Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

  A month or two after the marriage Cicero was struck by the most terrible blow he had ever experienced in his life. For the first time since his exile his mental equilibrium was threatened. Tullia died.

  In January 45, she gave birth to a son, “little Lentulus,” as Cicero called him after one of his father’s names. The lying-in apparently took place at Dolabella’s house, although the couple was now divorced. The mother failed to recover, surviving for only a few weeks, and the child died some months later. Tullia is a shadowy figure, who never speaks for herself and is glimpsed only through her father’s loving comments. We can guess that she was intelligent and amusing (as well as being self-willed and with a pronounced tendency to fall for unsuitable men).

  Cicero was devastated. Tusculum and his house on the Palatine were too full of memories and for a time he stayed with Atticus, reading everything he could find in his library that the Greek philosophers had to say about grief. Then, having gained leave of absence from his public duties, he fled the city. He went to Astura, a property he had recently bought on the coast south of Antium, a wooded and remote spot where he could hide away and grieve. The Romans disapproved of extravagant mourning, especially over a woman, and Cicero did his best to control or at least to conceal his emotions. He asked Atticus to attribute his absence from Rome to ill health.

  Reading did not help, so he picked up his pen and wrote a Self-Consolation, one of the most celebrated works of antiquity, although now lost. Consolatory texts were a recognized genre, but he was, he thought, the first man to write one for himself. He assembled every relevant text he could find and “threw them all into one attempt at consolation,” he wrote to Atticus, “for my soul was in a feverish state and I attempted every means of curing its condition.” He worked quickly and finished the book by early March, when he promised a copy to Atticus (with whom he was corresponding daily). “I write all day long, not that I do myself any real good, but just for the time being it distracts me—not enough, for grief is powerful and importunate; still it brings a respite.” He suspected that his anguish was changing his personality and was afraid that Atticus would no longer feel towards him as in the past. “The things you like in me are gone for good.”

  He found that he could not stop crying and spent most of his time on his own out-of-doors. “In this lonely place I don’t talk to a soul. Early in the day I hide myself in a thick, thorny wood, and don’t emerge till evening. When I am alone all my conversation is with books; it is interrupted by fits of weeping, against which I struggle as best I can. But so far it is an unequal fight.”

  When contrasted with the self-indulgent and sometimes slightly formulaic expressions of grief of his letters from exile, Cicero’s state of mind during this crisis reveals a new intensity of feeling, too raw and too astonishing to be publicized. He showed little self-pity; his pain was so fierce as almost to be physical. This was a true breakdown and he recognized it. He withdrew from the world like a sick animal and fought as hard as he could for recovery, for the regaining of his life.

  Tullia’s death spelled the end of Cicero’s brief marriage to Publilia. She was said to be pleased that someone she had seen as a rival had been removed from the scene, and Cicero could not forgive this. Even if the story was false, his bereavement pushed her to the far periphery of his concerns. Publilia was not allowed to visit him and he asked for Atticus’s support in preventing either her or her relatives from seeking him out. “I want you to find out just how long I can stay here [at Astura] without getting caught.” His mind was set on divorce and before long the baffled and relieved teenager was out of his life for good.

  Letters of condolence for Tullia’s death poured in, among them from Brutus and from Caesar in Spain, who knew well the agony of grief for a dead daughter. His friend the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus wrote a long, touching epistle that brought home to Cicero the mutability of human affairs.

  I want to tell you of something which has brought me no small comfort, in the hope that perhaps it may have some power to lighten your sorrow too. AS I was on my way back from Asia [to Rome on changing sides after Pharsalus], sailing from Aegina towards Megara, I began to gaze at the landscape around me. There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes. [These cities had not recovered from the Roman annexation of Greece in the middle of the previous century: Corinth had been sacked.] I began to think to myself: “Ah, how can we little creatures wax indignant if one of us dies or is killed, ephemeral beings as we are, when the corpses of so many towns lie abandoned in a single spot? Check yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a mortal man.” That thought, I do assure you, strengthened me not a little. If I may suggest it, picture the same spectacle to yourself. Not long ago so many great men died at one time, the Roman Empire was so gravely impaired, all its provinces shaken to pieces; can you be so greatly moved by the loss of one poor little woman’s frail spirit?

  Slowly Cicero began to get better. With an effort of will he returned to Tusculum towards the end of May. One good sign was that he transposed his emotions onto an external project. He conceived the idea of erecting a shrine to Tullia’s memory. This would give her immortality of a sort, for it would celebrate her “glory.” The Greeks and Romans believed that in exceptional cases a bridge could be built between the human and the divine. In Asia Minor there was an established tradition of worshiping great men and according divine status to rulers. Cicero was not going as far as that, but he wanted his daughter’s remarkable qualities to receive a permanent memorial. In a fragment from the Self-Consolation he wrote that if it had been appropriate for heroes of Greek mythology to be raised to heaven, “surely she too deserves the same honor and devotion, and I shall give it to her.”

