Caesar knew that if the war was to be brought to a rapid conclusion, it was of the utmost importance to capture his defeated rival; so he set off in pursuit of Pompey as he made his way eastwards, destination unknown. Meanwhile the leading survivors of Pharsalus gathered together and sailed the fleet to Corcyra, where they pondered their next move. Caesar’s victory was a devastating blow to the Republicans and it looked as if the war were over. However, this was not necessarily so: Pompey’s fleet still controlled the seas. The province of Africa had been in friendly hands since Curio’s defeat and death. If the defeated Commander-in-Chief managed to elude Caesar, he might well be able to raise another army in Asia Minor.
Cato had not fought at Pharsalus and was unwilling to accept its verdict. The first decision to be made was who should take over from Pompey as Commander-in-Chief. Surprisingly Cato suggested that the commission be offered to Cicero as the senior Roman official present. It is hard to believe that Cato made the invitation other than for form’s sake; even he would have seen something absurd in the distinctly unmilitary orator challenging the greatest general of his day.
Cicero rejected the idea out of hand and explained that he wanted to have nothing further to do with the war. His defeatist attitude enraged Pompey’s eldest son, Cnaeus, who had a short and cruel temper. Apparently Cnaeus and his friends drew their swords and would have cut Cicero down on the spot if Cato had not intervened and, with some difficulty, hustled the elderly statesman out of the camp—and, as it turned out, the war.
Most of the remaining optimates decided that their best course of action was to make their way to the province of Africa. There they gathered—Afranius and Petreius, defeated in Spain, Pompey’s two sons, other flotsam of Caesar’s earlier victories and Cato himself, the moral standard-bearer of resistance. Many of them had been pardoned once and could expect no mercy if they fell into Caesar’s hands a second time. Labienus, Caesar’s old comrade-in-arms who had defected from him after the crossing of the Rubicon, also went to Africa. Their plan was to muster their forces and prepare for an invasion of Italy, a short sail away.
Some fugitives from the catastrophe decided to end their resistance. Chief among them was Marcus Brutus, now about thirty years old. Despite the financial scandal in which he had been involved during Cicero’s governorship of Cilicia a couple of years before, he was in some respects a principled and serious-minded young man who thought long and hard about which side to fight for in the civil war. He had a strong family reason for going over to Caesar, as the youthful Pompey had had his father put to death during the wars of Sulla. However, in his considered opinion Pompey was more in the right than Caesar and Brutus decided that it was his duty to put the public good above his personal interests. Not for nothing was he Cato’s nephew.
After joining the Republican army in Greece, Brutus spent much of his time in camp reading books till late in the evening and writing a digest of the Greek historian Polybius. He took part in the battle at Pharsalus, but came to no harm. There was a reason for this. Caesar was very fond of him, perhaps due to his continuing affection for his former mistress and Brutus’s mother, Servilia, and gave instructions to his officers that he should not be killed. If Brutus gave himself up his life should be spared, and if he resisted he should be left alone. After the rout Brutus managed to escape through a marsh to safety. He traveled by night to the town of Larissa and immediately wrote to Caesar, who was delighted to learn that he was safe and asked Brutus to join him. According to Plutarch, he had no qualms about advising Caesar, correctly as it would turn out, that Pompey would likely flee to Egypt.
Brutus’s motives as a collaborator defy interpretation. Up to this point in his life his actions appear to have been governed by self-interest. It may be that his reputation for high-mindedness and probity derived from his somewhat un-Roman bookishness and his addiction to literature and philosophy rather than from his actual behavior. Possibly, he felt that he had done enough for his family enemy and was now within his rights to switch to Caesar. One way or another, Brutus quickly became a favorite and a few months later was put in charge of Italian Gaul. He was a popular and apparently incorruptible governor.
