In Rome, of course, there remained one man of greater renown and wealth than even Caesar. Pompey the Great lived in no one’s shadow. Certainly not that of Caesar, a man whom Pompey had always regarded as his protégé. Naturally, in the condescending manner that befitted Rome’s premier general, he took pride in his father-in-law’s achievements – but nothing more. The idea that Caesar might rival him, let alone surpass him, never crossed the great man’s mind.
Some tried desperately to open his eyes. Back in 55 BC, while Crassus was preparing for his expedition to the East and Caesar, far away in Gaul, was turning his thoughts to Britain, an unexpected visitor had come knocking on Pompey’s door. Cato had just been through a bruising few months. In January, attempting to block the second consulship of Pompey and Crassus, he had been badly beaten up by Pompey’s heavies. Since then, he had campaigned tirelessly and courageously against the granting of five-year commands to the two consuls, but again to no avail. Now Pompey wanted Caesar to have an identical command. Cato, swallowing his pride, had come to beg his adversary to reconsider. Could he not see that he was raising up a monster on his shoulders? The time would come when he would no longer have the strength to throw off Caesar, or to bear his weight. When that happened both men would totter, locked in a death-clinch, and collapse. And the Republic? Beneath the weight of two such colossi, the Republic would surely be flattened into dust.
Pompey rejected the appeal. In 55, of all years, he could feel sublimely confident of his power and good fortune. On the Campus Martius, where workmen had been labouring for years at his great theatre, the scaffolding had finally come down. Revealed to the astonished eyes of the Roman people was the most stupendous complex of buildings in their city’s history. Set within a beautiful park, it comprised not only an auditorium, but a public portico, a chamber for the Senate and a new house for Pompey himself. Surmounting it all was the temple to Venus, the device by which Pompey had been able to justify its construction in the first place, and that he trusted would serve to protect it for ever from the levelling instincts of jealous rivals.
This was a sensible precaution, for the entire complex stood as an exercise in provoking jealousy. No expense had been spared. In the gardens rare plants bore upon their aromas a soothing reminder of Pompey’s conquest of the East. In the portico gold-woven curtains hung between the columns, while in the background streams ran gently murmuring from countless fountains. Diaphanously draped goddesses, posing coyly in the shade, added to the ambience of what established itself overnight as the most romantic spot in Rome. All the statues and paintings were celebrated masterpieces, carefully selected by Atticus, that knowledgeable connoisseur, and a board of other experts, for Pompey had wished his displays to have the imprimatur of absolute quality. The most imposing piece of all, however, was not an antique, but a specially commissioned statue of Pompey himself. Strategically placed in the new Senate House, it ensured that even when the great man was absent his shadow would fall across the proceedings.
What need was there for the sponsor of such magnificence to go haring after barbarians in order to prove himself ? True, in the north of his allocated province of Spain there were savages still waiting to be tamed, but these were small fry, hardly worthy of aworld conqueror’s attention. Not that Pompey wished to forfeit his command, or the legions that came with it. Rather, he planned to govern Spain from a distance, through the agency of lieutenants. Let Crassus go and fight the Parthians, and Caesar the Gauls – Pompey had already triumphed over three continents. Now, with his theatre completed, his many victories on behalf of the Republic could be restaged as spectacular entertainments. No travelling to the limits of the globe for Pompey the Great. Rather, at his command, the limits of the globe would meet in Rome.
And they would take on bestial form. Back in his twenties, as a precocious young general, Pompey had taken time out from pulverising Libyans to go lion-hunting. ‘Even the wild animals that live in Africa’, he had pronounced, ‘should be taught to respect the strength and courage of the Roman people.’19 Along the frontiers of the Republic’s empire, beyond the light of the legionary’s flickering campfire, lions stalked the night as they had done since the creation of the world, primordial symbols of terror, preying on man’s ease of mind. Yet now, in his fifties, wishing to celebrate the dedication of his theatre, Pompey could order them brought to his theatre – and it was done. And not only lions. A century later, fleets weighed down with ravening exotica would be seen as the perfect symbol of the Republic’s new global reach. ‘The padding tiger, shipped in a golden cage, lapping at human blood, applauded by the crowds.’20 So wrote Petronius, Nero’s master of ceremonies, summing up an age.
