Lustrum

we need are armies: armies in the field – armies like the one being raised at this very moment by the tribune-elect's own brother. Besides, if you ask me, Pompey has too much power as it is.'
    That drew a loud and shocked 'Oh!' from the assembly.
    'If this senate will not vote Pompey the command,' said Nepos, 'then I give you fair warning that I shall lay a bill before the people as soon as I take office as tribune demanding his recall.'
    'And I give you fair warning,' retorted Cato, 'that I shall veto your bill.'
    'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' cried Cicero, having to shout to make himself heard. 'We shall do neither the state nor ourselves any good by bickering at a time of national emergency! Tomorrow there will be a public assembly. I shall report to the people on our deliberations, and I hope,' he added, staring hard at Sura and his cronies, 'that those senators whose bodies may be with us but whose loyalties lie elsewhere will search their hearts overnight and act accordingly. This house stands adjourned.'
    Normally after a session ended Cicero liked to stand outside for a while so that any senator who wished to speak to him could do so. It was one of those tools by which he exerted his control over the chamber, this knowledge he had of every man, however minor – his strengths and weaknesses, what he desired and what he feared, what he would put up with and what he would not stomach under any circumstances. But that afternoon he hurried away, his face rigid with frustration. 'It's like fighting the Hydra!' he complained furiously when we got home. 'No sooner do Ilop off one head than another two grow back in its place! So while Catilina storms out, his henchmen all sit there as calm as you please, and now Pompey's faction are starting to stir! I have one month,' he ranted, 'just one month – if I can survive that long – before the new tribunes come into office. Then the agitation for Pompey's recall will really get started. And in the meantime we can't even be sure we'll actually have two new consuls in January because of this
fucking lawsuit
!' And with that he swept his arm across his desk and sent all the documents relating to Murena's prosecution flying across the floor.
    In such a mood he was quite unreasonable, and I had learned from long experience that there was no point in attempting to reply. He waited irritably for me to respond and then, failing to get satisfaction, he stamped out in search of someone else to shout at, while I knelt and calmly gathered up all the rolls of evidence. I knew he would come back sooner or later, in order to prepare his address to the people for the following day, but the hours passed, dusk fell and the lamps and candles were lit, and I began to feel alarmed. Afterwards I discovered he had gone with his guards and lictors to the nearby gardens and spent the time pacing round and round so ceaselessly they thought he would wear a groove in the stones. When at last he came back, his face was very pale and grim. He had devised a plan, he told me, and he did not know which frightened him more: the thought that it might fail or the possibility that it might succeed.
    The following morning he invited Q. Fabius Sanga to come and see him. Sanga, you may recall, was the senator to whom he had written on the day the murdered boy's body was discovered, requesting information about human sacrifice and the religionof the Gauls. Sanga was about fifty and immensely rich from his investments in Nearer and Further Gaul. He had never aspired to rise beyond the back benches and treated the senate purely as a place in which he could protect his business interests. He was very respectable and pious, lived modestly and was rumoured to be strict with his wife and children. He only spoke in debates about Gaul, on which he was, to be frank, an immense bore: once he started talking about its geography, climate, tribes, customs and so forth, he could empty the chamber quicker than a shout of 'Fire!'
    'Are you a patriot, Sanga?' asked Cicero the moment I showed him in.
    'I like to think I am, Consul,' replied Sanga cautiously. 'Why?'
    'Because I wish you to play a vital part in the defence of our beloved republic.'
    'Me?' Sanga looked very alarmed. 'Oh dear. I am rather afflicted by gout …'
    'No, no, nothing like that. I merely want you to ask a man to speak to a man, and then to tell me what he replies.'
    Sanga noticeably relaxed. 'Well yes, I believe I could do that. Who are these men?'
    'One is