Lustrum

appearance of a large and malevolent weasel.
    'Senator,' I said, bowing, 'I shall tell him you're here.'
    'And not just I,' said Catulus.
    I looked along the street. Clambering stiffly out of the next litter, and cursing his old soldier's bones, was the conqueror of Olympus and father of the senate, Vatia Isauricus, while nearby stood Cicero's great rival in the law courts, the patricians' favourite advocate, Q. Hortensius. He in turn was holding out his hand to a fourth senator, whose shrivelled, nut-brown, toothless face I could not place. He looked very decrepit. I guessed he must have stopped attending debates a long while ago.
    'Distinguished gentlemen,' I said, in my most unctuous manner, 'please follow me and I shall inform the consul-elect.'
    I whispered to the porter to show them into the tablinum and hurried towards Cicero's study. As I drew close, I could hear his voice in full declamatory flow – 'To the Roman people I say, enough!' – and when I opened the door I found him standing with his back to me, addressing my two junior secretaries, Sositheus and Laurea, his hand outstretched, his thumb and middle finger formed into a circle. 'And to you, Tiro,' hecontinued, without turning round, 'I say: not another damned interruption! What sign have the gods sent us now? A shower of frogs?'
    The secretaries sniggered. On the brink of achieving his life's ambition, he had put the perturbations of the previous day out of his mind and was in a great good humour.
    'There's a delegation from the senate to see you.'
    'Now that's what I call an ominous portent. Who's in it?'
    'Catulus, Isauricus, Hortensius, and another I don't recognise.'
    'The cream of the aristocracy? Here?' He gave me a sharp look over his shoulder. 'And in this weather? It must be the smallest house they've ever set foot in! What do they want?'
    'I don't know.'
    'Well, be sure you make a thorough note.' He gathered his toga around him and stuck out his chin. 'How do I look?'
    'Consular,' I assured him.
    He stepped over the discarded drafts of his speech and made his way into the tablinum. The porter had fetched chairs for our visitors but only one was seated – the trembling old senator I did not recognise. The others stood together, each with his own attendant close at hand, clearly uncomfortable at finding themselves on the premises of this low-born 'new man' they had so reluctantly backed for consul. Hortensius actually had a handkerchief pressed to his nose, as if Cicero's lack of breeding might be catching.
    'Catulus,' said Cicero affably, as he came into the room. 'Isauricus. Hortensius. I'm honoured.' He nodded to each of the former consuls, but when he reached the fourth senator I could see even his prodigious memory temporarily fail him. 'Rabirius,' he concluded after a brief struggle. 'Gaius Rabirius, isn't it?' He held out his hand but the old man did not react and Cicerosmoothly turned the gesture into a sweeping indication of the room. 'Welcome to my home. This is a pleasure.'
    'There's no pleasure in it,' said Catulus.
    'It's an outrage,' said Hortensius.
    'It's war,' asserted Isauricus, 'that's what it is.'
    'Well, I'm very sorry to hear it,' replied Cicero pleasantly. He did not always take them seriously. Like many rich old men they tended to regard the slightest personal inconvenience as proof of the end of the world.
    Hortensius clicked his fingers, and his attendant handed Cicero a legal document with a heavy seal. 'Yesterday the Board of Tribunes served this writ on Rabirius.'
    At the mention of his name, Rabirius looked up. 'Can I go home?' he asked plaintively.
    'Later,' said Hortensius in a stern voice, and the old man bowed his head.
    'A writ on Rabirius?' repeated Cicero, looking at him with bemusement. 'And what conceivable crime is he capable of ?' He read the writ aloud so I could make a note of it. '“The accused is herein charged with the murder of the tribune L. Saturninus and the violation of the sacred precincts of the senate house.”' He looked up in puzzlement. 'Saturninus? It must be – what? – forty years since he was killed.'
    'Thirty-six,' corrected Catulus.
    'And Catulus should know,' said Isauricus, 'because he was there. As was I.'
    Catulus spat out his name as if it were poison. 'Saturninus! What a rogue! Killing him wasn't a crime – it was a public service.' He gazed into the distance as if surveying some grand historical mural on the wall of a temple:
The Murder of Saturninus in the Senate