Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

  For the time being Cicero kept his distance. For some days he wondered nervously whether or not to join Octavian in Rome. He did not want to miss some great event; but then it might not be safe to leave the coast: Antony was approaching and Cicero could be cut off and at the Consul’s mercy. On balance he felt that Octavian’s project of taking his new troops to Rome was daring but ill considered. Nevertheless, he acknowledged Octavian’s growing popularity and decided that he might, after all, go to the capital before January 1, as he had originally intended.

  The march on Rome turned out to be the fiasco Cicero had feared. Undeterred by the absence of Senators, Octavian met the General Assembly and delivered an uncompromisingly anti-Republican speech. He gestured towards a statue of Caesar and swore under oath his determination to win his father’s honors and status. But Antony was fast approaching and Octavian’s troops made it clear they would not fight against him. Many deserted. His hopes dashed, he withdrew north to Arretium.

  The setback was only temporary. Antony arrived in the city “in battle array” and, just as Octavian had done a few days earlier, illegally introduced troops inside the pomoerium. He called a Senate meeting for November 24, with the intention of charging Octavian with treason. However, for some reason the session was postponed. According to Cicero, Antony was drunk: “He was detained by a drinking bout and a feast—if you can call a blowout in a public house a feast.” A more plausible explanation was that one of his legions had mutinied and transferred its allegiance to Octavian. AS soon as he heard the news, the Consul rushed from Rome to confront the mutineers at a town named Alba Fucens; they would not listen to him and shot at him from the walls. Doubtless drawing on Caesar’s hijacked fortune, Antony arranged a donation of 2,000 sesterces for every soldier to calm his remaining legions. He then returned to the city and reconvened the Senate, which met (against convention) by night at the Capitol.

  A former Consul had been primed with a motion declaring Octavian a public enemy, but now Antony faced another disaster. The Fourth Legion also changed sides. The balance of power was shifting and Antony could no longer depend on a favorable vote in the Senate; even if he could win a majority, a Tribune would probably veto the bill. Some hurried business was pushed through: Brutus and Cassius had their latest provinces withdrawn again; a vote was passed to compliment Antony’s ally Lepidus for coming to terms with Sextus Pompey, the Republic’s standard-bearer in Spain; and Macedonia was allotted to Antony’s brother, Caius.

  After a military review the following day the Consul, who had been given a bad fright, left Rome and marched north. He still had four legions at his disposal. If he could have had his way, he would doubtless have preferred to finish off Octavian and encamped at Arretium, but he knew that his men would not have followed him. However, they were more than happy to fight any of Julius Caesar’s assassins, so Antony led them to Mutina and Decimus Brutus. With the onset of winter no immediate developments were expected.

  On December 9 Cicero at last made his way back to Rome from the country. Before setting off, he gave Atticus a summary of the political situation as he saw it. He was still cautious about Octavian, especially after receiving a copy of the speech he had given to the General Assembly on November 12.

  The boy is taking the steam out of Antony neatly enough for the moment, but we had best wait and see the issue. But what a speech—a copy was sent to me. Swears “by his hopes of rising to his father’s honors,” stretching his hand out towards the statue! Sooner destruction than this kind of a rescuer! But, as you say, the clearest test will be our friend Casca’s Tribuneship. [Casca, one of the conspirators, was due to take up office on December 10 and Octavian’s behavior towards him would be a test of his sincerity.] I told Oppius on that very subject, when he was pressing me to embrace the young man, not to mention his whole movement and band of veterans, that I could do nothing of the kind unless I was sure that he would be not only no enemy but a friend to the tyrannicides.

  At this point the correspondence with Atticus closes. We do not know why. Atticus may have been in Rome for the rest or most of the rest of Cicero’s life and so there would have been no need to write; alternatively the correspondence may in fact have continued but have been judged to be too controversial for publication and thus suppressed. AS Emperor years later, Octavian may not have relished his maneuverings as Julius Caesar’s heir being exposed to the public gaze.

  In the absence of both Consuls (Dolabella had already left Rome for Asia, his province) a Tribune called a meeting of the Senate for December 20 to approve the appointment of an armed guard for the new Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, when they took up office on January 1. At first Cicero had not intended to be present, but, having read an edict by Decimus Brutus warning Antony to stay away from his province and announcing his allegiance to the Senate, he let it be known he would be there. He had encouraged Decimus Brutus to make a stand and, now that he was doing so, was determined to help him in any way he could.

  There was no time to be lost. The Consul was moving as fast as he could to take over Italian Gaul before his successors could repudiate the legality of the law that had given him the province. He does not appear to have been acting unconstitutionally. After all, Decimus Brutus was soon due to hand over his powers to his successor. It should also be remembered that Antony (with his ally Dolabella) was head of the government with supreme executive powers. By the admittedly loose standards of the time he was within his rights to act as he did.

