The Dictator Read online

  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.”

  And with that it was over. For a moment Cicero stood there—one hand stretched towards the jury, the other towards Rufus—and there was silence. Then some great subterranean force seemed to rise from beneath the Forum, and an instant later the air began to tremble as several thousand pairs of feet stamped the ground and the crowd roared their approval. Someone started pointing repeatedly at Clodia and shouting, “Whore! Whore! Whore!” and very quickly the chant was taken up all around us, the arms flashing out again and again: “Whore! Whore! Whore!”

  Clodia looked out blank-faced with incredulity across this sea of hatred. She didn’t seem to notice that her brother had moved across the court and was standing beside her. But then he grasped her elbow and that seemed to jolt her out of her reverie. She glanced up at him, and finally, after some gentle coaxing, she allowed herself to be led off the platform and out of sight and into an obscurity from which it is fair to say she never again emerged as long as she lived.

  —

  Thus did Cicero exact his revenge on Clodia and reclaim his place as the dominant voice in Rome. It is hardly necessary to add that Rufus was acquitted and that Clodius’s loathing of Cicero was redoubled. “One day,” he hissed, “you will hear a sound behind you, and when you turn, I shall be there, I promise you.” Cicero laughed at the crudeness of the threat, knowing he was too popular for Clodius to dare to attack him—at least for now. As for Terentia, although she deplored the vulgarity of Cicero’s jokes and was appalled by the rudeness of the mob, nevertheless she was pleased by the utter social annihilation of her enemy, and as she and Cicero walked home, she took his arm—the first time I had witnessed such a public gesture of affection for years.

  The following day, when Cicero went down the hill to attend a meeting of the Senate, he was mobbed both by the ordinary people and by the scores of senators waiting outside the chamber for the session to begin. As he received the congratulations of his peers, he looked exactly as he had done in his days of power, and I could see that he was quite intoxicated by his reception. As it happened, this was the Senate’s final meeting before it rose for its annual vacation, and there was a febrile mood in the air. After the haruspices had ruled the heavens propitious, and just as the senators started to file in for the start of the debate, Cicero beckoned me over and pointed on the order paper to the main subject to be discussed that day: the grant of forty million sesterces from the treasury to Pompey, to finance his grain purchases.

  “This could be interesting.” He nodded to the figure of Crassus, just then stalking into the chamber, wearing a grim expression. “I had a word with him about it yesterday. First Egypt, now this—he’s in a rage at Pompey’s megalomania. The thieves are at one another’s throats, Tiro: there could be an opportunity for mischief here.”

  “Be careful,” I warned him.

  “Oh dear, yes: ‘Be careful!’ ” he mocked, and tapped me on the head with the rolled-up order paper. “Well, I have a little power after yesterday, and you know what I always say: power is for using.”

  With that he went off cheerfully into the Senate building.

  I had not been intending to stay for the session, having much work to do in preparing Cicero’s speech of the previous day for publication. But now I changed my mind and went and stood at the doorway. The presiding consul was Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, a patriotic aristocrat of the old sort—hostile to Clodius, supportive of Cicero and suspicious of Pompey. He made sure to call a series of speakers who all denounced the granting of such a huge sum to Pompey. As one pointed out, there was no money available in any case, every spare copper being swallowed up implementing Caesar’s law that gave the Campanian lands to Pompey’s veterans and the urban poor. The house grew rowdy. Pompey’s supporters heckled his opponents. His opponents shouted back. (Pompey himself was not allowed to be present, as the grain commission conveyed imperium—a power that barred its holders from entering the Senate.) Crassus looked gratified with the way things were going. Finally, Cicero indicated that he wished to speak, and the house became quiet as senators leaned forwards to hear what he had to say.

  “Honourable members,” he said, “will recall that it was on my proposal that Pompey was given this grain commission in the first place, so I am hardly going to oppose it now. We cannot order a man to do a job one day, and then deny him the means with which to accomplish it the next.” Pompey’s supporters murmured loud assent. Cicero held up his hand. “However, as has been eloquently pointed out, our resources are finite. The treasury cannot pay for everything. We cannot be expected to buy grain all over the world to feed our citizens for nothing and at the same time give free farms to soldiers and plebs. When Caesar passed his law, even he, with all his great powers of foresight, can hardly have imagined that a day was coming—and coming very soon—when veterans and the urban poor would have no need of farms to grow grain, because the grain would simply be given to them for nothing.”

  “Oh!” shouted the benches of the aristocrats in delight. “Oh! Oh!” And they pointed at Crassus, who, along with Pompey and Caesar, was one of the architects of the land laws. Crassus was staring hard at Cicero, although his face was impassive and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  “Would it not be prudent,” continued Cicero, “in the light of changing circumstances, for this noble house to look again at the legislation passed during the consulship of Caesar? Now is obviously not the right occasion to discuss it fully, complex as the question is, and conscious as I am that the house is eager to rise for the recess. I would therefore propose that the issue be placed on the order paper at the first available opportunity when we reconvene.”

