University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
THE CONSULAR COMITIA.

Coriolanus.

The morning had at length arrived, big with the fate of
Rome. The morning of the Consular elections.

The sun shone broad and bright over the gorgeous city,
and the wide green expanse of the field of Mars, whereon,
from an hour before the first peep of dawn, the mighty
multitude of Roman citizens had stood assembled.

All the formalities had been performed successfully. The
Consul Cicero, who had gone forth beyond the walls to
take the auspices, accompanied by an augur, had declared
the auguries favorable.

The separate enclosures, with the bridges, as they were
termed, across which the centuries must pass to give their
votes, had been erected; the distributors of the ballots,
and the guardians of the ballot-boxes, had been appointed.

And now, as the sun rushed up with his crown of living
glory into the cloudless arch of heaven, the brazen trumpets
of the centuries pealed long and loud, calling the civic
army to its ranks, in order to commence their voting.

That was the awful moment; and scarce a breast was
there, but beat high with hope or fear, or dark and vague
anticipation.

The Consul and the friends of order were, perhaps,
calmer and more confident, than any others of that mighty
concourse; for they were satisfied with their preparations;

they were firm in the support of the patrician houses, and
in the unanimity of the Roman knights conciliated by Cicero.

Scarcely less confident were the conspirators; for with
so much secrecy had the arrangements of the Consul been
made, that although Catiline knew himself suspected, knew
that his motives were perspicuous, and his measures in
some sort anticipated, he yet believed that the time was
propitious.

He hoped, and believed as fully as he hoped, that Cicero
and his party, content with the triumph they had obtained
in the Senate, and with the adjudication by that
body of dictatorial power to the consuls, were now deceived
into the idea that the danger was already over.

Still, his fierce heart throbbed violently; and there was
a feeling of hot agonizing doubt blent with the truculent
hope, the savage ambition, the strong thirst of blood, which
goaded him almost to madness.

From an early hour he had stood surrounded by his
friends, the leaders of that awful faction, hard by the portico
of the diribitorium, or pay-office, marking with a keen
eye every group that entered the field of Mars, and addressing
those, whom he knew friendly to his measures,
with many a fiery word of greeting and encouragement.

Cassius and Lentulus, a little way behind him, leaned
against the columns of the gateway, with more than a thousand
of the clients of their houses lounging about in groups,
seemingly inattentive, but really alive to every word or
glance of their leaders.

These men were all armed secretly with breast plates,
and the puissant Roman sword, beneath their peaceful togas.

These men, well-trained in the wars of Sylla, hardy and
brave, and acting in a body, were destined to commence
the work of slaughter, by slaying the Great Consul, so
soon as he should open the comitia.

Cethegus had departed, already, to join his gladiators,
who, to the number of fifteen hundred, were gathered beyond
the Janiculum, ready to act upon the guard, and to
beat down the standard which waved there, the signal of
election.

Statilius, Gabinius, and Cæparius, were ready with their

armed households and insurgent slaves, prepared at a moment's
notice to throw open the prison doors, and fire the
city in twelve places.

Fearless, unanimous, armed, and athirst for blood, the
foes of the republic stood, and marked with greedy eyes
and visages inflamed and fiery, their victims sweep through
the gates, arrayed in their peaceful robes, unarmed, as it
would seem, and unsuspecting.

Not a guard was to be seen anywhere; not a symptom
of suspicion; much less of preparation. The wonted cohort
only was gathered about the standard on the bridge
gate of the Janiculum; but even these bore neither shields,
nor javelins; and sat or lounged about, unconcerned, and
evidently off their guard.

But the keen eye of Catiline, could mark the band of
grey-tunicked Gladiators, mustered, and ready to assume
the offensive at a moment's notice, though now they were
sauntering about, or sitting down or lying in the shade, or
chatting with the country girls and rustic slaves, who covered
the sloping hill-sides of the Janiculum, commanding a
full view of the Campus Martius.

