25.

  If the case against Cotta had demonstrated to me the basic venality of forensic oratory, Milo's trial in early April that year showed how helpless it was against brute force.

  Pompey, for once, had acted with a nice combination of inflexibility and tact. Armed with his commission from the Senate, he had raised troops and used them to police the city. His methods were direct, brutal and effective; and in a matter of days the rioting and street-fights which had troubled the city for years were over.

  If he had played the game and used his position to root out only the remnants of the Clodian faction, the Senate would have been satisfied: he was Their Man after all, and they could continue to pretend to themselves that they still held the reins. But Pompey had little choice. Milo's feud with Clodius had provided a safe, even useful outlet for his violent, energetic nature. Now that Clodius was dead, Milo would be looking for other ways to power: a fact which would not escape the notice of Pompey's rival Caesar, still away on campaign in Gaul. Milo had to be removed, and removed permanently. Pompey proceeded to arrange a trial that would virtually assure his condemnation. To make certain that the point was not lost, he attended the trial himself, surrounded by his bodyguard, while a strong detachment of troops ringed the Market Square. If any doubt remained of where the real power lay, and of what the future held, the conduct of Milo's trial effectively stifled it.

  I was there, of course. Everyone was. On the final day of the trial, when Cicero was due to deliver his main speech for the defence, I was standing on the steps of the Temple of Concord, between an unshaven Syrian and a thin-faced aristocrat with a petulant mouth. Beneath and facing us, at the edge of the Square itself, stood a line of soldiers with drawn swords. The principals had not yet appeared.

  Someone shouted my name, and I turned.

  It was Gallus. He pushed his way through the crowd and squeezed, grinning, between me and the Syrian.

  'I thought I recognised you,' he said. 'Not given up on politics altogether, then?'

  'I came to see Cicero.'

  'So did I. Can't we get any closer?'

  'It would seem not.'

  We were wedged so tightly that I could hardly move my arms, let alone shift my position.

  'You think there'll be any more trouble?'

  'I doubt it,' I said bitterly. 'Pompey's shown he won't stand for any nonsense.'

  The previous day, a gang of Clodius's supporters had tried to break through the cordon. Pompey's troops had responded immediately. What few killings were necessary had been performed with ruthless, machine-like efficiency. I had seen it all from the other side of the square, and it had sickened me.

  'You don't sound as if you approve.'

  'I approve of the results. Not of the methods.'

  'They're the only ones that work.'

  A trumpet sounded. The soldiers raised their shields.

  'Here we go,' Gallus whispered, as the crowd fell silent. '"Those about to die salute you."'

  It was a travesty.

  You will have read, of course, Cicero's published speech. Admittedly, these literary productions are always to some degree a product of wishful thinking: they represent, not what was actually said, but an idealised version of it, rewritten with hindsight and polished in the quiet of the study for the benefit of leisured readers and inky-fingered students. On the demerit side – and this is especially true of Cicero – they cannot convey the power of the living voice, or the charged atmosphere of the courtroom. I have read with pleasure many of Cicero's speeches, but where I was actually present at the time of delivery the written words ring flat as lead coins against my memories and I cannot give them the attention they deserve.

  The speech for Milo is an exception. The Cicero who delivered it was a jerking puppet stumbling about the stage, mouthing words with no meaning. His voice that could burn the flesh from your bones and send the blood singing through your veins shook like an old man's, was as weak as a third- rate actor's; not that I heard much of what he actually said, for the Clodians in the crowd were in full cry, and no attempt was made to quieten them. Shouted insults, it seemed, did not concern the authorities: they merely served to intimidate the defence, which bothered no-one, or at least no-one of importance. At one point, when the shouting had become orchestrated into a terrifying, wolf-like ululation, Cicero stopped altogether. He raised his head and stared straight at Pompey who sat expressionless as a statue within his ring of iron. The two faced each other for the space of perhaps two minutes across the breadth of the Market Square, while the wolves howled around them. Then Cicero turned again towards where I stood, and I saw his face. His eyes were empty and lost- looking, as if some night-walking demon had sucked the soul from his body and left the empty carcass.

