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EDIT: First and foremost, I should acknowledge the debt this whole thing owes to Robert Harris's historical fiction about Cicero, the books Imperium and Lustrum, and also Tom Holland's history of the Roman Republic, Rubicon.

PROLOGUE


"High on a throne of royal state...where the gorgeous East with richest hand showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold..."
-John Milton, Paradise Lost

"Only a few prefer liberty - the majority seek nothing more than fair masters."
-Sallust, Histories

Rome is mistress of the Mediterranean. Carthage is long defeated, and no power since then has been able to threaten the existence of the Republic. Indeed, none has even been able to slow the inexorable advance of its influence eastward, as it bullies potentates and cows monarchs from Greece to Egypt and beyond. Mithridates VI of Pontus and Tigranes II of Armenia, fearsome conquerors in their own right, have been cowed by years of war against Rome, a war which will come to twist Roman history in new and unthinkable directions. However, while until 66 BCE the war had been overseen by the patrician general L. Licinius Lucullus, the Eastern command passed to Pompey the Great following the agitation of his populist partisans. Only in the year 63 BCE does Lucullus finally succeed in securing permission to enter the city of Rome in a triumphal procession, displaying the immense wealth he acquired on campaign. Meanwhile, Pompey, having inherited a region largely already beaten into submission by Lucullus, swallows nation after nation in the East with little effort, toppling kings and founding cities. Mithridates himself commits suicide this year after losing his last supporters.

Back in Rome, the consuls for the year are the novus homo and prominent orator M. Tullius Cicero and the alcoholic patrician C. Antonius Hybrida. Cicero spends most of his year in office wrangling with the plots of his rival, the murderous and bankrupt L. Sergius Catilina (complicated by concerns such as the rise of the populist C. Julius Caesar, who against all odds secured election as Rome’s chief priest for life this year, and the intrigues of Rome’s foremost moneylender, the immensely rich M. Licinius Crassus). In the last months of the year, Cicero finally manages to reveal Catilina’s plot to storm Rome, murder him and the senators, and seize control of the city, forcing him to flee to the camp of his ragtag secret army in Etruria. Several of Catilina’s supporters in Rome are uncovered and brought before the Senate: despite an eloquent speech by Caesar in favor of a sentence of exile, the stoic M. Porcius Cato persuades his colleagues to have the conspirators executed, although Cicero is nonetheless seen as the architect of this policy. Notably, Caesar is nearly killed in the debate, being spared when Cicero refuses to give the order to do so.

Rome has come to a turning point. Catilina has been defanged, albeit just barely, but the threat of chaos has given Pompey, having become weary of the Eastern world, a golden opportunity to return to the city, and no one can say how the return of the generalissimo might change the balance of power... (NB: a little artistic license there, since it seems doubtful Pompey could have heard of Catilina’s conspiracy being revealed before he started the trip home)



62 BCE. Consuls: Silanus and Murena



In the first days of January, Catilina’s army of brigands and ruffians is defeated after a fierce battle. Nominally, last year’s consul Hybrida is in command of the loyalist army, but he pleads sickness on the day of the battle and subordinates take over.

In the East, news of Mithridates’s death has brought an end to the war. Pompey, having subjugated everything from Pontus to Petra, now turns back west, visiting numerous cities along the way. Nearing Italy, he divorces his wife Mucia.

The Good Goddess incident. The upper-class women of Rome gather at the house of Caesar (as pontifex maximus, his wife Pompeia hosts the ceremony, since both consuls are seriously ill) to celebrate the rites of the Good Goddess, from which men are completely excluded. However, during the ceremony, the infamous aristocrat P. Clodius Pulcher is discovered with Pompeia herself, although he manages to flee. Caesar divorces Pompeia, famously refusing to comment on what may or may not have happened, later saying only that the wife of Caesar must be above suspicion.



61 BCE. Consuls: Messalla and Piso



Pompey returns to Rome, having disbanded his army and sent his troops back to their homes across Italy after reaching the port of Brundisium. The senators (and people) are relieved that he has not maintained his army, with which he could have demanded supreme power at swordpoint, as his old commander Sulla had done a generation prior. Remaining outside the city so as not to forfeit his right of command, he seeks both a triumph and the postponement of the consular elections, so that he might seek the consulship after celebrating his triumph.