“The Fools!” muttered Catiline. “The miserable,
God-deserted idiots! Does the man of Arpinum deem
me then so weak, to be disarmed by an edict, quelled by a
paltry proclamation?”

Then, as the stout smith, Caius Crispus, passed by him,
with a gang of workmen, and a rabble of the lowest citizens,

“Ha!” he exclaimed, “hail, Crispus—hail, brave hearts!
—all things look well for us to-day—well for the people!
Your voices, friends; I must have your voices!”

“You shall—Catiline!” replied the smith—“and our
hands also!” he added, with a significant smile and a dark
glance.

“Catiline! Catiline—all friends of the good people, all
foes of the proud patricians, give noble Catiline your voices!”

“Catiline! Catiline for the persecuted people!” and,
with a wild and stirring shout, the mob passed inward
through the gate, leaving the smith behind, however; who
stopped as if to speak with one of the Cornelian clients,
but in reality to wait further orders.

“When shall we march”—he asked, after a moment or
two, stealthily approaching the chief conspirator. “Before
they have called the prerogative century to vote, or when
the knights are in the bridges?”

“When the standard goes down, fool!” replied Catiline,
harshly. “Do not you know your work?”

At this moment, a party of young and dissipated nobles
came swaggering along the road, with their ungirded tunics
flowing down to their heels, their long sleeves fringed
with purple falling as far as to their wrists, and their curled
ringlets floating on their shoulders. Among them, with a
bloodshot eye, a pale and haggard face, and a strange terrible
expression, half-sullen, half-ashamed, on all his features,
as if he fancied that his last night's disgrace was known to
all men, strode Aulus Fulvius, the son of that stern senator.

“Your voices! noblemen, your voices!” cried Catiline,
laughing with feigned gayety—“Do but your work to-day,
and to-night”—

“Wine and fair women!” shouted one; but Aulus smiled
savagely, and darkly, and answered in one word “Revenge!”

Next behind them, came Bassus, the veteran father of
the dead eagle-bearer; he who had told so sad a tale of
patrician cruelty to Fulvius Flaccus, in the forge.

“Why, Bassus, my brave veteran, give me your hand,”
cried the conspirator, making a forward step to meet him.
“For whom vote you to-day, for Murœna and Silanus?
Ha?”

“For Catiline and justice!” answered the old man, “justice
on him who wronged the Eagle-bearer's child! who
sits in the senate even yet, defiled with her pure blood!—
the infamous Cornelius!”

Another man had paused to listen to these words, and he
now interposed, speaking to Bassus,

“Verily Catiline is like to do thee justice, my poor Bassus,
on a member of the Cornelian house! Is't Lentulus, I
prithee, or Cethegus, on whom thou would'st have justice?”

But the old man replied angrily, “The people's friend
shall give the people justice! who ever knew a noble pity
or right a poor man?”

“Ask Aulus Fulvius”—replied the other, with a sarcastic

tone, and a strange smile lighting up his features. “Besides,
is not Catiline a noble?”

At the word Aulus Fulvius leaped on him like a tiger,
with his face crimsoning, and his heart almost bursting with
fury.

He could not speak for rage, but he seized the man who
had uttered those mysterious words by the throat, and brandished
a long poniard, extricated in a second's space from
the loose sleeve of his tunic, furiously in the air.

As the bright blade flashed in the sunlight, there was a
forward rush among the conspirators, who, anxious to
avert any casual affray, that might have created a disturbance,
would have checked the blow.

But their aid would have come too late, had not the man
thus suddenly assaulted, by an extraordinary exertion of
strength, vigor, and agility, wrenched the dagger from
Aulus' hand, and, tripping him at the same moment with
his foot, hurled him upon his back in the dust, which
surged up in a great cloud, covering his perfumed hair and
snow-white toga, with its filthy and fætid particles.

“Ha! ha!” he cried with a loud ringing laugh, as he
tossed the weapon high into the sunny air, that all around
might see it—“Here is one of your noble people's friends!
—Do they wear daggers all, for the people's throats? Do
they wave torches all, against the people's workshops?”