So far as Cicero was concerned, hostilities were now definitely at an end. He took himself off to Patrae, the Greek port from where he would be able to catch a boat for Brundisium. Here a final misfortune awaited him, as he confided to Atticus a week or so later. He and his brother had a serious disagreement. By following Cicero’s star, Quintus had lost everything. He had sacrificed his excellent relationship with Caesar, under whose command in Gaul he had for once been his own man. There may have been financial problems, too, nagging both men. For all their lives Quintus had willingly played second fiddle to his older and more famous brother. Perhaps resentment had so long been growing below the surface—all those years of patronizing advice, of interference in his domestic affairs—that it boiled over all the more violently when the break came.
The upshot was that Quintus and his son followed after Caesar, with whom they intended to make their peace. Meanwhile, Cicero had nowhere to go but back to Italy. Worn down by his adventures and broken by the collapse of both his public and domestic worlds, he set off once again, without pause for second thoughts, to Brundisium and home.
11
PACIFYING CAESAR
The Last Gasps of Republican Rome: 48–45 BC
This time arrival in Brundisium was a melancholy affair. There was no Terentia or Tullia waiting when he sailed into port in mid-October 48. Tullia was ill, perhaps recovering from her miscarriage, and Cicero was at his wits’ end with worry. Ready money was in short supply, for while in Greece he had made over to Pompey all the funds he had brought with him. The payment of Tullia’s dowry to her new husband, Dolabella, was a touchy issue.
Cicero’s lictors were still with him, an expensive and embarrassing nuisance. He was nervous about his reception as he walked into the town and made them mingle discreetly with the crowd so that he would not be noticed. He could not disband them because, although his successor in Cilicia had been nominated, Caesar, now in charge of the government in Rome, refused to accept the appointment. (This meant, interestingly, that Cicero recognized, however reluctantly and implicitly, Caesar’s legitimacy.)
Cicero was not sure what to do next. Atticus advised him to go nearer to Rome, traveling by night, but he did not relish the thought. He didn’t have enough stopping places at his disposal, so what would he do in the daytime? Also, there was no pressing reason to move on, for his old enemy, Vatinius, was in charge of Brundisium and was now both hospitable and friendly. Cicero always found it hard to keep a feud going and was prone to be fond of anyone who showed him affection, whatever he really thought of them and their politics.
Balbus and Oppius, busy managing Caesar’s affairs behind the scenes, wrote to Cicero telling him not to worry. His position would be protected, if not enhanced. Dolabella let him know that Caesar had authorized him to invite his father-in-law to come back to Italy. This good news was soon contradicted by Mark Antony, once again responsible for governing Italy in Caesar’s absence, who sent Cicero a copy of a letter he had received from Caesar which stated that no Pompeians would be allowed back into the country until he had reviewed their cases individually. “He expressed himself pretty strongly on these points,” Cicero informed Atticus gloomily. He settled down miserably in Brundisium to await Caesar’s return.
At the end of November he learned of Pompey’s fate. After Pharsalus, the general had made his way eastwards, with Caesar in hot pursuit. His destination had been Egypt; he thought he could make a stand there and raise another army by recruiting in Asia Minor. For many years he had been the incarnation of Roman authority in the region and he expected that his writ would still hold. Also he was the Senate-appointed guardian of the boy Pharaoh.
But the royal advisers to the Pharaoh had no intention of welcoming a loser. Imagining that they would ingratiate themselves with Caesar, they lured Pom
pey from his ship and had him killed before he had even reached land. Not long afterwards Caesar arrived in Alexandria and was presented with Pompey’s severed and pickled head; when he was given his old brother-in-law’s signet ring, he is said to have wept.
Success came early to Pompey and gave him a reputation he had to work to deserve. His portraits show a puzzled, worried expression and suggest a man not entirely at ease with himself. His contemporaries overrated his military abilities, and as a politician he was hesitant, devious and clumsy. Yet he had his qualities: he was a first-rate organizer and, if only the Roman constitution had allowed it, could have spent a happy career as an imperial administrator. His private life was exemplary: his two marriages were arranged for political reasons, but he seems to have loved his wives and won their loyalty.
