Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

  When he reached the end of the processional route, the Capitol Hill, Pompey dedicated 8 million sesterces to the goddess Minerva and promised a shrine in honor of Venus the Victorious at the new theater he was to build on the Field of Mars. Surely, he may reasonably have felt, his glorious deeds would win him the gratitude of the Senate and People of Rome.

  Towards the end of the year Cicero, powerless, witnessed a serious blow to his ideal of an “alliance of all the classes.” The equites, mainly traders and businessmen, on whom Cicero relied for much of his political support, were annoyed by a Senatorial decree which removed their immunity from prosecution when sitting as jurors. The effect was simply to put them on an equal footing with Senators, but, while they kept their feelings to themselves, they resented the reform.

  Not long afterwards a delegation of equites asked the Senate to review their tax-farming concessions in the provinces of Asia Minor. On reflection, they felt that they had bid too high for the contracts and that their profit margins were at risk. Crassus was behind the move. His support for the tax farmers was in part a bid to counterbalance Pompey’s huge new power base in Asia Minor. Plutarch writes: “Giving up all attempts to equal Pompey in military matters, Crassus devoted himself to politics. Here by taking pains, by helping people in the law courts or with loans … he acquired an influence and a reputation equal to that which Pompeius had won by all his great military expeditions.”

  Cicero was furious but had no choice but to support the claim. “The demand was disgraceful,” he wrote to Atticus on December 5, “a confession of recklessness. But there was the gravest danger of a complete break between Senate and equites if it had been turned down altogether.” Cato was his usual obstructive self and made sure that the Senate resisted the request. The equites began to think that if Cicero could not get them what they wanted, they would have to look elsewhere for favors.

  Early in 60 a Tribune, Lucius Flavius, brought forward a comprehensive bill to distribute land to Pompey’s soldiers. It was carefully and unprovocatively framed and, after proposing some amendments, Cicero supported it. Private interests were to be protected and he welcomed the prospect that, if properly organized, “the dregs of the urban population can be cleared out and Italy repeopled.” To critics who argued that he was abandoning his constitutionalist position, he replied that Pompey “has become more constitutionally minded and less inclined to court popularity with the masses.” In other words, if Pompey’s wishes were granted, he might be persuaded to abandon the radicals and join the conservative interest.

  The optimates saw things in a very different light and opposed the measure from start to finish. This had little to do with its intrinsic merits. They were thinking in exclusively competitive terms; anything that enhanced Pompey’s standing would diminish theirs. It would not be long before this ill-conceived attack brought about the exact opposite of what was intended.

  Had there been more conservative politicians of real ability, the history of these years might have been quite different. The bloodlettings earlier in the century under Marius and Sulla had depopulated the ruling class and, with the deaths of senior figures (including, recently, that of that elderly pillar of the political establishment Catulus), the talent on the Senate’s benches was much reduced. The increasing wealth that flowed from the provinces had reduced the appeal of, and the necessity for, a political career. Major personalities such as Hortensius and Lucullus (the able general who had preceded Pompey in the east) had withdrawn into a private life of, in Cicero’s opinion, scandalous luxury.

  Of course, Cato did not fall into this category. But his inability to compromise made him as fatal to his cause, Cicero believed, as the moral dereliction of the others did. “As for our dear friend Cato,” he observed to Atticus while the land bill was being debated, “I have as warm a regard for him as you do. The fact remains that with all his patriotism, he can be a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as if he were living in Plato’s Republic instead of Romulus’s cesspool.”

  By June the political atmosphere was overheating. The Consul, Metellus Celer, placed all kinds of obstacles in the way of Flavius, who eventually lost his temper and dragged him off to the prison not far from the rear of the Senate House. The Consul preserved his sangfroid and resisted offers of help from other Tribunes. (They could, for example, have vetoed the arrest.) Instead he called a Senate meeting at the prison. Flavius, undaunted, placed himself across the entry to prevent the Senators from going in. The Consul, however, countered this move by having a hole knocked through the wall. AS he had doubtless calculated, public opinion swung decisively in his support. An embarrassed Pompey intervened and called Flavius off. He did not proceed with the bill. This incident marked the end of any possible rapprochement between him and the Senate.

