The Dictator Read online

  “What I am about to disclose is in the strictest confidence,” he said, with a sideways glance at me. “No word of it must go beyond us three.”

  “Who am I to tell?” retorted Cicero. “The slave who empties my chamber pot? The cook who brings my meals? I assure you I see no one else.”

  “Very well,” said Milo, and then he told us what he had offered Pompey: to place at his disposal one hundred pairs of highly trained fighting men to recapture the centre of Rome and end Clodius’s control of the legislative assembly. In return he had asked for a certain sum to cover expenses, and also Pompey’s support in the elections for tribune: “I couldn’t just do this as a private citizen, you understand—I’d be prosecuted. I told him I needed the inviolability of the office.”

  Cicero was studying him closely. He had barely touched his food. “And what did Pompey say to that?”

  “At first he brushed me off. He said he’d think about it. But then came the business with the Prince of Armenia, when Papirius was killed by Clodius’s men. Did you hear about that?”

  “We heard something of it.”

  “Well, the killing of his friend seemed to make Pompey do that bit of extra thinking, because the day after Papirius was put on the pyre, he called me to his house. ‘That idea of your becoming tribune—you’ve got yourself a deal.’ ”

  “And how has Clodius reacted to your election? He must know what you have in mind.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m here. And this you won’t have heard about, because I left Rome straight after it happened, and no messenger could have got here quicker than I.” He stopped and held out his cup for more wine. He had come a long way to tell his story; he was obviously a raconteur; he meant to do it in his own time. “It was about two weeks ago, not long after the elections. Pompey was doing a little business in the Forum when he ran into a gang of Clodius’s men. There was some pushing and shoving, and one of them dropped a dagger. A lot of people saw it, and a great shout went up that they were going to murder Pompey. His attendants hustled him out of there fast, and back to his house, and barricaded him in—and that’s where he is still, as far as I know, with only the Lady Julia for company.”

  Cicero said in astonishment, “Pompey the Great is barricaded in his own house?”

  “I don’t blame you if you find it funny. Who wouldn’t? There’s rough justice in it, and Pompey knows it. In fact he said to me that the greatest mistake of his life was letting Clodius drive you out of the city.”

  “Pompey said that?”

  “That’s why I’ve raced across three countries, barely stopping to eat or sleep—to give you the news that he’s going to do everything he can to get your exile overturned. His blood is up. He wants you back in Rome, you and me and him, fighting side by side, to save the republic from Clodius and his gang! What do you say to that?”

  He was like a dog that has just laid a kill at its master’s feet; if he’d had a tail, it would have been thumping against the fabric of the couch. But if Milo had expected either delight or gratitude, he was to be disappointed. Depressed in spirit and ragged in appearance though he might be, Cicero had nevertheless seen straight through to the heart of the matter. He swilled his wine around in his cup, frowning before he spoke.

  “And does Caesar agree to this?”

  “Ah now,” said Milo, shifting slightly on his couch, “that’s for you to settle with him. Pompey will play his part, but you must play yours. It would be hard for him to campaign to bring you back if Caesar were to object very strongly.”

  “So he wants me to reconcile with him?”

  “His word was to reassure him.”

  It had grown dark while we were talking. The household slaves had lit lamps around the perimeter of the garden; their gleams were clouded with moths. But no light was on the table, so I couldn’t properly make out Cicero’s expression. He was silent for a long while. It was terrifically hot as usual, and I was conscious of the night sounds of Macedonia—the cicadas and the mosquitoes, the occasional dog bark, the voices of local people in the street, speaking in their strange, harsh foreign tongue. I wondered if Cicero was thinking the same as I was—that another year in such a place as this would kill him. Perhaps he was, because eventually he let out a sigh of resignation and said, “And in what terms am I supposed to ‘reassure’ him?”

  “That’s up to you. If any man can find the right words, it’s you. But Caesar has made it clear to Pompey that he needs something in writing before he’ll even think of reconsidering his position.”

  “Am I supposed to give you a document to take back to Rome?”

  “No, this part of the arrangement has to be between you and Caesar. Pompey thinks it would be best if you sent your own private emissary to Gaul—someone you trust, who could deliver some form of written undertaking into Caesar’s hands personally.”

  Caesar—everything seemed to come back to him eventually. I thought again of the sound of his trumpets leaving the Field of Mars, and in the stifling gloom I sensed rather than saw that both men had turned to look at me.

  How easy it is for those who play no part in public affairs to sneer at the compromises required of those who do. For two years Cicero had stuck to his principles and refused to join with Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in their “triumvirate” to control the state. He had denounced their criminality in public; they had retaliated by making it possible for Clodius to become a tribune; and when Caesar had offered him a legateship in Gaul that would have given him legal immunity from Clodius’s attacks, Cicero had refused it, because acceptance would have made him Caesar’s creature.

