Lustrum

as bright as polished ivory. He had a very quick way of talking, and he laughed a lot, throwing back his small neat head in delight, so that the most boring men in Rome all fancied themselves great wits after a short time in his company. He had a particular gift for attaching himself to powerful figures – first to Pompey, under whom he served in Spain, and who arranged to make him a Roman citizen, and then to Caesar, who picked him up in Gades when he was governor, appointed him his chief engineer during his conquest of Lusitania, and then brought him back to Rome to run his errands. Balbus knew everyone, even if at first they did not know him, and he bustled in to see Cicero on that December morningwith his hands held wide as if he were meeting his closest friend.
    'My dear Cicero,' he said in his thickly accented Latin, 'how are you? You look as well as I have ever seen you – and I have never seen you looking anything other than well!'
    'Then I suppose I am very much the same as ever.' Cicero gestured to Balbus to take a seat. 'And how is Caesar?'
    'He is marvellous,' replied Balbus, 'completely marvellous. He asks me to give you his very warmest regards, and his absolute assurance that he is your greatest and most sincere friend in the world.'
    'Time for us to start counting our spoons, then, Tiro,' said Cicero, and Balbus clapped his hands and pulled up his knees and literally rocked with laughter.
    'Well, that is very funny – “count the spoons” indeed! I shall tell him you said that, and he will be most amused. The spoons!' He wiped his eyes and recovered his breath. 'Oh dear! But seriously, Cicero, when Caesar offers his friendship to a man, it is not an empty thing. He takes the view that deeds, not words, are what count in this world.'
    Cicero had a mountain of legal documents to read. 'Balbus,' he said wearily, 'you have obviously come here to say something – so would you kindly just say it?'
    'Of course. You are busy, I can see that. Forgive me.' He pressed his hand to his heart. 'Caesar wishes me to tell you that he and Pompey have reached an agreement. They intend to settle this question of land reform once and for all.'
    Cicero gave me a quick look: it was exactly as he had predicted. To Balbus he said: 'On what terms is this to be settled?'
    'The public lands in Campania will be divided between Pompey's demobbed legionaries and those among the Romanpoor who wish to farm. The whole scheme will be administered by a commission of twenty. Caesar hopes very much to have your support.'
    Cicero laughed in disbelief. 'But this is almost precisely the bill he tried to bring in at the start of my consulship and which I opposed!'
    'There will be one great difference,' said Balbus with a grin. 'This is between us, please. Yes?' His eyebrows danced in delight. He ran his small pink tongue over the edges of his large white teeth. 'The official commission will be of twenty, but there will be an inner commission of just five magistrates who will take all the decisions. Caesar would be most honoured – most honoured indeed – if you would agree to join it.'
    That caught Cicero off his guard. 'Would he indeed? And who would be the other four?'
    'Apart from yourself, there would be Caesar, Pompey, one other still to be decided, and' – Balbus paused for effect, like a conjuror about to produce an exotic bird from an empty basket – 'and Crassus.'
    Up to that point, Cicero had been treating the Spaniard with a kind of friendly disdain – as a joke figure: one of those self-important go-betweens who often crop up in politics. Now he gazed at him in wonder. '
Crassus?
' he repeated. 'But Crassus can barely abide to be in the same
city
as Pompey. How is he going to sit beside him on a committee of five?'
    'Crassus is a dear friend of Caesar. And also Pompey is a dear friend of Caesar. So Caesar played the marriage-broker, in the interests of the state.'
    'The interests of themselves more like! It will never work.'
    'It most certainly will work. The three have met and agreed it. And against such an alliance, nothing else in Rome will stand.'
    'If it has already been agreed, why am I needed?'
    'As Father of the Nation, you have a unique authority.'
    'So I am to be brought in at the last moment to provide a covering of respectability?'
    'Not at all, not at all. You would be a full partner, absolutely. Caesar authorises me to say that no major decision in the running of the empire would be made without consulting