Caesar

by Allan Massie

  I signed myself "Your affectionate friend".

  However carefully couched, this was, I knew, a dangerous letter to send. Yet it seemed to me necessary, for I could not but be alarmed by the rashness of Caesar's conduct, and the dangers this might breed for Octavius and myself as well as for Caesar.

  I sent the letter by a trusted slave, with instructions that he was to deliver it to Octavius in person and that he was to wait for a reply which he would bring directly to me.

  Mouse of mice,

  Congratulations on impending fatherhood. I always knew you had it in you.

  As for the other matters of which you discourse so sagely, speaking with the wisdom of Cicero, if not of Solon, be assured that I shall ponder them in whatever of my heart I can spare from my current enthusiasms, the nature of which it would be unseemly to commit to writing. Suffice it to say that Greece has delights to offer in matters other than literature and philosophy. Indeed, only the sternest philosopher could profess himself indifferent to the goods available.

  Public affairs seem remote from this idyllic Apollonian setting. Yet I am well aware that they will soon press hard upon me, and I am grateful to you, my dear Mouse, for the care with which you attend to my interests. I shall ever be guided by you in all matters, for I know how tenderly you feel. I know and commend your prudence. I am at one with you in all things, and I recognise that this is a time for caution and conciliation.

  We are wise, are we not, to walk warily in the sight of the, gods who are ever quick to punish the presumptions of us mere mortals.

  I wrote by an earlier messenger today to my uncle, so there is no need to burden you with a request to convey my dutiful love and esteem to him.

  Maecenas and Agrippa, though frequently at odds, are in their different ways, agreeable and stimulating companions. I trust their good sense, but I trust you more, and my native discretion most of all.

  I send you whatever you would have from me, with the assurance that you will not demand what I cannot offer.

  Octavius

  That letter provoked a renewed spasm of desire, soon quelled. I admired the boy's discretion, was conscious that the same quality was demanded from me in circumstances which appeared ever more perplexing.

  * *

  The question "What will Caesar do?" was in everyone's mouth. Nobody could imagine that he would not mark the end of the civil wars by a thorough reconstruction of the State and its Constitution. After all, even many who had followed Pompey agreed that the civil wars had been caused as much by the decay of the Republic as by Caesar's ambition. There were not many to agree with old Cicero that only a change of heart was needed.

  Cicero himself had retired, perhaps in disgust, to his estate at Tusculum where he amused himself with philosophy, which he not only wrote but taught to a group of young noblemen who delighted to flatter him. He also talked of writing a history of Rome, but was dissuaded partly by the report that Caesar did not look kindly on the enterprise. This came as a surprise to him because, whenever they met, Caesar was accustomed to flatter him. Nevertheless Caesar's opposition to the project was real.

  "It would of course have the merit of keeping the old man occupied and out of mischief," he said to me, "and that is certainly a consideration in its favour. We would all enjoy the rhetorical flourishes too. But all the same I can't approve. When Cicero sits down to write, he gets carried away. Loose talk at the dinner-table doesn't offend me, but I don't choose that Cicero should give the definitive version of my career to posterity. And his literary skill is such that we all know it would be received as definitive. So warn the old thing off, will you, Mouse?"

  Which I did, to Cicero's very considerable consternation; he was terrified to think he might have incurred Caesar's displeasure.

  "How could he imagine an old man could undertake such an arduous task?" he said. "Do please assure Caesar that I never speak anything but well of him."

  This was nonsense, as we all knew, but I let it pass, even though he continued by saying:

  "All the same, I do wish you would do something to prompt him to the right sort of action. When I think of how Sulla employed his dictatorship in an attempt to eradicate weaknesses and restore stability to the Republic, I am astonished by Caesar's indolence and complacency. You know how I honour him. You know the depths of my affection for him. It is my consciousness of my own virtue that allows me to urge you to speak to him about these matters. It rests in Caesar's power now - which is greater than that of any man since Sulla, greater perhaps even than Sulla's - to put things on a sound footing. I am told that he plans to appoint the consuls and praetors for the next five years in advance, making the elections a mere formality, and thus also making a mockery of our proud traditions of liberty. I have denied the rumour, of course, and assured people that Caesar would never do anything so flagrant. Do tell him what I say, how I do all I can to quell these insidious rumours, and warn him that the proliferation of such stories must harm his reputation. Constitutional reform - conservative and moderate reform - is the most urgent task before him. I am quite ready to draw up proposals for what needs to be done. You, my dear Decimus Brutus, know better than anyone - I say that for I admire your powers of perception and judgment - that I am the man best fitted to do this, for I am now bereft of ambition. It cannot be supposed that at the age of sixty-two I retain any hopes, even any wish, of playing a conspicuous part in public life. Not at all; I am happy with my books and my garden. It is only my intense desire to serve, to do something more, even above and beyond the great services I performed which earned me the title of 'Father of his Country' - one that I revere above all other honours - which prompts me to suggest that I may perform this last service for Rome and Caesar. Assure him therefore of my willingness, but stress, I beg you, the absence of any personal ambition in my proposals."