  Cicero was not enjoying the situation in which he found himself. His efforts to keep in favor with all sides meant that he had to behave with unaccustomed circumspection and keep his emotions—and his tongue—under control. The only advantage that accrued from his support for the land bill and his growing closeness to Pompey was popularity in an unexpected quarter: as he wrote to Atticus, “those conspirators of the wine table, our goateed young bloods.” Curio, Caelius and other budding populares were pleased with him. He was cheered at the Games and gladiatorial shows “without a single wolf whistle.” Otherwise he took what consolation he could in spending more time with his family and in literary pursuits.

  Increasingly aware of the need to bolster his fading influence, Cicero decided that more propaganda about his Consulship was called for. He produced an epic in three books, furnished with all the apparatus of gods and muses. Of another work, he told Atticus that he “had used up the entire perfume cabinet of Isocrates [a famous Greek orator] along with all his pupils’ scent boxes and some of Aristotle’s rouge too.” His tone of voice is ironic, as if he knew perfectly well that what he was doing was not to be taken too seriously. Nor was it: Cicero’s readers ridiculed his literary pretensions and had a good laugh at his expense.

  At the end of January 60, Cicero let Atticus know of his unhappiness.

  What I most badly need at the moment is a confidant.… And you whose talk and advice has so often lightened my worry and vexation of spirit, the partner in my public life and intimate of all my private concerns, the sharer of all my talk and plans, where are you? I am so utterly forsaken that my only moments of relaxation are those I spend with my wife, my little daughter and my darling Marcus. My brilliant, worldly friendships may make a fine show in public, but in the home they are barren things. My house is crammed of a morning, I go down to the Forum surrounded by droves of friends, but in all the crowds I cannot find one person with whom I can exchange an unguarded joke or let out a private sigh.

  Later in the same letter he hinted that even family life was not all it might be. Apart from Terentia’s futile jealousy of Clodia, there were worries about his brother, Quintus. For most of his life Quintus was overshadowed by his more celebrated older brother, and every now and again he kicked against his lot and revealed a sore and irascible inferiority complex. He had been Praetor in 62 and in the following year went out to govern the province of Asia. Cicero was anxious for him and hoped that Atticus might accompany him to exert a moderating influence. He was afraid that Quintus’s behavior might damage his own interests, for Cicero tended, maddeningly for his brother, to regard both of them as a single political entity.

  Quintus chose this moment to pick a quarrel with Atticus. Its cause is unknown. Perhaps Quintus sensed Atticus’s and his brother’s lack of confidence in him, or perhaps there was some dispute with his wife, Pomponia, Atticus’s sister (heralding the marital difficulties of later years). In any event, Cicero was dismayed that two of the people closest to him were suddenly on bad terms. He did his best to pacify Atticus: “I trusted and indeed convinced myself that … a frank talk or even the mere meeting and sight of one another would set all to rights between you. I need not tell you, for
you already know, what a kindly, amiable chap my brother is, how impressionable he is both in taking offense and laying it aside.”

  Quintus’s performance as governor threatened to realize his brother’s worst fears. He had two men found guilty of killing their father sewn up in a sack and drowned—the traditional Roman penalty. When an important provincial named Zeuxis was tried for murdering his mother, Quintus decided to display his evenhandedness by meting out the same punishment—despite the fact that Zeuxis had been acquitted. Zeuxis wisely made himself scarce and, although cross, the new governor then changed his mind, writing him a friendly letter and inviting him to return. On another occasion Quintus ordered one of his lieutenants to burn two embezzlers alive and threatened to have a Roman eques “suffocated one day in smoke, to the applause of the province.” When criticized, he said that he had only been joking. His anxious relatives must have raised their eyebrows at his sense of humor.