  Cicero opened the debate at an unusually well-attended meeting with a powerful address, his third Philippic. He sought to demonstrate that Antony was an enemy of the state (arguably a treasonable assertion, bearing in mind that he was still Consul, if only for a few more days). He also argued that Octavian’s position as the leader of a private army should be regularized. For the first time he referred to the young man not as Octavian but by his new patronymic. “Caesar on his own initiative—he had no alternative—has liberated the Republic.” It sounded very much as if Cicero, despite all his misgivings, had at last decided to yield to the young man’s advances and strike a deal.

  The Senate accepted most of Cicero’s advice but not all. It agreed that Antony was engaging in civil war but refused to outlaw him. It recognized Caesar and his army and confirmed all provincial governors in their posts until further notice, thereby overriding the following year’s appointments.

  In his speech Cicero made a passing reference to young Quintus. He had definitively broken with Antony, who accused him of plotting his father’s and uncle’s deaths. Cicero commented: “What amazing impudence, presumption and bravado! To dare to write this about a young man whose sweetness and excellence of character make my brother and me rivals in our love for him.” The charge was routine slander and not to be taken seriously—but those who were aware of the dissensions inside the Cicero family will have smiled at this description of the orator’s unreliable nephew.

  Aware of the need to secure public opinion for the Republican side, Cicero made a point throughout this period of guiding the People through complex and confusing developments. Once the Senate meeting was over, he went on to give a rousing address (the fourth Philippic) to a packed General Assembly in the Forum, in which he said: “We have for the first time and after a long interval, on my advice and by my initiative, been fired by the hope of freedom.” He compared Antony to Spartacus and, interestingly, to Catilina. AS Consul in 63, Cicero had had Catilina condemned for raising a private army, but now he was using all his powers of persuasion to have a legally appointed Consul declared a public enemy and a freebooting young privateer its savior. The lifelong conservative was standing his convictions on their head. He did not notice the contradiction, or if he did thought it a matter of no consequence.

  To the conspirator Trebonius, now in Asia as its governor, he wrote: “I did not mince my words, and, more by willpower than by oratorical skill, I recalled the weak and weary Senate to its old, traditional vigor. That day, my energy and the
course I took, brought to the Roman People the first hope of recovering their freedom.”

  Without the letters to Atticus we no longer have a window into Cicero’s mind, his private moods and doubts; but, so far as we can tell, the process of transformation that had begun with Cato’s death was now reaching completion. Some twentieth-century historians have detected fanaticism and obsession in Cicero at this time, especially so far as his loathing of Antony is concerned. One certainly senses a coarsening of his personality, the obverse perhaps of his new decisiveness. This was the price Cicero was to pay for his return to power. Although he held no public office, the next six months saw him become the first man in Rome, with as great a dominance over the political scene as during his Consulship. The disappointments and humiliations of the intervening twenty years were behind him.

  15

  CICERO’S CIVIL WAR

  Against Mark Antony: January–April 43 BC

  January 43 opened with gales. Some tablets around the Temple of Saturn in the Forum were snapped off and scattered on the ground. An epidemic was reported across Italy and one of the new Consul’s lictors fell down and died on his first day of office. A statue representing Honor was blown over and the little image of Minerva the Guardian, which Cicero had set up in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol before his departure for exile in 58, was shattered. These were sinister omens for the new, culminating phase of Cicero’s career.

  The Senate met starting on January 1 for three days to discuss the political situation. The new Consuls, Aulus Hirtius and Caius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, took a loyally constitutionalist line, but they distrusted Cicero’s extremism against Antony. Somewhat to Cicero’s annoyance, Pansa, in the chair, called on his father-in-law, Quintus Fufius Calenus, to speak first. A supporter of Antony, Calenus argued for negotiation and proposed that a delegation be sent to meet the former Consul, who was now besieging Decimus Brutus at the town of Mutina in Italian Gaul. Antony’s friends in Rome had been taken by surprise at the Senate meeting on December 20, but this time they had come prepared to launch a strong counterattack against their critics.

  In his fifth Philippic, Cicero argued that this motion was pernicious and absurd. Antony’s intentions were the reverse of peaceful and negotiations would be pointless. He went through the familiar catalog of sins. The blockade of Mutina was an act of war and he proposed that the Senate declare a state of military emergency. He then moved to another subject: honors. Votes of thanks should be passed in honor of Decimus Brutus and Lepidus and a gilt equestrian statue of Lepidus should be erected on the Speakers’ Platform or elsewhere. This undistinguished but crucially placed Caesarian was now governor of Transalpine Gaul and Near Spain and commanded a substantial army; his loyalty was suspect and Cicero wanted to do all he could to bind him to the Senate.

  Finally, Cicero came to Octavian, whom he called “this heaven-sent boy.” Throwing constitutional proprieties to the winds, he proposed that he be coopted to the Senate and given Propraetor status (that is, as if he had served as Praetor and so was eligible for military command). “I happen to know all the young man’s feelings,” he claimed. “Members of the Senate, I promise, I undertake, I solemnly swear, that Caius Caesar will always be such a citizen as he is today and as we should especially wish and pray he should be.”

  This was a bold statement. If Cicero were not entirely convinced of Octavian’s settled intentions, he would know it to be a dangerous hostage to fortune. He was too experienced a politician to have taken such a risk without having prepared the ground carefully; something must have happened in December to allay his fears and allow him to enter into a firm alliance.