  And so on, and so on; a man could empty a wine-flask while Cicero talked.

  As a matter of fact, Cicero was far too deeply engaged in the problems of his private life to undertake such a task, even if Caesar had wished it, and even if he had still been competent to perform it (which I no longer thought him) or likely to carry it out in a manner agreeable to Caesar. He had recently divorced his wife Terentia, though they had been married for over thirty years. He claimed that she had neglected him during the civil-war, and even left him without necessities. Then he said that she had impoverished him by running up huge debts, that his house had become naked and empty as a result of her insensate extravagance, and that when his daughter Tullia had travelled to receive him at Brindisi after Pharsalus, Terentia had sent her south with an insufficient number of attendants and quantity of supplies. This was all nonsense. The truth was that the old philosopher had had his eye on a girl young enough to be his granddaughter whom he was determined to marry. She had the merit also of being rich, and Cicero was indeed laden with debt, though it was his responsibility rather than Terentia's. The truth was that the old goat lusted after his young bride, and that was the picture that filled my mind, as he jabbered on concerning the need for constitutional reform and his own willingness to undertake the task of drawing up proposals.

  Chapter 12

  All the same, Cicero might be an old windbag nowadays, but I couldn't deny that he had spoken sense. We had endured these terrible wars — wars which no one — not even Caesar, as he so often reminded us — had sought, and they had been fought for one simple reason: that the traditional political system of the Republic no longer answered the needs of Empire.

  (I explained that to you, Artixes, you will remember, but you will forgive me if I say now that I then did so in excessively simple terms suitable for the understanding of a barbarian youth, however charming.)

  But it was this question which perplexed me throughout that autumn. It was a golden autumn, as I recall, one of those years when each day seems imbued with a crisp clarity that calls on man to worship the gods, and yet with a warmth that encourages him to indulge in all physical pleasure. The hea
t of the day still invited languor, and the little breeze that blew in from the campagna encouraged reflection. We old warriors deserved the languor; we politicians, who had to consider how reform might best be effected, required those moments of reflection. Casca mocked me for my preoccupation. "Take what the gods give and be grateful." Rumours swept the city that Caesar intended to introduce Gauls and other barbarians into the Senate in such numbers that we Roman noblemen would become objects of contempt.

  "It cannot be," said even those who most keenly spread the rumour.

  "What is the purpose of a Roman nobleman's career in public life?" asked my father-in-law, and now friend, Cassius. He answered his own question.

  "He seeks dignity and power." But what did Caesar plan?

  Oh he made minor reforms, of course: he adjusted the calendar, for instance, and set great store by that.

  "I am a practical man, Mouse," he said, "and concerned with practical matters. There is nothing more practical than the measurement of time. In antiquity our Roman months so ill agreed with the revolution of the year that festivals and days of sacrifice gradually fell in seasons quite opposite to those for which they were intended. It might happen therefore that the sacrifice intended to bless the sowing of crops might, in one year, fall at the time when the corn was yellow. Could anything be more absurd, my dear fellow? Well, King Numa, the great law-giver so revered by our ancestors, took thought and devised a remedy. He ordered that the priests, when times seemed too abruptly out of joint, should order the interposition of this month called Mercidonius, which, as you know, is of the type described as intercalary. But even this has proved ineffective. I have, however, taken counsel of the wisest sages, Greeks and Egyptians for the most part, and we have propounded a new scheme of things, a new calendar, which eradicates these ancient defects, and which will set things right for all time."

  He could continue in this vein for hours. It was extraordinary: Caesar, so swift in action, so witty in repartee, the man whom the ladies called "Quicksilver", could also be the most frightful bore.

  But I suppose that is true of most men when they mount their hobbyhorse.

  I could get him to talk of these things. I could get him to expatiate on a plan he had projected to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, to the great benefit of traders no longer compelled to skirt the dangerous coast of the Peloponnesus. He would talk also, again at length, of how the Tiber might be conveyed directly from Rome by a deep channel cut directly from Rome to Circeii, and so into the sea near Terracina.

  "The merchants at Ostia may grumble, but what of that? In any case, I shall clear the shore there of its secret and dangerous obstructions."

  Then he proposed draining the marshes by Nomentum and Setia, to employ many idle hands in agriculture.

  And so on . . . There was no end to his schemes for social and physical improvement.

  This was all very well. It proved that his luminous mind had lost none of its accustomed invention and activity.

  But when I ventured to ask him, yet again, how he intended to reform the Constitution, with the implication (I admit) that any effective reform would make a future career like his own impossible, he frowned and declined to answer.

  Let me, as has ever been my endeavour throughout this memoir (which is not, I insist, primarily intended as a work of self-justification, but rather as a treatise which may edify such future generations as may chance upon it), let me then try to speak with all the honesty which I can muster.

  It may be beyond the wit of any man to restore the State. It may prove impossible, given the universal nature of our Empire, ever again to combine order with liberty.

  This is a matter which I had discussed with young Octavius. He responded to the question with all the pessimism characteristic of youth.

