In essentials, Schola's story matched what I had learned from Felicia, though in the finer details he cast Clodius in an even more innocent light.
When the time for cross-examination arrived, a thrill of anticipation passed through the crowd as Milo, Cicero and Marcellus conferred. Milo and Cicero remained seated. Their colleague Marcellus stepped forward.
Someone in the crowd shouted, 'Let's see Cicero!'
'No, let's see Milo — with his head on a stick!'
Marcellus ignored them. He was a seasoned orator, used to the give and take of debates in the Senate and catcalls from the rabble at trials. 'So, Schola,' he began, 'you claim that the incident on the Appian Way occurred at the tenth hour of the day. And yet — '
There was an eruption of jeering from the crowd, drowning him out. Marcellus scowled and waited for the noise to subside, but as soon as he' opened his mouth again, the jeering recommenced, even louder. He opened his arms in an appeal to Domitius on the tribunal, then gave a start as a stone the size of a child's fist came hurtling through the air and struck him in the back. He whirled about and stared at the crowd with a look of utter shock on his face.
The mob, still screaming and jeering, began to rush towards the tribunal, pouring in along the sides of the seated crowd, knocking down bystanders and stampeding over broken folding chairs. Eco and I seemed to be safe enough, since we were seated near the centre of the seated spectators with plenty of occupied chairs all around us. Then a group of men came scrambling right through the midst of the seated crowd, stepping on people's laps and shoulders.
Domitius rose to his feet and shouted furiously at the prosecutors. They shrugged helplessly, making an elaborate mime of being unable to hear him and equally unable to do anything about the unruly crowd. The panel of potential jurors, men of substance who were not easily intimidated, shook their heads and looked thoroughly disgusted. Milo, Cicero and Marcellus, together with their secretaries, gathered up armfuls of scrolls and wax tablets and rushed to join Domitius on the tribunal. As the mob drew closer and showed no sign of stopping, Milo and his party retreated into the Temple of Liberty, leaving Domitius to stand with his hands on his hips, defying the mob to violate a sacred temple. But the mob seemed satisfied to have silenced Marcellus and driven Milo to flight. They occupied the tribunal and in a jubilant mood began to stamp their feet and recite lewd chants about Milo's wife Fausta. 'When it became evident that order was not going to be restored, jurors and peaceful spectators who had not already fled began to disperse. Eventually there was a rumour that Pompey was coming with a troop of armed soldiers. This caused the mob to abandon the tribunal and scatter in all directions.
Thus ended the first day of Milo's trial.
The next day began much as the first, except that the room for spectators was more constricted, thanks to the soldiers who now flanked the courtyard on either side. At Domitius's insistence, Pompey had assigned troops to keep order during the trial. Roman justice would be carried out with the assistance of Roman steel
The hearing of witnesses resumed with the testimony of various persons from the vicinity of Bovillae, beginning with Felicia. Like an actor finally allowed to have a major role, she seemed determined to make the most of her time as a witness. She flashed her incongruous smile and projected her sultry demeanour while the advocates examined and cross-examined her; many of the spectators, meanwhile, seemed to be examining her in another way. The day was off to an appropriately bizarre beginning.
Her brother Felix testified next, about the comings and goings of the victims and their pursuers, including the bound prisoners, who were now known to be Philemon and his companions. Philemon himself testified, reiterating the story he had told at the contio. The wife of the slain innkeeper at Bovillae did not appear; she was still in seclusion down in Rhegium, I assumed. Her sister and brother-in-law, the current keepers of the inn, gave secondhand testimony about what the widow had told them and described the gory aftermath.
The Virgo Maxima told of the visit by an unknown woman offering thanks to the goddess for the death of Publius Clodius. This account so inflamed the Clodians that for a while it seemed there might be another disturbance. Pompey's soldiers eventually moved to drive off some of the more vocal agitators. Order was restored, but by this point Domitius was ready to adjourn the court for the day.
