Caesar i-3

by Allan Massie

  Our position was now one of the greatest danger. I could imagine Labienus smile as he watched the battle develop from his vantage point at the gates of Munda. Another fifty yards, he must have thought, and I shall be able to loose my cavalry on the enemy's flank. I shouted orders to halt the attack and re-form our ranks, but in the noise and press no one heard me or had sufficient self-control to obey. I looked across and up the hill. I could see cohorts of Labienus' cavalry and infantry moving from his right and centre. Our position was more dangerous than ever, and all, I cursed, as a result of Caesar's moment of uncharacteristic panic. (It is fair to say that this may have been the result of an epileptic attack he had suffered a few days before.)

  But… Caesar always declared that he was a favourite of the gods, and if ever a day proved this to be the case, it was Munda. Labienus' manoeuvre, admirably intelligent though it was, destroyed him. The rapid and unexpected deployment of the troops was remarked and misinterpreted by the men in his front lines. They did not realise that he was about to unleash the blow that would give them victory. Instead, they thought that it was the beginning of a general flight. Panic set in, rapidly as it always does. Except for one legion, which retreated in good order, and died fighting almost to the last man, the army of our enemy disintegrated.

  I have never known a battle change so completely in such a short time.

  One wing of the enemy army broke, fleeing to the safety of Cordova. The rest were thrown back into the ditch before the walls of Munda. There was no escape. Few prisoners were taken. Our legionaries were determined to make an end of the wars, then and there, that grey afternoon. They could not have been restrained from slaughter, even if that had been Caesar's wish. And it was not. For the first time in the civil wars no quarter was given.

  "I have often fought for victory," Caesar said as night fell on the field, whence the groans of the dying and the wounded still prevented the silence of night from descending, "but this is the first time I ever fought for my life."

  It was reported that the enemy dead numbered almost thirty thousand. Among them was Labienus himself. I looked on that strong, proud, aggrieved countenance.

  "He chose the path he has followed," Caesar said.

  That night Octavius came to my tent. He was pale and trembling.

  "Well," I said, "that is war, the great destroyer of illusion."

  It was not quite the end. The two sons of Pompey had escaped the field. Sextus, it seemed, had found a refuge, none knew where. Gnaeus reached Gibraltar to find that all the ships were in Caesar's hands. He fled back from the coast, into the mountains. There he was discovered by a troop seeking fugitives from the battle. They found him wounded in a cave, deserted by all but a couple of slaves. He demanded clemency. Even in his extremity, I am told, he could not keep a note of arrogance from his voice. He received none. The soldiers made short work of him. As with his father, his head was cut off, and sent to Caesar.

  Meanwhile Cordova had been besieged. The walls were stormed. More than twenty thousand soldiers and citizens were put to the sword. Antony was mighty in the slaughter, drunk on wine and blood-lust. The word "clemency" rang in my ears like a mocking bell. We had journeyed far from that dawn on the banks of the Rubicon.

  CHAPTER 9

  What a strange thing is love, a word we commonly employ as a euphemism for sexual desire. My passion for Octavius had died. Its end was abrupt. A few nights after the sack of Cordova, he came to me in tears. He babbled in confusion. It seemed that Antony (who had been roaring drunk for a week) had tried to ravish him. The boy's tongue stumbled over the story; his beauty fled from him. I was seized with an impulse of cruelty, not tenderness. Even now, I cannot account for the violence of the change in my feeling. I looked on him with contempt, even disgust. He needed my help, perhaps. I had none to offer him. Something in me had snapped.

  A few weeks later he left for Greece, to resume his studies, by Caesar's command. He went to join Maecenas; another companion was an ill-bred young officer, by name Marcus Agrippa. Well, I was relieved to see him depart. His presence had begun to embarrass me. There is nothing so dead as an infatuation from which you have recovered. As the months passed, something of tenderness returned. But when we corresponded, there was now a distance between us. There was nothing intimate in our letters, and I knew that when we met again, there would be a gulf between us, like a stretch of inhospitable coastland fringing the sea.