Cicero was saddened by Pompey’s death but not surprised. The two men had been on good terms, but Pompey had kept his feelings to himself and, despite their surface affection, had been happy to manipulate and on occasion deceive his sometimes gullible friend. Cicero offered Atticus his own cool but generous epitaph: “As to Pompey’s end I never had any doubt, for all rulers and peoples had become so thoroughly persuaded of the hopelessness of his case that wherever he went I expected this to happen. I cannot but grieve for his fate. I knew him for a man of good character, clean life and serious principle.”
There was further news from the east, which Cicero took much more deeply to heart. Following the quarrel at Patrae, Quintus had sent his son ahead of him to find Caesar and make his excuses, hoping to be taken back into favor. Thinking that his own salvation depended on throwing Cicero to the wolves, he heaped all the blame for his own behavior on his elder brother. In addition, the younger Quintus was reported to have used scandalous language about his uncle in public. Cicero was deeply upset by these betrayals: “It is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to me,” he told Atticus, “and the bitterest of my present woes.”
In early January 47 a package of letters arrived from the elder Quintus for various addressees, including Vatinius and another person in Brundisium. Cicero had the local ones sent on at once. In no time the two recipients turned up on his doorstep, furious at what they had read. Apparently the letters contained malicious and inaccurate information about him. Cicero wondered what was in the rest of the correspondence, so he opened all the other letters and found much more in the same vein. He forwarded them all to Atticus for his opinion, telling him that Pomponia had a seal to replace the imprints he had broken.
Perhaps Cicero felt guilty for having taken his brother too much for granted; in any case, he wrote to Caesar accepting all responsibility for the decision to go to Greece and join Pompey: his brother had been “the companion of my journey, not the guide.” This gesture of generosity was well judged. Cicero knew Caesar well and might have guessed that treachery of this kind would not endear Quintus to a man who valued personal loyalty above almost all things. AS part of his reconciliation policy, Caesar had had all of Pompey’s correspondence burned unread after Pharsalus. It would hardly have been in character for him to pay attention to the self-interested information, or disinformation, which Quintus was purveying about his brother.
Meanwhile Dolabella, who was Tribune that year, was stirring up trouble in Rome. He picked up the baton Caelius had let fall and, in opposition to government policy, was campaigning for a cancellation of debts. Caesar’s financial settlement in Italy was faltering and discontent spread through the country, even contaminating veteran legions stationed not far away in Campania. Antony was forced to go to the troops to pacify them, leaving the city to Dolabella and disorder. Dolabella’s agitations seriously reduced his value to Cicero as an insurance policy with the new regime.
All in all, the behavior of his relatives added private misery to Cicero’s public misfortune. What was worse, he did not dare to draw attention to himself by leaving Brundisium, and there was little he could do so far from Rome except brood on an uncertain future.
Caesar now unexpectedly disappeared from view and nothing was heard from him for months. Between December 23, 48, and June of the following year he sent no dispatches to Rome. He had become embroiled, with too few troops at his back, in a bitter little war with the Egyptian court and at one stage was blockaded inside the royal palace in Alexandria. One of the daughters of the late Pharaoh, Ptolemy, was Cleopatra, now in her late teens. This young woman was to become one of the most celebrated and enigmatic figures in ancient history, mysterious in part because her memory is filtered through the malicious accounts of her enemies. Cleopatra was unable to offer her own version of the momentous events of her time; sex and politics are interwoven so closely in her career that her motives are hard to disentangle. Raison d’état led her into the bedrooms of two famous Romans—first Caesar, and later Mark Antony. To what extent did physical attraction or love also play a part? We do not know.