  Another of Quintus’s weaknesses (according to Cicero) long outlasted his governorship. While outwardly decisive, he relied a great deal on the advice of those around him, and he preferred to listen to his slaves than to his social equals. His favorite was a certain Statius whom he soon freed and kept as a personal assistant and adviser for many years. Cicero could not stand him and resented his (as he saw it, thoroughly un-Roman) influence over his brother.

  Partly as thanks for the election pamphlet of a few years earlier and partly as a kind of insurance policy, Cicero wrote Quintus a long letter, in effect an essay, on the duties of governorship and, while sugaring the pill, spoke his mind; his brother had to learn to control his temper.

  In any case, perhaps because of the good advice of his brother, Quintus seems to have settled down and remained at his post until 59, an unusually long assignment. For all his faults, he was an honest and sophisticated man, who read Plato and Xenophon, spoke Greek fluently and even wrote tragedies in his spare time.

  Back in Rome an uneasy interval was dragging on. After the defeat of the land-distribution bill, Pompey, disgruntled and moody, was considering his position. Meanwhile, in what is now Portugal and northwest Spain, Caesar was winning a lively little war against some rebellious tribes. It was not clear what Clodius’s ambitions were, and where they might or might not lead, but he was busy building political support. The Senate was in a defensive and obstructionist mode.

  By June of the year 60 Caesar had returned from Spain with a new reputation for generalship. Despite opposition from Cato and his friends, he was duly elected Consul for the next year. His colleague was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, an obstinate and not very astute conservative.

  It may have been at this point that Caesar began to look beyond his policy of harrying the optimates as occasion arose and to think seriously of ways to break their power permanently. In any case, in the months before taking office, he took stock of the general situation. He saw that there were four senior personalities: himself, Pompey, Crassus and Cicero, each of whom was alienated in one way or another from the political process and unable to achieve his aims. Would it be possible, he wondered, to bring them together in a partnership that would bypass the obstructionist Cato and the Senate? AS summer gave way to autumn, he began to assemble a deal that would give them what they wanted. Pompey’s needs took priority; it was becoming urgent to settle his soldiers and confirm the arrangements he had made in Asia Minor. This was not just a question of satisfying the vanity of a great commander; it was in the public interest, although his opponents would not see it, to ensure that discontented and unemployed veterans were not allowed to add to social confusion in the countryside and in the city of Rome. And the prosperity and stability of the Empire depended on the pacification of the eastern provinces after years of war, massacre and destruction. Crassus was at loggerheads with the Senate too. The tax farmers were still waiting for a decision about their contracts. The problem would be to find a way of persuading him and Pompey to patch up their poor personal relations.

  Then there was Cicero. Although his influence was in decline he still had an extensive network of clients and friends; he was at the height of his powers as an orator and could swing opinion; and he was the ablest politician on the right, a moderate who stood for social and political reconciliation. It is possible that at this stage Caesar had not altogether despaired of a consensual solution to the difficulties facing the Republic. Cicero might have a useful contribution to make; at the very least he would give any pact a degree of respectability—something that would appeal to Pompey.

  Finally there were Caesar’s own claims. If his forthcoming Consulship was to be a radical and reforming one, which he intended it to be, it would arouse great animosity and it would be essential to protect his personal position once it was over. This could be managed only if he obtained the governorship of a major province—better still, a province where he could further develop his military career. He was the junior partner of the quartet and doubtless perceived that his long-term future would be assured only if he could create the circumstances which would allow him to raise himself and his reputation to a level with that of Pompey.

