Lustrum

said Cicero, eyeing his great rival, 'the two of us appearing together.'
    'The prospect is no more appealing to me than it is to you,' rejoined Hortensius coldly.
    'Now, now, Hortensius, don't take offence. I'd be honoured to act as your colleague in court. But let's not rush into their trap. Let's try to see if we can settle this matter without a trial.'
    'How can it be avoided?'
    'I'll go and talk to Caesar. Discover what he wants. See if we can reach a compromise.' At the mere mention of the word 'compromise', the three ex-consuls all started to object at once. Cicero held up his hands. 'He must want something. It will do us no harm at least to hear his terms. We owe it to the republic. We owe it to Rabirius.'
    'I want to go home,' said Rabirius plaintively. 'Please can I go home now?'
    Cicero and I left the house less than an hour later, the unfamiliar snow crunching and squeaking beneath our boots as we descended the empty street towards the city. Once again we went alone, which I now find remarkable to contemplate – this must have been one of the last occasions when Cicero was able to venture out in Rome without a bodyguard. He did however pull up the hood of his cloak to avoid being recognised. Even the busiest thoroughfares in daylight could not be counted safe that winter.
    'They will have to compromise,' he said. 'They may not like it, but they have no choice.' He suddenly swore, and kicked at the snow in his frustration. 'Is this what my consulship is going to consist of, Tiro? A year spent running back and forth between the patricians and the populists, trying to stop them tearing one another to pieces?' I could think of no hopeful reply, so we trudged on in silence.
    Caesar's home at this time stood some way beneath Cicero's, in Subura. The building had been in his family for at least a century and had no doubt been fine enough in its day. But by the time Caesar had come to inherit it, the neighbourhood was impoverished. Even the virginal snow, smudged with the soot of burned-out fires and dotted with human shit thrown fromthe tenement windows, somehow served only to emphasise the squalor of the narrow streets. Beggars held out trembling hands for money, but I had brought none with me. I recall urchins pelting an elderly, shrieking whore with snowballs, and twice we saw fingers and feet poking out from beneath the icy mounds that marked where some poor wretch had frozen to death in the night.
    And it was down here in Subura, like some great shark attended by shoals of minnows hoping for his scraps, that Caesar lurked and awaited his chance. His house was at the end of a street of shoemakers, flanked by two tottering apartment blocks, seven or eight storeys high. The frozen washing strung between them made it seem as though a pair of drunks with torn sleeves were embracing above his roof. Outside the entrance a dozen rough-looking fellows stamped their feet around an iron brazier. I felt their hungry, crafty eyes stripping the clothes from my back even as we waited to be admitted.
    'Those are the citizens who will be judging Rabirius,' muttered Cicero. 'The old fool doesn't stand a chance.'
    The steward took our cloaks and showed us into the atrium, then went to tell his master of Cicero's arrival, leaving us to inspect the death masks of Caesar's ancestors. Strangely, there were only three consuls in Caesar's direct line, a thin tally for a family that claimed to go back to the foundation of Rome and to have its origins in the womb of Venus. The goddess herself was represented by a small bronze. The statue was exquisite but scratched and shabby, as were the carpets, the frescoes, the faded tapestries and the furniture: all told a story of a proud family fallen on hard days. We had plenty of leisure to appreciate these heirlooms as time passed and still Caesar did not appear.
    'You can't help but admire the fellow,' said Cicero, after hehad paced around the room three or four times. 'Here am I, about to become the pre-eminent man in Rome, while he hasn't even made it to praetor yet. But I am the one who must dance attendance on him!'
    After a while I became aware that we were being watched from behind a door by a solemn-faced girl of about ten who must have been Caesar's daughter, Julia. I smiled at her and she darted away. A little while later, Caesar's mother, Aurelia, emerged from the same room. Her narrow, dark-eyed, watchful face, like Caesar's, had something of the bird of prey about it, and she