white-faced and silent, to watch the consul pass.
When we reached the temple, we found it ringed by members of the Order of Knights, some quite elderly, all armed with lances and swords. Within this security perimeter several hundred senators stood around in muted groups. They parted to let us through and a few patted Cicero on the back and whispered their good wishes. Cicero nodded in acknowledgement, took the auspices very quickly, and then he and the lictors led the way into the large building. I had never set foot inside before, and it presented a most sombre scene. Centuries old, every wall and corner was crammed with relics of military glory from the earliest days of the republic – bloodied standards, dented armour, ships' beaks, legionary eagles, and a statue of Scipio Africanus painted up to look so lifelike it actually seemed he stood among us. I was some distance back in Cicero's retinue, the senators pouring in behind me, and because I was so busy craning my neck at all the memorabilia, I must have dawdled a little. At any rate, it wasn't until I had nearly reached the dais that I became aware, to my embarrassment, that the only sound in the building was the click click of my footsteps on the stone floor. The senate, I realised, had fallen entirely still.
Cicero was fiddling with a roll of papyrus. He turned to find out what was happening and I saw his face transfix with astonishment. I spun round in alarm myself – only to see Catilina calmly taking his place on one of the benches. Almost everyone else was still on their feet, watching him. Catilina sat, whereupon all the men nearest to him started edging away, as if he had leprosy. I never saw such a demonstration in my life. Even Caesar wouldn't go near him. Catilina took no notice, but folded his arms and thrust out his chin. The silence lengthened, until eventually I heard Cicero's voice, very calm, behind me.
'How much longer, Catilina, will you try our patience?'
All my life people have asked me about Cicero's speech that day. 'Did he write it out beforehand?' they want to know. 'Surely he must at least have planned what he was going to say?' The answer to both questions is 'no'. It was entirely spontaneous. Fragments of things he had long wanted to say, lines he had practised in his head, thoughts that had come to him in the sleepless nights of the last few months – all of it he wove together while he was on his feet.
'How much longer must we put up with your madness?'
He descended from his dais and started to advance very slowly along the aisle to where Catilina was sitting. As he walked, he extended both his arms and briefly gestured to the senators to take their places, which they did, and somehow that school-masterly gesture, and their instant compliance, established his authority. He was speaking for the republic.
'Is there no end to your arrogance? Don't you understand that we know what you're up to? Don't you appreciate that your conspiracy is uncovered? Do you think there's a man among us who doesn't know what you did last night – where you were, who came to your meeting, and what you agreed?' He stood at last in front of Catilina, his arms akimbo, looked him up and down, and shook his head. 'Oh, what times are these,' he said in a voice of utter disgust, 'and oh, what morals! The senate knows everything, the consul knows everything, and yet – this man is still alive!'
He wheeled around. 'Alive? Not just alive, gentlemen,' he cried, moving on down the aisle from Catilina and addressing the packed benches from the centre of the temple, 'he attends the senate! He takes part in our debates. He listens to us. He watches us – and all the time he's deciding who he's going to kill! Is this how we serve the republic – simply by sitting here, hoping it's not going to be us? How very brave we are! It's been twenty days since we voted ourselves the authority to act. We have the sword – but we keep it sheathed! You ought to have been executed immediately, Catilina. Yet still you live. And as long as you live, you don't give up your plotting – you increase it!'
I suppose by now even Catilina must have realised the size of his mistake in coming into the temple. In terms of physical strength and sheer effrontery he was much more powerful than Cicero. But the senate was not the arena for brute force. The weapons here were words, and no one ever knew how to deploy words as well as Cicero. For twenty years, whenever the courts were in session, scarcely a day had gone by that hadn't seen Cicero practising his craft. In a sense, his whole life had been but a preparation for this moment.
'Let's go over the events of last night. You went to the street of the scythe-makers – I'll be precise – to the house of Marcus Laeca. There you were joined by your criminal accomplices. Well, do you deny it? Why the silence? If you deny it, I'll prove it. In fact, I see some of those who were with you here in the senate. In heaven's name, where in the world are we? What country is this? What city are we living in? Here, gentlemen – here in our very midst, in this, the most sacred and important council in the world, there are men who want to destroy us, destroy our city, and extend that destruction to the entire world!
