I Am Rome, page 42
“I take your silence to mean that you would’ve preferred a smaller audience,” Caesar said in a surprisingly relaxed tone. “After the disaster of the prima actio, the fewer people to witness my failure in this second session the better, right? Am I wrong, my friend?”
Labienus sighed before responding: “No, you are not wrong.”
Caesar nodded and looked around. Dolabella was already seated in the center of the room, prepared to give his testimony. The judges were taking their places. In the audience, his wife, mother, and sisters looked at him with a mixture of pride and worry on their faces. Caesar acknowledged them with a brief nod and a somewhat forced smile: he had reconciled with his mother, but he still felt the sting of her betrayal. He understood that she was only trying to protect him, to keep him from receiving the full force of Dolabella’s ire. With the trial rigged against him anyway, his mother had thought it best to make him seem like a lesser threat. After all, no one in Rome believed that Dolabella would truly be punished. Only Caesar, it seemed, held on to that delusion as he sat in the basilica, his guts roiling as if he were preparing to charge into combat.
“Hortensius is standing,” Labienus said.
Caesar tracked the defense lawyer’s movements, still lost in thought, recalling his reconciliation with Cornelia. She had forgiven him for doubting her. His wife was his greatest supporter, a soothing balm that helped replenish his strength.
“You’re going to go after him with all you’ve got, aren’t you?” she had asked him that morning as she helped him dress.
“Yes,” he’d responded, and then turned to her as she finished adjusting his toga. “You know what? I think my mother, by betraying me, has unwittingly given me a second chance in the trial.”
Cornelia gave him a perplexed look. “I don’t see how.”
“Dolabella and his lawyers, the tribunal and the public, they all think there are two Julius Caesars. They’ve seen two very different men in the basilica: first a clumsy orator during the divinatio, when I secretly let Cicero destroy me to assure I’d be named accusator. Then the brilliant Julius Caesar in the reiectio, when I convinced Metellus to recuse himself. Everyone was left wondering which of those two Julius Caesars would prevail during the trial. Now, after that disaster in the prima actio, with Hortensius and Cotta completely undermining my witnesses, everyone is convinced that I’m simply a bumbling amateur.”
“And today my true Julius Caesar will return for the reiectio. The bold, brave man I love so dearly, who confronted Sulla for me even though it almost killed him,” his wife said.
“Yes, today your true Julius Caesar will return. The brave, bold man you love who defied Sulla for you. But today I’ll have to confront his hound Dolabella.”
Cornelia had wrapped her thin arms around Caesar and hugged him tightly as she whispered in his ear: “May the gods protect you.”
Caesar blinked.
“They’re starting,” Labienus whispered.
During the time it took for an entire water clock to empty, Dolabella answered an exultant Hortensius’s questions, one by one.
Caesar listened to each answer, every word the reus spoke, paying close attention to his categorical denial, his relaxed demeanor, the defiant way he looked at the audience. Dolabella was calm and collected as Hortensius asked his questions and seemed satisfied with his answers. The defense was so confident in this testimony, in fact, that Dolabella was their only witness.
“The prosecution alleges that the Via Egnatia is in poor condition throughout the entire province of Macedonia. Is that in fact the case?” Hortensius asked.
“It is,” Dolabella admitted, to Caesar and Labienus’s surprise. “It’s true that the road is in poor condition, but it’s not as bad as they have suggested. It had been severely abused and neglected by the Macedonians and was in truly pathetic shape when I arrived in the province. The repairs funded by my government have made the road passable, but without doubt, there is more work left to be done.”
“Perfect,” said Hortensius. “That clears that up. The taxes levied for the repair of the road were used, then, to that end.”
“That is correct,” Dolabella assured him.
“In the same way that the tariffs on grain were used to transport said grain from Egypt, correct?”
“Exactly.”