  But the price of upholding those principles had been banishment, poverty and heartbreak. “I have made myself powerless,” he said to me, after Milo had gone off to bed, leaving us alone to discuss Pompey’s offer, “and where is the virtue in that? What use am I to my family or my principles stuck in this dump for the rest of my life? Oh, no doubt one day I could become some kind of shining example to be taught to bored pupils: the man who refused ever to compromise his conscience. Perhaps after I’m safely dead they might even put up a statue of me at the back of the rostra. But I don’t want to be a monument. My skill is statecraft, and that requires me to be alive and in Rome.” He fell silent. “Then again, the thought of having to bend the knee to Caesar is scarcely bearable. To have suffered all this, and then to have to go creeping back to him like some dog that’s learnt its lesson…”

  He was still undecided when he retired for the night, and the following morning, when Milo called to ask him what answer he should take back to Pompey, I could not have predicted what he would say. “You can tell him this,” responded Cicero. “That my whole life has been dedicated to the service of the state, and that if the state demands of me that I should reconcile with my enemy—then reconcile I shall.”

  Milo embraced him and then immediately set off back to the coast in his war chariot with his gladiator standing beside him—such a pair of brutes longing for a fight that one could only tremble for Rome and all the blood that was bound to be spilt.

  —

  It was settled that I should leave Thessalonica on my mission to Caesar at the end of the summer, as soon as the military campaigning season was over. To have set off before then would have been pointless, as Caesar was with his legions deep inside Gaul, and his habit of rapid forced marches made it impossible to say with any certainty where he might be.

  Cicero spent many hours working on his letter. Years later, after his death, our copy was seized by the authorities, along with all the other correspondence between Cicero and Caesar, presumably in case it contradicted the official history that the Dictator was a genius and that all who opposed him were stupid, greedy, ungrateful, short-sighted and reactionary. I assume it has been destroyed; at any rate, I have never heard of it since. However, I still possess my shorthand notes, covering most of the thirty-six years I worked for Cicero—such a vast mass of unintelligible hieroglyphics that the ignorant operatives wh
o ransacked my archive doubtless assumed them to be harmless gibberish and left them untouched. It is from these that I have been able to reconstruct the many conversations, speeches and letters that make up this memoir of Cicero—including his humiliating appeal to Caesar that summer, which is not lost after all.

  Thessalonica

  From M. Cicero to G. Caesar, Proconsul, greetings.

  I hope you and the army are well.

  Many misunderstandings have unfortunately arisen between us in recent years but there is one in particular which, if it exists, I wish to dispel. I have never wavered in my admiration for your qualities of intelligence, resourcefulness, patriotism, energy and command. You have justly risen to a position of great eminence in our republic, and I wish only to see your efforts crowned with success both on the battlefield and in the counsels of state, as I am sure they will be.

  Do you remember, Caesar, that day when I was consul, when we debated in the Senate the punishment of those five traitors who were plotting the destruction of the republic, including my own murder? Tempers were high. Violence was in the air. Each man distrusted his neighbour. Suspicion even unjustly fell upon you, astonishingly, and had I not intervened, the flower of your glory might have been cut off before it had a chance to bloom. You know this to be true; swear otherwise if you dare.

  The wheel of fate has now reversed our positions, but with this difference: I am not a young man now, as you were then, with golden prospects. My career is over. If the Roman people were ever to vote for my return from exile, I should not seek any office. I should not put myself at the head of any party or faction, especially one injurious to your interests. I should not seek to overturn any of the legislation enacted during your consulship. In what little earthly time remains to me, my life will be devoted solely to restoring the fortunes of my poor family, supporting my friends in the law courts, and rendering such service as I can to the well-being of the commonwealth. On this you may rest assured.

  I am sending you this letter via my confidential secretary M. Tiro, whom you may remember, and who can be relied upon to convey in confidence any reply you may wish to make.

  “Well, there it is,” said Cicero, when it was finished, “a shameful document, and yet if one day it were to be read aloud in court, I don’t believe I would need to blush too deeply.” He copied it out carefully in his own hand, sealed it and handed it to me. “Keep your eyes open, Tiro. Observe how he seems and who is with him. I want an exact account. If he asks after my condition, hesitate, speak with reluctance, and then confide that I am utterly broken in body and spirit. The more certain he is I’m finished, the more likely he is to let me return.”

  By the time the letter was done, our situation had in fact become much more precarious again. In Rome, the senior consul, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was Caesar’s father-in-law and an enemy of Cicero’s, had been awarded the governorship of Macedonia in a public vote rigged by Clodius. He would take office at the start of the new year: an advance guard from his staff was expected in the province shortly. If they caught Cicero they might kill him on the spot. Another door was starting to close on us. My departure could no longer be put off.

  I dreaded the emotion of our parting, and so, I knew, did Cicero; therefore we colluded to avoid it. On the night before I left, when we had dined together for the final time, he pretended to be tired and retired to bed early, while I assured him I would wake him in the morning to say a final goodbye. In fact I slipped away before dawn, while the house was still in darkness, without a fuss, as he would have wanted.