  My mother always used to say that lust was a game the gods played to make fools of us, and amuse themselves. When she looked back on her own passion for Caesar, she could no longer understand how it had come about.

  Is it the result of a trick of light, of the immediate disposition of limbs, lines, and posture?

  How strange to perplex myself with this question now. For me, it has always been inseparable from some idea of degradation. My revulsion of Octavius puzzles me therefore.

  Perhaps I was attracted by his freedom from experience. I do not know.

  When I look on Artixes, I think this may be possible.

  As it happened, I returned to Rome and surprised my wife Longina in bed with a curly headed boy. Both sat up, Longina displaying her delightful breasts. Surprise, then indignation, then fear, as he recognised me, could be read in the boy's face. I had no idea who he was. He looked even younger than my wife. Her tongue flicked her upper lip. Then she smiled.

  "Husband," she said. "What a charming surprise," she added in Greek.

  "No wonder your freedwomen were alarmed to see me." "They should be whipped for letting you break in on me like this."

  She nestled back among the cushions and fluttered her eyelashes at me.

  "Fair's fair," she said. "I bet you haven't been faithful to me in Spain. He's a friend of Caesar's," she said to the boy, "and you know what that means. Besides, he's been having the most tremendous thing with Octavius. Does that still go on, husband?"

  "I could divorce you," I said.

  "Why bother?"

  "I could have you whipped yourself. In the days of our ancestors I could have had you put to death."

  "Of course you could, but those days have gone. Besides, I know you better than you think. I'm not quite the mophead you take me to be. I've taken the trouble to find out a lot about you, husband, and I could give you quite a long list of your lovers, starting with that famous pair, Clodia and her brother. So don't pretend. Actually, I imagine you're enjoying this as much as I am."

  The trouble was, she was right. I found the situation exciting.

  "Who's your friend?" I said.

  She giggled.

  "Can't you guess? We're more alike than you think, husband."

  I looked at the boy's tumbling curls, his lustrous eyes, his soft and at that moment trembling mouth. He was slim, and there was a hint of mischief even in his fear.

  "Yes," I said, "I see a resemblance."

  The boy was Appius Claudius Pulcher, whose father had been consul ten years previously. That father, whom I had known to be proud, corrupt and superstitious (like so many of the clan) had fallen at Pharsalus in the ranks of the Pompeians, though he had despised Pompey himself. He had married his daughter to my cousin, Marcus Brutus, who, disgusted by her infidelity, had put her aside, in order to marry Cato's daughter Porcia, certainly a woman better suited to his priggish nature. This boy must be the fruit of his father's last marriage to a woman half his age whose name I couldn't recall. Appius Claudius Pulcher had hated Caesar. Looking at the boy I couldn't imagine he felt any powerful desire to avenge his father. He probably revelled in his freedom from paternal rebuke, which would certainly have been forthcoming.

  There was a silence in the room. My wife appeared content, happy to enjoy what she had provoked. She wanted a scene. So I determined to deny her that. As for the boy, he had clearly got more than he bargained for. I was travel-stained, grim, returned from the wars, a general of renown, not — he must have thought — a safe man to be discovered cuckolding. I told him to get out of bed an
d dress himself. He obeyed; in some confusion, made uncomfortable by the gaze I directed at him. Then I escorted him to the door of the bedchamber.

  "We shall say no more of this at present," I said. "You are ' not to be blamed. On the other hand, you must understand that you have insulted me. Before I determine what must be done, I must talk to my wife. Then you and I will have to talk also. For the moment, think yourself fortunate that I am not a man of the same temper as your late father."

  I turned back towards my wife. She had thrown the coverings aside, and lay on her back, her legs spread, her right hand resting between them.

  "How masterful you are, husband," she said.

  Her voice was low. I unbuckled my tunic and leaned towards her. She put her right arm around my neck and drew me down, and giggled again.