“Good. We still need to clear up two claims made by the prosecution against the former governor of Macedonia, former consul, and brave commander granted a triumph in the streets of Rome,” Hortensius said, seeming to enjoy reciting his defendant’s hefty cursus honorum. “The first claim, the matter of the temple of Aphrodite in Thessaloniki and its plunder; and the second, the lies spouted here by a young Macedonian woman, unmarried, unchaste, a truly shameless girl, to put it mildly. But let’s go first to the matter of the temple. Was the temple of Aphrodite in Thessaloniki, so sacred to the Macedonians, in fact pillaged?”
“It was,” Dolabella admitted. “But it had already been plundered before I arrived in the city. The Macedonians are not a particularly religious people who bother to take care of their temples. When I arrived in the capital I found that the temple had already been stripped of its statues and all items of value.”
“I see,” Hortensius continued without batting an eye, taking his client’s audacious lies as unquestionable truths. “We’re left, then, with the accusations of that dishonored Macedonian woman, which this tribunal has already been forced to hear. Can the former governor enlighten us as to what truly occurred between himself and that woman?”
“Easy to clear up. She summoned me to a meeting,” Dolabella began. “It seemed unusual that a young woman, no matter how aristocratic the family, would take the liberty of inviting me to her home, but I agreed to go, out of courtesy. When I arrived, she was alone and wearing clothing more appropriate for an intimate encounter, and she insinuated herself to me repeatedly. I am a widower and I decided to accept her sexual invitation, thinking that if she wanted to be dishonored, that was her prerogative. I supposed she held out some hope that I would wish to bring her to Rome and offer her a life of luxury at my side. But, the fact is, I would choose a Roman woman over a Macedonian any day.” He chuckled and was met with laughter from Hortensius, some members of the audience, and a portion of the tribunal.
Myrtale herself, along with Perdiccas, Aeropus, Archelaus, Orestes, and the other Macedonians, gritted her teeth and clenched her fists as the laughter fanned the flames of their bitter fury over Dolabella’s blatant lies.
“I think everything is now perfectly clear,” said Hortensius as the laughter died down. “The defense has no further questions and no further witnesses. We do not wish to drag out this drama or bore the judges of this tribunal.”
Pompey then gave the floor over to the prosecution.
Caesar did not stand. He simply sat staring at Dolabella.
The two men had never exchanged a single word, not even when Caesar had been summoned to an audience at Sulla’s home five years prior. They had sized each other up, but they had not spoken directly. Only Sulla had addressed him.
At last, Caesar stood and slowly took his place in the center of the room.
He looked at the audience.
He took a deep breath.
He projected his voice.
“Testis unus, testis nullus,”[*] the young prosecutor began. “A single witness is as good as no witness. The defense wishes to conceal their inability to find a single outside witness to support the reus’s version of events. They claim it is to keep from dragging out a case that they consider to be a spectacle. This is interesting: the defense would have it that this is all a stage act, a comedy perhaps, a farce. What part do the judges play in this so-called farce, according to the defense, I wonder? But I won’t continue that line of thinking, since I see that the reus’s lawyer is about to stand up and tell me not to put words in his mouth. Let’s return, then, to the witness who has testified in defense of the reus. The only witness, the reus himself.” He turned now to Dolabella. “I was able to find witnesses, several in fact, willing to testify against the reus, as I explained during the divinatio. My two main witnesses were the high priest of the temple of Aphrodite during the reus’s term as governor of Macedonia, and the engineer hired by the reus to, supposedly, repair the Via Egnatia. Those witnesses would have testified that the reus looted the temple and that the reus never invested a single sesterce in the repair of the Roman road that traverses Macedonia. But those two men were murdered. Both of them. Both murdered by unknown persons, both stabbed to death,” Caesar said, as he walked to the table where Labienus sat and lifted a scroll to reveal a knife, clean and gleaming, and held it up for everyone to see. “Both stabbed to death, yes, a dagger stuck into the back of both witnesses, one after another. And the hired hitmen left the daggers behind in the wake of their abominable crimes. A dagger much like this one.”
