The furore at last quieted enough for him to continue. 'When my client… and myself… when we first took up politics…'
'Yes, but when will you give it up?' shouted someone in the crowd.
'Not soon enough!' answered a chorus of voices, to raucous laughter.
'When we first took up politics,' Cicero went on at a higher pitch, 'we held high hopes that honourable rewards for honourable service would come our way. Instead we suffer a constant burden of fear. Milo has always been especially vulnerable, for he has deliberately… deliberately and bravely… placed himself on the foremost… I mean to say, in the forefront… in the struggle of true patriots against enemies of the state — '
There was another outburst, so loud it hurt my ears. Milo had sunk so low in his chair and hugged himself so tightly that he appeared to have melted. His expression was one of utter disgust. Tiro flinched every time Cicero stammered, and began to bite his nails.
From that point on the roar of the crowd was almost constant. 'Whenever Cicero did manage to make himself heard, he seemed to be uttering confused fragments from more than one speech. On several occasions he clearly lost his place, muttered to himself, and started at some point he had already covered. His voice continually shook. Even knowing his general intention — to accuse Clodius of an ambush and to exonerate Milo completely — it was impossible for me to make any sense of his argument. From the looks on their faces, the jurors were equally confounded.
Cicero's orations had roused many reactions in me over the years — outrage at his willingness to twist the truth, admiration approaching awe at his ability to construct a logical argument, simple wonder at his prodigious ego, grudging respect for his loyalty to his friends, dismay at his shameless demagoguery, for Cicero was always ready to exploit his listeners' religious sentiments and sexual prejudices to his own-ends. Now I began to feel something I had never felt before, something I would have thought impossible: I began to feel embarrassed for Cicero.
This should have been his finest hour. When he defended Sextus Roscius and risked offending the dictator Sulla, he had been too young to know better; inciting the people against Catilina had been almost too easy; destroying Clodia in his speech for Marcus Caelius had been an act of personal vengeance. This was a situation that required true bravery and heroic stamina. If he could have stood his ground against the angry mob, if he could have stared them down and by the sheer power of his oratory compelled them to listen, what a crowning accomplishment that would have been, whether he won the case or not. He could have attained a kind of glory even in failure.. Instead, he was the very portrait of a man cowed by fear. He stuttered, averted his eyes, broke out in a sweat, stumbled over his lines. He was like an actor crippled by stage fright. No man could be blamed for being intimidated by that crowd, but from Cicero such a reaction was difficult to stomach. The wretchedness ofhis performance robbed his words of any weight they might have possessed. The few audible portions of his speech seemed disconnected, forced, artificial, insincere. I seemed to be watching a second-rate actor doing a poor parody of Cicero. More than feeling embarrassed, I almost felt pity for him.
Milo became increasingly agitated until he seemed about to come out of his skin. He kept jumping towards Tiro, engaging him in whispered arguments. Milo, I suspected, wanted to call Cicero from the Rostra and speak extemporaneously in his own defence; Tiro managed to argue him out of it.
The crowd soon learned to make a game of their outbursts. I have seldom seen a mass of people act with such seeming single-mindedness. They would grow just quiet enough to allow Cicero to be heard, then would laugh when he stuttered or misspoke, then would wait until the critical moment of the point he was making and let out a deafening roar. Their performance was uncanny, as if orchestrated by an invisible hand. The spirit of Clodius himself seemed to guide them that day.
The debacle seemed to go on forever. In fact, it lasted for considerably less than the three hours allotted for the defence. Eventually Cicero neared the end of his speech. 'Milo was born to serve his country. Surely it cannot be right that he should be forbidden to die within her boundaries — '
'Then let him take his own life, right now!' someone shouted.
'Distinguished jurors, can you possibly see fit to banish him from our soil? Send a man such as Milo into exile, and he would be eagerly welcomed by every other city in the world — '
'Then send him! Send him! Exile! Exile!' The word became a chant that echoed all through the Forum.
