The senators understood the implication that the people of Rome might one day avenge themselves for the death of the conspirators (because their aims coincided more nearly with those of the people themselves). The response of the consul-elect Silanus was to prevaricate and to maintain that by “the ultimate penalty” he had meant no more than imprisonment for life. Cicero’s riposte was to suggest that “such a wise and merciful man” as Caesar had contrived, by his own statement, to suggest a penalty for the accused that was far worse than death. If such was the case, then Caesar was proposing a torture far worse than he, Cicero, had suggested. Nevertheless, Caesar had won, and the “conversion” of the respected consul-elect Silanus (whose wife Servilia was one of Caesar’s mistresses) seemed to sway the senate in favor of imprisonment rather than death. Only Catulus could be found among the consulars ready to approve the death sentence. But there did remain one Roman of the antique breed to stand up and vehemently disagree with the acquiescence of his seniors. This was the redoubtable Marcus Porcius Cato, a descendant of the famous Cato the Censor who had distinguished himself in the third war against Carthage and had largely been responsible, in the last and final war against Rome’s major rival in the Mediterranean, for the destruction of that city. This young Cato was of the same opinion as Cicero. Traitors to the Republic must die.

An unusual character, the direct antithesis to Caesar in almost every way, he has been portrayed by Sir Ronald Syme in The Roman Revolution:

 

Aged thirty-three and only quaestorian in rank, this man prevailed by force of character. Cato extolled the virtues that won empire for Rome in ancient days, denouncing the undeserving rich, and strove to recall the aristocracy to the duties of their station. This was not convention, pretense or delusion. Upright and austere, a ferocious defender of his own class, a hard drinker and an astute politician, the authentic Cato, so far from being a visionary, claimed to be a realist of traditional Roman temper and tenacity.

 

He hated Caesar and everything he stood for, and he also had personal reasons for this hatred. Servilia, Silanus’ wife, was his sister, and Caesar to him was therefore the corrupter not only of public but of private morals. He lashed out at Caesar in a way that Cicero would not have dared, accusing him of wishing to destroy the state and of attempting to frighten the senate with a vision of what might happen if they did what they should. Caesar, he maintained, was lucky to have got clear of implication in the whole matter himself, and that was the reason why he was trying to prevent the malefactors from paying the just penalty. Not only should these criminals be condemned to death but their properties should also be confiscated for the benefit of the very state against which they had conspired.

This passion and directness, reflecting no doubt what many senators felt but dared not say, swept away the assembly.

Caesar spoke yet again against the imposition of the death sentence, but by now the mood had radically altered and there was a growing animosity against him. The senators had remembered their duty and had been recalled by Cato to an old Roman sense of what was right. Caesar appealed to the tribunes of the people to use their veto, but none would support him, and there was a riot. Hearing the uproar, some of Cicero’s armed guards who were stationed outside rushed in to see if their master was in danger. “They unsheathed their swords,” says Suetonius, “and threatened Caesar with death unless he ceased his opposition [to the motion].” Most of the senators near him fled from the scene; only a few of his friends huddled round him and covered him protectively with their togas. For the first time in his life Caesar came near to death in the Roman senate, and he was sufficiently impressed by the experience to stay away from the senate house for the rest of the year. He, whose rise had been occasioned by preying on the passions of the Romans, now had a firsthand knowledge of them. It was not an experience any man would ever be likely to forget—unless over a long period of time he had become possessed by overweening arrogance.

 

 

 

8

 

The Praetor and a Scandal

 

DESPITE the tumult with which the senate meeting had ended, Caesar had nevertheless achieved a great deal by his speech urging a life sentence, rather than death, for the conspirators. The people now had him firmly fixed in their minds as a merciful man and, despite his breeding, not one of the hard and implacable aristocrats of the senate. Besides, hardly had the arrested conspirators been executed than some of the senators began to have qualms about what had been done and, after the elections, two of the new tribunes began to speak out against the death sentences. It was as Caesar had foreseen; whatever his motives had been, he had better understood the feelings of the Roman people than such die-hards as Cato. The two men would hate each other all their lives; indeed, Caesar would continue to hate Cato even after the latter’s death. The whole Catiline conspiracy came to an end when Catiline himself fell fighting against the government troops early in 62. His story has been told by the historian Sallust, and he appears in Roman history as a dark and malevolent figure.