Cicero - Anthony Everitt [71]
The Senate was uncertain how to handle the Good Goddess scandal. A trial would only cause trouble and might ignite the populares, but it seemed that there was no alternative. A bill to set up a special tribunal was agreed on by the Senate and the proposal was then considered by the People. Cicero was there and described the scene: “When the day came for the bill to be put to the assembly under the terms of the Senatorial decree, there was a flocking together of our goateed young bloods, the whole Catilinarian gang with little Miss Curio at their head, to plead for its rejection. Clodius’s roughs had taken possession of the gangways.” It seems to have been impossible to take a vote and the matter went back to the Senate. Eventually, in July 61, a court was established, but on terms favorable to Clodius. Crassus, Catilina’s shadowy financier, happy as ever to make trouble for the Senate, came forward with funds to bribe the jurors.
Clodius pleaded that he could not have been the intruder, for he had been out of Rome at the Etruscan town of Interamna (where he wielded considerable political influence and, according to Cicero, employed gangs to harass the countryside). Terentia, still irritated by the visits she believed her husband to be paying Clodia, goaded Cicero to take the witness stand and break Clodius’s alibi by reporting that he had seen him in Rome on the day in question. The trial started well, the jury asked for a guard (which suggested honesty), and it looked as if it was an open-and-shut case. But then Crassus’s cash began to do its work.
Cicero reported to Atticus:
Inside a couple of days, with a single slave (an ex-gladiator at that) for go-between, [Crassus] settled the whole business—called them to his house, made promises, backed bills or paid cash down. On top of that (it’s really too shocking!), some jurors actually received a bonus in the form of assignations with certain ladies or introductions to youths of noble families. Yet even so, with the [optimates] making themselves very scarce, 25 jurors had the courage to take the risk, no small one, preferring to sacrifice their lives rather than the whole community. AS for the other 31, they were more worried about their empty purses than their empty reputations.
Clodius was acquitted, but he was a vindictive man and made up his mind to punish Cicero for having testified against him. For a while, though, nothing happened and Cicero could not help amusing himself at his expense. He liked to call him Pretty-Boy (making a play on his cognomen Pulcher, the Latin word for “beautiful”). There were a number of barbed exchanges at Senate meetings and elsewhere over the next year or so.
“You bought a mansion,” Clodius sneered.
“One might think he was saying I had bought a jury,” Cicero riposted.
On another occasion, the two men happened to be taking a candidate for political office down to the Forum together and entered into conversation. Clodius asked if Cicero was in the habit of giving Sicilians who were in his clientela seats at gladiatorial shows. Cicero said he was not.
“Ah,” replied Clodius. “But I’m a new patron of theirs and I’m going to institute the practice. But my sister, with all that free space at her disposal as an ex-Consul’s wife, only gives me one wretched foot.”
Unable to resist referring to the gossip about their relationship, Cicero remarked: “Oh, don’t grumble about one foot in your sister’s case. You can always hoist the other.”
This kind of jibe was not overlooked. AS SO often in his career, Cicero let his sense of