The matter seemed to be growing serious, and while two
or three of the conspirators seized Aulus, and compelled
him with gentle violence to desist from farther tumult, Cæ
parius whispered into the ear of Catiline, “This knave
knows far too much. Were it not best three or four of our
friend Crispus' men should knock him on the head?”

“No! no!” cried Catiline—“By Hades! no! It is too
late, I tell you. The whole thing will be settled within
half an hour. There goes the second trumpet.”

And as he spoke, the shrill blast of the brazen instruments
rose piercingly and almost painfully upon the ear;
and the people might be seen collecting themselves rapidly
into the centuries of their tribes, in order to give their
votes in their places, as ascertained by lot.

“And the third”—exclaimed Cassius, joyfully—“Will
give the signal for election!” Catiline interrupted him, as if
fearful that he would say something that should commit the

party. “But see,” he added, pointing with his hand across
the wide plain toward a little knoll, on which there stood a
group of noble-looking men, surrounded by a multitude of
knights and patricians, “See yonder, how thickly the laticlavian
tunics muster, and the crimson-edged togas of the
nobles—all the knights are there too, methinks. And look!
look the consuls of the year! and my competitors! Come,
my friends, come; we must toward the consul. He is
about to open the comitia.”

“Catiline! Catiline! the people's friend!” again shouted
Caius Crispus; and Bassus took the word, and repeated
it in the shrill quavering accents of old age—“All those
who love the people vote for the people's friend—vote for
the noble Catiline!”

And at once thousands of voices took the cry, “Catiline!
Catiline! Hail, Catiline, that shall be Consul!”

And, in the midst of these triumphant cries, hardened
and proud of heart, and confident of the success of his
blood-thirsty schemes, he hurried forward, accompanied by
Lentulus and his armed satellites, panting already with
anticipated joy, and athirst for slaughter.

But, as he swept along, followed by the faction, a great
body of citizens of the lower orders, decent substantial
men, came crowding toward the Campus, and paused to
inquire the cause of the tumult, which had left its visible
effects in the flushed visages and knotted brows of many
present.

Two or three voices began to relate what had passed;
but the smith Crispus, who had lingered with one or two
of his ruffians, intent to murder the man who had crossed
his chief, so soon as the signal should be given, rudely
broke in, and interrupted them with the old cry, “The
people's friend! All ye who love the people, vote for the
people's friend, vote for the noble Catiline!”

“Had mighty Marius been alive, Marius of Arpinum, or
the great Gracchi, they had cried, `Vote rather for the man
of the people!—vote for Cicero of Arpinum!' ”

“Tush, what knows he of Marius?” replied the smith.

“What knows he of the great Gracchi?” echoed one of
his followers.

“Whether should best know Marius, they who fought
by his side, or they who slew his friends? Who should

best know the great Gracchi if not Fulvius, the grandson
of that Fulvius Flaccus, who died with them, in the forum,
by the hands of Saturninus?”

“Vote for Catiline! vote for Catiline! friends of the
people!” shouted the smith again, reëchoed by all his savage
and vociferous gang, seeking to drown the voice of
the true man of the people.

“Aye” exclaimed Fulvius, ironically, springing upon
a stone horse-block, thence to address the people, who
shouted “Flaccus! Flaccus!” on all sides. “Live Fulvius
Flaccus! Speak to us, noble Fulvius!”

“Aye!” he exclaimed, “friends of the people, followers
of Marius, vote, if ye be wise men, for the murderer of
his kinsman—for Catiline, who slew Marius Gratidianus!”

“No! no! we will none of them! no Catiline! no follower
of Sylla? To your tribes, men of Rome—to your
tribes!”

The mingled cries waxed wild and terrible; and it was
clear that the popular party was broken, by the bold words
of the speaker, into two bodies, if ever it had been united.
But little cared the conspirators for that, since they had
counted, not upon winning by a majority of tribes, but by
a civic massacre.