  “I second that!” shouted Domitius Ahenobarbus, a patrician who was married to Cato’s sister, and who hated Caesar so much he had recently called for him to be stripped of his command in Gaul.

  Several dozen other aristocrats also jumped up clamouring to add their support. Pompey’s men seemed too confused to react: after all, the main thrust of Cicero’s speech had seemed to be in support of their chief. It was indeed a tidy piece of mischief that Cicero had wrought, and when he sat down and glanced along the aisle in my direction, I almost fancy he winked at me. The consul held a whispered conference with his scribes and then announced that in view of the obvious support for Cicero
’s motion, the issue would be debated on the Ides of May. With that the house was adjourned and the senators started moving towards the exit—none quicker than Crassus, who almost knocked me flying in his eagerness to get away.

  —

  Cicero, too, was determined to have a holiday, feeling he deserved one after seven months of non-stop strain and labour, and he had in mind the ideal destination. A wealthy tax farmer for whom he had done much legal work had lately died, leaving Cicero some property in his will—a small villa on the Bay of Naples, at Cumae, between the sea and the Lucrine Lake. (In those days, I should add, it was illegal to accept direct payment for one’s services as an advocate, but permissible to receive legacies; the rule was not always strictly observed.) Cicero had never seen the place but had heard that it enjoyed one of the loveliest aspects in the region. He proposed to Terentia that they should travel to inspect it together, and she agreed, although when she discovered I was to be included in the party, she plunged into another of her sulks.

  “I know how it will be,” I overheard her complaining to Cicero. “I shall be left alone all day while you are closeted with your official wife!”

  He made some soothing reply to the effect that no such thing would happen, and I was careful to keep out of her way.

  On the eve of our departure, Cicero gave a dinner for his future son-in-law, Crassipes, who happened to mention that Crassus, to whom he was very close, had left Rome in a hurry the previous day, telling no one where he was going. Cicero said, “No doubt he’s heard of some elderly widow in a remote spot who is at death’s door and who might be persuaded to part with her property cheaply.”

  Everyone laughed apart from Crassipes, who looked very prim. “I am sure he is simply taking a vacation, like everyone else.”

  “Crassus doesn’t take holidays—there’s no profit in them.” Then Cicero raised his cup and proposed a toast to Crassipes and Tullia. “May their union be long and happy and blessed with many children—for preference I should like three at least.”

  “Father!” exclaimed Tullia. She laughed and blushed and looked away.

  “What?” asked Cicero, with an air of innocence. “I have the grey hairs and now I need the grandchildren to go with them.”

  He rose from the table early. Before he left for the south he wanted to see Pompey. In particular he wanted to plead the case for Quintus to be allowed to relinquish his legateship and return home from Sardinia. He travelled to Pompey’s in a litter but ordered the porters to go slowly so that I could walk alongside and we could have some conversation. It was getting dark. We had to travel a mile or so, beyond the city walls, to the Pincian hill, where Pompey had his new suburban villa—or palace would be a better word for it—looking down on his vast complex of temples and theatres then nearing completion on the Field of Mars.

  The great man was dining alone with his wife, and we had to wait for them to finish. In the vestibule a team of slaves was busy transferring piles of luggage to half a dozen wagons drawn up in the courtyard—so many trunks of clothes and boxes of tableware and carpets and furniture and even statues that it looked as if Pompey were planning to set up a new home somewhere. Eventually the couple appeared and Pompey presented Julia to Cicero, who in turn presented me to her.

  “I remember you,” she said to me, although I’m sure she didn’t. She was only seventeen but very gracious. She possessed her father’s exquisite manners, and also something of his piercing way of looking at one, so that I had a sudden, disconcerting memory of Caesar’s naked hairless torso reclining on the massage table at his headquarters in Mutina: I had to shut my eyes to banish it.

  She left almost at once, pleading the need to get a good night’s sleep before her travels the next day. Pompey kissed her hand—he was famously devoted to her—and took us through into his study. This was a vast room the size of a house, crammed with trophies from his many campaigns, including what he insisted was the cloak of Alexander the Great. He sat on a couch made out of a stuffed crocodile, which he said Ptolemy had given him, and invited Cicero to take the seat opposite.

  Cicero said, “You look as though you are embarking on a military expedition.”

  “That’s what comes of travelling with one’s wife.”

  “Might I ask where you’re going?”

  “Sardinia.”

  “Ah,” said Cicero, “that’s a coincidence. I wanted to ask you about Sardinia.” And he proceeded to make an eloquent case for his brother to be allowed home, citing three reasons in particular—the length of time he had been away, his need to spend time with his son (who was turning into a troubled boy) and his preference for military rather than civil command.

