go on living. At least that's how it usually works out, sooner or later. It's what we Romans call politics.' I smiled without mirth.
'You hate politics, don't you, Papa?' 'I like to say I do.' 'But I thought — '
'I'm like the man who says he hates the theatre but never misses a play. He claims it's his friends who drag him along. Even so, he can quote every line of Terence.'
'So you secretly love politics.'
'No! But it's in the air I breathe, and I don't care to stop breathing. Put it another way: politics is the Roman disease, and I'm no more immune than anyone else.'
She frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'Certain diseases are peculiar to certain tribes and nations. Your brother Meto says that up in Gaul there's a tribe in which every person is born deaf in one ear. You've heard your mother say that there's a village on the Nile where everyone breaks out in hives at the approach of a cat. And I read once that Spaniards suffer a form of tooth rot that can only be cured by drinking their own urine.'
'Papa!' Diana wrinkled her nose.
'Not all diseases are grossly physical. The Athenians are addicted to art; without it they become irritable and constipated. Alexandrians live for commerce; they'd sell a virgin's sigh if they could find a way to bottle it. I hear the Parthians suffer from hippomania; whole clans go to war with each other to lay claim to a fine breeding stud.
'Well, politics is the Roman disease. Everyone in the city catches it sooner or later, even women nowadays. No one ever recovers. It's an insidious sickness, with perverse symptoms. Different people suffer in different ways, and some don't suffer at all; it cripples one man, kills another, and makes yet another man grow fat and strong.'
'So is it a good thing or a bad thing?'
'Just a Roman thing, Diana. And whether it's good or bad for Rome, I can't say. It's made us the rulers of the world. But I begin to wonder if it won't be the end of us.' I stared down at the Forum, no longer like Jupiter watching the plain of Ida — more now like Pluto surveying the fiery pits of Hades.
Diana leaned back. Her jet-black hair made a pillow for her head as she studied the sky above. Her dark eyes reflected glimmers of cold starlight.
'I like it when you talk to me like this, Papa.'
'Do you?'
'This is how you used to talk to Meto sometimes, before he left for the army.'
'I suppose.'
She turned on her side, propped her head on her hand and looked at me earnestly. 'Is something bad going to happen, Papa?'
'I imagine the people around Clodius think something bad has already happened.'
'To us, I mean. Are we in danger, Papa?'
'Not if I can help it.' I ran my hand over the side of her face and stroked her hair.
'But things are getting worse, aren't they? That's what you and Eco always say to each other, when you talk politics. And now it's worse than ever — Clodius dead, the Senate House burned down. Is something awful about to happen?'
'Something awful is always about to happen — to someone, somewhere. The only escape is to make a friend of Fortune, if she'll have you, and run the other way whenever you see a politician coming.'
'I'm serious, Papa. Are things about to — I don't know, about to fall apart? For us, for everybody?'
How could I answer her? Out of the past I suddenly remembered a scene from the Forum when I was a young man, after Sulla won the civil war: rows and rows of heads mounted on pikes, the enemies of the dictator paying gaping witness to his triumph. Afterwards, people swore that such a thing would never happen again. That was thirty years ago.
'I can't see the future, Diana.'
'But you know the past, enough to understand about Clodius and Milo. Explain it to me. If I could understand what's happening, perhaps it wouldn't worry me so much.'
'Very well, Diana. Clodius and Milo: where to begin? Well, we shall have to start with Caesar and Pompey. You know who they are.'
'Of course. Gaius Julius Caesar is the man Meto serves, up in Gaul. The greatest general since Alexander the Great.'
I smiled. 'So Meto says. Pompey might not agree.'
'Pompey cleared the seas of the pirates and conquered the East.'
I nodded. 'And surnamed himself Magnus — 'the Great,' just like Alexander. As I said a moment ago, sometime when two men want the same thing — '
'You mean Caesar and Pompey both want to be Alexander the Great?'
'Yes, exactly, since you put it like that. And there can't be two at once. The world is not big enough.'
'But don't Caesar and Pompey both serve the Senate and the people of Rome?'
'Nominally, yes. They receive their commands and permission to raise their armies from the Senate, and between them they've conquered the world in the name of the Senate. But sometimes servants outgrow their master. Caesar and Pompey have both grown too big for the Senate. So far, the salvation of the Republic has been that the two generals have held one another in check — neither can grow too powerful for fear of riling the other. And there have been other factors figured into the balance.'
'Pompey married Caesar's daughter, didn't he?'
'Yes: Julia. Apparently it was a genuine love match. That marriage link smoothed over the two men's differences. Family connections mean everything, especially to patricians like Caesar. And another factor: the two rivals used to be three. There was Marcus Crassus.'
'The man who owned Meto when he was a little boy. He was the one who put down Spartacus and the slave rebellion.'
'Yes, but despite that victory Crassus was never much of a general. But he did manage to make himself the richest man in the world. Crassus, Caesar and Pompey formed what they called the Triumvirate, sharing power between the three of them. That seemed to work for a while. A table with three legЈ is steady.'
'But a table with just two legs…'
'Sooner or later has to fall. Last spring Crassus was killed in Parthia, at the eastern end of the world, trying to prove his military prowess once and for all by conquering some of the same lands that Alexander conquered. But the Parthian cavalry defeated him. They killed his son, along with forty thousand Roman soldiers. They chopped off Crassus's head and used it for a stage prop to amuse their king. Exit Crassus.'
'Leaving the Triumvirate with only two feet.'
'But at least those two feet were still bound together by the marriage link between Pompey and Caesar — until Julia died in childbirth. Now nothing holds the two of them together, and there's nothing to keep them from coming to blows sooner or later. Rome holds its breath, like a hedgehog watching two eagles circle overhead, ready to battle it out to see which of them gets to eat the hedgehog.'
'I think you must be the first man ever to compare Rome to a hedgehog, Papa!' Diana studied the stars. 'Is there a hedgehog constellation?' 'I don't think so.'
'So you've told me all this about Caesar and Pompey the Great. But what about Clodius and Milo?'
'Caesar and Pompey are eagles up in the sky, soaring over mountains and seas. Down here on solid ground, it's Clodius and Milo who've been fighting over Rome itself — the city, not the empire. They fought with gangs instead of armies. Instead of mountain ranges and seas, they squabbled over the seven hills and the markets on the riverfront. Instead of battles, they staged riots in the Forum. Instead of campaigning against barbarians, they campaigned against each other for office — bullying and bribing voters, pandering to their constituents, postponing elections, pulling every possible trick to get the better of each other.
'Milo represents those who call themselves the Best People — old families, old money, the most conservative elements in the Senate. The kind of people Pompey likes to associate with, so it's not surprising that from time to time Milo has more or less acted as Pompey's henchman here in Rome.
'Clodius is-was-a radical, despite his patrician blood. He appealed to the mob. When he was in the military, he staged an uprising of common soldiers against their commander, who happened to be his own brother-in-law. The year the plebeians elected him tribune, he promised to set up a free grain dole, and he did, by annexing Cyprus