Cleopatra was not, it seems, particularly good-looking, but she had a bewitching personality. “Her own beauty, so we are told, was not of that incomparable kind which instantly captivates the beholder,” Plutarch avers. “But the charm of her presence was irresistible: and there was an attractiveness in her person and talk, together with a peculiar force of character which pervaded her every word and action, and laid all who associated with her under its spell. It was delight merely to hear the sound of her voice.”
At the time of her first meeting with Caesar, Cleopatra and a younger half-brother were joint Pharaohs (and, according to Egyptian custom for royal families, were probably married). She had no intention of sharing her authority with her brother for a minute longer than was necessary. The arrival of Rome’s leading general was an opportunity for her, if only she could win him over to her cause.
The Queen had herself smuggled into Caesar’s presence wrapped in a carpet or bedroll and they soon began an affair. She quickly persuaded him to take her side in the struggle for power with her brother. Caesar defeated the Egyptian army at the end of March 47 and Cleopatra’s annoying little brother was drowned while trying to escape by boat from the battlefield. She wasted no time in marrying yet another boy sibling. Unaccountably, Caesar did not leave the country until June. He seems to have spent some of this time on a lavish and leisurely excursion up the Nile.
This was risky, if not irresponsible behavior, for it undermined the apparently decisive result of Pharsalus. What remained of Pompey’s fleet was scoring successes in the Adriatic and the optimates in Africa were raising substantial forces. Antony was not doing well at governing Italy and failed to calm the mutinous soldiery. Caesar, cut off from the rest of the world, did not learn of these developments until later, but he could have foreseen that his absence would lead to problems. It was no time for him to quit the helm.
While Rome was distracted with its internal quarrels and Caesar was indulging in his Egyptian interlude, Mithridates’ son Pharnaces seized his chance, recovering his kingdom of Pontus and defeating a Roman army. Asia Minor was on the point of disintegration. It looked as if the chain of eastern provinces along the Mediterranean seaboard and the protective buffer zone of client kingdoms inland could be lost—a high price to pay for the luxury of a civil war.
It is hard to find a convincing political explanation for Caesar’s behavior. He may have thought that securing Egypt, with the kingdom’s vast wealth and inexhaustible corn supplies, was of high importance. Ensuring that the young and inexperienced queen was firmly established on the throne took time. In addition, he could have simply felt he needed a holiday in the company of his charming new mistress. This is posterity’s favorite explanation, and there may be truth in it.
In any event, he finally left Egypt a few weeks before the birth of Cleopatra’s son, named Caesarion and almost certainly the product of their affair. His first task, which he accomplished with remarkable rapidity, was to deal with Pharnaces. In a lightning five-day campaign, he annihilated the king’s army at Zela in Cappadocia. “Came, saw, conquered,” he r
emarked. He added acidly that Pompey was lucky to have been considered a great general if this was the kind of opposition he had had to face.
Meanwhile Cicero remained isolated in Brundisium, unable to move until Caesar reappeared and ruled on his case. Quintus, badgered by Atticus, sent his brother a grudging letter of apology, which as far as Cicero was concerned only made matters worse. Young Quintus also wrote to him “most offensively.” In the summer Cicero learned that his nephew had been given an interview with Caesar and that he and his father had been forgiven. He was pleased, with the reservation that concessions of this sort, “from a master to slaves,” could be revoked at will. Except for the occasional explosion, his anger with both Quintuses gradually subsided.
Then, as if he didn’t have enough domestic problems, relations with Terentia came under increasing strain. The details are clouded, but she was “doing some wicked things” regarding her will. Cicero remained very worried about the financial prospects of Marcus and Tullia and he must have believed that his wife was in some way imperiling their interests. But he still depended on her for advice and trusted her judgment on how to handle relations with Dolabella. Tullia’s marriage was turning out to be an unhappy one. Dolabella was rumored to have had a number of sexual escapades and was conducting an affair with a respectable married woman from the Metellus clan. To add insult to injury, he was proposing to erect a statue of Clodius, of all people. Divorce was being considered, but the timing was important. Was Dolabella too powerful to offend just at the moment?
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