Lustrum

Tiro.
    That there was such a man as Tiro, and that he wrote such a work, is well-attested. 'Your services to me are beyond count,' Cicero once wrote to him, 'in my home and out of it, in Rome and abroad, in my studies and literary work …' He was three years younger than his master, born a slave, but long outlived him, surviving – according to Saint Jerome – until he reached his hundredth year. Tiro was the first man to record a speech in the senate verbatim, and his shorthand system, known as
Notae Tironianae
, was still in use in the Church in the sixth century; indeed some traces of it (the symbol '&', the abbreviations etc, NB, i.e., e.g.) survive to this day. He also wrote several treatises on the development of Latin. His multi-volume life of Cicero is referred to as a source by the first-century historian Asconius Pedianus in his commentary on Cicero's speeches; Plutarch cites it twice. But, like the rest of Tiro's literary output, the book disappeared amid the collapse of the Roman Empire.
    What kind of work it might have been still occasionally intrigues scholars. In 1985, Elizabeth Rawson, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, speculated that it would probably have been in the Hellenistic tradition of biography – a literary form 'written in an unpretentious, unrhetorical style; it might quotedocuments, but it liked apophthegms by its subject, and it could be gossipy and irresponsible … It delighted in a subject's idiosyncrasies … Such biography was written not for statesmen and generals, but for what the Romans called
curiosi
.' *
    That is the spirit in which I have approached the recreation of Tiro's vanished work. Although an earlier volume,
Imperium
, described Cicero's rise to power, it is not necessary, I hope, to read one in order to follow the other. This is a novel not a work of history: wherever the demands of the two have clashed, I have unhesitatingly given in to the former. Still, I have tried as far as possible to make the fiction accord with the facts, and also to use Cicero's actual words – of which, thanks in large part to Tiro, we have so many. I would like to thank Mr Fergus Fleming for generously giving me the title
Lustrum
. Readers wishing to clarify the political terminology of the Roman republic, or who would like to refer to a list of characters mentioned in the text, will find a glossary and
dramatis personae
at the end of the book.
    R.H.
    * Elizabeth Rawson,
Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic
(London 1985), pp 229–30.

'We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for
us
… but what if we're only an after-glow of
them
?'
    J. G. Farrell,
The Siege of Krishnapur
    lustrum (1) in plur.,
the den or lair of a wild beast
; (2) in plur.,
brothels
; hence
debauchery
; (3) LIT.,
an expiatory sacrifice
, esp.
that offered every five years by the censors
; TRANSF.,
a period of five years, a lustrum
.

PART ONE
CONSUL
    63 BC
    O condicionem miseram non modo administrandae verum etiam
conservandae rei publicae!
    The preservation of the republic no less than governing it
– what a thankless task it is!
    Cicero, speech, 9 November 63 BC

I
    Two days before the inauguration of Marcus Tullius Cicero as consul of Rome, the body of a child was pulled from the River Tiber, close to the boat sheds of the republican war fleet.
    Such a discovery, though tragic, would not normally have warranted the attention of a consul-elect. But there was something so grotesque about this particular corpse, and so threatening to civic peace, that the magistrate responsible for keeping order in the city, C. Octavius, sent word to Cicero asking him to come at once.
    Cicero at first was reluctant to go, pleading pressure of work. As the consular candidate who had topped the poll, it fell to him, rather than his colleague, to preside over the opening session of the senate, and he was writing his inaugural address. But I knew there was more to it than that. He had an unusual squeamishness about death. Even the killing of animals in the games disturbed him, and this weakness – for alas in politics a soft heart is always perceived as a weakness – had started to be noticed. His immediate instinct was to send me in his place.
    'Of course I shall go,' I replied carefully. 'But …' I let my sentence trail away.
    'But?' he said sharply. 'But what? You think it will look bad?'
    I held my tongue and continued transcribing his speech. The silence lengthened.
    'Oh, very well,' he