Cicero did not wait for the chant to die down in order to finish his speech. He continued in a hoarse voice amid the growing roar of the crowd. I strained to hear him. 'Urgently I ask you, honourable jurors, when you cast your votes, be brave enough to act as you truly think is right. Do that, and believe me, your integrity… and courage… and sense of justice will surely please the one who chose this jury by fixing on the best and bravest and wisest men in Rome.'
Was that, then, the ultimate appeal? That a vote to acquit Milo would be pleasing to the Great One, the sole consul and selector of judges and juries? If that was his final argument, it was just as well that Cicero's voice was drowned out by the mob.
Once the speeches were finished, each side was allowed to excuse fifteen of the jurors. This was done quickly, as both prosecution and defence had already drawn up their lists of those they considered undesirable.
All that remained was for the fifty-one remaining jurors to vote. Each was given a tablet with wax on each side, with the letter A (for absolve) stamped on one side and the letter C (for condemn) stamped on the other. The juror wiped out one of the letters, leaving the other to show his judgment These were collected before they were counted, so that the vote of each juror was kept secret Domitius presided over the counting of the tablets as they were separated into two groups. From where I sat, I could see that one group was about three times higher than the other.
Domitius announced the results. The vote to condemn was thirty-eight. The vote to absolve was thirteen.
The defeat was crushing. Even so, Milo had gathered more support from the jury than I expected. Strangely enough, I felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for him. He was responsible for some of the darkest days of my life; he had deliberately separated me from my family and treated me like an animal. Yet the time I had spent in captivity had also made me consider the harsh reality of the exile's existence, ait off forever, from his heartland, from the places of his childhood and the people he loves, from the only life he has known, forbidden ever to return, even in death. I had had a taste of that despondency, at Milo's hand. Now Milo's world was at an end. Just as I had almost felt pity for Cicero, I almost felt it for Milo.
There was an outcry of triumph from the crowd. Expressionless, Milo rose stiffly from his chair and went directly to the closed litter in which he had arrived. Cicero, looking dazed, followed him. In addition to their own bodyguards, Pompey's soldiers formed a cordon around the litter to ensure its safe passage out of the Forum.
Pompey must be pleased, I thought After a shaky beginning on the first day of the trial, he had managed to establish order, and order, of a sort, had prevailed to the end. The question of Milo had been settled; Milo would trouble him no more, and neither would Cicero, at least for a while. Now the Great One could turn his attention to the Glodian radicals. What punishment would be appropriate for those who instigated the burning of the Senate House? Rome craved law and order, and Rome was about to get it — in the short term, at least.
Taverns reopened as soon as the trial was over. The Clodians would drink to celebrate. Milo's supporters would drink to drown their misery. I decided to stay behind locked doors.
Over dinner, I revealed to the family what I had discovered the previous night regarding Milo's responsibility for abducting Eco and me, and Cicero's knowledge of it. Eco was not surprised. Bethesda and Menenia were outraged. Diana began to cry and left the room.
We discussed the trial, which had done the job of punishing Milo for us; he was already being penalized to the full extent of the law, and there was nothing more that we could do to him. As for Cicero, Bethesda vowed to put an Egyptian curse on him. I myself was less certain about how to deal with him. Certainly, there could be no more friendly commerce of any kind between our houses ever again. I had come close to making a full break with Cicero in the past; now it was done. But beyond that, it was difficult to see what sort of satisfaction we might obtain against him, at least for the time being.
We discussed and argued long into the night. The lamps grew dim and the slaves refilled them. We had eaten our fill, but gradually grew hungry again. Bethesda produced another course. We discussed and argued some more. At some point I realized how inexplicably happy I was. I was safe in my home, in the heart of the city, content with my family, finally out of harm's way. Was everyone else in Rome like myself, heaving a great sigh of relief?
The world had been turned upside down and given a great rattling shake. Soldiers had been given the run of a
