Crassus nodded gravely to the presiding magistrate and the judges and sat. On Cicero's face I saw the quiver of a smirk, barely repressed. It was a look I knew well; the great orator was feeling smug about some-thing. Could it be that he was secretly pleased to have the charge of the attempted poisoning of Clodia included among the rest? What conjurer's trick was he planning this time?
Formalities concluded, the trial could begin. The three prosecutors would speak first, then Caelius and his advocates would respond. After the orations, witnesses for both sides would deliver their statements.
Given the number of speakers and the numerous charges to be discussed the trial would surely last for more than one day.
A Roman trial is only ostensibly about establishing guilt or inno-cence. At Rome, all trials are to some extent political, and a trial for political violence is overtly so. Roman judges are not merely citizens seeking the truth about a specific act; they are a committee of the state and their purpose is to make a political as well as a moral judgment. A trial typically deals with the whole life of the accused-his reputation family connections, political affiliations, sexual practices, virtues, vices. Judgment is rendered not merely on whether the accused did or did not commit a specific crime, but on the entire character of the accused, and for the good of the body politic as a whole. Cicero himself put it plainly at a trial held the year before his own exile: "When rendering their verdict, judges must consider the good of the community and the needs of the state."
Moreover, everyone knows that judges are more influenced by the orations of the advocates than by the testimony of the witnesses who follow. "Arguments count for more than witnesses," as Cicero has often said. The deductions a good orator draws from the internal evidence of a case (asserting, "Because of this, it stands to reason that…") are more persuasive than the bald statements of any given witness, no matter that the witness testifies under oath (or in the case of slaves, under torture).
Atratinus rose to deliver the first speech. His clear young voice carried exceedingly well, and his oratorical delivery, if not polished to a dazzling shine, had the ring of sincerity.
Atratinus dwelled exclusively on Caelius's character-his well-known dissipation, his extravagance, the disreputable haunts he was known to frequent. Atratinus's righteous indignation would have sounded forced and false coming from many older advocates, but Atratinus was young and unsullied enough to be credible when he frowned on Caelius's excesses.
Caelius was untrustworthy, said Atratinus. No wise man would turn his back on Caelius, or else Caelius was likely to slander and mock him, as he had slandered and mocked his own mentors behind their backs, chose who were at this very moment closest to him; his notorious lack of respect for these men was sadly evident to everyone else in the court except themselves, apparently. Now that he had finally gotten himself into more trouble than he could handle, the crass opportunist was only too happy to make use of the elders he had betrayed, not only his mentors, but his own father, whom he had abandoned to go live by himself in a Palatine apartment where he could indulge all his vices away from paternal
and make fun of the humble house on the Quirinal Hill from which he had fled, and to which he had now unwillingly returned in his distress. There were more sincere ways to show respect to one's father, Atratinus insisted, pausing with a meaningful smile so that no one would miss the example he himself presented.
Nor would it be wise for any woman to turn her back on Caelius, he said, for the fellow was capable of far worse than mockery and slander- as we would see when the charge of the attempted poisoning of Clodia was dealt with by another speaker.
Atratinus played on these themes of dissipation and disreputable conduct, turning them over and over as a man turns a jewel in his hand, to see the various ways it catches the light. By turns he sought to outrage the judges, to appeal to sentiment, to make them laugh.
Politically, he said, Caelius had flirted with the cause of the depraved revolutionary Catilina. Sexually, he had assaulted the wives of Roman citizens; witnesses would be called to verify these charges. Witnesses would also be called to attest to Caelius's violent nature; there was the case of a senator named Fufius whom Caelius had beaten up at the pontifical elections in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers. And if these indications of Caelius's character were not damning enough, con-sider the way he swaggered and strutted and spat out his speeches when playing the prosecutor at other men's trials, or debating in the Senate. And the appalling color of the stripe on his senatorial toga! Where everyone else's was traditionally somber, almost black, his was a garishly bright, bold purple. At the reminder of this impropriety, I saw quite a few judges nod their gray heads.
Worst of all-because it was this vice which most seriously threat-ened to destroy the republic-was Caelius's extravagance with money. In this Caelius represented the very worst aspect of his generation, which was set so firmly apart from wiser, more senior men such as the judges, as well as from less experienced but more virtuous young men of Atratinus's age, who looked on the spendthrift habits of men like Caelius with dread and dismay. What would become of the Republic if such men were not stopped? They squandered fortunes on licentious behavior and spent huge sums on electoral bribery, corrupting everyone and everything they touched. Then, finding themselves bankrupt, as they inevitably must, and stripped by their own debauchery of all moral sense, such men resorted without hesitation to the most fiendish crimes to replenish their coffers. To get his hands on Egyptian gold, Caelius had covered his hands with Egyptian blood. In so doing he had cast a bloody stain on the dignity and honor of the Roman state.
"If ever there was a case which proved the sad necessity for courts such as this one, this is that case. If ever there was a man who full deserved the condemnation of this court, Marcus Caelius is that man." So Atratinus concluded.
I turned to Bethesda and asked what she thought. "Rather too young for my taste," she said. "But a pleasant voice."
The freedman Publius Clodius spoke next. His speech dealt with the first three charges against Caelius. Where Atratinus had shown a kind of prim distaste at having to pollute himself with cataloguing Cae-lius's crimes, Clodius attacked with the relish of a man wielding a red-hot poker. He did not hesitate to make crude jabs and thrusts, but he also pulled back from time to time, confident in his weapon's power to inflict damage even from a distance. Paroxysms of disgust were punctuated with abrupt full stops, during which, standing stock-still and emotionless, Clodius would deliver some of his most acid comments, eliciting gasps and laughter from the crowd. It was a technically dazzling speech.
The virtues or vices of Caelius's character might ultimately be matters of opinion, he conceded, especially in a time when so many Romans had become sadly confused about such things, but the outrages committed against the Alexandrian envoys were simple matters of fact. A hundred of the most respected men in Egypt had come to Rome to petition the Senate. As ambassadors, they carried the protection of the gods and the state. Yet they had been met with unremitting violence, intimidation, fire and ultimately murder. Word of this scandal had spread from the Pillars of Hercules to the borders of Parthia, undermining Rome's prestige with her subjects and allies and inflaming her already precarious relations with the volatile kingdom of Egypt.