Lustrum

Lustrum, the second installment of Robert Harris's Cicero Trilogy, is set in the final decades of the Roman Republic and narrated by Tiro, the personal secretary and slave of the statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. The novel spans approximately five years, from Cicero's inauguration as consul, Rome's highest annually elected magistrate, in 63 BC through his forced exile in 58 BC. A lustrum is the Latin term for a five-year period, but the word also carries darker associations with sacrifice and debauchery.

Two days before Cicero takes office, the mutilated body of a boy is pulled from the Tiber. His skull has been crushed, his throat cut, his organs removed. A tattoo identifies him as a slave of Antonius Hybrida, Cicero's incoming consular colleague. Cicero orders the body burned in secret and calms the crowd, but the discovery haunts him. Rome is gripped by hunger and anxiety. Pompey the Great is away commanding legions in the East, while Julius Caesar, an ambitious politician, and the plutocrat Marcus Licinius Crassus are secretly backing a populist land bill.

On the eve of the inauguration, patrician senators, members of Rome's hereditary aristocracy, bring alarming news. The elderly senator Gaius Rabirius has been charged with perduellio, an archaic form of treason carrying the death penalty, for killing the tribune Saturninus, an elected representative of the people, thirty-six years earlier. Both appointed judges are Caesars, making conviction a foregone conclusion. Cicero visits Caesar and learns the prosecution serves as a warning that killing the people's representatives will bring vengeance. Caesar offers a deal: If Cicero supports the land bill, Rabirius will be spared. After consulting his closest allies, Cicero is persuaded that agreeing could buy time, but he ultimately charts his own course.

In his inaugural address, Cicero dismantles the land bill clause by clause and makes a dramatic sacrifice: He renounces his allotted province of Macedonia, forfeiting its enormous income, to place the republic above personal gain. This allows him to transfer Macedonia to Hybrida, who switches sides in exchange. During a journey together, Hybrida drunkenly reveals the truth about the murdered boy. Lucius Sergius Catilina, a dangerous political rival, killed the boy as a human sacrifice and made those present swear a blood oath to murder Cicero.

The Rabirius trial goes to a mass assembly on the Field of Mars, the open plain where citizens vote. Cicero delivers a powerful defense, but the vote turns against him. He sends Metellus Celer, a senior magistrate, to the Janiculum hill to haul down the red flag, the signal that an enemy threatens Rome, which automatically suspends the assembly. Rabirius is saved. Caesar then wins election as pontifex maximus, chief priest of the Roman state religion, spending lavishly on bribery. Tiro reflects that this victory, bought with borrowed money, is "the greatest bargain in history: it would buy him the world" (83).

Cicero gains intelligence through his wife Terentia's network: A noblewoman who is the mistress of the conspirator Curius warns of a plot against Cicero's life. Cicero recruits her as a spy. As the consular elections approach, he arranges a military triumph for the general Lucullus so that veterans flood the city and vote for his preferred candidate, Licinius Murena. Catilina loses but grows more threatening. Cicero's informant is found murdered in the same ritualistic manner as the slave boy, and Cicero recruits Curius, her lover, as a replacement by promising him immunity.

Late one night, Crassus arrives bearing anonymous letters warning of imminent bloodshed. The senate passes the senatus consultum ultimum, the Final Act, granting the consuls emergency powers. Only much later does Tiro learn that Cicero himself dictated these letters, engineering Crassus's visit to give the plutocrat a face-saving reason to abandon Catilina. Catilina leaves Rome while armed bands gather in Etruria.

Cicero sets a trap. Through the senator Sanga, he arranges for Gallic ambassadors to approach the conspirators and offer a military alliance. The plotters provide sealed letters. Praetors Flaccus and Pomptinus, senior magistrates, ambush the party at the Mulvian Bridge and recover the evidence. The five principal conspirators still in Rome, including the senior magistrate Lentulus Sura, are summoned to Cicero's house, where they identify their seals. The letters are then opened before the full senate, revealing offers of alliance with foreign enemies and encouragement of a slave uprising.

The senate debates the prisoners' fate. Caesar argues for life imprisonment, warning that execution without trial will set a dangerous precedent. His speech shifts momentum away from the death penalty until Marcus Porcius Cato, a rigid stoic senator, rises and delivers what Tiro calls the most effective speech he ever witnesses, shaming the senate into action. The sentence is death. That evening, the five men are strangled in the Carcer, Rome's state prison. Cicero announces the executions to the crowd, and the senate bestows on him the title Father of his Country. Catilina's rebel army is subsequently defeated; Catilina dies fighting.

The second half traces Cicero's decline. He endlessly retells stories of his consulship, buys a grand house at a suspiciously low price, and defends the conspirator Publius Sulla for a large fee. The scandal of the Good Goddess ceremony accelerates his fall: Publius Clodius, a young patrician, is discovered disguised as a woman among female worshippers at Caesar's house. Caesar divorces his wife Pompeia, declaring that "the wife of the chief priest must be above suspicion" (272). Despite overwhelming evidence, Clodius is acquitted after Crassus bribes jurors. Clodius announces his intention to become a plebeian, a commoner as opposed to a patrician, and stand for tribune, with the declared aim of prosecuting Cicero.

Caesar returns from Spain as a military hero and is elected consul. He, Pompey, and Crassus form a secret alliance that Cicero calls the Beast with Three Heads. Caesar offers Cicero a place on an inner commission to govern Rome, but Cicero refuses, recognizing it as a path to dictatorship. Caesar's consulship dismantles constitutional safeguards: He forces through his land bill by violence, has Cato dragged from the senate, and obtains a five-year command over Gaul. Pompey marries Caesar's daughter Julia, cementing the alliance.

When Cicero defends Hybrida at a treason trial, he attacks Caesar and Crassus as the hidden architects behind Catilina's conspiracy. In retaliation, Caesar approves Clodius's adoption into a plebeian family. Cicero and Celer plot to arrest Caesar, but Celer falls suddenly ill and dies; Cicero suspects poisoning.

Clodius wins election as tribune and passes popular legislation before unveiling his true weapon: a one-line bill making it a capital offense to offer fire or water to anyone who has executed citizens without trial. The bill does not name Cicero. It does not need to.

Cicero's allies fail him one by one. Pompey refuses to see him. Caesar offers a legateship, a military post that would grant immunity from prosecution, but demands exclusive loyalty. Cicero refuses. Caesar tells him that once, passing through a tiny mountain village, he told his officers he would rather be first there than second in Rome. Cicero replies that he too would aspire to be first, or at least free. That evening, Cicero grants Tiro his freedom, but Tiro refuses to leave. At midnight, Clodius's law takes effect. Cicero and Tiro slip out of Rome through the Capena Gate. Looking back, they see the red glow of Cicero's burning house against the night sky and hear the trumpets of Caesar's army preparing to march to Gaul. Cicero turns south, walking in the opposite direction to Caesar, into exile.