It was important to Pompey’s purpose that the savagery of his imports serve to edify as well as entertain. This was why animals were rarely kept in zoos. Only by displaying them in combat, the monstrous matched with the human, could Pompey instruct his fellow citizens in what it took to be the rulers of the world. Sometimes the lesson was too much for the citizenry to bear. When twenty elephants, an unprecedented number, were attacked by spearmen, their trumpetings of distress so harrowed the spectators that everyone in the theatre began to weep. Cicero, who had been in the audience, puzzled over this. How was it possible, he wondered, that a spectacle so impressive had afforded so little delight?
He analysed his own feelings. The violence, rather than thrilling him, had left him numb. Prisoners being savaged by lions, proud and magnificent wild creatures being skewered on spears: neither seemed the kind of entertainment to afford a cultured man much pleasure. Yet if one thing had depressed Cicero about the entertainments above all others, it had been their scale. The slaughter of the twenty elephants had been merely the climax of what he freely acknowledged to have been ‘the most lavish and magnificent show of all time’21 – an unparalleled display of the Republic’s greatness. Pompey had filled his theatre with wonders from every corner of the empire: not only lions, tigers and elephants, but leopards, lynxes, rhinoceroses and stag-wolves, to say nothing of the mysterious cephos,* a creature from Ethiopia with the hands and feet of a man, so rare that it was never seen in Rome again. And yet Cicero, a citizen passionately proud of his city’s achievements, the most articulate spokesman for Rome’s global destiny that the Republic had ever produced, was left bored and oppressed by his hero’s games: ‘If these are sights which must be seen, then you have seen them many times.’22 Pleasure and excitement had both been dulled by excess. Cicero could no longer identify with the emotions that Pompey wished him to feel. Games designed to glorify the Republic served to glorify only the sponsor himself. Gazing humbly down upon the carnage, spaced around the theatre, were fourteen statues, each one representing a nation conquered by Pompey.23 Marble and blood combined to create an extravaganza of self-promotion unmatched in the Republic’s history. Never before had the Romans been made to feel quite so inferior to a man who was, after all, a citizen just like them. Was this why the distress of the elephants had moved them more deeply than the mastery of the spearmen? At the end of the games, rather than cheering ‘the general and the lavish display which he had laid on especially to honour them, they rose to their feet, and, through their tears, called down curses upon his head’.24
Of course, the Roman people were fickle: their anger with Pompey rarely lasted for long. Yet their suspicions – of his greatness, of his generosity – remained. Pompey’s games had been staged in September 55 BC; weeks later his fellow citizens went to the polls. Despite – or perhaps because of – the new theatre complex looming massively in the background, they delivered its sponsor a pointed rebuff. The previous year Pompey had blocked the candidacies of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Cato; now, for the year 54, both men were elected – Domitius as consul and Cato as praetor. True, there was one candidate backed by Pompey who did secure election, and to the consulship, no less – but Appius Claudius, despite his role as one of the conspirators at Lucca, was hardly a reliable ally. Imperturbable and self-serving, he did no one’s bidding but his own. He might not have built a theatre, but he had breeding, and that, in his own opinion, counted for much more.
The results brought home to Pompey the full ambiguity of his position. By any reckoning he was the first citizen in the Republic. He had just completed his second consulship; he was the governor of Spain, the commander and general of its army; his generosity was the wonder of Rome. Yet the more he sought to consolidate his power, the more it seemed to slip through his fingers. Every effort that he made to secure pre-eminence brought a matching defeat. Increasingly criminal in his methods, Pompey remained conformist in his dreams. The consulships of Appius and Domitius, both of them notorious for their arrogance, mocked the insecurities of the arriviste. So too, and even more cruelly, did the praetorship of Cato. This infuriating, obdurate, extraordinary man had no legions, no great wealth with which to bribe his fellow citizens. In rank he was not even the equal of a consul, let alone of Caesar or Pompey. Yet he wielded an authority hardly less than that of either. Even as senators took their seats in Pompey’s theatre, or surreptitiously accepted presents from Gaul, they still identified themselves with Cato, with his principles and beliefs. Over the years he seemed to have become the embodiment of legitimacy – almost of the Republic itself. Caesar, far away in Gaul, could afford to scoff at such pretensions. But Pompey, who in his heart of hearts still yearned for Cato’s approval, could not.
