Catilina's Riddle by Steven Saylor Read Free Book Online

Fates sift out the details of our lives to unseen ends and, if we're fortunate, to happy coincidence. Just when I felt that I could no longer stand living in the city another year, the dream of a retreat from the city became real. The election campaign last summer was the last straw. Consular campaigns as a rule are crude, vicious affairs, but an uglier campaign I've never witnessed.
    "Candidates all run against each other," I explained, "and the two who garner the most votes become joint consuls for the year. If the two consuls are of the same political persuasion, they can reinforce one another and have a very effective year in office. If they're of different stripes, the Senate quickly learns which is the more dominant of the two and which the more easily led. In some years rivals are elected, and
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    the stalemate as they try to outdo one another can be spectacular—
    literally. The year you came to live with me, Crassus and Pompey shared the consulship, and it was one feast after another, festival upon festival, from their inauguration in Januarius up to their valedictory addresses in December. The citizens grew fat and saw some fine chariot races that year!" "Can any senator run for the consulship?" asked Meto.
    "No. There is a prescribed sequence of offices that must be held first. The praetorships, the quaestorships, and so on, all last a year and have their specific functions. A politician goes up the ladder rung by rung, year by year. An electoral defeat means he sits out a whole year, and men in a hurry quickly grow bitter."
    "But what keeps a man from holding the same office over and over?"
    "No man may hold the same office two years in a row—otherwise the same tiny handful of the most powerful men, like Pompey and Crassus, would be consul over and over. Besides, the consulship itself is yet another stepping-stone. The whole point of attaining the consulship is that it entitles a man to a year as governor of a foreign province. A Roman governor can become fabulously rich by bleeding the locals white with taxes. The whole ugly enterprise is fueled by endless corruption and greed."
    "And who votes?"
    "Every citizen but me, I suppose, since I gave it up years ago.
    Nothing will ever be changed in Rome by voting, because not all votes are equal."
    "What do you mean?"
    I shook my head. Having been born a slave, Meto had no grounding from infancy in the inherited privileges of citizenship; having been raised in my household, his subsequent education in such technicalities had been sorely neglected, due to my own growing apathy. "The votes of a poor man count less than those of a rich one," I said.
    "But how?"
    "On election day the citizens gather on the Campus Martius, between the old city walls and the River Tiber. Eligible voters are divided into what are called centuries. But the centuries have nothing to do with the number of voters in them. One century might have a hundred men in it and another might have a thousand. The rich are allotted more centuries than the poor, even though there are fewer rich men than poor ones. Thus, when a rich man votes, his vote counts much more than a poor man's vote.
    "Even so, the poor man's vote is often needed, since the candidates all come from the rich or high-born classes and split those centuries among themselves. So common citizens are not neglected; they are wooed, seduced, suborned, and intimidated in all sorts of legal and illegal
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    ways, from promises of favoritism, to outright bribery, to gangs set loose in the streets to beat up a rival's supporters. During the campaign the candidates tell pretty lies about themselves and hurl hideous accusations at their rivals, while their supporters cover the city with slanderous graffiti."
    " 'Lucius Roscius Otho kisses the buttocks of the brothel keepers!' "
    quoted Meto, laughing.
    "Yes, one of the more memorable slogans from last year," I agreed glumly. "Yet Otho was elected praetor nonetheless!"
    "But what was so