Read Catilina's Riddle for Free Online

the new order everything already established will be usurped and thrown down, ground into the dust. The fact that you no longer live in Rome will provide no protection to you or your family. Bury your head in a haystack if you wish, but don't be surprised when someone comes up behind you and cuts it clean off."
    I sat for a long moment in silence, unblinking. At last I managed to shake my head and suck in a breath. "Well done, Marcus Caelius!" I said. "For a moment there, you had me entirely under your spell! Cicero has taught you exceedingly well. Such rhetoric could make any man's hair stand on end!"
    He raised his eyebrows, then his lids grew heavy. "Cicero said you would be unreasonable. I told him he should have sent that slave of his, Tiro. Tiro you know and trust—"
    "Tiro I sincerely like and respect, because he is such a kind and openhearted man, but I would have beaten him back with words at every turn, which is no doubt precisely why Cicero did not send him. No, he did very well to send you as his agent, Marcus Caelius, but he did not count on the depth of my disgust with Roman politics, or the strength of my resolve to steer clear of any involvement with his consulship."
    "Then what I've said so far means nothing to you?"
    "Only that you've mastered the skill of making insanely exaggerated statements as if you sincerely believed them."
    "But every word is true. I exaggerate nothing."
    "Caelius, please! You're a Roman politician in the making. You are not allowed to speak the truth, and you are absolutely required to exaggerate everything."
    He sat back, momentarily rebuffed but regrouping, as I could see from the glimmer in his eyes. He stroked his narrow beard. "Very well, you care nothing for the Republic. But surely you at least retain some vestige of your personal honor as a Roman."
    "You are in my house, Caelius. Do not insult me."
    "Very well, I won't. I will argue with you no longer. I will simply remind you of a favor you owe to Marcus Tullius Cicero, and request on his behalf that you pay back that favor now. Having faith in your honor as a Roman, I know you won't refuse."
    I shifted in my seat uneasily. I glanced over my shoulder, through the doorway into the herb garden, where a wasp was buzzing among the leaves. I sighed, already sensing defeat. "I assume you refer to the case that Cicero argued on my behalf last summer?"
    - 23 -

    "I do. You inherited this estate from the late Lucius Claudius. His family, quite reasonably, contested the will. The Claudii are a very old and distinguished patrician clan, whereas you are a plebeian with no ancestry at all, a dubious career, and a most irregular family. You might very well have lost your case, and with it any claim to this farm where you have so comfortably retired from the city you claim to loathe so much. For that you can thank Cicero, and don't deny it—I was in the court that day and I heard his arguments myself. I have seldom witnessed such eloquence—excuse me, untruths and exaggerations, if you prefer.
    It was you who asked Cicero to speak for you. He might well have declined. He had just finished a grueling political campaign, and as consul-elect he was pressed on all sides with obligations and requests.
    Yet he took time to prepare your case and to present it himself. Afterward, Cicero asked no payment for his service to you; he spoke on your behalf to honor you, acknowledging the many occasions on which you have assisted him since the trial of Sextus Roscius, seventeen years ago. *
    Cicero doesn't forget his friends. Does Gordianus?"
    I looked out at the herb garden, avoiding his gaze. I watched the wasp, envying its freedom. "Oh, Cicero trained you well indeed!" I said under my breath.
    "He did," Caelius acknowledged quietly, with a crooked smile of triumph on his lips.
    "What does Cicero want from me?" I growled.
    "Only a small favor."
    I pursed my lips. "You try my patience, Marcus Caelius."
    He laughed good-naturedly, as if to say: Very