Dolabella remained silent. For the moment, the accusator was only insinuating that he had given the order for the murders. He was curious to see if the young lawyer would dare to directly state the accusation.
Caesar swallowed. He was going to go for it. Dolabella was already planning to kill him, so what did he have to lose?
“And I am certain that these daggers,” he said as he held the sharp, shining blade with its ivory handle up high for everyone to see, “were wielded by Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella’s hired hitmen.”
Hortensius shot to his feet.
“That is a gratuitous and unfounded accusation,” he objected. “Is our defendant going to be blamed for all the murders that occur every day across Rome and its many provinces?”
Caesar turned to Hortensius. “No, not all of them, I suppose,” he said, making part of the audience laugh.
Pompey gestured toward the praecones, furious that he was losing control of the session. The eldest clerk stood up and demanded silence in the room: “Favete linguis!”
The laughter died down, and Caesar resumed his speech before the president of the tribunal could call him to order. “Not all of them, no, but I am wholly convinced that the hitmen who murdered my witnesses, leaving identical daggers in the backs of both innocent men, were hired by the reus.” He looked directly at Dolabella now. “Isn’t that right?”
Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella’s face lit up with a smile. The young prosecutor’s enormous clumsiness seemed almost unbelievable. All he had to do was deny the accusation, it was that simple. It was the word of a respected Roman senator against the accusations of a young and inexperienced lawyer.
“No, I did not order their deaths. Everyone in Rome knows that my men don’t carry daggers with ivory handles. They carry much sharper blades, with red-and-black hilts. Nothing like the knife the accusator holds in his hand. So the daggers found in the backs of your witnesses could not have belonged to my men.”
Caesar froze in the center of the room. He seemed surprised for a moment, defeated once again. But just before the murmurs began, he spoke up: “The dagger I hold in my hand is my own,” he said. “A gift from my wife. Perhaps I led the reus to falsely believe that the dagger I hold was the one used by the murderers, but that is not the case.” He walked back to the table where Labienus sat. He stood to one side and lifted the scrolls to reveal two daggers with dried blood on their blades.
Caesar set down the dagger that Cornelia had gifted him and held up the other two, lifting the handles, red and black, for everyone to see.
“These are the daggers that killed the prosecution’s witnesses, which the reus has been kind enough to identify as the ones used by the men in his hire. And I have witnesses, live ones, who can testify that these, in fact, were the very knives found in the backs of the Macedonian priest and the murdered engineer.”
Dolabella gritted his teeth and muttered under his breath, breathing heavily. He looked to Cotta and Hortensius, who stood. “That proves nothing. Purely circumstantial,” he argued. “Our defendant’s men are not the only ones who use that kind of dagger. And we can’t even be sure if those knives were, in fact, the ones used in the murders.”
Caesar smiled before responding. He’d managed to get Dolabella, almost without realizing it, to testify against himself.
“It is perhaps circumstantial, but whether it proves anything is a matter to be determined by the fifty-two judges of the tribunal. Because we are not in the theatre watching a farcical comedy, or in the Circus Maximus enjoying a spectacle. We stand before a tribunal of justice in the Basilica Sempronia of Rome.” He turned now to the judges. “To the testimonies supplied in the prima actio, I’d like to add the reus’s testimony…against himself.” He turned back to Hortensius. “Or is the defense now going to argue that the reus is a liar? Or that the reus is a senile old man who doesn’t even remember the color of the daggers used by his personal guard? That would be interesting to hear.”
Laughter once more spread through the room.
Under Pompey’s attentive gaze, the praecones called the court to order and silence once again fell over the Basilica Sempronia.
Everyone thought that Caesar had finished interrogating the defendant; in fact, the prosecutor had walked back to his corner, but he stopped short, turned, and faced Dolabella: “One last question: Does the reus believe that the Macedonians deserve justice, Roman justice?”
