'Not to mention Catilina and the mob,' I said.

'Yes, but Catilina intentionally distanced himself from the Rullan bill. Too mild for him; to have been seen as a force behind it would have compromised his radical reputation. Nor would his support have been an asset to the bill; his enthusiasm would have further alarmed the Optimates, who were already suspicious of the idea.'

'Even so, I imagine Catilina would have accepted an appointment as one of the new land commissioners, along with Caesar and Crassus.'

Rufus smiled wryly. 'Your grasp of politics is more subtle than you let on, Gordianus.'

'But the bill was defeated,' said Meto.

'Yes. The Optimates saw it as merely a tool for Caesar and Crassus, and yes, perhaps Catilina, to increase their power, and any talk of land reform immediately sets them on edge. They always pretend to support the idea in the abstract, but no concrete proposal ever satisfies them. Cicero became their spokesman, as he has been since they rallied to support him for the consulship. But he didn't limit himself to debating the matter in the Senate. He came here, to the Forum, and brought the issue directly to the people.'

'But it's the sort of bill the people like, isn't it? That's why they call Caesar a populist, isn't it?' asked Meto. 'Why would Cicero debate against the bill before the very people it's meant to help?'

'Because Cicero could talk a condemned man into chopping off his own head,' said Rufus. 'He knows how to make a speech; he knows what arguments will impress the mob. First, he said that the law was directed against Pompey, even though Pompey was specifically excluded from the investigations that were to be made into the acquisitions of other generals abroad. The people don't like it when they hear that something will hurt Pompey. Pompey is the darling of the mob; successful generals always are. To denigrate Pompey is to denigrate the people of Rome, to call Pompey into question is to insult Rome's favourite son, et cetera, et cetera. Then Cicero took aim at the commission itself, saying it would become a little court of ten despots. They would embezzle the funds they raised, robbing the Roman people of their own wealth; they would punish their enemies by forcing them to sell their lands, which would be almost as wicked as the proscriptions and confiscations that Sulla carried out; they would forcibly move the contented urban poor onto barren tracts of land where they would starve. Well, you know how persuasive Cicero can be, especially when it comes to convincing people to work against their own interests. I do believe he could convince a beggar that a rock is better than a coin because it weighs more, and an empty stomach is better than a full one because it causes no indigestion.'

'But Rullus must have defended the law,' said Meto.

‘Yes, and Rullus was pounded into dust — rhetorically speaking. Caesar and Crassus each wet a finger, held it in the wind, and decided to keep quiet, though in debate either one is a match for Cicero, at least to my ear. The time was simply not right, and the law was dropped. Soon people got distracted by other matters, like the incident in the theatre, and Catilina's new campaign for consul.'

'You say the time was not right for such reform,' I said. 'In Rome, and with the Optimates in control of the Senate, when is it ever the right time for change?'

'Nunquam,' said Rufus, smiling ruefully: never.

Our destination was the summit of the Capitoline Hill, where Rufus would perform his augury. We at last managed to cross the densely crowded area in front of the Rostra and came to the wide, paved path that ascends in winding stages to the summit of the Capitoline. Here we had to pause again, for a large group of men was descending the path, so many in number that they blocked any opportunity to ascend. As the group drew nearer, Rufus's face brightened. His eyes were better than mine, for he had already made out the faces of the two men who walked side by side at the head of their respective retinues. One was dressed in a senatorial toga, white bordered with purple; the other wore a toga with the much broader purple border of the Pontifex Maximus.

They smiled in return when they recognized Rufus, and nodded to Marcus Mummius. For the moment Meto and myself and the rest were invisible to them. Those who wear purple acknowledge one another first; others come later.

'Rufus!' said the Pontifex Maximus.

'Caesar!' said Rufus, bowing his head. He made the same gesture of obeisance to the white-bearded augur who stood beside the Pontifex Maximus, dressed like Rufus in a trabea with saffron stripes. Within their college a younger augur always defers to an elder.

I took a close look at the face of our Pontifex Maximus. Not yet forty, Gaius Julius Caesar had already established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the Republic. His patrician heritage was impeccable; his family ties to the dictator Sulla's old enemy Marius, once a death sentence, had become a part of his credentials as a leader of the populist movement. If Cicero was the master of rhetoric, able to get what he wanted by the sheer force of argument, Caesar was said to be the master of pure politics, a genius at comprehending the multitudinous and often obscure strands of the ages-old web that bound together the state and the priesthoods. He understood the most arcane and cumbersome rules of procedure within the Senate, and could invoke them at the most unexpected moments to the consternation of his enemies; he knew the intricate workings of the ever-growing bureaucracy that carried out (or as often confounded) the will of the Senate and the people; as Pontifex Maximus he oversaw the maze of religious offices and brotherhoods that interpreted omens and sacred texts and thus exercised power over the Senate, the army, and commerce by allowing or not allowing these institutions to function on a given day.

Caesar was not a handsome man, but in no sense was he plain. His narrow face was striking, but beauty did not figure into it. It was the vitality of his eyes that impressed, along with the patrician austerity of his high cheekbones and forehead, and the drawn tension of his thin lips, that seemed perpetually to smile at some ironic jest. His erect carriage and steady gait marked him as a man in absolute control of his every movement, fully conscious of his own fluid grace and quietly pleased with the image he presented to the world. I have met only a handful of men (and some women) with such a way about them, and they have all been either wealthy, eminently well-educated patricians, or else slaves who possess the natural charm of the unlearned along with the remarkable beauty that sweeps every other consideration before it. We mortals in the middle can never hope to possess the perfect grace of these god-blessed others higher and lower than ourselves. It conies from power, I suppose, political or sexual — not simply possessing it, but instinctively knowing how to use it, and having the capacity to enjoy using it. Catilina had a measure of that grace, but in him it was mixed with something else, an imperfection of some sort that made him all the more fascinating. In Caesar, that grace was undiluted. He seemed to me to be power personified, and thus he projected (like the beautiful) the illusion of being indestructible and immortal. Rend his mortal vessel with wounds, cut him open to show the blood and bones within, slice his head from his shoulders — still, it seemed, his lips would wear that same effortless smile.

Somehow I had glimpsed his companion from the corner of my eye, or perhaps had recognized his gait from a distance, for I knew that the man was Marcus Licinius Crassus before I reluctantly set my eyes on him. There were few men whom I less desired to meet by chance on this of all days. As Rufus turned to greet him, Crassus's restless gaze fell on me. He knew me in an instant, though it had been almost nine years since the affair at Baiae. Things there had not gone as he had wished, thanks to me, and Crassus was a man accustomed to having his own way in everything to do with lesser men; from the glint in his eye I saw that the memory still rankled. Catilina had indicated that Crassus respected me in a begrudging way, but if so, he was good at concealing it. His eyes had a cold gleam without a trace of humour.