Such approval now appeared as remote as ever. The brutality of Pompey’s actions in seizing the consulship would not lightly be forgiven. His army remained a standing menace. Nor did Pompey have the slightest intention of giving up so much as a single legionary. Yet even as he persisted in intimidating the establishment he clung to his hope of winning its heart. For the citizens of a republic such as Rome, loneliness was a bewildering, almost incomprehensible state. Only outlaws – or kings – could truly know it. This was why Pompey, no matter how violently he offended his peers, still wooed them. He had been loved too long, too ardently, not to crave and need love still.
It was a cruel irony, then, that even as he returned to his improbable courtship of the Senate his personal life, which had been so happy and such a comfort to him, should suddenly have darkened. In August 54 BC his adored wife Julia went into labour. Again she miscarried, but this time she did not survive the loss of her baby. Her husband and father were left equally devastated. For Caesar, however, grief was compounded by alarm. The love that both he and Pompey had felt for Julia had provided the two men with a bond strong enough to survive any number of political tensions. Now that bond was gone. Caesar, preoccupied with rebellions in Gaul, was desperate not to have his position back in the capital weakened. He needed Pompey more than Pompey needed him, and both men knew it. For a while their shared bereavement would continue to unite them, but not for ever. How long would Pompey stay single? His eligibility was a valuable asset – far too valuable not to be exploited. His return to the marriage market would give him unanticipated room for manoeuvre. And that, of course, was precisely what unsettled his partner so much.
Yet Pompey was still hemmed in by obligations. For as long as the menacing figure of Crassus remained on the horizon, he would remain nervous of offending Caesar. Mutual fear, not affection, was what had provided the triumvirate with its cement. No one partner could stand up to the other two. This was why, in carving up the Republic’s empire, the three conspirators had been so careful to interlock their power bases. By doing so they aimed to defend themselves from one another as much as from their common foes. But then, a year after Julia’s death, midway through 53 BC, the news arrived from Carrhae that Crassus was dead. For Caesar this was a second devastating blow, but it is unlikely that Pompey shed many tears. After all, what sweeter measure of success could there be than the failure of a rival? Let the Roman people shudder – the Parthian victory would serve to remind them that victories against Eastern barbarians could never be taken for granted. Should the situation on the frontier turn really ugly, then Pompey’s fellow citizens would know where to turn. But even if – as happened – the Parthians did not press their advantage into Syria, Pompey could still stretch his limbs and exult in a novel feeling. A malign presence had been exorcised from his life. Never again would it shadow him, cabin him, torment him. Crassus was no more.
Now, suddenly, everything seemed to be moving Pompey’s way. Sleaze had begun to corrode the moral authority of the Senate. The consulship of Appius and Domitius had ended amid high outrage when the two men were accused of accepting bribes to fix the forthcoming consular elections. Four candidates had been standing and all four were indicted. Amid escalating rumours of ever more shady deals, the elections had to be postponed for six months. For Domitius, and the cause of senatorial respectability for which he had been the spokesman, the scandal was a particular calamity. As Cicero cattily pointed out, Appius had no reputation to lose, ‘but his colleague is left a broken reed, utterly discredited’.25 Such was the turmoil that it seemed only one man could restore order. Pompey’s lapdogs began to mutter that he should be made dictator. When Cato, to no one’s surprise, exploded at the suggestion, Pompey ostentatiously turned down the offer. But still the whisperings would not be silenced. They could be heard throughout the feverish, troubled capital: in the Senate House, the Forum, the slums. The Republic was collapsing. A strongman was needed. Only Pompey would do. Pompey himself kept his peace, looked modest, and bided his time.
