Lustrum

elections
'), followed by Catilina's words ('
How long, brave comrades, will we endure it? …
') and when he had finished there was not a pair of eyes directed anywhere other than at Catilina. 'At the end of this seditious rant,' concluded Cicero, 'Catilina retired with others to consider, not for the first time, how best I might be killed. Such is the extent of my know ledge, gentlemen, which I felt it my duty to lay before you, so that you might decide how best to proceed.'
    He sat down, and after a pause someone called out, 'Answer!' and then others took up the cry, angrily hurling the word like a javelin at Catilina: 'Answer! Answer!' Catilina gave a shrug, and a kind of half-smile, and heaved himself to his feet. He was a huge man. His physical presence alone was sufficient to intimidate the chamber into silence.
    'Back in the days when Cicero's ancestors were still fucking goats, or however it is they amuse themselves in the mountainshe comes from—' He was interrupted by laughter; some of it, I have to say, from the patrician benches around Catulus and Hortensius. 'Back in those days,' he continued, once the racket had died down, 'when my ancestors were consuls and this republic was younger and more virile, we were led by fighters, not lawyers. Our learned consul here accuses me of sedition. If that is what he chooses to call it, sedition it is. For my part, I call it the truth. When I look at this republic, gentlemen, I see two bodies. One,' he said, gesturing to the patricians and from them up to Cicero, sitting dead still in his chair, 'is frail, with a weak head. The other' – he pointed to the door and the forum beyond it – 'is strong, but has no head at all. I know which body I prefer, and it won't go short of a head as long as I'm alive!'
    Looking at those words written down now, it seems amazing to me that Catilina wasn't seized and accused of treason on the spot. But he had powerful backers, and no sooner had he resumed his seat than Crassus was on his feet. Ah, yes, Marcus Licinius Crassus – I have not devoted nearly enough space to him so far in this portion of my narrative! But let me rectify that. This hunter of old ladies' legacies; this lender of money at usurious rates; this slum landlord; this speculator and hoarder; this former consul, as bald as an egg and as hard as a piece of flint – this Crassus was a most formidable speaker when he put his cunning mind to it, which he did on that July morning.
    'Forgive my obtuseness, colleagues,' he said. 'Perhaps it's just me, but I've been listening intently and I've yet to hear a solitary piece of evidence that justifies postponing the elections by a single instant. What does this so-called conspiracy actually amount to? An anonymous note? Well, the consul himself could have written it, and there are plenty who wouldn't put it past him! The report of a speech? It didn't sound particularly remarkableto me. Indeed, it reminded me of nothing so much as the sort of speech that that radical new man Marcus Tullius Cicero used to make before he threw in his lot with my patrician friends on the benches opposite!'
    It was an effective point. Crassus grasped the front of his toga between his thumbs and forefingers, and spread his elbows, in the manner of a country gentleman delivering his opinion of sheep at market.
    'The gods know, and you all know – and I thank Providence for it – I am not a poor man. I have nothing to gain from the cancellation of all debts; very much the reverse. But I do not think that Catilina can be barred from being a candidate, or these elections delayed an hour longer, purely on the basis of the feeble evidence we've just heard. I therefore propose a motion:
That the elections begin immediately, and that this house do adjourn and repair to the Field of Mars
.'
    'I second the motion!' said Caesar, springing to his feet. 'And I ask that it be put to the vote at once, so that no more of the day may be wasted by these delaying tactics, and the election of the new consuls and praetors may be concluded by sunset, in accordance with our ancient laws.'
    Just as a pair of scales that are finely balanced may suddenly be plunged one way or another by the addition of a few grains of wheat, so the whole atmosphere of the senate that morning abruptly tilted. Those who had been howling down Catilina only a short while earlier now began clamouring for the elections to start, and Cicero wisely decided not even to put the matter to a