  Atticus thought the scheme eccentric, but he went patiently along with his friend and for some months they discussed various possible sites Cicero might purchase. It was important that the monument should not be off the beaten track, so perhaps somewhere in the suburbs of Rome would be best. Price was not an object, for Cicero would happily sacrifice some of his luxuries or even one of his villas to raise the necessary funds. He considered a wide range of properties, including one belonging to one of Clodius’s sisters.

  By the summer the project was abandoned. Cicero’s engagement with and curiosity about the world around him were returning. He wrote a new will to take account of his short-lived grandson and Terentia made a nuisance of herself about it. He paid increasingly affectionate attention to Atticus’s daughter, who was born around 51. Although she was only about five or six years old, she already had a tutor. She had a tendency towards fevers and Cicero was always asking after the little girl. She was no replacement for Tullia, but she took his mind off his loss.

  On March 17, 45, Caesar won the battle of Munda against an army led by Pompey’s son Cnaeus. His victory, although total, was narrowly achieved. Afterwards he admitted: “Today, for the first time, I fought for my life.” His old comrade-in-arms, Labienus, who had deserted him at the start of the civil war, lay among 30,000 Republican dead. Cnaeus was caught and killed in flight.

  Caesar remained for a few months in Spain reorganizing the provincial administration before setting out for home. Exhausted and unwell, he did not go to the capital immediately but spent some time on one of his country estates. There he wrote his will, which he deposited in September with the Vestal Virgins, as custom dictated. This was a personal, not a political, testament and disposed of his immense private fortune; however, when it was published after his death, it was to change the course of Roman history.

  The civil war was conclusively over. The human price had been high, for it has been estimated that 100,000 Roman citizens had lost their lives since the opening of hostilities in 49. No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. His leading opponents were dead. The Republic was dead too: he had become the state.

  By agreement with Balbus an
d Oppius, Atticus suggested that Cicero write a letter of advice to Caesar, in which he could return to the theme of the restoration of the constitution. Cicero obediently attempted a draft and, out of courtesy and caution, showed it to the two confidential agents before sending it off. They thought it too outspoken and counseled a revision. On May 25, Cicero informed Atticus that it would be better not to write anything. He was relieved to have extricated himself because it now occurred to him that Caesar would interpret the letter as an apology for the Cato. But Atticus would not give in and continued to badger him. On the following day, Cicero came to a final decision. He announced that he was simply unable to write the letter, not so much because he would be ashamed of its contents as because he could not think of anything else to say.

  Cicero no longer entertained hopes that the Republic would be restored and moved gradually from collaboration to opposition. It was becoming common knowledge in the Dictator’s circle that, despite the end of the war, he had no intention of settling permanently in Rome; he had decided that the continuing Parthian threat should be addressed once and for all. So he would soon be marching off on another military campaign. Clearly he was uninterested in addressing constitutional issues.

  Also, perhaps, the deep depression from which Cicero was emerging had hardened him and made him less inclined to compromise. Tullia’s death and the quarrels in his family circle meant that old ties had loosened and that he could follow his own wishes.

  A by-product of this more explicit disillusionment with the present state of affairs was the cooling of Cicero’s friendship with Brutus. He had already been irritated by an inaccurate and less than generous account of his Consulship in 63 in Brutus’s book on Cato. “Brutus reports that Caesar has joined the honest men,” he wrote sardonically to Atticus. “Good news! But where is he going to find them—unless he hangs himself? AS for Brutus, he knows which side his bread is buttered.”

  In June, Dolabella, with whom Cicero was still friendly, paid a visit and reported some new scandal concerning young Quintus. “Dolabella came this morning,” Cicero wrote to Atticus. “We got on to Quintus. I heard of much that is too bad for utterance or narration, and one thing of such a kind that if the whole army did not know of it I should not dare to put it on paper myself, let alone dictate it to Tiro.” The nature of this thing is not disclosed, for at this point the letter has been cut, probably by Atticus when he began to allow his friends to read his collection of Cicero’s correspondence. It is hard to conceive of what new offense the young man could have committed.

  In August Quintus, now back in Italy after the Spanish campaign, fell out with his mother. For this reason he needed to have a house of his own and his father wondered whether to vacate his own home to make room for him. But Quintus was still doing his best to blacken his uncle’s reputation and was now busy criticizing his father as well. Cicero told Atticus that, according to Hirtius, he “is at it constantly, especially at dinner parties. When he finishes with me he comes back to his father, his most plausible line being that we are thoroughly hostile to Caesar and are not to be trusted.”

  The two brothers were on rather better terms than they had been and the problematic youth may have helped bring them back together. Cicero was in the money again—he had just learned of a substantial legacy from a wealthy banker—and, after settling his own debts, he planned to make over the surplus, apparently as a loan, to his brother. This was a remarkably generous gesture after their bitter quarrel and a further illustration of Cicero’s inability to bear a grudge. That year Quintus finally divorced Pomponia. The aging siblings now had only each other as the remaining pillars of a dispersed family.

  When Atticus had an idea he seldom let it rest. He continued to press his friend to write to Caesar and at last Cicero yielded. Cicero had told Balbus and Oppius that he had been impressed by the Anti-Cato (untrue; he may have admired it for stylistic reasons, but he later called it an “impudent” work). They mentioned this to the Dictator and in August Cicero agreed to write a discursive letter about the book. He had them vet the text as usual, and this time they cleared it enthusiastically. They had “never read anything better.”

