Robert Harris - Conspirata

A few years before the birth of Christ, a biography of the Roman orator and statesman Cicero was produced by his former secretary, Tiro.

That there was such a man as Tiro, and that he wrote such a work, is well-attested. 'Your services to me are beyond count,' Cicero once wrote to him, 'in my home and out of it, in Rome and abroad, in my studies and literary work...' He was three years younger than his master, born a slave, but long outlived him, surviving - according to Saint Jerome - until he reached his hundredth year. Tiro was the first man to record a speech in the senate verbatim, and his shorthand system, known as Notae Tironianae, was still in use in the Church in the sixth century; indeed some traces of it (the symbol '&', the abbreviations etc, NB, i.e., e.g.) survive to this day. He also wrote several treatises on the development of Latin. His multi-volume life of Cicero is referred to as a source by the first-century historian Asconius Pedianus in his commentary on Cicero's speeches; Plutarch cites it twice. But, like the rest of Tiro's literary output, the book disappeared amid the collapse of the Roman Empire.

What kind of work it might have been still occasionally intrigues scholars. In 1985, Elizabeth Rawson, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, speculated that it would probably have been in the Hellenistic tradition of biography - a literary form 'written in an unpretentious, unrhetorical style; it might quote

From this time on men began to look upon Caesar differently Although Isauricus accepted his defeat with the stoicism of an old soldier, Catulus - who had set his heart on the chief pontificate as the crown of his career - never entirely recovered from the blow. The following day he denounced his rival in the senate. 'You are no longer working underground, Caesar!' he shouted in such a rage his lips were flecked with spittle. 'Your artillery is planted in the open and it is there for the capture of the state!' Caesar's only response was a smile. As for Cicero, he was in two minds. He agreed with Catulus that Caesar's ambition was so reckless and gargantuan it might one day become a menace to the republic. And yet,' he mused to me, 'when I notice how carefully arranged his hair is, and when I watch him adjusting his parting with one finger, I can't imagine that he could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.' Reasoning that Caesar now had most of what he wanted, and that everything else - a praetorship, the consulship, command of an army - would come in due course, Cicero decided the time had come to try to absorb him into the leadership of the senate. For example, he felt it was unseemly to have the head of the state religion bobbing up and down during debates, alongside senators of the second rank, trying to catch the consul's eye. Therefore he resolved to call upon Caesar early, straight after the praetorians. But this conciliatory approach immediately landed him with a fresh political embarrassment - and one that showed the extent of Caesar's cunning. It happened in the following way.

Very soon after Caesar was elected - it must have been within three or four days at most - the senate was in session, with Cicero in the chair, when suddenly there was a shout at the far end of the chamber. Pushing his way through the crowd of spectators gathered at the door was a bizarre apparition. His hair was wild and disordered and powdery with dust. He had hastily thrown on a purple-edged toga, but it did not entirely conceal the military uniform he was wearing underneath. In place of red shoes his feet were clad in a soldier's boots. He advanced down the central aisle, and whoever was speaking halted in mid-sentence as all eyes turned on the intruder. The lictors, standing near me just behind Cicero's chair, stepped forward in alarm to protect the consul, but then Metellus Celer shouted out from the praetorian benches: 'Stop! Don't you see? It's my brother!' and sprang up to embrace him.

Observing this, a great murmur of wonder and then alarm went round the chamber, for everyone knew that Celer's younger brother, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos, was one of Pompey's legates in the war against King Mithradates, and his dramatic and dishevelled appearance, obviously fresh from the scene of war, might well mean that some terrible calamity had befallen the legions.

'Nepos!' cried Cicero. 'What is the meaning of this? Speak!'

Nepos disentangled himself from his brother. He was a haughty man, very proud of his handsome features and fine physique. (They say he preferred to lie with men rather than women, and certainly he never married or left issue; but that is just gossip, and I should not repeat it.) He threw back his magnificent shoulders and turned to face the chamber. 'I come directly from the camp of Pompey the Great in Arabia!' he declared. 'I have travelled by the swiftest boats and the fastest horses to bring you great and joyful tidings. The tyrant and foremost enemy of the Roman people, Mithradates Eupator, in the sixty-eighth year of his life, is dead. The war in the East is won!' There followed that peculiar instant of startled silence that always succeeds dramatic news, and then the whole of the chamber rose in thunderous acclamation. For a quarter of a century Rome had been fighting Mithradates. Some say he massacred eighty thousand Roman citizens in Asia; others allege one hundred and fifty thousand. Whichever is true, he was a figure of terror. For as long as most could remember, the name of Mithradates had been used by Roman mothers to frighten their children into good behaviour. And now he was gone! And the glory was Pompey's! It did not matter that Mithradates had actually committed suicide rather than been killed by Roman arms. (The old tyrant had taken poison, but because of all the precautionary antidotes he had swallowed over the years it had had no effect, and he had been obliged to call in a soldier to finish him off.) It did not matter either that most knowledgeable observers credited Lucius Lucullus, still waiting outside the gates for his triumph, as the strategist who had really brought Mithradates to his knees. What mattered was that Pompey was the hero of the hour, and Cicero knew what he had to do. The moment the clamour died down, he rose and proposed that in honour of Pompey's genius, there should be five days of national thanksgiving. This was warmly applauded. Then he called on Hybrida to utter a few inarticulate words of praise, and next he allowed Celer to laud his brother for travelling a thousand miles to bring the glad tidings. That was when Caesar got up; Cicero gave him the floor in honour of his status as chief priest, assuming he was going to offer ritual thanks to the gods.

"With all due respect to our consul, surely we are being niggardly with our gratitude?' said Caesar silkily. 'I move an amendment to Cicero's motion. I propose the period of thanksgiving be doubled to ten full days, and that for the rest of his life Gnaeus Pompey be permitted to wear his triumphal robes at the Games, so that the Roman people even in their leisure will ever be reminded of the debt they owe him.'

I could almost hear Cicero's teeth grinding behind his fixed smile as he accepted the amendment and put it to the vote. He knew that Pompey would mark well that Caesar had been twice as generous as he. The motion passed with only one dissenting voice: that of young Marcus Cato, who declared in a furious voice that the senate was treating Pompey as if he were a king, crawling to him and flattering him in a way that would have sickened the founders of the republic. He was jeered, and a couple of senators sitting near to him tried to pull him down. But looking at the faces of Catulus and the other patricians, I could tell how uncomfortable his words had made them.

Of all these great figures from the past who roost like bats in my memory and flutter from their caves at night to disturb my dreams, Cato is the strangest. What a bizarre creature he was! He was not much more than thirty at this time, but his face was already that of an old man. He was very angular. His hair was unkempt. He never smiled, and rarely bathed: he gave off a ripe smell, I can tell you. Contrariness was his religion. Even though he was immensely rich, he never rode in a litter or a carriage