Clodius is put on trial for the capital crime of sexual immorality. Lucullus, who was once married to his sister Clodia, uses this opportunity to further an old grudge: Clodius had organized a mutiny against him while he was in the East, besides (allegedly) committing incest with Clodia, including while she was married to Lucullus. The evidence is overwhelming; Clodius attempts to claim that he was absent from Rome on the night in question, but Cicero reluctantly testifies against this claim. However, Clodius is acquitted nonetheless, in a surprise decision that gratifies the people and horrifies the aristocracy. Lavish bribes (in money and sexual favors) are rumored to have been paid, not only by Clodius and his sister but also by Crassus. Following his acquittal, Clodius moves to Sicily to serve as a junior magistrate, laying low for the time being.

Cato, displaying his tendency to uphold his principles at all costs, leads the opposition to Pompey’s request for the postponement of the elections. This forces Pompey to choose between a triumph and the consulate; he chooses the former. In the meantime he spends lavish bribes in an effort to buy the consulship for his lieutenant Afranius, and proposes to Cato that he and his son each marry one of Cato’s nieces, thus making a formidable alliance. However, Cato angrily declares that he refuses to be bribed with marriage alliances, over the objections of his household. Afranius is duly elected consul for the following year. The other consul is Q. Metellus Celer, head of the Metelli clan, the most influential aristocratic family in Rome. He has an impressive military record and is also the husband of Clodia.

In late September, the moment for Pompey’s triumph, the third of his career, comes: it is, by far, the most lavish event ever witnessed in Rome, occupying two days as opposed to the traditional one (with still more elements having to be omitted rather than add a third day). The names of the fifteen nations he had conquered are carried on placards, as well as those of the hundreds of cities and strongholds he had captured, and the fact that his conquests had increased the annual revenue of the state by more than 150%. His worst-paid soldier received fifteen hundred drachmas (a quarter of a talent, worth about four years’ worth of labor), and he deposited twenty thousand talents into the treasury. (NB: to put this in context, Crassus, up till then the richest man in Rome, was worth 200 million sesterces, and in another era, the rich mercantile state of Athens set aside six thousand talents to fund the entire generation-long Peloponnesian War. Twenty thousand talents equates to 120 million drachmas/105 million denarii, or 420 million sesterces, more than twice the size of Crassus’s entire estate. Pompey probably spent about as much again on the donative to his soldiers; an army of 35,000 people would have cost him 8,750 talents even if they were all paid at the lowest rate, and of course the officers undoubtedly received many times that amount). Needless to say, Pompey is now the most powerful man in Rome.

Caesar becomes governor of Further Spain, having served as a praetor the previous year. He thus eludes his creditors, to whom he owes massive sums, being known for profligate spending even before the flood of bribes he used to get himself elected as pontifex maximus. As governor, he wages war against the tribes of Spain, subjugating new areas and imposing taxes on the inhabitants.

The Senate continues to debate the issue of Pompey’s conquests in the East. His land settlements were done without any reference to the lawful authorities back in Rome, and the measure he desires, namely a blanket approval of all his actions undertaken there, is fiercely opposed by Cato, Lucullus, and many other senators. Cicero, however, warns that to continue to deny Pompey approval will estrange him from the optimates, thus prompting him to turn to more menacing allies such as Caesar or perhaps Clodius. Pompey begins using the presence of his soldiers to pressure the Senate further.



60 BCE. Consuls: Afranius and Metellus Celer



Clodius returns to Rome from Sicily and begins moving to be adopted as a plebeian; a tribune argues for him to that effect, and Metellus Celer places the motion before the Senate out of respect for form despite his dislike of his wayward brother-in-law. However, the issue is delayed by concern about Pompey.

Pompey, impatient at the Senate’s continued deliberation and knowing that his splendid triumph has raised his popularity with the people to new heights, begins agitating forcefully for the approval of his settlements in the East. Tribunes bribed by him rally the people, denouncing the Senate’s stall tactics as an assault on Pompey’s honor, and by extension, the people as a whole, since Pompey has been known as a populist since restoring the rights of the tribunes a decade earlier. The populist stance is reinforced by the presence of Pompey’s veterans, housed in the city at his expense. Cato continues in his opposition, while Cicero, now fearing Pompey’s retribution if he does not vocally support the measure, begins actively lobbying for it.

The turning point comes when Pompey, in a surprise move, becomes engaged to Caecilia Metella, daughter of Metellus Celer the consul and Clodia. Metellus Celer is also the half-brother of Mucia, Pompey’s previous wife: the sudden divorce turned him against Pompey, despite their former closeness, and this about-face shocks Rome. It is rumored that Clodia pressured her husband into it, allegedly seeking to oblige Pompey to support her brother’s aspiration to become a plebeian. Even Cicero is privately shocked, as Pompey is in his mid-forties and Metella is still pubescent. Nevertheless, Metellus Celer now reluctantly supports Pompey’s settlement, and the backing of Rome’s most powerful patrician clan clinches its passage. (NB: This is the point of divergence. In our timeline, Pompey continues to become estranged from the Senate and eventually allies with Crassus and Caesar.)