  A little later she said:

  "We make a better pair than you thought, don't we?"

  She proved this to me repeatedly in the weeks that followed. I began to think that I had got a better bargain in Longina than I had thought to have. Perhaps the young Appius Claudius had woken her up. (I soon resolved that problem, by the way, arranging to have him attached to the staff of the Procurator of Judaea. Since the appointment seemed to come direct from Caesar, he did not dare demur. It was unfortunate, and in no way my fault, that he got a fever and died before the end of the year. To her credit, Longina did not protest when I told her that her lover was being despatched into what was effectively exile. I have reason to suspect that they continued to correspond, however, but by the time I came to that conclusion I had other more important matters to consider.)

  Longina was not well-educated. Indeed she was scarcely educated at all. She wrote in the same tumbling and ungrammatical manner that she talked. But she was no fool; her wits were quick, and she had a liveliness that one would not have looked for in Cassius' daughter.

  My father-in-law viewed the progress of our marriage with an ironic detachment. That was a mood, or air, which he cultivated. Cassius was in reality a man of the most intense passion, proud, jealous and implacable. He had made the marriage in cynical fashion: Caesar had conquered; I was a favourite of the dictator; therefore the alliance was desirable. He looked on me still in those weeks after my return from Spain with an appraising eye. In my company he usually spoke well of Caesar.

  As for my wife, she was eager to make the acquaintance of the dictator. She urged me to invite him to our house: "For dinner, supper, anything."

  "Caesar demands intelligent conversation," I said.

  "And we can't provide it? Well, ask that old bore Cicero if you like."

  "Caesar can scarcely go out to dinner without finding Cicero in the party. People look on the old man as a sort of insurance policy. Actually, though Caesar respects him, he more and more finds his tendency to dominate the conversation irritating. Besides, Cicero suspects I penned the Anti-Cato. He has been cool to me recently."

  My objections, which I did not in any case understand myself, were overruled. Caesar was invited, and accepted. At the last minute, my wife added my cousin Marcus Brutus to the party — an invitation which did not please me.

  "Is it true," my wife asked Caesar, "that you have invited the Queen of Egypt to Rome?"

  We all knew he had, and that Calpurnia was furious.

  Caesar smiled: "I hope you will make her acquaintance when she arrives."

  "Oh I don't expect she'll want to meet ladies," Longina said. "Not if what I've heard is true." "And what have you heard?"

  My wife screwed up her nose so that she looked like a little girl.

  "Well, that she put her brother to death and that he was also her husband. Is that true?" "Absolutely."

  "And when he was her husband, did they… you know?" "Did they what?"

  "Well, you know, you must know, go to bed together, fuck?"

  "That is something only the Queen could tell you."

  "I don't suppose she would though."

  "I am sure you will not be too shy to ask her."

  I had seen it so often before. Perhaps that was why I had attempted to divert Longina from her intended course. Now Caesar exercised his old accustomed charm. His manner was at the same time intimate and perfunctory. He gave the girl the impression that his whole attention was concentrated on her; and yet he remained aware of his performance, aware of his wider audience whom he invited to admire it.

  It was like a play unfolding of which one already knows the conclusion; the chief interest for the audience is therefore to judge the skill with which the dramatist has handled his material. Sometimes, now, especially in these summer evenings, when the mist rising from the valley turns my mood to melancholy (as if there were not already sufficient reasons more substantial than my imaginings to induce such a mood, even a darker one, even despair), then it seems to me that the whole gaudy course of a man's life is indeed no more than such a play, a charade which we enact for the amusement of the indifferent gods. And so I watched the to-and-fro of the conversational dance, saw my wife's lips curve in invitation as she leaned towards him displaying, as if by nature, the rich roundness of a breast, heard her laugh gurgle forth like a stream long dammed-up now breaking free; and all the time, Caesar, the Master, drew her towards him as if there was no more question that she would come than there is that the sun will sink into the western sea.

