However, returning to my story, the tribunes were a poor lot on the whole, but there was one among them who stood out for his talent and his energy, and that was Lollius Palicanus. He was a proud man, but of low birth, from Picenum in the Italian northeast, the power base of Pompey the Great. It had been assumed that when Pompey returned from Spain he would use his influence to try to gain his fellow-countryman a praetorship, and Cicero had been as surprised as everybody else earlier in the summer when Palicanus had suddenly announced his candidacy for the tribunate. But on this particular morning he looked happy enough with his lot. The fresh crop of tribunes always began their term of office on the tenth day of December, so he must have been very new in the job. “ Cicero!” he bellowed the moment he saw us. “I had been wondering when you would show up!”

He told us that he had already heard the news from Syracuse, and he wanted to talk about Verres. But he wanted to talk in private, for there was more at stake, he said mysteriously, than the fate of one man. He proposed meeting us at his house on the Aventine Hill in an hour, to which Cicero agreed, whereupon Palicanus immediately ordered one of his attendants to guide us, saying he would follow separately.

It turned out to be a rough and unpretentious place, in keeping with the man, close to the Lavernal Gate, just outside the city wall. The thing I remember most clearly was the larger-than-life-size bust of Pompey, posed in the headgear and armor of Alexander the Great, which dominated the atrium. “Well,” said Cicero after he had contemplated it for a while, “I suppose it makes a change from the Three Graces.” This was exactly the sort of droll but inappropriate comment which used to get repeated around the town, and which invariably found its way back to its victim. Luckily, only I was present on this occasion, but I took the opportunity to pass on what the consul’s clerk had said regarding his joke about Gellius mediating between the philosophers. Cicero pretended to be sheepish and promised to be more circumspect in the future-he knew, he said, that people liked their statesmen to be dull-but naturally he soon forgot his resolution.

“That was a good speech you made the other week,” said Palicanus the moment he arrived. “You have the stuff in you, Cicero, you really have, if I may say so. But those blue-blooded bastards screwed you over, and now you are in the shit. So what exactly are you planning to do about it?” (This was more or less how he spoke-rough words in a rough accent-and the aristocrats used to have some sport with him over his elocution.)

I opened my case and handed the documents to Cicero, and he quickly laid out the situation regarding Sthenius. When he had finished he asked what chance there was of receiving any help from the tribunes.

“That depends,” said Palicanus, with a quick lick of his lips and a grin. “Come and sit down and let us see what is to be done.”

He took us through into another room, small and completely overwhelmed by a huge wall painting of a laureled Pompey, this time dressed as Jupiter, complete with lightning bolts shooting from his fingers.

“Do you like it?” asked Palicanus.

“It is remarkable,” said Cicero.

“Yes, it is,” he said, with some satisfaction. “That is art.”

I took a seat in the corner, beneath the Picenean deity, while Cicero, whose eye I dared not meet, settled himself at the opposite end of the couch to our host.

“What I am about to tell you, Cicero, is not to be repeated outside this house. Pompey the Great”-Palicanus nodded to the painting, in case we were in any doubt as to whom he meant-“will soon be returning to Rome for the first time in six years. He will come with his army, so there can be no fancy double-dealing from our noble friends. He will seek the consulship. And he will get the consulship. And he will get it unopposed.”

He leaned forward eagerly, expecting shock or surprise, but Cicero received this sensational intelligence as coolly as if he were being told the weather.

“So in return for your helping me over Sthenius, I am to support you over Pompey?”

“You are a canny one, Cicero, you have the stuff in you. What do you think?”

Cicero rested his chin in his hand and gazed at Palicanus. “Quintus Metellus will not be happy, for a start. You know the old poem-‘In Rome Metalliare, ’tis fate, / Elected to the consulate.’ He has been scheduled since birth to have his turn next summer.”

“Has he indeed? Well he can kiss my backside. How many legions did Quintus Metellus have behind him the last time you looked?”

“Crassus has legions,” Cicero pointed out. “So has Lucullus.”

“Lucullus is too far away, and besides, he has his hands full. As for Crassus-well, it is true that Crassus hates Pompey’s guts. But the thing about Crassus is that he is not a proper soldier. He is a businessman, and that type always cuts a deal.”

“And then there is the little matter of its being completely unconstitutional. You have to be forty-two at the time of the consular election, and Pompey is how old?”

“Just thirty-four.”

“Indeed. Almost a year younger than me. And a consul is also required to have been elected to the Senate and to have served as praetor, neither of which has Pompey achieved. He has never made a political speech in his life. To put the matter simply, Palicanus, seldom has a man been less qualified for the post.”

