Normally the new governors would have set off for their provinces immediately: in fact they should have left months earlier. But on this occasion the senate refused to allow them to leave Rome until the trial of Clodius had been concluded, in case they might be needed to restore public order.
The court duly convened in May, the prosecution being mounted by three young members of the Cornelius Lentulus family – Crus, Marcellinus and Niger, the latter being also the chief priest of Mars. They were great rivals of the Claudian clan, and had a particular grudge against Clodius, who had seduced several of their womenfolk. As his chief defender Clodius relied upon a former consul, Scribonius Curio, who was the father of one of his closest friends. Curio had made his fortune in the East as a soldier under Sulla, but was rather slow-witted, with a poor memory. As an orator he was known as 'The Fly-Swatter' because of his habit of throwing his arms around when he spoke. To weigh the evidence was a jury of fifty-six citizens, drawn by lot. They were of all types and conditions, from patrician senators down to such notorious low-life figures as Talna and Spongia. Originally eighty jurors had been empanelled, but the defence and prosecution each had twelve challenges, which they quickly used up, the defence rejecting the respectable and the prosecution the rough. Those who had survived this winnowing sat uneasily together.
A sex scandal will always draw a crowd, but a sex scandal involving the ruling classes is titillating beyond measure. To accommodate the numbers who wished to watch, it was necessary to hold the trial in front of the Temple of Castor. A special section of seats was set aside for the senate, and that was where Cicero took his place on the opening day, on the bench next to Hortensius. Caesar's ex-wife had prudently withdrawn from Rome to avoid giving evidence, but the chief priest's mother, Aurelia, and his sister, Julia, both came forward to act as witnesses, and identified Clodius as the man who had invaded the sacred rites. Aurelia made an especially strong impression, as she pointed her talon-like finger at the accused, sitting no more than ten feet from her, and insisted in her hard voice that the Good Goddess must be placated by his exile or disaster would descend on Rome. That was the first day.
On the second, Caesar followed her on to the witness stand, and I was struck again by the similarities between mother and son – tough and sinewy, and confident beyond mere arrogance, to a point where all men, aristocrat or plebeian, were deemed equally beneath them in their gaze. (This, I think, was why he was always so popular with the people: he was far too superior to be a snob.) Under cross-examination he responded that he could not say what had happened that night, as he had not been present. He added, very coldly, that he bore no particular ill will towards Clodius – in whose direction, however, he did not once look – because he had no idea whether he was guilty or not; clearly, he loathed him. As to his divorce, he could only repeat the answer he had given Cicero in the senate: he had set Pompeia aside not necessarily because she was guilty but because, as the chief priest's wife, she could not be tainted by suspicion. As everyone in Rome knew of Caesar's own reputation, not least his conquest of Pompey's wife, this fine piece of casuistry provoked long and mocking laughter, which he had to endure behind his habitual mask of supreme indifference.
He finished giving evidence and stepped down from the tribunal, coincidentally at exactly the same moment as Cicero rose to leave the audience. They almost walked into one another, and there was no chance of avoiding at least a brief exchange.
'Well, Caesar, you must be glad your testimony is over.'
'Why do you say that?'
'I presume it must have been awkward for you.'
'I never feel awkward. But yes, you're right, I am delighted to put this absurd affair behind me, because now I can set off for Spain.'
'When are you planning to leave?'
'Tonight.'
'But I thought the senate had forbidden the new governors to leave for their provinces until the trial was over?'
'True, but I haven't a moment to lose. The moneylenders are after me. Apparently I somehow have to make twenty-five million sesterces just to own nothing.' He gave a shrug – a gambler's shrug: I remember he seemed quite unconcerned – and sauntered off towards his official residence. Within the hour, accompanied by a small entourage, he was gone, and it was left to Crassus to stand surety for his debts.
Caesar's evidence was entertaining enough. But the real highlight of the proceedings came on the third day of Clodius's trial with the appearance of Lucullus. It is said that at the entrance to Apollo's shrine at Delphi three things are written: 'Know thyself'; 'Desire nothing too much' and 'Never go to law'. Did ever a man so wilfully ignore these precepts as Lucullus in this affair? Forgetting that he was supposed to be a military hero, he ascended the platform trembling with his desire to ruin Clodius, and very soon began to describe how he had surprised his wife in bed with her brother during a vacation when Clodius had been a guest in his house on the Bay of Naples more than a decade earlier. By then he had been watching them together for many weeks, said Lucullus – oh yes, the way they touched one another, and whispered when they thought his back was turned: they took him for a fool – and he had ordered his wife's maids to bring her sheets to him each morning for his inspection and report to him everything he saw. These female slaves, six in all, were summoned into court, and as they filed in, clearly nervous and with their eyes lowered, I saw among them my beloved Agathe, whose image had rarely left my mind in the two years since we were together.
They stood meekly as their depositions were produced, and I willed her to look up and glance in my direction. I waved. I even whistled. The people standing around me must have thought I had gone mad. Finally I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled her name. She did raise her eyes at that, but there were so many thousands of spectators crammed into the forum, and the noise was so intense, and the glaring sunshine so bright, there can have been little chance of her seeing me. I tried to struggle forward through the packed crowd, but the people in front of me had queued for hours for their places, and they refused to let me pass. In an agony I heard Clodius's counsel announce that they did not wish to challenge these witnesses, as their testimony was not relevant to the case, and the maids were ordered to leave the platform. I watched Agathe turn with the others and descend out of sight.
Lucullus resumed giving evidence and I felt a great hatred well up in me at the sight of this decaying plutocrat who unthinkingly possessed a treasure for which, at that moment, I would have given my life. I was so preoccupied that I briefly lost track of what he was saying, and it was only when I realised that the crowd had started to gasp and laugh with delight that I took notice of his evidence. He was describing how he had concealed himself in his wife's bedchamber and observed her and her brother in the act of fornication: 'dog on bitch', as he put it. Nor, continued Lucullus, ignoring the noise of the crowd, did Clodius confine his base appetites to one sister, but boasted of his conquests of the other two. Bearing in mind that Clodia's husband Celer had just returned from Nearer Gaul to stand for the consulship, this allegation caused a particular sensation. Clodius sat through it all smiling broadly at his former brother-in-law, clearly aware that whatever damage Lucullus imagined he was doing to him, he was actually inflicting far more harm on his own reputation. That was the third day, and at the end of it the prosecution rested its case. I lingered after the court had been adjourned in the hope of seeing Agathe again, but she had been taken away.