  Pompey heard him out, stroking his chin, reclining on his Egyptian crocodile. “If that’s what you want,” he said. “Yes, he can come back. You’re right anyway—he isn’t much good at administration.”

  “Thank you. I’m obliged to you, as always.”

  Pompey regarded Cicero with crafty eyes. “So I hear you caused a stir in the Senate the other day.”

  “Only on your behalf—I was simply trying to secure the funds for your commission.”

  “Yes, but by challenging Caesar’s laws.” He wagged his finger in reproach. “That’s naughty of you.”

  “Caesar is not a god, infallible; his laws have not come down to us from Mount Olympus. Besides, if you’d been there and seen the pleasure Crassus was taking in all the attacks on you, I believe you would have wanted me to find some way to wipe the smile from his face. And by criticising Caesar, I certainly did that.”

  Pompey brightened at once. “Oh well, I’m with you there!”

  “Believe me, Crassus’s ambition and disloyalty to you have been far more destabilising to the commonwealth than anything I have done.”

  “I agree entirely.”

  “In fact I’d suggest that if your alliance with Caesar is threatened by anyone, it’s him.”

  “How is that?”

  “Well, I don’t understand how Caesar can stand back and allow him to plot against you in this way, especially letting him employ Clodius. Surely as your father-in-law he owes his first duty to you? If Crassus carries on like this, he will sow much discord, I predict it now.”

  “He will.” Pompey nodded. He looked crafty again. “You’re right, of course.” He stood, and Cicero followed suit. He took Cicero’s hand in both his immense paws. “Thank you for coming to see me, my old friend. You have given me much food for thought during my voyage to Sardinia. We must write to one another often. Where exactly will you be?”

  “Cumae.”

  “Ah! I envy you. Cumae—the most beautiful spot in Italy.”

  Cicero was well pleased with his night’s work. On the way home he said to me, “This triple alliance of theirs can’t last. It defies nature. All I have to do is keep chipping away at it, and sooner or later the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down.”

  We left Rome at first light—Terentia, Tullia and Marcus all in the same carriage, along with Cicero, who was in great good humour—and made quick progress, stopping first for a night at Tusculum, which Cicero was glad to find habitable again, and then at the family estate in Arpinium, where we remained for a week. Finally from those cold high peaks of the Apennines we descended south to Campania.

  With every mile the clouds of winter seemed to lift, the sky became bluer, the temperature warmer, the air more fragrant with the scent of pines and herbs, and when we joined the coastal road, the breeze off the sea was balmy. Cumae was then a much smaller and quieter town than it is today. At the Acropolis I gave a description of our destination and was directed by a priest to the eastern side of the Lucrine Lake, to a spot low in the hills, looking out across the lagoon and the narrow spit of land to the variegated blueness of the Mediterranean. The villa itself was small and dilapidated, with half a dozen elderly slaves to look after it. The wind blew through open walls; a section of the roof was missing. But it was worth every discomfort simply for the panor
ama. Down on the lake, little rowing boats moved among the oyster beds, while from the garden at the back there rose a majestic view of the lush green pyramid of Vesuvius. Cicero was enchanted, and set to work at once with the local builders, commissioning a great programme of renovation and redecoration. Marcus played on the beach with his tutor. Terentia sat on the terrace and sewed. Tullia read her Greek. It was a family holiday of a sort they had not taken for many years.

  There was one puzzle, however. That whole stretch of coast from Cumae to Puteoli, then as now, was dotted with villas belonging to members of the Senate. Naturally Cicero assumed that once word spread he was in residence, he would begin to receive callers. But nobody came. At night he stood on the terrace and looked up and down the seashore and peered up into the hills and complained he could see hardly any lights. Where were the parties, the dinners? He patrolled the beach, a mile in either direction, and not once did he spot a senatorial toga.

  “Something must be happening,” he said to Terentia. “Where are they all?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “but speaking for myself, I am happy there is no one with whom you can discuss politics.”

  The answer came on our fifth morning.

  I was on the terrace answering Cicero’s correspondence when I noticed that a small group of horsemen had turned off the coastal road and were coming up the track towards the house. My immediate thought was Clodius! I stood to get a better view and saw to my dismay that the sun was glinting on helmets and breastplates. Five riders: soldiers.

  Terentia and the children had gone off for the day to visit the sibyl who was said to live in a jar in a cave at Cumae. I ran inside to alert Cicero, and by the time I found him—he was choosing the colour scheme for the dining room—the horsemen were already clattering into the courtyard. Their leader dismounted and took off his helmet. He was a fearsome apparition: dust-rimed, like some harbinger of death. The whiteness of his nose and forehead was in contrast to the grime of the rest of his face. He looked as if he wore a mask. But I knew him. He was a senator, albeit not a very distinguished one—a member of that tame, dependable class of pederii who never spoke but merely voted with their feet. Lucius Vibullius Rufus was his name. He was one of Pompey’s officers from Pompey’s home region of Picenum naturally.