Caesar returns to Rome, having concluded his term in Spain and now enjoying the title of Imperator and newfound wealth. Like Pompey a year earlier, he is forced by Cato’s opposition to choose between a triumph and the consulship. It is already known that Pompey seeks the consulship, and the optimates are endorsing M. Calpurnius Bibulus, a fierce rival of Caesar’s, thus his prospects are bleak. Yet with Pompey’s triumph the year before, which Caesar cannot hope to equal, fresh in the minds of the voters, to choose a triumph would be largely a hollow gesture and bring him no lasting gain. Thus Caesar, true to his gambler’s nature, chooses to run for the consulship, counting on his support among the people (and covert support from Crassus) to edge out Bibulus. He succeeds, to the fury of the aristocrats.



59 BCE. Consuls: Pompey and Caesar



At the beginning of the year, Caesar draws Transalpine Gaul as his province for the following year. Pompey draws Africa.

Caesar serves his first month as president of the Senate in February (being the junior consul), and is immediately confronted by Cato’s resolution to filibuster every motion he lays before the Senate. Seeing the opportunity to divide his opponents, he responds by proposing doubling the value of the grain dole to Rome’s urban poor (to 2,500 talents a year); Cato, as tribune, had been the one who had established it, in an effort to placate the plebeians following the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators. Opposing it would thus erode his support among the people (who tended to respect his rare devotion to the constitution). Nonetheless, Cato continued in his policy.

At Pompey’s request, Cicero joined Cato to lead the argument against Caesar’s bill, much as he had against the sweeping land reforms proposed by the tribune Rullus at Caesar’s instigation in 63 BCE. Doing so hurt Cicero’s popularity even more than Cato’s, since the sight of Cicero opposing such a popular measure invited populists (who, it was rumored, were acting on behalf of Cicero’s enemies Caesar and Crassus) to attack Cicero for having executed the conspirators four years prior. However, the bill fails (barely) in the Senate, angering the people.

M. Caelius Rufus, a former student of Cicero’s and now a companion of Clodius’s, prosecutes Antonius Hybrida for corruption and treason during his term as governor of Macedonia following his consulship. Cicero acts as Hybrida’s advocate, yet faces skilled opposition from Rufus. Hybrida’s guilt is unquestioned, and the trial quickly becomes about Rufus’s accusations that Cicero received a share of his extorted profits, that the purchase of Cicero’s mansion on the Palatine represents his abandonment of the common people, and that Cicero acted as a tyrant in executing the conspirators without trial. Cicero defends himself ably, leveling savage invective against Caesar, Crassus, and Clodius in the process, but Hybrida is nonetheless convicted, encouraging the populists further.

Intimidation by mobs on the street, bribery from Crassus, and illegal strongarm tactics by Caesar serve to coerce a number of senators into supporting the measure for Clodius to be adopted as a plebeian, enough to make a slim majority. The measure is thus laid before the Senate by Caesar, and when Cato attempts to filibuster it, Caesar has his lictors drag him from the room. This, however, prompts most of the senators to walk out in solidarity with Cato. Undeterred, Caesar simply polls those who remain, and in his authority as both consul and chief priest quickly arranges for the adoption to be finalized.

Such blatantly unconstitutional action enrages the optimates; however, the instability on the streets is becoming ever more dangerous. Pompey demands that Caesar change his behavior immediately, and for a few months Caesar does so, not going as far as to apologize but nonetheless making overtures towards the optimates and taking every opportunity to flatter Pompey in the Senate.

A few months later, Clodius wins election as a tribune of the plebs. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, a fierce enemy of Caesar’s, is elected consul, along with Bibulus. It is expected that with the optimates in control of both consulships, the next year will be much more peaceful.


* * *


Excerpts from Rufus’s closing speech against Hybrida, In Hybridam:
“I pray you, gentlemen, examine the defendant and his advocate. The former is known throughout the world for his indolence, his drunkenness, his utter abandonment of discipline and fortitude, to say nothing of the debauched lusts that have led him to live openly with a slave, the lowest of the low, as his courtesan! He has drowned his Roman nature in an endless sea of wine, no different than a Gaul might…Yet standing for him is a man who, despite his obscure origin and the bare walls of his atrium, prides himself on his aristocratic friends and pristine manners. Indeed, look there, gentlemen, across the Forum, and you see the manor to which he has retired, bought by the illicit wealth of Hybrida, extorted in the most shameful manner from friends of Rome: in such a way does this Arpinate flee from his common birth and don the mask of nobility. What could cause a man so obsessed with remaining stainless to defend a man so stained with every kind of sin? What could cause a man of consular rank, a man who made his name prosecuting a corrupt governor, to defend a man who, like his old enemy, is distinguished by nothing save his great wealth and his countless offenses? What else, gentlemen, but money?”