  Plancius had arranged an escort to conduct me back over the mountains to Dyrrachium, and there I took ship and sailed to Italy—not straight across to Brundisium this time, but north-west, to Ancona. It was a much longer voyage than our original crossing and took almost a week. But it was still quicker than going overland, with the added advantage that I would not encounter any of Clodius’s agents. I had never before travelled such a long distance on my own, let alone by ship. My terror of the sea was not the same as Cicero’s—of shipwreck and of drowning. It was rather of the vast emptiness of the horizon during the day and the glittering, indifferent hugeness of the universe at night. I was at this time forty-six, and conscious of the void into which we all are voyaging; I thought of death often while sitting out on deck. I had witnessed so much; ageing in body though I was, in spirit I was even older. Little did I realise that actually I had lived less than half my life, and was destined to see things that would make all the wonders and dramas that had gone before seem quite pallid and insignificant.

  The weather was favourable, and we landed at Ancona without incident. From there I took the road north, crossing the Rubicon two days later and formally entering the province of Nearer Gaul. This was territory familiar to me: I had toured it with Cicero six years earlier, when he was seeking election as consul and canvassing the towns along the Via Aemilia. The vineyards beside the road had all been harvested weeks before; now the vines were being cut back for winter, so that as far as one could see, columns of white smoke from the burning vegetation were rising over the flat terrain, as if some retreating army had scorched the earth behind it.

  In the little town of Claterna, where I stayed the night, I learned that the governor had returned from beyond the Alps and had set up his winter headquarters in Placentia, but that with typical restless energy he was already touring the countryside holding assizes: he was due in the neighbouring town of Mutina the next day. I left early, reached it at noon, passed through the heavily fortified walls, and made for the basilica on the forum. The only clue to Caesar’s presence was a troop of legionaries at the entrance. They made no attempt to ask my business, and I went straight inside. A cold grey light from the clerestory windows fell upon a hushed queue of citizens waiting to present their petitions. At the far end—too far away for me to make out his face—seated between pillars, dispensing judgement from his magistrate’s chair, in a toga so white it stood out brightly amid the locals’ drab winter plumage, was Caesar.

  Uncertain how to approach him, I found myself joining the line of petitioners. Caesar was issuing his rulings at such a rate that we shuffled forwards almost continuously, and as I drew closer I saw that he was doing several things at once—listening to each supplicant, reading documents as they were handed to him by a secretary, and conferring with an army officer who had taken off his helmet and was bending down to whisper in his ear. I took out Cicero’s letter so that I would have it ready. But then it struck me that this was not perhaps the proper place to hand over the appeal: that it was unconducive somehow to the dignity of a former consul for his request to be considered alongside the domestic complaints of all these farmers and tradespeople, worthy folk though they no doubt were. The officer finished his report, straightened, and was just walking past me towards the door, fastening his helmet, when his eyes met mine and he stopped in surprise. “Tiro?”

  I glimpsed his father in him before I could put a name to the young man himself. It was M. Crassus’s son, Publius, now a cavalry commander on Caesar’s staff. Unlike his father he was a cultured, gracious, noble man, and an admirer of Cicero, whose company he used to seek out. He greeted me with great affability—“What brings you to Mutina?”—and when I told him, he volunteered at once to arrange a private interview with Caesar and insisted I accompany him to the villa where the governor and his entourage were staying.

  “I’m doubly glad to see you,” he said as we walked, “for I’ve often thought of Cicero, and the injustice done to him. I’ve talked to my father about it and persuaded him not to oppose his recall. And Pompey, as you know, supports it too—only last week he sent Sestius, one of the tribunes-elect, up here to plead his cause with Caesar.”

  I could not help observing, “It seems that everything these days depends upon Caesar.”

  “Well, you have to understand his position. He feels no personal animosity towards your master—very much the opposite. But unlike my father and Pompey, he’s
not in Rome to defend himself. He’s concerned about losing political support while his back is turned, and being recalled before his work here is complete. He sees Cicero as the greatest threat to his position. Come inside—let me show you something.”

  We passed the sentry and went into the house, and Publius conducted me through the crowded public rooms to a small library where, from an ivory casket, he produced a series of dispatches, all beautifully edged in black and housed in purple slip-cases, with the word Commentaries picked out in vermilion in the title line.

  “These are Caesar’s own personal copies,” Publius explained, handling them carefully. “He takes them with him wherever he goes. They are his record of the campaign in Gaul, which he has decided to send regularly to be posted up in Rome. One day he intends to collect them all together and publish them as a book. It’s perfectly marvellous stuff. See for yourself.”

  He plucked out a roll for me to read:

  There is a river called the Saone, which flows through the territories of the Aedui and Sequani into the Rhone with such incredible slowness that it cannot be determined by the eye in which direction it flows. This the Helvetii were crossing by rafts and boats joined together. When Caesar was informed by spies that the Helvetii had already conveyed three parts of their forces across that river, but that the fourth part was left behind on this side of the Saone, he set out from the camp with three legions. Attacking them, encumbered with baggage, and not expecting him, he cut to pieces a great part of them…

  I said, “He writes of himself with wonderful detachment.”

  “He does. That’s because he doesn’t want to sound boastful. It’s important to strike the right note.”

  I asked if I might be allowed to copy some of it, and show it to Cicero. “He misses the regular news from Rome. What reaches us is sparse, and late.”