The third day of testimony began with the last of the witnesses from the vicinity of Bovillae. Senator Sextus Tedius was called. He rose from the front row of spectators and hobbled before the court, using a cane and dragging his lame left leg. I was in the second row of spectators that day and was close enough to see his daughter Tedia sitting next to the chair he had vacated, looking after him with a worried expression. Normally she would have assisted him, I thought Probably he did not care to be seen accepting a woman's help in front of the court.
Senator Tedius repeated the story he had told me: that he had left for Rome in his litter accompanied by his daughter and some slaves, that he had encountered Milo, who warned him of fictitious bandits, but had pressed on to Bovillae, where he found Clodius's abandoned body in the road, apparently dragged there by his killers, and had sent it on to Rome in his litter. It was now evident that Tedius must have arrived while Eudamus and Birria and their men were off in the woods hunting for Philemon and his companions. After dispatching Clodius to Rome, Tedius returned by foot towards Aricia, and told of seeing the prisoners being marched up the road while he rested at a spot close to the new House of the Vestals.
A man named Quintus Arrius, a colleague of Clodius, testified that he had helped to interrogate Clodius's slaves after the incident. One of them, a personal secretary, had confessed under torture that for months he had provided information on Clodius's movements to an agent of Milo's. Therefore, Arrius suggested, Milo was regularly kept apprised of Clodius's comings and goings, and could have premeditated the apparently chance encounter on the Appian Way. Cicero, during cross-examination, scoffed at this idea, pointing out that Schola had testified on the first day that Clodius left his villa suddenly, upon hearing the news of the death of Cyrus the architect; therefore, how could Milo, even with an inside source, have predicted their encounter?
Then Cicero called a witness himself: Marcus Cato, who descended from the raised benches where the potential jurors sat. Cato, perhaps the only person in the court even more staid and conservative than Domitius the judge, gave secondhand testimony to the effect that a certain Marcus Favonius had passed along a remark to him which Clodius had made exactly three days before the fatal incident.
'And what was this remark, this jewel, this bit of wisdom from the lips of Publius Clodius?' said Cicero.
Cato looked at Domitius and the panel of jurors. 'Clodius told Favonius that Titus Annius Milo would be dead within three days.'
There was a stir of excitement in the court. 'Cato's a liar and a drunk!' someone yelled. 'What's he doing sitting with the jury if he's a witness?'
Cicero spun about. 'Who impugns the judgment of Pompey? It was the Great One himself who personally selected Marcus Cato to sit among the jurors, and why? Because Cato's integrity and honesty are absolutely beyond doubt. Any man who says otherwise only shows himself to be a fool.'
This was true enough. Whatever one thought of his politics, Cato was not a man to lie. But the story he told was only secondhand; Clodius supposedly said something to Favonius, who said something to Cato. And Cicero, I noticed, made no refutation of the accusation that Cato was a drunkard. A lifetime of hard drinking showed in the statesman's rheumy eyes.
Whatever effect Cicero had hoped to achieve by Cato's testimony was entirely negated by what followed.
The last witnesses to be heard were Sempronia and Fulvia. Each told how Clodius's body had arrived at his house on the Palatine borne in a stranger's litter, unaccompanied by friends or any sort of explanation. They described the shocking condition of his corpse. They explained how the surviving friends and slaves who had been with him made their way back to Rome one by one, each adding another horrifying detail to the catastrophe that had occurred on the Appian Way. They spoke of Clodius's young son, Publius, who was missing and unaccounted for all that night, and of their grief and worry when they learned of the slaughter at Clodius's Alban villa. Sempronia — dour, smug Sempronia — broke down and wept, and seemed to become the image of every man's anxious, fretful grandmother. Fulvia, who began with a stiff emotionless recitation of the facts, ended with a shrieking lament that eclipsed even her agony on the night of her husband's death. She wept, pulled at her hair and tore her stola.
I heard more weeping nearby, and saw that the daughter of Sextus Tedius had covered her face with her hands. Her father stared straight ahead, apparently embarrassed by such a display.
But Tedia was not the only one who shed tears. I thought it could only be a miracle that kept the Clodians from erupting into another riot, until I looked around and saw that many of them were weeping uncontrollably.
Cicero did not dare to cross-examine the women. The court adjourned at the tenth hour.
