Milo promised to think about it, although naturally he did not withdraw. The vaulting ambition that had carried him, in a mere half-dozen years, from ownership of a gladiator school to the brink of the consulship, was hardly likely at this late stage to be bridled by caution and good sense. Besides, his campaign debts were so enormous (some said the amount he owed was seventy million sesterces) that he was facing exile whatever he did; he gained nothing by giving up now. So he continued with his canvass and Pompey moved ruthlessly to destroy him by setting up an inquiry into the events of the eighteenth and nineteenth of January – including the murder of Clodius, the burning of the Senate house and the attack on the home of Lepidus – under the chairmanship of Domitius Ahenobarbus. The slaves of Milo and Clodius were put to the torture to ascertain the facts, and I feared that some poor wretch, in his desperation, might remember my presence at the scene, which would have been embarrassing to Cicero. But I seem to have been blessed with the sort of personality that nobody notices – the reason perhaps why I have survived to write this account – and nobody mentioned me.
The inquiry led to Milo’s trial for murder at the beginning of April and Cicero was required to honour his pledge to defend him. It was the only time I ever saw him prostrated by nerves. Pompey had filled the centre of the city with soldiers to guarantee order. But the effect was the opposite of reassuring. They blockaded every approach to the Forum and guarded the main public buildings. All the shops were closed. An atmosphere of tension and dread lay over the city. Pompey himself came to watch proceedings and took a seat high up on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, surrounded by troops. Yet despite the show of force, the vast pro-Clodian crowd was allowed to intimidate the court. They jeered both Milo and Cicero whenever they tried to speak and made it difficult for the defence to be heard. All outrage and emotion was on their side – the brutality of the crime, the spectacle of the weeping widow and her fatherless children, and above all perhaps that curious retrospective sanctity that settles over the reputation of any politician, however worthless, if his career is cut off in its prime.
As chief defence advocate, allowed under the special rules of the court only two hours to speak, Cicero had an almost impossible task. He could hardly pretend that Milo, who had openly boasted of what he had done, was innocent of the crime. Indeed some of Milo’s supporters, such as Rufus, thought that Cicero should make a virtue of it and argue that the murder was not a crime at all but a public service. Cicero recoiled from that line of reasoning. ‘What are you saying? That any man can be condemned to death without trial and summarily executed by his enemies if it suits enough people? That’s mob rule, Rufus – exactly what Clodius believed in – and I refuse to stand up in a Roman court and make such a case.’
The only feasible alternative was to argue that the killing was justified on the grounds of self-defence – but that was difficult to reconcile with the evidence that Clodius had been dragged out of the tavern and finished off in cold blood. Still, it was not impossible. I had known Cicero win from weaker positions. And he wrote a good speech. However, on the morning he was due to deliver it, he woke gripped by a terrible anxiety. At first I took no notice. He was often nervous before a big oration, and suffered from loose bowels and vomiting. But this morning was different. He was not gripped by fear, which he sometimes called ‘cold strength’ and had learned how to harness; rather he was simply in a funk and could not remember a word of what he was supposed to say.
Milo suggested he should go down to the Forum in a closed litter and wait somewhere out of sight, calmly composing himself until it was time for him to speak; and this was what we tried. Cicero, at his request, had been provided with a bodyguard by Pompey for the duration of the trial, and they cordoned off a part of the Grove of Vesta and kept everyone away while the orator reclined beneath the thick embroidered canopy, trying to commit his speech to memory and occasionally leaning out to retch on the sacred earth. But although he could not see the crowd, he could hear it chanting and roaring nearby, and that was almost worse. When the praetor’s clerk finally came to fetch us, Cicero’s legs were so weak he could barely stand. As we walked into the Forum, the noise was terrific, and the sunlight glinting on the armour and weapons of the soldiers dazzled our eyes.
