Cicero - Anthony Everitt [66]
AS for Catilina, the dreadful news from Rome soon reached his troops and they began to melt away. He was said to have recruited 20,000 soldiers, but in a little while he had only one quarter of that number. His old friend Antonius was given the task of tracking him down. On the day in early 62 when the two armies met, the reluctant general, no doubt diplomatically, pleaded gout and left the battle to his deputy. It was an easy but bloody victory. Catilina fell beside Marius’s standard—we are told, fighting hand-to-hand to the last. The encounter was probably little more than a messy one-sided skirmish. But Catilina was dead.
For all the jibes of the optimates, Cicero had averted a danger to the state. In contrast with his later reputation for vanity and indecision, he had acted with intelligence, patience and firmness. He had amply fulfilled the administrative promise of his Quaestorship in Sicily and shown that he was better able to govern than many of his peers. The conspiracy was perhaps less of a threat than Cicero claimed. Nevertheless, Catilina represented, if only in caricature, the continuing challenge from the populares and a new model of politician. His defeat was likely to have serious implications for activists like Caesar.
The outgoing Consul had reason to be proud of his stewardship of the Republic, but success had come with a cost. His efforts before he took office to be all things to all men, to please the radical as well as the conservative interest, had failed. His refusal to countenance the land-reform bill in January and his decision to execute the conspirators without trial (especially after the warning of the Rabirius affair) placed him firmly on the side of the optimates. Cicero’s cover was blown.
6
PRETTY-BOY’S REVENGE
The Good Goddess Affair and the Return of Pompey: 62–58 BC
The Father of His Country believed that, thanks to him, the Republic was safe. There were, to be sure, troubles ahead. Pompey and his legions would soon return from Asia Minor and the victorious general would expect to play a leading role in the state; just conceivably, if given an excuse, he might act like Sulla, march on Rome and establish an autocracy. The populares had lost decisively with the defeat of Catilina, but the snake was only stunned. Caesar, who had been plotting against the Senatorial interest behind the scenes, was rising up the political ladder and, barring accidents, would be Consul in a few years’ time. It would be Cicero’s task, which he felt to be well within his abilities, to hold the balance between the competing parties.
Overelated by his Consulship, he refused to stop talking about it. His listeners soon grew tired of him. “One could not attend the Senate or a public meeting nor a session of the law courts without having to listen to endless repetitions of the story of Catilina and Lentulus,” Plutarch writes. “This unpleasing habit of his clung to him like fate.”
Cicero’s boastfulness was not simply an expression of conceit, although that played a part. Privately, he mocked himself for “a certain foolish vanity to which I am somewhat prone.” However, the prestige, or dignitas, which was the essential political and social attribute of a leading Roman rested on a combination of his own achievements and those of his ancestors. Cicero had only the former to maintain his status, and so he felt obliged to keep himself firmly and prominently in the public eye by ostentation and constant self-praise. He also encouraged his friends and acquaintances to write about him and his achievements.
Cicero’s position was not nearly so preeminent, nor so secure, as he supposed. AS it turned out, a reaction against him was under way even before his triumph ended. Pompey, who had been watching events from afar, saw in the military threat from Catilina an opportunity for his recall as the