  Apart from the catcalls of the mob, there was total silence when he finished speaking; not the stunned silence to which he was well-accustomed, but the silence of indifference.

  To a man like Cicero, that must have been worse than the jeers.

  . . .

  Milo was condemned, of course, and went into exile at Marseilles. They say that, when Cicero sent him the written version of the speech, Milo thanked him, remarking sarcastically that he was glad it had not been delivered, since in that case he would have missed the excellent Massilian red mullet. That was unfair. If Cicero failed, it was not through want of trying – or even through cowardice. The art in which he was pre-eminent was simply no longer relevant.

  The future sat there, surrounded by its iron ring of soldiers, and presided over the first death-throes of the Republic.

  26.

  I saw Gallus frequently after the Milo speech. In fact, we soon discovered that we shared a teacher in the rhetorician Epidius.

  I have not said much about my studies at Rome, nor will I, largely because other events far outweighed them in importance; but perhaps I should say a little now, for the sake of completeness. My parents had sent me to Rome, as you know, to study oratory. I had not enrolled under any particular teacher before my arrival; however, once I was properly settled in and had had a chance to watch the teachers at first hand, I had chosen Epidius.

  Partly, I chose him because he was Greek: Greece, to me, was everything that was civilised, in contrast to the barbarism of Rome. Unlike most Greek rhetoricians, however, he taught the plain Attic style of oratory, which is based on reasoned argument rather than emotional impact. This I found suited both my nature and my abilities.

  It would seem that I was not in the minority. Epidius was a popular teacher, even a fashionable one; in fact, had I come to Rome a few years later I might have found myself studying alongside the future ruler of the Roman world.

  Yes. I also shared Epidius with Octavian, and with his friend Marcus Agrippa. However, they were after my time, and we did not meet until he already held half the earth in his cupped hands and needed a poet to stop it slipping through his fingers. In a way, I regret not having known Octavian as a very young man. Not because it would have advanced me politically, as it did Gallus (and what good did it do him?) but because I would have had an earlier form with which to compare the later figure.

  I saw, once, at Thebes, a wooden statue of Proserpina. The face of the goddess was black and stern with age, seamed with cracks and wrinkles like an old woman's; yet her smile was that of a young girl. The priest told me she was the Queen of Hell, but I saw only the child gathering flowers, whom Death had caught and ground beneath his heel. Which of us was right, I, or the priest? Could one have taken sand and pumice, and scoured away the blackness and the wrinkles from the child's face? Or did the darkness go too deep, and time merely make visible what was already there? I do not know. I will never know.

  Perhaps, if I had met Octavian then, I might understand him a little better now.

  I continued to study with Epidius even after I had privately given up all thoughts of a legal career. To a certain extent, this was for my parents' benefit: they had sent me to Rome to study public speaking, and I owed it to them to make no sudden decisions. Besides, as I have said, the study of rhetoric is, if not essential for a poet, at least of great practical value; and Epidius was an excellent teacher. From him I learned the importance of simplicity and euphony, and how properly used they can be more effective than high-flown bombast.

  My other teacher, albeit an unofficial one, was Parthenius. What he saw in me I do not know, for it was long enough before I could bring myself to show him even the best of my poor scribblings; but it was he who sought me out, not the other way round. He came to call on me a few days after we met at Pollio's, ostensibly to bring me a copy of a book I had mentioned wanting to read. We talked at great length about poetry (after I had got over my shyness) and he invited me to his house for supper that evening, where I met – by, I later discovered, prior arrangement – the last of my future mentors, his friend Siro the Epicurean. I will say nothing more of either Parthenius or Siro at present, except that I was fortunate enough to enjoy their friendship and teaching for many years thereafter.

  I was walking along Pullian Street about a month after Milo's trial when I met Gallus coming towards me. He had a flower tucked behind his ear – it was the third day of the Festival of Blossoms – and he had obviously been drinking.

