with the likes of Eudamus or Birria and not flinch.' This elicited some sympathetic murmurs.
'Still, you did a brave thing, citizen, you and your fine friends here. I should hope that if ever some scoundrel like Milo sends his slaves after me or my loved ones, there'll be citizens like you to come to my rescue!' Plancus led the crowd in an outburst of cheering and applause.
'But Philemon,' Plancus continued, 'how is it that we're only now hearing about this? Why did you not come forward before, when we were all in a state of confusion about what happened on the Appian Way?'
'Because we've only now had the chance to come forward. For two months, we were all held prisoner by Milo at his villa in Lanuvium.'
This created a great stir in the crowd.
'Explain, Philemon,' said Plancus.
'When Eudamus and Birria and their men came after us, we all split up and headed away from the road. We thought we might be able to lose them in the hills and the woods. But there were plenty of them after us, and they caught us one by one until they'd rounded up all five of us. They tied us up and herded us like prisoners back through Bovillae and up the Appian Way.'
'Slaves did this? To citizens?'
Men in the crowd shook their fists and shouted curses at Milo. 'Burn his house!' someone shouted. 'Burn down the villain's house!'
I looked uneasily at the soldiers who stood rigidly at attention on the Senate House steps.
Plancus quieted the crowd so that Philemon could go on. 'They took us up the hill to Milo. He was standing in the road with a lot of men around him. When he saw us he stamped his foot and had a tantrum like a child. I thought that was the end of us, that they'd kill us right there in the road. But Milo ordered his men to gag us and put bags over our heads. Then we were shoved into some sort of wagon or carriage and they took us to a place a few miles away — Milo's own villa in Lanuvium, as it turned out. They locked us in an underground storage room. And that's where we stayed for two long months while they fed us on kitchen scraps and mouldy bread. Then we heard from one of the men guarding us that Milo had finally made up his mind to have us killed. I don't want to say too much about how we escaped, as there were those in Milo's villa who helped us do it.'
'You said you were prisoners for two months,' yelled someone in the crowd. 'But it's been more like three months since Clodius was killed. What have you been doing in the month since you escaped? Why haven't we heard from you before?'
'I can answer that,' said Plancus. 'These men have been lying low. Are you surprised? Milo spared their lives once, but what would stop him from killing them if he could catch them a second time? Now it finally looks as if Milo will be brought to justice after all, and so these men have come forward. Truth bides its time.'
'But is it the truth?' shouted another man in the crowd. 'The whole story sounds suspicious to me. You Clodians looked everywhere and you never could find anybody who saw the actual killing, and now you've suddenly come up with five witnesses who claim they were there on the spot! And if it seems a bit funny that we haven't heard from them in all this time, oh, that's because they just happen to have been held prisoner for a couple of months! It's all a bit incredible, if you ask me. Do they have any proof that Milo held them captive?'
One of the four men ran to the front of the platform and shook his fist, 'Proof? You want proof of something? I can think of a way to prove whether or not you have blood in your veins!'
There were more shouts and threats. The mood began to turn ugly. I looked towards the soldiers. Was it my imagination, or had they all moved a few steps closer? Plancus shook his head and gestured for calm, but more and more shouting matches began to break out, I nudged Eco, who nodded his consent, and we made our way out of the crowd.
'So, Papa, the mystery of the prisoners on the road is solved.'
I nodded. 'Not Clodius's men after all, just hapless travellers who happened to stumble upon the fracas.'
'I can see why Eudamus and Birria hunted them down, but why didn't they kill them on the spot? Why did they spare them?'
'Their recklessness had already got their master into enough trouble for one day. Who knew who these five fellows were, or whether some powerful patron might be offended if they were killed? Milo must have thought it was better to simply hold them prisoner until the storm passed. Instead, the storm only kept building. You heard what Philemon said: just before they escaped, Milo had finally made up his mind to get rid of them. Probably some slave in Milo's villa took pity on them and helped them get away.'
'There were sceptics in the crowd. I suppose it is a rather incredible story.'
'But it all sounds only too credible to us, eh, Eco?'
The next morning, Pompey's legislation to reform the law courts, proposed a month before, was officially voted on and approved by the Senate. Immediately, Appius Claudius brought formal charges against Milo, accusing him of the crime of political violence in the murder of their uncle. Under Pompey's new rules for the courts, each side was allowed ten days to prepare for the trial. Rome held its breath.
If convicted, Milo would be subject to immediate, permanent exile and the confiscation of almost all his possessions. He would be disgraced and dispossessed. He would be finished in Rome forever.
But what if he was absolved? I tried to imagine the reaction in the city. I could envision only endless flames, rubble and bloodshed. Could even Pompey with his troops contain such a whirlwind? Reason, morality and simple pragmatism argued that any verdict other than guilty was impossible, except…
Except that Milo had Cicero on his side. And as I had learned from long, sometimes bitter experience, with Cicero for the defence, anything was possible.
XXX
The trial of Titus Annius Milo began on the morning of the fourth day of the month of Aprilis, with the examination of witnesses in the courtyard of the Temple of Liberty. Presiding over the court from a raised tribunal was the former consul Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, a grim-jawed, humourless former consul hand-picked by Pompey himself and, purely as a formality, approved by a vote of the people's assembly. Testimony was given before a panel of 360 potential jurors who sat on raised benches on either side of the courtyard. This panel had been selected from a list of eligible senators and men of property drawn up by Pompey. Of these, eighty-one would ultimately be chosen by lot to make up the jury.
Milo and his advocates, Cicero and Marcus Claudius Marcellus, sat with their secretaries on benches feeing the tribunal, as did the prosecutors, Clodius's nephew Appius Claudius, Publius Valerius Nepos, and Marc Antony. Also present were numerous officers of the court, including a battery of secretaries to record the testimony in Tironian shorthand.
A huge crowd gathered at the open end of the courtyard to view the proceedings. Those with foresight sent slaves ahead to save places for them. Eco and I, with our long experience of trials, had managed to secure excellent seats in the tenth row; Davus and one of his fellow bodyguards had arrived well before dawn with our folding chairs, and dozed on them until we arrived. Latecomers without chairs crowded into every vacant nook and cranny and continually tried to push their way in from the Forum.
Pompey was not present. Nor were Pompey's soldiers, who seemed so omnipresent everywhere else in the city. Even Pompey would not
dare to post armed troops at a Roman trial. Surely they would not be needed; even the Clodians would not dare to disrupt a Roman trial. A political gathering was one thing. A public trial, the most sacred of Roman institutions, the cornerstone of Roman justice, was another matter.
The first witness to be called was Gaius Causinius Schola, one of the men who had accompanied Clodius on horseback that day on the Appian Way. He testified that Clodius's party had met and passed Milo's larger party close to the tenth hour of the day; that a scuffle had broken out among the rearguard of the two parties, for reasons he did not know, though he suspected that Milo's men had started it; that when Clodius turned and cast a dark look at Birria, the gladiator hurled a spear at Clodius and wounded him, knocking him from his horse. Fighting broke out, and Schola himself was knocked from his horse and driven into the woods by Milo's slaves. He remained in hiding until well after dark, then made his way to Clodius's villa, where he found that the place was in shambles and that the foreman and the tutor Halicor had been murdered. The next day he returned to Rome.