It was the perfect strategy. As the sense of crisis steadily deepened, the mood in the Republic began to turn brutal as well as fetid. In his desperation to find a forceful counterweight to Pompey, Cato had settled upon an extraordinary choice. His favoured candidate for the consulship of 52 was none other than Clodius’ old sparring-partner, the turbulent street-brawler Milo. Once a ferocious partisan of Pompey, Milo had been unceremoniously dumped by the great man, and was therefore happy to throw his lot in with Cato and his plans. Pompey warned his former protégé to stand down, and when Milo refused threw his weight behind rival candidates. But his fury was, of course, nothing compared to that of Milo’s deadliest enemy. For three years Clodius had been on his best behaviour, attempting to rebrand himself as a sound and sober statesman, but the prospect of having Milo as a consul was too much. Like a reformed alcoholic reaching for a bottle, Clodius returned to the streets. His old gangs were resurrected. In reply Milo bought up the gladiator schools. As 53 BC drew to a close, Rome descended into anarchy. So too did the Republic. For the third time in four years elections were postponed, this time because the presiding official had been knocked out by a brick. With all public business in abeyance, club-wielding mobsters roamed the streets, while law-abiding citizens cowered where they could.
It seemed that things could hardly become any worse. Then, on 18 January 52 BC, they did. Clodius and Milo met face to face on the Appian Way. Taunts flew; one of Milo’s gladiators flung a javelin; Clodius was struck in the shoulder. His bodyguards hauled their wounded leader to a nearby tavern, but Milo’s heavies, following in pursuit, overpowered them. Clodius himself was slung out of the tavern on to the road, where he was speedily finished off. There, by the side of a shrine to the Good Goddess, his corpse was left mangled and naked in the dust. It appeared that the goddess had at last had her revenge.
But Clodius’ friends claimed differently. After his body had been found and brought back to Rome, the news of his murder spread quickly from crossroad to crossroad. The slums began to echo with wails of lamentation. Soon crowds were massing outside Clodius’ mansion on the Palatine. Fulvia showed them the gashed body of her husband, carefully pointing out each wound. The mob howled in misery and rage. The next day the corpse of the people’s hero was borne from the Palatine, across the Forum, and laid on the rostra. Meanwhile, in the neighbouring Senate House benches were kicked over, tables smashed, clerical records plundered. Then, on the floor of the chamber, a pyre was raised. Clodius was laid upon it. A torch was brought. More than thirty years had passed since the destruction of Jupiter’s temple on the Capitol, warning the Roman people of coming catastrophe. Now, once again, the Forum was lit a violent red. In the flickering glare battles between the partisans of Clodius and those of his murderer reached a new and intoxicating pitch of savagery. Still the flames raged, and as the Senate House crashed into blackened ruin they spread to a neighbouring monument: the Basilica Porcia. Here was where Rome’s first permanent law court had been built – by an ancestor of Cato, no less. In a spectacle loaded with pointed and deliberate symbolism, it too was consumed. That night, when Clodius’ partisans feasted in honour of their dead leader, they did so amid the ashes of the Senate’s authority.
Now at last Pompey’s moment had come. Even Cato, gazing at the charred shell of his ancestor’s monument, had to accept that. Anything was preferable to anarchy. He still could not bring himself to accept a dictatorship, but proposed as a compromise that Pompey should serve for the year as sole consul. The paradoxical nature of such an office was indication enough of the monstrous nature of the times. The Senate met in Pompey’s theatre, and on Bibulus’ motion invited the great man to rescue the Republic. Pompey obliged with brisk and military efficiency. For the first time since the civil war, armed troops were marched into Rome. The gangs of Clodius and Milo proved no match for Pompey’s legionaries. Milo himself was speedily put on trial. Since the charge was the murder of Clodius, Cicero leapt at the chance to defend him. It was his hope, in such a cause, to deliver the speech of his life. His opportunity came on the last day of the trial. That morning he crossed from his mansion on the Palatine to the law courts. Eerie and unprecedented silence cloaked the city. All the shops had been boarded up. Guards had been posted on the corner of every street. Pompey himself was stationed beside the law courts, surrounded by a wall of troops, the sun glinting off the steel of their helmets – and this in the Forum, the very heart of Rome. Cicero, taken aback by the spectacle, lost his nerve. His speech was delivered, we are told by one source, ‘without his customary assurance’.26 Others claimed that he could barely stammer so much as a word. Milo was found guilty. He left that same week for exile in Marseille. Other ringleaders of the mob violence were similarly served. In the space of barely a month peace had been restored to Rome.