  "There has to be a supreme ruler of such an empire," he said, "and my uncle has made himself its master, as Pompey failed to do."

  "Sulla was such a master," I said. "He drew up a revised Constitution and then retired from public life."

  "And how long did his Constitution last?"

  We were in an arbour in his stepfather's garden. Ilex trees shaded us from the afternoon sun. A lizard ran along the wall. A slave brought us wine and we dismissed him. Then he was summoned by Octavius' stepfather, Philippus, as he lay at his ease, half-drunk, at the other end of the garden. We talked in low voices though none could hear us. It was about a month before we set out on the Spanish campaign, before Octavius had made clear to me that relations between us must now change.

  I said: "What do men want? Dignity, first of all."

  "Well, that can be arranged, can't it?"

  "Freedom from fear."

  "More difficult to ensure?"

  "The ability to exercise their powers to the full."

  "And if these powers clash, one man's with another's, as my uncle's did with Pompey's? What then?"

  He stroked his thighs. For a moment I was distracted, amazed as ever by his ability to be so conscious of his own body, yet capable of allowing his intellect to work independently of such preoccupations.

  "Do you know what has changed in Rome?" I said.

  When I recall my conversations with Octavius, I am perplexed ' - I was perplexed then, am even more so now - by what I can only call my consciousness of duality. This came on me in two forms. In the first place, there was that duality that philosophers have expounded. It was like those dialogues of Socrates: where you are aware that abstract philosophical questions are being debated in an atmosphere of highly charged sexuality. Such duality is always disturbing, and always alluring.

  But there was another duality that disturbed me more deeply. I could never be certain which of us — the experienced General, the man of action, the almost grizzled man of affairs - or the beardless boy who had his thighs shaved with red-hot almond shells, and who delighted in his beauty as the most mindless of women does — which of us was master and which disciple. Did I play Socrates to his Alcibiades, or was Alcibiades giving lessons to Socrates?

  So, now, when I said, "Do you know what has changed in Rome?" I did not, even as I spoke the words, know whether I was about to instruct him, or whether I was seeking information.

  Of course I must have been about to instruct him, for what could he tell me on such a matter?

  "Yes, of course," he said. "Rome made itself, or was formed by the gods, as an assembly of free men, exercising voting rights in the Forum about matters which concerned them intimately and of which they might be expected to have arrived at an informed opinion; and now the Roman populace, who still exercise, nominally at least, the same voting rights, who still claim to be the fount of political power, is composed of idle, workless layabouts, whose votes are for sale either to the highest bidder, or to the man who shouts the stupidest but most violent cry."

  I paused. He smiled.

  "Come on, my dear, contradict me if you dare." "You have told me what I was going to argue myself. And what is the consequence?"

  "Well this time, my dear, since we are in such evident agreement, let me urge you to provide the answer."

  "The answer is that popular politics, the politics of the elections, the politics that determine the magistracies, the politics that choose the men who must guide the destinies of Rome, have become a sham."

  "A lie," he smiled. "A game which the most honest among noblemen finds himself compelled to play most cynically."

  He sipped his wine, then, doing something which I had never seen done before, took a deep purple grape from the dish on the stone ledge beside his couch, and peeled it delicately with the nail of his forefinger.

  "My dearest Mouse," he said. "There is nothing to be done. Which is why men of intelligence like you and me — yes, and my uncle most of all - are driven to action, in an attempt to persuade ourselves that something worthwhile may yet be done. On the other hand, look across the garden, at my stepfather. He is drunk now, though it is early afternoon. He will stay drunk. Why not? He is rich. He
has no part to play, not because he considers any part unworthy of his abilities, which by the way he grossly exaggerates, but because he considers his abilities unworthy of any task that might present itself to him. Somebody said to me the other day that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Do you know what my friend Maecenas replied? 'Not so,' he said, 'a cynic knows the value of everything and knows it is not worth the price demanded.'"

  I was displeased to hear him quote Maecenas, but could not dissent from the judgment.

  And yet, Artixes, I find myself here, your father's hostage, your father's prisoner, and let me be honest, your father's destined victim, since none will pay the price he might demand for my release.

  Where stands cynicism there?

  Chapter 13

  But there was one other subject about which Caesar would talk as autumn turned to winter. This was his proposed campaign against Parthia. Now, let me admit that in other circumstances these plans would have been justifiable. The Parthians were insolent and aggressive. Their victory over Marcus Crassus at Carrhae had given them a contempt for Rome. They threatened the security of the eastern frontier of our Empire. There was also the question of Armenia, that kingdom which, protruding south, must be dominated either by Rome or by Parthia.

  Yet these were not the real reasons why Caesar was determined to embark on this enterprise which exceeded in audacity all that even he had ever attempted. Nor was it the case that he was persuaded by Cleopatra, whom he had now installed in a palace on - if I remember rightly - the Esquiline, and whom he visited nightly for an hour before supper, sometimes indeed remaining there for the meal, and even for hours afterwards. It was true that as an Easterner she was eager to see Parthia humbled, and she admitted to me herself that she had a further reason.