'Catulus,' said Cicero affably, as he came into the room. 'Isauricus. Hortensius. I'm honoured.' He nodded to each of the former consuls, but when he reached the fourth senator I could see even his prodigious memory temporarily fail him. 'Rabirius,' he concluded after a brief struggle. 'Gaius Rabirius, isn't it?' He held out his hand but the old man did not react and Cicero smoothly turned the gesture into a sweeping indication of the room. 'Welcome to my home. This is a pleasure.'
'There's no pleasure in it,' said Catulus.
'It's an outrage,' said Hortensius.
'It's war,' asserted Isauricus, 'that's what it is.'
'Well, I'm very sorry to hear it,' replied Cicero pleasantly. He did not always take them seriously. Like many rich old men they tended to regard the slightest personal inconvenience as proof of the end of the world.
Hortensius clicked his fingers, and his attendant handed Cicero a legal document with a heavy seal. 'Yesterday the Board of Tribunes served this writ on Rabirius.'
Hortensius clicked his fingers, and his attendant handed Cicero a legal document with a heavy seal. 'Yesterday the Board of Tribunes served this writ on Rabirius.'
At the mention of his name, Rabirius looked up. 'Can I go home?' he asked plaintively.
'Later,' said Hortensius in a stern voice, and the old man bowed his head.
'A writ on Rabirius?' repeated Cicero, looking at him with bemusement. 'And what conceivable crime is he capable of?' He read the writ aloud so I could make a note of it. 'The accused is herein charged with the murder of the tribune L. Saturninus and the violation of the sacred precincts of the senate house.' He looked up in puzzlement. 'Saturninus? It must be what? forty years since he was killed.'
'Thirty-six,' corrected Catulus.
'And Catulus should know,' said Isauricus, 'because he was there. As was I.'
Catulus spat out his name as if it were poison. 'Saturninus! What a rogue! Killing him wasn't a crime it was a public service.' He gazed into the distance as if surveying some grand historical mural on the wall of a temple: The Murder of Saturninus in the Senate House. 'I see him as plainly as I see you, Cicero. A rabble-rousing tribune of the very worst kind. He murdered our candidate for consul and the senate declared him a public enemy. After that, even the plebs deserted him. But before we could lay our hands on him, he and some of his gang barricaded themselves up on the Capitol. So we blocked the water pipes! That was your idea, Vatia.'
'It was.' The old general's eyes gleamed at the memory. 'I knew how to conduct a siege, even then.'
'Of course they surrendered after a couple of days, and were lodged in the senate house till their trial. But we didn't trust them not to escape again, so we got up on the roof and tore off the tiles and pelted them. There was no hiding place. They ran to and fro squealing like rats in a ditch. By the time Saturninus stopped twitching, you could barely tell who he was.'
'And Rabirius was with you both on the roof?' asked Cicero. Glancing up from my notes at the old man his expression vacant, his head trembling slightly it was impossible to imagine him involved in such an action.
'Oh yes, he was there,' confirmed Isauricus. 'There must have been about thirty of us. Those were the days,' he added, bunching his fingers into a gnarled fist, 'when we still had some juice in us!'
'The crucial point,' said Hortensius wearily he was younger than his companions and obviously bored of hearing the same old story 'is not whether Rabirius was there or not. It's the crime with which he is being charged.'
'Which is what? Murder?'
' Perduellio.'
I must confess I had never even heard of it, and Cicero had to spell it out for me. ' Perduellio,' he explained, 'is what the ancients called treason.' He turned to Hortensius. 'Why use such an obsolete law? Why not just prosecute him with treason, pure and simple, and have done with it?'
'Because the sentence for treason is exile, whereas for perduellio it's death and not by hanging, either.' Hortensius leaned forward to emphasise his words. 'If they find him guilty, Rabirius will be crucified.'
'What is this place?' demanded Rabirius, getting to his feet. 'Where am I?'
Catulus gently pressed him down into his seat. 'Calm yourself, Gaius. We're your friends.'
'But no jury is going to find him guilty,' objected Cicero quietly. 'The poor fellow's clearly lost his brains.'
' Perduellio isn't heard before a jury. That's what's so cunning. It's heard before two judges, specially appointed for the purpose.'
'Appointed by whom?'
'Our new urban praetor, Lentulus Sura.'
Cicero grimaced at the name. Sura was a former consul, a man of great ambition and boundless stupidity, two qualities which in politics often go together.
'And whom has Old Sleepy-Head chosen as judges? Do we know?'
'Caesar is one. And Caesar is the other.'
' What?'
'Gaius Julius Caesar and his cousin Lucius are to be selected to hear the case.'
' Caesar is behind this?'
'Naturally the verdict is a foregone conclusion.'