Even Cato had to acknowledge that Pompey had done well, though he did so with his customary gracelessness. When Pompey took him aside to thank him for his support, Cato sternly retorted that he had not been supporting Pompey, but Rome. ‘As for advice, he would happily give it in private, if asked, and if he were not asked, then he would give it anyway in public.’27 Disguised as a slap in the face as this offer was, Pompey accepted it gratefully. Even since his return from the East a decade before he had been waiting for such a moment. However begrudgingly, Cato had acknowledged his status as first citizen. At long last, Pompey appeared to have power and respect together.
No wonder that when Caesar, that same new year, having racked his brains to come up with a suitable bride for his partner, had finally proposed his own great-niece Octavia, Pompey had turned down the offer. He had not meant to signal the end of his friendship by this rebuff, merely that it could not be taken for granted. Now that he had been restored to respectability in the eyes of the senatorial establishment, there were bidders for his hand who could offer more than Caesar. Pompey had been eyeing up the daughters of the crème de la crème for a while. One in particular had caught his connoisseur’s eye. The death of young Publius Crassus at Carrhae had left his wife Cornelia a widow. Beautiful and cultivated, she also happened to be exquisitely well connected. The pedigree of her father, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nascia, was sonorously reflected in the roll-call of his names. The fact that Metellus Scipio himself was a vicious nonentity, pre-eminent at nothing save the staging of pornographic floor shows, mattered not the slightest. What did matter was the fact that he was the head of the Metelli, closely related to any number of impressive patricians, and descended from the same Scipios who had defeated Hannibal and captured Carthage. Cornelia’s own delights were an added bonus. Taking a break from cleaning up the streets of Rome, Pompey decked himself out in wedding garlands. It was the fifth occasion on which he had done so. This time round he was twice the age of his new bride. He brushed aside all the predictable jeers. Married life suited him. Above all, it provided him with a salve for his grief over Julia. The happy couple were soon scandalously in love.
A man in the arms of a woman such as Cornelia could know himself to be in the very bosom of the aristocracy. It was a sweet fulfilment, made all the sweeter by the fact that Cato, the man who had pronounced Pompey unworthy of his niece’s hand, had himself once been jilted by Cornelia’s mother. Old rancours ran deep, and there was no love lost between Cato and Metellus Scipio. Even so, when Pompey pronounced that the state of emergency in Rome had been brought under control and invited his father-in-law to serve as consul with him for the remainder of 52 BC, Cato could hardly object. After all, Pompey was behaving with impeccable regard for the constitution. The Republic had been sick, and now it was restored. All was just as it had been in the past.
Pompey’s fellow citizens were desperate to believe this. Even those who had long been suspicious of his ambitions now had their own reasons for acknowledging his pre-eminence. Haughty aristocrats who had seen what Pompey had been able to achieve on behalf of that grand pornographer Metellus Scipio had begun to moderate their disdain. Cato might still clap his hands over his ears whenever Pompey said anything unconstitutional, but in general, and for the first time, he was prepared to give his old opponent a hearing. And then, of course, there was Caesar. In Gaul, amid the blood and smoke of Alesia, Pompey’s partner still looked to him for friendship. Many different interests, many of them irreconcilably opposed – and yet all of them looking for support to a single person.
This was unprecedented in the history of the Republic. No wonder that Cicero found himself marvelling at Pompey’s ‘abilities and good fortune, which have enabled him to achieve what nobody else has ever done’.28 Yet even as the great man exulted in his primacy, each faction competing for his favours was manoeuvring to destroy the others, and force Pompey to identify with them alone. Who was exploiting whom? This was a question that had barely begun to be resolved. Yet it would be soon enough – to the point of destruction and beyond.