Lustrum

They drifted away from the entrance, and gradually the sounds of the house resumed, whereupon Pompey – whose bonhomie could be as abrupt and disconcerting as his rages – suddenly announced that they should drink some wine. It was brought in by a very beautiful woman, whose name, I discovered afterwards, was Flora. She was one of the most famous courtesans in Rome and was living under Pompey's roof while he was between wives. She always wore a scarf around her neck, to conceal, she said, the bite marks Pompey inflicted when he was making love. She poured the wine demurely and then withdrew, while Pompey showed us Alexander's cloak, which had, he said, been found in Mithradates's private apartments. It looked very new to me, and I could see that Cicero was having difficulty keeping a straight face. 'Imagine,' he said in a hushed voice, feeling the material with great reverence, 'three hundred years old, and yet it looks as though it was made less than a decade ago.'
    'It has magical properties,' said Pompey. 'As long as I keep it by me, I am told no harm can befall me.' He became very serious as he showed Cicero to the door. 'Speak to Celer, will you, and the others, on my behalf ? I promised my veterans that I would give them land, and Pompey the Great can't be seen to go back on his word.'
    'I'll do everything I can.'
    'I'd prefer to work through the senate, but if I have to find my friends elsewhere, I shall. You can tell them I said that.'
    As we walked home, Cicero said, 'Did you hear him? “I know nothing about any weapons”! Our Pharaoh may be a great general, but he is a terrible liar.'
    'What are you going to do?'
    'What else can I do? Support him, of course. I don't like it when he says he might try to find his friends elsewhere. At all costs I must try to keep him out of the arms of Caesar.'
    And so Cicero put aside his distaste and his suspicions and did the rounds on Pompey's behalf, just as he had done years before when he was merely a rising senator. It was yet another lesson to me in politics – an occupation that, if it is to be pursued successfully, demands the most extraordinary reserves of self-discipline, a quality that the naive often mistake for hypocrisy.
    First, Cicero invited Lucullus to dinner and spent several fruitless hours trying to persuade him to abandon his opposition to Pompey's bills; but Lucullus would never forgive The Pharaoh for taking all the credit for the defeat of Mithradates, and flatly refused to co-operate. Next, Cicero tried Hortensius, and received the same response. He even went to see Crassus, who, despite clearly wishing to destroy his visitor, nevertheless received him very civilly. He sat back in his chair with the tips of his fingers pressed together and his eyes half closed, listening to Cicero's appeal and relishing every word.
    'So,' he summarised, 'Pompey fears he will lose face if his bills don't pass, and he asks me to set aside past enmities and give him my support, for the sake of the republic?'
    'That's it.'
    'Well, I have not forgotten the way he tried to take the credit for defeating Spartacus – a victory that was entirely mine – and you can tell him that I would not raise a hand to help him even if my life depended on it. How is your new house, by the way?'
    'Very fine, thank you.'
    After that Cicero decided to approach Metellus Celer, who was now consul-elect. It took him a while to summon up the nerve to go next door: this would be the first time he had stepped over the threshold since Clodius committed his outrage at the Good Goddess ceremony. In fact, like Crassus, Celer could not have been friendlier. The prospect of power suited him – he had been bred for it, like a racehorse – and he too listened judiciously as Cicero made out his case.
    'I no more care for Pompey's hauteur than you do,' concluded Cicero, 'but the fact remains that he is by far the most powerful man in the world, and it will be a disaster if he ends up alienated from the senate. But that is what will happen if we don't try to give him his legislation.'
    'You think he will retaliate?'
    'He says he will have no option except to find his friends elsewhere, which obviously means the tribunes or, even worse, Caesar. And if he follows that route, we'll have popular assemblies, vetoes, riots, paralysis, the people and the senate at one another's throats – in short, a disaster.'
    'That's a grim picture, I agree,' said Celer, 'but I'm afraid I cannot help you.'
    'Even for