  'Where are you off to, Virgil?' he said.

  I showed him the book I was carrying. One of the end-horns had become detached from the roller.

  'I took this down to Caninus's to have it repaired,' Caninus was a bookseller in the Argiletum, 'but he's closed for the holiday.'

  'Of course he's closed, you fool!' Gallus grinned. 'Anybody but you would've known that. What's the book? Anything interesting?'

  'Not to you. He's an Epicurean. I borrowed him from Parthenius.'

  He examined the title and frowned.

  'Philodemus, eh? Virgil, that's no stuff for holiday reading. Shove it under your mantle and come into town with me. Have a bit of fun for a change.'

  'Really, Gallus, I don't think –’

  ‘Yes you do. Too much and too often.' He took me by the arm and turned me round, back the way I had come. 'An hour or two away from your books won't do you any harm. Besides, there's someone I want you to meet.'

  'Who's that?'

  'Wait and see!'

  I found myself trotting along beside him like a schoolboy.

  'Well, at least tell me where we're going,' I said.

  'To a theatrical performance.' He removed the flower from behind his ear and stuck it behind mine. It promptly fell off. 'After that...well, that depends.'

  We turned left down the Carneta towards the fish market. The streets were crowded, even more so than usual, and most people were as pleasantly drunk as Gallus. Up ahead of us two she-wolves, arms linked, wove in and out of the crowd, singing an Alexandrian love song at the tops of their rough young-old voices, and I remembered Milan; but the Festival of Blossoms belongs to the prostitutes' patron goddess, so perhaps they had the right. Certainly no-one seemed to mind.

  'What sort of theatrical performance?' I asked.

  'If I told you that you wouldn't come.' Gallus steered me round a street-porter, asleep with his back to the wall hugging a wine-flask. 'It's not in Pompey's theatre, anyway, that much I will tell you.'

  That came as a mixed blessing. Pompey's theatre was on the far side of the Capitol, in the Plain of Mars – a fair way off. On the other hand, being the only stone-built theatre in the city it tended to host the most reputable performances. Anything held elsewhere was likely to be dubious.

  We crossed the Market Square and turned down the Velabrum towards Cattlemarket Square and the Tiber. Now most of the crowd seemed to be travelling in our direction, and its composition confirmed my fears. Very few mantles were in evidence, and of these most could have done with a visit to the cleaners. Most of the men wore simple tunics, and the women were shrill-voiced and raucous.

  'They're set up near the Flumentan Gate,' Gallus said. 'And it won't cost a penny, I know one of the cast.'

  'Intimately?'

  He grinned.

  'Intimately.'

  I put two and two together.

  'It's a mime, isn't it?' I said. 'Gallus, for God's sake, let me get back to my Philodemus! I won't enjoy this, I promise you.'

  'Have you ever seen a mime?'

  'Well, no, but –'

  'Then consider it as an educational experience.'

  We walked on in silence.

  'Whose is it?' I said at last.

  'Laberius's. It's called Mars and Venus.'

  'Oh, for heaven's sake!'

  Laberius was a Roman knight, quite well-connected but with a taste for low life and gutter-humour. He was a bitter opponent of Caesar, and his productions – one could hardly dignify them with the name of plays – often had a scurrilous political content, basic enough to appeal to his working- class audience. They also (although Laberius was not alone in this) contained off-colour crowd-pullers such as performing animals, female strippers and live sex. Thinking of this, I shuddered. I could imagine what kind of performance Mars and Venus would be.

  'Who's your friend?'

  'Her stage name's Cytheris,' he said.

  We turned the corner and I saw our destination ahead. Most theatres, even although they are temporary structures, look solid enough, and some are extensively (and expensively) decorated with portable marble columns and bronzes. This one, however, being designed for a mime, was merely a stage with a semi-circular auditorium of raised tiers. The canvas awning that served to keep off the rain had been drawn back to let in the light.

  'We're at the front.' Gallus nodded familiarly to the man on the gate, who looked like an ex-prize-fighter. The man grinned and waved us through.