'You were at the house of Laeca, Catilina. You carved up the regions of Italy. You decided where you wanted each man to go. You said you would go yourself as soon I was dead. You chose parts of the city to be burnt. You sent two men to kill me. So I say to you, why don't you finish the journey you have begun? At long last really leave the city! The gates are open. Be on your way! The rebel army awaits its general. Take all your men with you. Cleanse the city. Put a wall between us. You cannot remain among us any longer – I cannot, I will not, I must not permit it!'
He thumped his right fist against his chest and cast his eyes to the roof of the temple as the senate came to its feet, bellowing its approval. 'Kill him!' someone shouted. 'Kill him! Kill him!' The cry was passed from man to man. Cicero waved them back down on to their benches.
'If I give an order for you to be killed, there will remain in the state the rest of the conspirators. But if, as I have long been urging, you leave the city, you will drain from it that flood of sewage that for you are your accomplices and for the rest of us our deadly enemies. Well, Catilina? What are you waiting for? What's left that can give you any pleasure in this city now? Beyond that conspiracy of ruined men, there isn't a single person who doesn't fear you, not one who doesn't hate you.'
There was much more in this vein, and then Cicero moved into his peroration. 'Let the traitors, then, depart!' he concluded. 'Go forth, Catilina, to your iniquitous and wicked war, and so bring sure salvation to the republic, disaster and ruin on yourself, and destruction to those who have joined you. Jupiter, you will protect us,' he thundered, reaching out his hand to the statue of the deity, 'and visit on these evil men, alive or dead, your punishment eternal!'
He turned away and stalked up the aisle to the dais. Now the chant was 'Go! Go! Go!' In an effort to retrieve the situation, Catilina leapt to his feet and began waving his arms about and shouting at Cicero's back. But it was far too late for him to undo the damage, and he didn't have the skill. He was flayed, humiliated, exposed, finished. I caught the words 'immigrant' and 'exile,' but the din was too great for him to be heard, and in any case his fury rendered him almost incomprehensible. As the cacophony of sound raged around him he fell silent, breathing deeply, and stood there for a short while longer, turning this way and that, like a once great ship lashed by a terrible storm, mastless and twisting at anchor, until something in him seemed to give way. He shuddered and stepped out into the aisle, at which point several senators, including Quintus, jumped across the benches to protect the consul. But even Catilina was not that demented: had he lunged at his enemy he would have been torn to pieces. Instead, with a final contemptuous glance around him – a glance that no doubt took in all those ancient glories in which his ancestors had played their part – he marched out of the senate. Later that same day, accompanied by twelve followers whom he called his lictors, and preceded by the silver eagle that had once belonged to Marius, he left the city and went to Arretium, where he formally proclaimed himself consul.
There are no lasting victories in politics, there is only the remorseless grinding forward of events. If my work has a moral, this is it. Cicero had scored an oratorical triumph over Catilina that would be talked about for years. With the whip of his tongue he had driven the monster from Rome. But the sewage, as he called it, did not, as he had hoped, drain away with him. On the contrary, after their leader had departed, Sura and the others remained calmly in their places, listening to the rest of the debate. They sat together, presumably on the principle of safety in numbers: Sura, Cethegus, Longinus, Annius, Paetus, the tribune-elect Bestia, the Sulla brothers, even Marcus Laeca, from whose house the assassins had been dispatched. I could see Cicero staring at them and I wondered what was going through his mind. Sura actually rose at one point and suggested in his sonorous voice that Catilina's wife and children be placed under the protection of the senate! The discussion meandered on. Then the tribune- elect Metellus Nepos demanded the floor. Now that Catilina had left the city, he said, presumably to lead the insurrection, surely the most prudent course would be to invite Pompey the Great back to Italy to take charge of the senatorial forces? Caesar quickly stood and seconded the proposal. Nimble-witted as ever, Cicero saw a chance to drive a wedge between his opponents, and with an innocent air of genuine interest he asked Crassus, who had been consul alongside Pompey, for his opinion. Crassus got up reluctantly.