“The Father of the Country, he calls himself – and I pray you, gentlemen, mark this well – the father of all the Republic. Are, then, the citizens of Rome, from the downtrodden of Subura to the patricians atop the Palatine, the children of Cicero, subject to his authority and his chastening rod? Do you, O gentlemen of the jury, feel yourselves to be the children of Cicero? May almighty heaven forbid it! But such an insolent claim befits this man, it becomes him well, for the pretension of such authority is a fitting mark for a tyrant. For the very deed by which Cicero claims his lofty title marks him as such a tyrant, of a rare and deadly sort: this man sends Roman citizens to death on a whim without trial, and because of his crime wishes to be known as the father of us all!”


* * *


58 BCE. Consuls: Ahenobarbus and Philippus



Caesar leaves for his province of Transalpine Gaul just before his term as consul expires; as provincial governors are immune to prosecution during their term, he is now secure from prosecution for his illegal actions as consul for another year.

Clodius begins his term in office by placing a set of laws before the Plebeian Council (a right exclusive to tribunes), most prominently the same motion to double the grain dole rejected by the Senate last year, and a bill to restore the immensely popular guilds, known as collegia, which had been disbanded by Sulla. Although it is wholly against the spirit of the constitution to simply ignore the Senate’s opinion, the laws pass with overwhelming support, raising Clodius to new heights of popularity. Privately, Cicero is alarmed: although months of calm pass, persuading many of his allies that Clodius is after other targets, his enemy is now much more powerful and, with Pompey in Africa, Cicero has little to protect him.

North of Italy, the Helvetii tribe (located near modern-day Switzerland) begins a mass migration south. Rumors estimate the force at almost two hundred thousand fighting men. The news provokes a furor back in Rome comparable to that regarding the Cimbri and Teutones generations earlier. Much to the dismay of the optimates, this puts Caesar in an excellent position to win glory if he can succeed in defeating them. Indeed, Caesar hurriedly sets about drafting new legions, using negotiations with the Helvetii to stall until he is prepared.

Clodius oversees the passage of legislation assigning the province of Syria to Ahenobarbus and Macedonia to Philippus for the next year, thus making the consuls obliged to him. Secretly, he negotiates with certain members of the optimates, promising them that if they withdraw their support of Cicero, he will use his clout in the popular assemblies to have Caesar recalled from Gaul (Cicero later writes that this was undoubtedly at Crassus’s instigation, as he wanted a military command badly enough to betray Caesar for a chance at securing it). The plan backfires, and Cicero is confirmed in his suspicions that Clodius is still seeking to destroy him.

Caesar, having raised a force of four legions plus auxiliaries offered by the Aedui tribe, rejects the Helvetian request for safe conduct through his province, gambling on his ability to defeat them in pitched battle (with the advantage that he expects an additional legion from Cisalpine Gaul). In reality, he is outnumbered by no more than two to one, far less than estimates back in Rome would have had it, and although the extra legion does not arrive in time, Caesar inflicts a sharp defeat on the Helvetii, and they sign a treaty binding them to provide the Republic with fighters. The Senate, upon news of his victory, votes him three days of national thanksgiving.

Finally Clodius launches his attack on Cicero, deadly in its simplicity: he puts a law before the Plebeian Council making it a capital crime to shelter or give aid to any who has put Roman citizens to death without trial. It is not a prosecution, which would have catered to Cicero’s skills in the courts; rather, he has no opportunity to speak, and the law is quickly passed. Thousands of equestrians, as well as the optimates, pledge to support him, but as the day when the law takes effect comes nearer, the mob becomes increasingly violent. Philippus offers him a position on his staff as proconsul of Macedonia, but Cicero refuses, not wishing to become beholden to a supporter of Caesar. Instead, Cicero left the city, seeking refuge with allies abroad who were beyond Clodius’s reach.


* * *


So matters stand at the end of 58 BCE, with Pompey away in Africa, Caesar victorious in Gaul, Crassus frustrated in Rome, Clodius more or less in control of the city, and Cicero biding his time. I know this hasn't gone very far after the POD, but I hope it's detailed enough to make up for that. And please excuse me if this is in the wrong place or anything like that. I'm new to this. Anyway, I have a few ideas about where to take it from here, some more long-range than others, but I'm open to suggestions/comments/criticism.
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