  Cicero had not lost his fondness for teaching and guiding young men. He had even offered his services earlier in the year as mentor to his disreputable former son-in-law, Dolabella, before his defection to Antony. Now Octavian joined the long line of these unofficial trainees and took to calling him “father.” For all his early suspicions, Cicero must have been flattered by these respectful attentions.

  Although he was popular with the legions, Octavian was in a weak position. The Caesarian faction, as we have seen, was split into three parts—the young man’s own followers, moderates who fell into place behind the Consuls Hirtius and Pansa, and supporters of Antony—and there was little he could do to bring them back together for the moment. The agreement with Cicero and the Senate gave him official status. He would in all likelihood have calculated that if the Republicans triumphed it would be difficult, pace Cicero, to discard him entirely. After all, time was on his side and he could live to fight another day; if necessary he would work through the constitution rather than openly against it.

  Cicero’s speech was well received and he got much of what he asked for. The Senate had no difficulty in agreeing to the honors. Octavian was given Propraetorian rank and Antony’s Land Reform Act was declared invalid. But the assembly agonized over whether or not to declare a state of emergency. Eventually, despite Cicero’s advice to the contrary, it was agreed that a delegation would be sent to Antony. Three men were appointed to it: Piso, Philippus (Octavian’s stepfather), and the distinguished, cautious jurist Servius Sulpicius. Sulpicius was terminally ill but felt that, having argued for negotiations, he was morally obliged to accept the commission. The envoys were to convey a series of demands: Antony was to submit to the Senate and People; he was to abandon the siege of Mutina; and he was to move his troops out of Italian Gaul into Italy but should not come closer than 200 miles from Rome. Their demands were more of an ultimatum than a negotiating position.

  It was a sign of his growing dominance that Cicero rather than the Consuls was then summoned by a Tribune to report to the People gathered in the Forum on what had been decided. This he did in his sixth Philippic, in which he made his opposition to the delegation very clear. “I give you notice,” he cried out. “I predict that Mark Antony will perform none of the commands which the envoys bring.”

  Cicero was now the energy and guiding force behind the government. He used all of his resources of persuasion to get his way. The Consuls were honorable men, ready to do their duty but not altogether certain what it was. In addition, Hirtius was in poor health. Nothing much was expected of them—certainly not by Quintus, who had campaigned with them in Gaul. In his usual choleric manner he told Tiro: “I know them through and through. They are riddled with lusts and languor, utter effeminates at heart.” Quintus was exaggerating, for Hirtius and Pansa were soon to acquit themselves bravely on the battlefield, but in the Forum they were no match for Cicero, who liked to call them “my Consuls.” The Senate contained few people of note and moderate opinion tended to follow where he led.

  In addition to sending their official dispatches to the Senate, provincial governors and generals took care to inform Cicero of their activities. He spent much of his time writing them letters—chivying, cajoling, flattering, advising, briefing. He tried hard to cheer up the depressed and beleaguered Decimus Brutus. He paid particular attention to men of wavering loyalty—Titus Munatius Plancus and Lepidus in Gaul, Caius Asinius Pollio in Far Spain—and was in close touch with Brutus in Macedonia and Cassius in Asia Minor. He was not exaggerating when he told his friend Paetus: “My days and nights are passed in one sole care and occupation—the safety and freedom of my countrymen.” In the same letter he showed that he still had time for private concerns and friendships. He twitted Paetus for having become rather antisocial for some reason.

  I am sorry to hear you’ve given up dining out. You have deprived yourself of a great deal of amusement and pleasure. Furthermore (you won’t mind my being frank) I am afraid you will unlearn what little you used to know and forget how to give dinner parties. When I laid the facts before Spurinna [the haruspex, or official diviner of entrails, who had warned Julius Caesar of the danger of assassination] and explained to him how you used to live, he pronounced a grave danger to the supreme interests of the State unless you resume your former habits!

  He was riding
high but always had time to poke fun at a friend. In the middle of January it was decided that Hirtius should take command of the troops in Italy, while Pansa would be responsible for further levies. Octavian agreed to lead his army towards Mutina, where he would join forces with Hirtius. Preoccupied by their military tasks, the Consuls were not in a position to manage affairs in Rome and, despite the fact that he held no official post, Cicero acted more and more like a popular leader. There were frequent General Assemblies, at which he seems to have had remarkable success in winning support for his policies. He had arms manufactured by gathering craftsmen together and convincing them to work without pay. To finance the war he raised money and exacted heavy contributions from Antony’s supporters. They in turn campaigned loudly against him, exploiting the public mood for peace and portraying him as hell-bent on a military confrontation. At a routine meeting of the Senate, Cicero took advantage of the rules of debate that allowed speakers to raise any subject they wished and launched into another Philippic (the seventh) in which he defended his record as a peacemaker but said that any compromise with Antony would be dishonorable. “I do not reject peace,” he said, “but I am afraid of war disguised as peace.”