  In December Caesar quickly came to an understanding with Pompey, thoroughly disillusioned with the optimates, and, once he had been secured, sounded out the other two. Crassus presented no insuperable difficulties and sometime in the early new year he joined the alliance. The basic proposition was that all three would promise to take no political action of which one of them disapproved. Once Consul, Caesar would put through a land-reform act and get the eastern settlement confirmed, revise the tax farmers’ contracts and arrange a five-year provincial command for himself. For all these measures he would receive Pompey’s and Crassus’s support.

  Cicero, however, was a tougher nut to crack. He was approached towards the end of December and for a time could not make up his mind how to react. The go-between was a millionaire businessman from Gades in Spain, Lucius Cornelius Balbus, who had received Roman citizenship about ten years previously. Caesar had come across him during his recent governorship and brought him to Rome, where he acted as his confidential agent. He and an eques, Caius Oppius, became the subtle and ingenious fixers Caesar used to promote his interests during his frequent absences from the capital during the coming years. They wrote letters and published pamphlets. On good terms with all the leading politicians of the day, they wheedled and cajoled, or when necessary threatened, enemies and influential neutrals. They did favors and called them in later as and when the need arose. They were fiercely loyal to their employer.

  Balbus told Cicero that Caesar would like him to support the land-reform bill with which he intended to launch his Consulship; in return Caesar would follow his and Pompey’s advice in all things and try to draw Pompey and Crassus together. Cicero gave the proposition serious thought. The alliance would bring him closer to Pompey and would secure his position from his critics—and especially from Clodius, who had not forgotten his part in the Good Goddess trial: the word was that as soon as he won public office he would prosecute Cicero for the execution of the conspirators.

  Then some lines from the poem on his Consulship came to Cicero’s mind, in which the muse of epic poetry, Calliope, appears to him and gives him some advice:

  Meantime the paths which you from earliest days did seek,

  Yes, and when Consul too, as mood and virtue called,

  These hold, and foster still your fame and good men’s praise.

  Nobody else had taken the book very seriously, but, as he pointed out to Atticus, for Cicero the passage reminded him of his duty. AS he thought about what he had written, it struck him how it was essentially a celebration of traditional, aristocratic values. They were where his deepest feelings lay, even if the Patricians of his day cold-shouldered him. His decision not to join the Caesarian alliance was at bottom an emotional one. It was beyond his imagination that the established order could not be saved.

  Caesar, Pompey and Crassus went ahead without Cicero and sealed their secret ag
reement. With their money, their influence, their access to military force and their ruthlessness, they were in a position to act more or less as they wished. They could control the results of elections and arrange special commands or postings almost at will. A cabal was now in command of affairs, which was willing and able to bypass the Senate. When a later contemporary, Caius Asinius Pollio, wrote one of the first histories of the period, it was no accident that he opened his narrative with this alliance, which signaled the bankruptcy of the old order.

  Caesar’s success as a politician sprang not only from his capacity for rigorous analysis of a given situation and for decisive action but also from his charm and attention to detail. So, when softening up Pompey, he had appealed to the great man’s vanity by getting the Senate to let him wear his triumphal insignia, including the special embroidered purple gown, at public shows. Few people saw the steel behind his agreeable, good-humored manners. He knew how to make himself liked by all and sundry. He was scrupulously polite: once when he was served asparagus dressed with myrrh instead of olive oil, he ate it without objecting and told off his friends when they objected to the dish (because it tasted bitter and was vulgarly expensive). “If you didn’t like it, you didn’t need to eat it. But if one reflects on one’s host’s lack of breeding it merely shows one is ill-bred oneself.” His attitude towards money was strategic: it was not so much that he wanted it for himself, he sought it as a fund into which his friends and soldiers could dip, often providing them with cheap or interest-free loans. He was always giving people presents, whether or not they asked for them.

  From his youth Caesar took a dandyish care of his appearance, once adding wrist-length sleeves to his purple-striped Senatorial tunic and wearing his belt fashionably loose. His dinner parties and entertainments were legendary; in Plutarch’s phrase, he was known and admired for a “certain splendour in his life-style.” Cicero observed: “When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.”