The defendant leaned back in his seat and tilted his head, looking at Caesar out of the corner of his eye. It was a totally unexpected question and seemed to have nothing to do with the case. According to Roman law, the Macedonians had the right to bring the former governor of their province to trial as long as another Roman citizen, like Caesar, agreed to prosecute him. That was a fact. But the young lawyer was asking whether he thought they deserved this right.
Dolabella walked right into the trap. He was so confident in the notion that the tribunal would exonerate him on all counts that he didn’t see any harm in speaking his mind. He failed to see how giving his honest opinion could damage him in any way. So he straightened his back and responded loudly and clearly. “Personally, I don’t think that the Macedonians or any other non-Roman people should be allowed to abuse our judicial system. Rome is for the Romans, and Roman law should be applicable only among Romans. Especially in the case of a defeated people such as the Macedonians, who forget they are now merely subjects of Rome and that they exist at the mercy of our generosity. They live in the past, in the times of their great Alexander. But Alexander has been dead and buried in the ground for centuries…”
He was about to say, “in Alexandria,” where the tomb of the great Macedonian conqueror lay, but just then a thunderous boom echoed through the Basilica Sempronia, silencing him. It was an unexpected sound since the day had started out bright and clear. But a sudden storm must now be rolling in. Dolabella refused to consider other alternatives. But he stopped speaking.
The former Macedonian governor, breathing shallowly through his mouth, sat motionless as he looked out at the audience, his eyes scanning the crowd until, suddenly, he found Myrtale, her icy glare fixed on him.
He saw her turn to one of the other Macedonians, but he couldn’t hear what the girl was saying. It didn’t matter, he could guess.
“He’s said it,” Myrtale hissed, her heart pounding with a sense of triumph. “He’s said it.”
Caesar, like everyone else, was jarred by the thunderclap, but he knew nothing of the curse of Thessaloniki, so he resumed his line of questioning without another thought to the brewing storm. “It’s interesting to note that the reus thinks this trial should’ve never taken place,” he said with a smile.
There was no more thunder.
Dolabella looked away from Myrtale and shook off the strange, dark thoughts about the sudden thunderclap that foretold torrential rain. He turned his attention back to the prosecutor. “I follow the laws and therefore accept this trial,” he said, not wanting the judges to think he was questioning their authority. Truth be told, he despised the tribunal; he’d paid them a fortune to sit and pass judgment on him. But he knew it would be unwise to openly express his disdain or make them look ridiculous in public. Bribed or not, he couldn’t belittle the judges before the entire basilica. “I was referring to the fact that foreigners have been allowed to abuse our laws and unjustly accuse a senator of Rome. I would change that law if I could, but the law exists, and I am here, following it. I follow the law.”
“That is what it all boils down to, isn’t it?” Caesar replied. “Whether we truly believe that the reus followed Roman law during his term as governor of Macedonia.” He walked back to the prosecution’s table and addressed the tribunal. “I have no further questions,” he said before the defendant had time to object.
Skip Notes
* “A single witness is a null witness.” This phrase appears in the Latin version of the Bible, in the book of Deuteronomy, and is also included in the Justinian Code, after Caesar’s time, but that does not mean it hadn’t been used informally well before then.
LXII
The Defense’s Final Statement
Basilica Sempronia, Rome
77 B.C.
Caesar had been very skillful in his interrogation of Dolabella, almost seeming to have coaxed a confession of murder out of the defendant. Hortensius knew that even though the tribunal was predisposed to exonerate his client, it was still a public trial and the basilica was packed. The political situation in Rome was tense—it was crucial that Dolabella be made to look as good as possible in front of the masses, just as it was important for Caesar to be fully discredited.
The eternal struggle between the optimates and the populares still remained latent, like a dormant volcano that might erupt at any moment. The defense lawyers understood that Dolabella was paying them not only to achieve a favorable verdict, but also to repair his public image. The former governor of Macedonia had bribed the entire tribunal and would surely obtain a not-guilty verdict. He had hired the services of the best lawyers in Rome to ensure that the people would overlook his excesses in Macedonia and view him as a just and upright politician.