  "What sort of man are you, son-in-law?" Cassius said.

  The question was rhetorical.

  "If Caesar or any man debauched my wife…"

  "Come, Cassius," I replied, "there is no need for this pretence. You know very well what you would do. The same as me: nothing, in the case of Caesar. That sort of virtue is out-of-date. Besides, I have shared women with Caesar before, and on some of them he had a prior claim."

  "You deceive yourself, son-in-law, only when you lay claim to any equality with Caesar."

  "Very well, Cassius. I yield to you on that point, and I acknowledge also that you may have a father's interest in not seeing your daughter disgraced. But then I tell you, she is not disgraced. Longina made the running herself. She is no flower that Caesar has picked."

  "And does that not anger you?"

  "Cassius," I said, "I thought you were a philosopher."

  But if I could not tell the truth to Cassius, I could not hide it from my cousin Casca.

  That was strange, for Casca was not a man whom I could expect to understand noble indignation. I suppose it was because he knew me better than any other man. He knew, for instance, that at any time up to the hour of my return from Spain (when I had surprised young Appius Claudius, himself incidentally an admiration of Casca's) I would have been happy to trade Longina to Caesar in return for the many favours he had done me. But Casca also saw, even while he mocked me, that something more than my vanity was wounded. He saw that I had really believed that, simply because I had found in myself an unexpected tenderness for my wife, she experienced the same feeling for me.

  And now Casca said:

  "So the Senate proposes to grant divine honours to Caesar. It would be appropriate if you were to speak in favour of the motion."

  "In favour?"

  "Naturally, my dear. To lose your wife to a man, however distinguished, may be thought disgraceful; to be cuckolded by a god is no shame."

  "I can see only one objection, cousin," I replied. "While we may indeed grant divine honours to Caesar…"

  "Say 'shall', not 'may'."

  "Very well: shall. While we shall do so, nobody will believe that Caesar is in reality a god."

  "Oh," Casca said, "when you introduce the word 'reality', you lose me, and I lose interest. Who is to say what constitutes 'reality' in this fool's world? Are my debts reality? On which subject, by the way, I am distressed that Caesar has betrayed those who trusted him, and declined to cancel debts as we were told he would; not, of course, that I believed that assurance. Certainly my creditors think them real; as for me, I dismiss them from my mind. And as for passion, which some call reality, you are aw
are — how could you fail to be? — of my passion for Diosippus, when the moon is waxing, and Nicander when it is on the wane, but you also know that if it was in my interest I would have either of the brats crucified — which I mention only as the nastiest death I can envisage. So where is the reality of my passion? I would weep for either lad, naturally, and my tears would be copious and impressive, but they would not prevent me from acting in my own interest."

  "So your self-interest is reality."

  "Is it? Is it? I wish I knew."

  He leaned back and stroked his belly. We were in the hot room of the baths, I remember. He brushed the palm of his hand across the folds of flesh and flicked a stream of sweat and vapour on to the tiled floor.

  "Is it? There are times, cousin, when it seems to me that there are only two realities I recognise: the first is physical. The body is real, I can't deny that."

  "Many have."

  "They have less flesh than I. The body is real and so, as a consequence, are its demands." "And the mind?"

  "Belongs to the body… part of the body." "It controls the body."

  Casca laughed: "How can you, an old soldier, say so! You have known fear in battle. Which is in the ascendant then? Mind or body? Or does fear force itself on you from without?"

  "If so, fear is real."

  "We think it is. And as for the mind controlling the body, let us return to where we started. There is a part of the body" — he fondled it — "which sometimes displays an intelligence of its own. I may wish to stimulate it, and it says 'no' and remains limp. At other times it moves on its own without my permission. In short, it does as it pleases whether I am awake or asleep. Sometimes I am awake and it sleeps. Sometimes I sleep and the dear little thing dances and sweats. So where is the reality of the controlling mind?"