquest of Pompey's wife, this fine piece of casuistry provoked long and mocking laughter, which he had to endure behind his habitual mask of supreme indifference.
    He finished giving evidence and stepped down from the tribunal, coincidentally at exactly the same moment as Cicero rose to leave the audience. They almost walked into one another, and there was no chance of avoiding at least a brief exchange.
    'Well, Caesar, you must be glad your testimony is over.'
    'Why do you say that?'
    'I presume it must have been awkward for you.'
    'I never feel awkward. But yes, you're right, I am delighted to put this absurd affair behind me, because now I can set off for Spain.'
    'When are you planning to leave?'
    'Tonight.'
    'But I thought the senate had forbidden the new governors to leave for their provinces until the trial was over?'
    'True, but I haven't a moment to lose. The moneylenders are after me. Apparently I somehow have to make twenty-five million sesterces just to own nothing.' He gave a shrug – a gambler's shrug: I remember he seemed quite unconcerned – and sauntered off towards his official residence. Within the hour, accompanied by a small entourage, he was gone, and it was left to Crassus to stand surety for his debts.
    Caesar's evidence was entertaining enough. But the real highlight of the proceedings came on the third day of Clodius's trial with the appearance of Lucullus. It is said that at the entrance to Apollo's shrine at Delphi three things are written: 'Know thyself'; 'Desire nothing too much' and 'Never go to law'. Did ever a man so wilfully ignore these precepts as Lucullus in this affair? Forgetting that he was supposed to be a military hero, he ascended the platform trembling with his desire to ruin Clodius, and very soon began to describe how he had surprised his wife in bed with her brother during a vacation when Clodius had been a guest in his house on the Bay of Naples more than a decade earlier. By then he had been watching them together for many weeks, said Lucullus – oh yes, the way they touched one another, and whispered when they thought his back was turned:they took him for a fool – and he had ordered his wife's maids to bring her sheets to him each morning for his inspection and report to him everything he saw. These female slaves, six in all, were summoned into court, and as they filed in, clearly nervous and with their eyes lowered, I saw among them my beloved Agathe, whose image had rarely left my mind in the two years since we were together.
    They stood meekly as their depositions were produced, and I willed her to look up and glance in my direction. I waved. I even whistled. The people standing around me must have thought I had gone mad. Finally I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled her name. She did raise her eyes at that, but there were so many thousands of spectators crammed into the forum, and the noise was so intense, and the glaring sunshine so bright, there can have been little chance of her seeing me. I tried to struggle forward through the packed crowd, but the people in front of me had queued for hours for their places, and they refused to let me pass. In an agony I heard Clodius's counsel announce that they did not