Lustrum

made his intentions plainer: if we won't work with him, he'll get a tribune to lay the legislation he wants before a popular assembly, and that will mean endless conflict. Or, worse, he'll throw in his lot with Caesar when he gets back from Spain.'
    'What are you afraid of ? Conflict can be healthy. Nothing good comes except through struggle.'
    'There's nothing good about a struggle between people and senate, believe me. It will be like Clodius's trial, only worse.'
    'Ah!' Cato's fanatical eyes widened. 'You are confusing separate issues there. Clodius was acquitted not because of the mob but because of a bribed jury. And there's an obvious remedy for jury-bribing, which I intend to pursue.'
    'What do you mean by that?'
    'I intend to lay a bill before the house that will remove from all jurors who are not senators their traditional immunity to prosecution for bribery.'
    Cicero clutched his hair. 'You can't do
that
!'
    'Why not?'
    'Because it will look like an attack by the senate on the people!'
    'It's no such thing. It's an attack by the senate on dishonesty and corruption.'
    'Maybe so, but in politics, how things look is often more important than what they are.'
    'Then politics needs to change.'
    'At least, I beg you, don't do it now – not on top of everything else.'
    'It's never too soon to right a wrong.'
    'Now listen to me, Cato. Your integrity may be second to none, but it obliterates your good sense, and if you carry on like this, your noble intentions will destroy our country.'
    'Better destroyed than reduced to a corrupt monarchy.'
    'But Pompey doesn't want to be a monarch! He's disbanded his army. All he's ever tried to do is work with the senate, yet all he's received is rejection. And far from corrupting Rome, he has done more to extend its power than any man alive!'
    'No,' said Cato, shaking his head, 'no, you are wrong. Pompey has subjugated peoples with whom we had no quarrel, he has entered lands in which we have no business, and he has brought home wealth we have not earned. He is going to ruin us. It is my duty to oppose him.'
    From this impasse, not even Cicero's agile brain could devise a means of escape. He went to see Pompey later that afternoon to report his failure, and found him in semi-darkness, brooding over the model of his theatre. The meeting was too short even for me to take a note. Pompey listened to the news, grunted, and as we were leaving called after Cicero, 'I want Hybrida recalled from Macedonia at once.'
    This threatened Cicero with a serious personal crisis, for he was being hard-pressed by the moneylenders. Not only did he still owe a sizeable sum for the house on the Palatine; he had also bought several new properties, and if Hybrida stopped sending him a share of his spoils in Macedonia – which he had at last begun to do – he would be seriously embarrassed. His solution was to arrange forQuintus's term as governor of Asia to be extended for another year. He was then able to draw from the treasury the funds that should have gone to defray his brother's expenses (he had full power of attorney) and hand the whole lot over to his creditors to keep them quiet. 'Now don't give me one of your reproachful looks, Tiro,' he warned me, as we came out of the Temple of Saturn with a treasury bill for half a million sesterces safely stowed in my document case. 'He wouldn't even
be
a governor if it weren't for me, and besides, I shall pay him back.' Even so, I felt very sorry for Quintus, who was not enjoying his time in that vast, alien and disparate province and was very homesick.
    Over the next few months, everything played out as Cicero had predicted. An alliance of Crassus, Lucullus, Cato and Celer blocked Pompey's legislation in the senate, and Pompey duly turned to a friendly tribune named Fulvius, who laid a new land bill before the popular assembly. Celer then attacked the proposal with such violence that Fulvius had him committed to prison. The consul responded by having the back wall of the gaol dismantled so that he could continue to denounce the measure from his cell. This display of resolution so delighted the people, and discredited Fulvius, that Pompey actually abandoned the bill. Cato then alienated the Order of Knights entirely from the senate by stripping them of jury immunity and also refusing to cancel the debts many had incurred by unwise financial speculation in the East. In both of these actions he was absolutely right morally whilst being at the same time