  A gap in the correspondence with Atticus follows for nearly three months, but it seems that Cicero was on superficially good terms with Caesar again. The Dictator was back in Rome in October to celebrate a Triumph for the Spanish war. He had been elected sole Consul, but had had himself replaced for the last three months of the year by two other Senators.

  Towards the end of the year Cicero made a short speech on behalf of Deiotarus, King of Galatia, who was alleged to have plotted Caesar’s assassination during the civil war. The case was heard in the accused’s absence behind closed doors in the Dictator’s house. Caesar cast himself as judge and jury. Cicero combined compliment with candor (he commented adversely on the irregularity of the judicial procedure), a mixture that usually pleased his listener. It would appear that the Dictator found against him, but, if Cicero in a later tirade against Mark Antony is to be trusted, Antony restored the King’s lost territories to him after Caesar’s death.

  In December, Caesar toured Campania, perhaps visiting veteran colonies, and called on Cicero at his house in the seaside resort of Puteoli. What was intended as a friendly gesture was, in fact, a massive inconvenience for a reluctant host. The Dictator turned up on December 18 with no fewer than 2,000 soldiers, who camped out in the open. He stayed the night at a neighbor’s villa. The house was so crowded with soldiers that there was hardly a spare room for Caesar to dine in. Cicero was “a good deal perturbed” about what would happen the following day with so many troops wandering around. Fortunately an officer agreed to post sentries.

  Caesar spent the morning alone till one o’clock, apparently working on accounts with Balbus. Then he went for a walk on the beach and took a bath an hour later. Some bad news about his Prefect of Engineers was brought in, but the expression on Caesar’s face did not change. Once his skin had been oiled at the end of his bath (as was the custom), he took his place at Cicero’s dinner table. The occasion throws an attractive light on Caesar’s personality; although, or possibly because, he was encumbered by the cares and paraphernalia of state, he wanted a short break from work, relaxing in good company and engaging in agreeable conversation. Cicero reluctantly conceded that he too had had a pleasant time. “It really was a fine, elegantly served meal,” he reported to Atticus.

  His entourage was lavishly entertained in three other dining rooms. The humbler freedmen and slaves had all they wanted—the smarter ones I entertained in style. In a word, I showed I knew how to do things. But my guest was not the kind of person to whom one says, “Do come again when you are next in the neighborhood.” Once is enough. We talked of nothing serious, but a good deal on literary matters. All in all, he was pleased and enjoyed himself.

  The year was ending on a modestly contented note. Not only was Cicero’s relationship with Caesar ostensibly in good repair, but harmony of a sort was breaking out on the domestic front. Some days after the Dictator’s visit, young Quintus paid his uncle a visit. He intended to accompany Caesar on the Parthian expedition and wanted to mend some bridges.

  Cicero noted the conversation for Atticus.

  “Why do you have to go?” Cicero asked.

  “Debt—I haven’t even enough to pay my traveling expenses.”

  Cicero, discreet for once, held his tongue.

  “What upsets me most is my uncle, Atticus.”

  “Why do you let him be annoyed—I prefer to say ‘let’ rather than ‘make’?”

  “I won’t anymore. I’ll get rid of the reason.”

  “Excellent. But if you don’t mind my asking, I would be interested to know what the reason is.”

  “It’s because I couldn’t make up my mind whom to marry. My mother was cross with me, and so as a result was he. Now I don’t care what I do to put things right. I’ll do what they want.”

  “Well, good luck, and congratulations on your
decision.”

  It seemed that the difficult, hostile teenager was beginning to settle down into an ordinary Roman young-man-about-town with debts, who realized that it would be in his interest to be on good terms again with his disappointed family. Whether or not Quintus acted as he said he would is unknown, but there is no subsequent reference to a wife in the fragmentary surviving documentation. One thing is certain, though: he did not accompany the legions to Parthia, for the expedition never took place. He must have found some alternative solution to the problem of his debts.

  By now, Cicero had become less volatile than he had been in the past. He met the challenges and misfortunes that faced him with determination. In politics he made up his mind about the regime with fewer of his usual doubts and nervous questionings. Criticism did not bother him as much as it had once. He still reacted passionately to events and was no less self-absorbed, but he had learned to control himself. Family estrangements troubled him and he had nearly been broken by Tullia’s death, but he had struggled with all his might to regain his emotional balance. Tempered by the fire, he seemed to have acquired a new, steely resolve.

  12

  PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

  Thoughts on the Nature of Things: 46–44 BC

  One explanation for Cicero’s new maturity lay in his phenomenal productivity as a writer. In 46, at the age of sixty, he started work on a succession of books which, taken together, represent one of Rome’s most valuable legacies to posterity. At their core is a summary of the philosophical issues that had concerned thinkers and moralists from Plato to Cicero’s own day. He made no claim to originality. “I only supply the words, and I have plenty of those.” However, he was a popularizer of genius. With the disappearance of the Greek language in Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages, Cicero’s compendium of classical thought had a huge influence on the continuing development of western philosophy.