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And then, to her evident horror, Cicero actually started walking across the court towards her. He was smiling, hand extended, inviting her to choose – the tiger playing with its prey. He halted barely a pace away from her.

‘If she prefers the old method, then I must call up from the dead one of those full-bearded men of antiquity to rebuke her …’

I have often pondered what Clodia should have done at this point. On reflection I believe her best course would have been to laugh along with Cicero – to try to win over the sympathy of the crowd by some piece of pantomime that would have shown she was entering into the spirit of the joke. But she was a Claudian. Never before had anyone dared openly to laugh at her, let alone the common people in the Forum. She was outraged, probably panicking, and so she responded in the worst way possible: she turned her back on Cicero like a sulky child.

He shrugged. ‘Very well, let me call up a member of her own family – to be specific, Appius Claudius the Blind. He will feel the least sorrow since he won’t be able to see her. If he were to appear, this is what he would say …’

And now Cicero addressed her in a ghostly voice, his eyes closed, his arms raised straight out in front of him; even Clodius started laughing. ‘Oh woman, what hast thou to do with Rufus, this stripling who is young enough to be thy son? Why hast thou been either so intimate with him as to give him gold, or caused such jealousy as to warrant the administering of poison? Why was Rufus so closely connected with thee? Is he a kinsman? A relative by marriage? A friend of thine late husband? None of these! What else could it have been then between you two except reckless passion? O woe! Was it for this that I brought water to Rome, that thou mightest use it after thy incestuous debauches? Was it for this that I built the Appian Way, that thou mightest frequent it with a train of other women’s husbands?’

With that, the ghost of old Appius Claudius evaporated and Cicero addressed Clodia’s turned back in his normal voice. ‘But if you prefer a more congenial relative, let us speak to you in the voice of your youngest brother over there, who loves you most dearly – who, as a boy, in fact, being of a nervous disposition and prey to night terrors, always used to get into bed with his big sister. Imagine him saying to you’ – and now Cicero perfectly imitated Clodius’s fashionable slouching stance and plebeian drawl – ‘what’s there to worry about, sister? So what if you fancied some young fellow. He was handsome. He was tall. You couldn’t get enough of him. You knew you were old enough to be his mother. But you were rich. So you bought him things to purchase his affection. It didn’t last long. He called you a hag. Well, forget him – just find yourself another one, or two, or ten. After all, that’s what you usually do.’

Clodius was no longer laughing. He looked at Cicero as if he would like to clamber over the benches of the court and strangle him. But the audience were laughing right enough. I glanced around and saw men and women with tears running down their cheeks. Empathy is the essence of the orator’s art. Cicero had that immense crowd entirely on his side, and after he had made them laugh with him, it was easy for him to make them share his outrage as he moved in for the kill.

‘I am now forgetting, Clodia, the wrongs you have done me; I am putting aside the memory of what I have suffered; I pass over your cruel actions towards my family during my absence; but I ask you this: if a woman without a husband opens her house to all men’s desires, and publicly leads the life of a courtesan; if she is in the habit of attending dinner parties with men who are perfect strangers; if she does this in Rome, in her park outside the city walls, and amid all those crowds on the Bay of Naples; if her embraces and caresses, her beach parties, her water parties, her dinner parties, proclaim her to be not only a courtesan, but also a shameless and wanton courtesan – if she does all that and a young man should be discovered consorting with this woman, should he be considered the corrupter or the corrupted, the seducer or the seduced?

‘This whole charge arises from a hostile, infamous, merciless, crime-stained, lust-stained house. An unstable and angry wanton of a woman has forged this accusation. Gentlemen of the jury: do not allow Marcus Caelius Rufus to be sacrificed to her lust. If you restore Rufus in safety to me, to his family, to the state, you will find in him one pledged, devoted and bound to you and to your children; and it is you above all, gentlemen, who will reap the rich and lasting fruits of all his exertions and labours.’