Palicanus made a dismissive gesture. “All that may be true, but let us face facts-Pompey has run whole countries for years, and done it with proconsular authority to boot. He is a consul, in all but name. Be realistic, Cicero. You cannot expect a man such as Pompey to come back to Rome and start at the bottom, running for quaestor like some political hack. What would that do to his dignity?”

“I appreciate his feelings, but you ask my opinion, and I am giving it to you, and I tell you the aristocrats will not stand for it. All right, perhaps if he has ten thousand men outside the city, they will have no choice but to let him become consul, but sooner or later his army will go home and then how will he…Ha!” Cicero suddenly threw back his head and started laughing. “That is very clever.”

“You have seen it?” said Palicanus, with a grin.

“I have seen it.” Cicero nodded appreciatively. “Very good.”

“Well, I am offering you the chance to be a part of it. And Pompey the Great does not forget his friends.”

At the time I had not the least idea of what they were talking about. Only when we were walking home afterwards did Cicero explain everything to me. Pompey was planning to seek the consulship on the platform of a full restoration of tribunician power. Hence Palicanus’s surprising move in becoming a tribune. The strategy was not born of some altruistic desire on Pompey’s part to give the Roman people greater liberty-although I suppose it is just possible he was occasionally pleased to lie in his bath in Spain and fancy himself a champion of citizens’ rights-no: it was purely a matter of self-interest. Pompey, as a good general, saw that by advocating such a program he would trap the aristocrats in a pincer movement, between his soldiers encamped beyond the walls of Rome and the common people on the city’s streets. Hortensius, Catulus, Metellus, and the rest would have no choice but to concede both Pompey’s consulship and the tribunes’ restoration, or risk annihilation. And once they did, Pompey could send his army home, and if necessary rule by circumventing the Senate and appealing directly to the people. He would be unassailable. It was, as Cicero described it to me, a brilliant stroke, and he had seen it in that flash of insight as he sat on Palicanus’s couch.

“What exactly would be in it for me?” asked Cicero.

“A reprieve for your client.”

“And nothing else?”

“That would depend on how good you were. I cannot make specific promises. That will have to wait until Pompey himself gets back.”

“That is a rather weak offer, if I may say so, my dear Palicanus.”

“Well, you are in a rather weak position, if I may say so, my dear Cicero.”

Cicero stood. I could see he was put out. “I can always walk away,” he said.

“And leave your client to die in agony on one of Verres’s crosses?” Palicanus also stood. “I doubt it, Cicero. I doubt you are that hard.” He took us out then, past Pompey as Jupiter, past Pompey as Alexander. “I shall see you and your client at the basilica tomorrow morning,” he said, shaking hands with Cicero on the doorstep. “After that you will be in our debt, and we shall be watching.” The door closed with a confident slam.

Cicero turned on his heel and stepped into the street. “If that is the kind of art he puts on public display,” he said, “what do you suppose he keeps in the latrine? And do not warn me to guard my tongue, Tiro, because I do not care who hears it.”

He walked on ahead of me through the city gate, his hands clasped behind his back, his head hunched forward, brooding. Of course, Palicanus was right. He had no choice. He could not abandon his client. But I am sure he must have been weighing the political risks of moving beyond a simple appeal to the tribunes to a full-blooded campaign for their restoration. It would cost him the support of the moderates, such as Servius.

“Well,” he said with a wry smile when we reached his house, “I wanted to get into a fight, and it seems I have succeeded.”

He asked Eros, the steward, where Terentia was, and looked relieved when he learned she was still in her room. At least that saved him from having to tell her the news for a few more hours. We went into his study, and he had just started dictating to me his speech to the tribunes-“Gentlemen, it is an honor to stand before you for the first time”-when we heard shouts and a thump from the entrance. Cicero, who always liked to think on his feet and was pacing around, ran to find out what was happening. I hurried after him. Six rough-looking fellows were crowded in the vestibule, all wielding sticks. Eros was rolling on the ground, clutching his stomach, with blood pouring from a split lip. A seventh stranger, armed with an official-looking document, stepped up to Cicero and announced that he had the authority to search the house.

“The authority of whom?” Cicero was calm-calmer than I would have been in his shoes.

“Gaius Verres, pro-praetor of Sicily, issued this warrant in Syracuse on the first day of December.” He held it up before Cicero ’s face for an insultingly short time. “I am searching for the traitor Sthenius.”