And now—even as that roar was the loudest, while
Flaccus in vain strove to gain a hearing, for the third time
the brazen trumpets of the centuries awoke their stirring
symphonies, announcing that the hour had arrived for the
tribes to commence their voting.

Those who were in the secret looked eagerly over the
field. The hour had come—the leader was at their head—
they waited but the signal!

That signal, named by Catiline, in the house of Læca,
—the blood of Cicero!

They saw a mass of men, pressing on like a mighty
wedge through the dense multitude; parting the waves of
the living ocean as a stout galley parts the billows; struggling
on steadily toward the knoll, whereon, amid the magnates
of the land, consulars, senators, and knights, covering
it with the pomp of white and crimson gowns, gemmed
only by the flashing axe-heads of the lictors, stood the
great Consul.

They saw the gladiators forming themselves into a separate

band, on the slopes of the Janiculum, with a senator's
robe distinct among the dark gray tunics.

Catiline and his clients were not a hundred paces distant
from Cicero, and the assembled nobles. They had
halted! Their hands were busy in the bosom of their
gowns, griping the hilts of their assassin's tools!

Cethegus and his gladiators were not a hundred paces
distant from the bridge-gate of the Janiculum, and the cohort's
bannered eagle.

They, too, had halted! they, too, were forming in battle
order—they too were mustering their breath for the dread
onset—they too were handling their war weapons!

Almost had Caius Crispus, in his mad triumph, shouted
victory.

One moment, and Rome had been the prize for the winner
in the gladiators' battle.

And the notes of the brazen trumpets had not yet died
away, among the echoing hills.

They had not died away, before they were taken up and
repeated, east, west, and north and south, by shriller, more
pervading clangors.

It burst over the heads of the astonished people like heaven's
thunder, the wild prolonged war-flourish of the legions.
From the Tarpeian rock, and the guarded Capitol;
from the rampired Janiculum; from the fortress, beyond
the Island bridge; from the towered steeps of the Quirinal,
broke simultaneously the well known Roman war
note!

Upsprang, along the turreted wall of the Janiculum,
with crested casques, and burnished brazen corslets, and
the tremendous javelins of the cohorts, a long line of Metellus'
legionaries.

Upsprang on the heights of the Capitol, and on each
point of vantage, an answering band of warriors, full armed.

And, last not least, as that warlike din smote the sky,
Cicero, on whom every eye was riveted of that vast concourse,
flung back his toga, and stood forth conspicuous,
armed with a mighty breastplate, and girded with the
sword that won him, at an after day, among the mountains
of Cilicia, the high style of Imperator.

A mighty shout burst from the faithful ranks of the

knights; and, starting from their scabbards, five thousand
sword-blades flashed in a trusty ring around the savior of
his country.

“Catiline would have murdered Him!” shouted the
voice of Fulvius Flaccus—“Catiline would have burned
your workshops! Catiline would have made himself Dictator,
King! Vote, men of Rome, vote, friends of the people!
vote now, I say, for Catiline!”

Anticipated, frustrated, outwitted, — the conspirators
glared on each other hopeless.

Against forces so combined, what chance of success?

Still, although ruined in his hopes, Catiline bore up
bravely, and with an insolence of hardihood that in a good
cause had been heroism.

Affecting to laugh at the precautions, and sneer at the
pusillanimous mind that had suggested them, he defied
proof, defied suspicion.

There was no overt act—no proof! and Cicero, satisfied
with his triumph—for alarmed beyond measure, and astonished,
all ranks and classes vied with each other in voting
for Silanus and Muræna—took no step to arrest or convict
the ringleaders.

It was a moral, not a physical victory, at which he had
aimed so nobly.

And nobly had he won it.

The views of the conspiracy frustrated; the hearts of its
leaders chilled and thunder-stricken; the loyalty and virtue
of all classes aroused; the eyes of the Roman people
opened to knowledge of their friends; two wise and noble
consuls chosen, by who were on the point of casting their
votes for a murderer and traitor; the city saved from conflagration;
the commonwealth preserved, in all its majesty;
these were the trophies of the Consular Comitia.