  I was interested despite myself: as Gallus had said, it was an educational experience. A small orchestra – double-flute, hand-drum and finger-cymbals – was warming up to one side as the audience took their seats and got out the snacks they’d brought with them to nibble on. A few more middle-class spectators joined us in the first rows – I noticed several narrow-striped mantles, although as yet no broad-striped senatorials. Most of them were young, and Gallus greeted some by their first names. There were even a few women.

  Then the curtain went down, and the performance began.

  27.

  It was everything I had feared.

  You know the story of Mars and Venus, of course. The red-faced, blustering War God and the voluptuous Goddess of Love are lovers; clandestine lovers, since Venus is married to Vulcan, the ugly, lame Blacksmith-God (I retain the Latin forms of the names, although the original story is Greek). One day, Vulcan announces his intention to visit his island of Lemnos. Off he sets; and no sooner has he gone than Mars arrives, by prearrangement, and is welcomed by Venus. The two lovers hurry upstairs to bed.

  But Vulcan, although a cuckold, is no fool. He knows perfectly well what has been going on behind his back. His trip to Lemnos is a ruse. He has made an unbreakable net; and returning unexpectedly he catches Mars and Venus in bed, throws the net over them and locks them tight together in flagrante delicto.

  Then he invites the other gods to come and look.

  You can imagine how the story would translate into Roman comedy: Mars the handsome, swaggering soldier, Venus the beautiful wife and cuckold Vulcan, the old buffoon who nonetheless gets the better of them in the end. A standard comic plot, with enough juice in it to adapt well to the coarseness of mime.

  Except that was not at all how Laberius played it.

  So much was obvious from the first scene, a domestic quarrel between Venus and her husband. Vulcan came as no surprise. He was the stock comic figure of fun, the lecherous old fool with his padded phallus trailing the ground in front of him. The surprise was Venus.

  She was no beauty, but a whore past her prime, with rouged cheeks (actors in the mime wear no masks) and green-lidded eyes ringed with black. Her character, too, had more of the shrew in it than the siren: she beat her husband about the stage with a slapsick, screaming like a fishwife and using language that I had never expected to hear on a public stage.

  The audience loved it. Gallus was doubled over laughing, holding his side. I am afraid I simply sat, straight-faced and rigid with embarrassment. If our seats had not been in the middle of the row I would have walked out.

  'Oh, come on, Virgil!' Gallus had at last noticed my disapproval. 'It's all in fun! Don't be such a prude!'

  'I see nothing funny in representing one of the principal goddesses of the Roman state as a foul-mouthed harpy.'

  'Nonsense! No-one believes in her anyway these days. Not seriously.'

  'That's beside the point.' There was a crack! from the stage as the goddess caught her husband a double-handed blow on his rump. Vulcan leapt into the air with a howl, clutching his bared buttocks, and the audience roared. 'I suppose Venus is your friend Cytheris.' That is another difference between ‘proper’ plays and mime; in the latter, women, not men, take the female roles.

  Gallus's mouth dropped open in astonishment. Then he grinned.

  'Give me some credit for taste,' he said. 'You mean you haven't noticed?'

  'Noticed what?'

  The grin broadened.

  'Oh, nothing,' he said. 'No, that's not Cytheris. She's on later.'

  He turned back to watch the performance. Venus had grabbed Vulcan – she was at least a hand-span taller than he was – and was shaking him like a rag doll. All at once, he reached up, grasped her long golden hair, and pulled.

  The hair came away in his hand, revealing a man's gleaming scalp. The audience erupted.

  I doubt if I could have been more surprised if the head had come off with the wig. Venus mimed consternation, covered 'her' baldness with a patched napkin and rushed headlong from the stage, followed by Vulcan, waving the slapstick. The applause was terrific.

  'She's a man.' In my shock I stated the obvious.

  Gallus was applauding with the rest.

  'Of course she is,' he said. 'The point would be lost otherwise, wouldn't it?'

 

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