Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

  Towards the end of the month the delegation to Antony returned without Sulpicius, who had died before reaching Mutina. Antony took advantage of the fact that the Senate was not treating him as an outlaw and tabled counterproposals. He would give up his claim to Italian Gaul, thus removing the threat to Decimus Brutus, but he insisted on retaining Long-haired Gaul with an army for five years. This would mean that Brutus and Cassius, who had the prospect of becoming Consuls in 41 and then being assigned post-Consular governorships, would have served their terms before he would have to lay down his arms. His political survival would be secured.

  For Cicero, these terms had to be resisted, for their real consequence would be that the two leading followers of Caesar would be left in possession of armies and sooner or later might combine against the Senate. What looked like a personal obsession concealed a reasoned determination to keep the pair at loggerheads.

  The Senate, under Pansa’s chairmanship, rejected Antony’s proposals and a motion for a second embassy was defeated. Opinion was hardening and war seemed inevitable. In a bid to ward off the greater evil, outlawry, Antony’s supporters finally conceded that a state of emergency should be decreed. The following day Cicero delivered his eighth Philippic, in which he politely criticized Pansa for not having been firm enough with the opposition. Everyone knew there was a war on, he said, and it was ridiculous to suggest yet more talks. There could be no negotiations so long as Antony contrived to threaten Rome with his army. When a state of emergency was declared, all Senators except former Consuls were obliged to wear military uniform rather than their togas; despite the fact that he was excused, Cicero announced that he would follow the rule too. He proposed that anyone who switched sides from Antony to the Consuls before the Ides of March that year would be granted an amnesty and that anyone who joined him would be deemed to have acted against the interests of the state. On the following day, in his ninth Philippic, Cicero celebrated Servius Sulpicius’s career and persuaded the Senate to vote him a bronze statue in the Forum.

  Cicero’s policy did not win universal support and he was regarded by some middle-of-the-road Senators as a warmonger, but he held to it unswervingly, seeing his critics as without energy and without principle. The prize was within grasp. He wrote to Cassius in February: “If I am not in error, the position is that the decision of the whole war depends entirely on D. Brutus. If, as we hope, he breaks out of Mutina, it seems unlikely that there will be any further fighting.”

  Cicero had other grounds for optimism. After Marcus Brutus left Italy the previous year he settled in Athens and gave the impression that he had abandoned politics for literary and philosophical pursuits. He attended lectures at the Academy. He was genuinely unenthusiastic for war and for a time waited and watched on events in Rome; he wanted to do nothing that would give his enemies any pretext for action.

  With the situation in Italy deteriorating, however, he decided he had to act. He took possession of the province of Macedonia, which had originally been promised him by Julius Caesar and was now being claimed by Marcus Antony’s brother, Caius. He was helped in this endeavor by the outgoing governor, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, the famous orator’s son and a close relative of his. Once Brutus had made up his mind, he moved with speed and efficiency and sent an agent to win over the legions based in the province. He recruited the 22-year-old Marcus Cicero, who happily abandoned his studies and accepted a military command. He intercepted the Quaestors of Asia and Syria on their homeward journey and persuaded them to hand over the tax revenues they were taking back to Rome. Caius Antonius was soon under siege in the town of Apollonia. By the end of the year Brutus was in control of most of the province.

  In February he sent an official dispatch to the Senate setting out what had happened and reporting that Hortensius had handed the province over to him. This presented Cicero with a tricky problem: the allocation of governorships since Julius Caesar’s assassination had been altered so many times, and on occasion with dubious legality, that it was hard to say who was entitled to what. However, Cicero had to acknowledge that one thing at least was clear: Brutus no longer had any legal right to Macedonia. Nevertheless, in the tenth Philippic he successfully persuaded the Senate to confirm Brutus in place. He argued, not unreasonably, that Caius Antonius’s allegiance would not be to the Senate but to his brother, who would use the province as his refuge if he were defeated at Mutina. Once again, Cicero was abandoning the rule of law for realpolitik.

  Meanwhile, Cassius had managed to take over the troops in Syria as well as those which Julius Caesar had left behind in Egypt—in total, eleven legions. On March 7 he sent a report to this effect to Cicero, adding: “I want you to know that you and your friends and the Senate are not without powerful supports, so you can defend the state in the best of hope and courage.”

  Cassius would now have to deal with Dolabella, his rival claimant to Syria, who had arrived in the region. Decisive action was all the more necessary as Dolabella had recently murdered Caius Trebonius, the governor of the neighboring province of Asia (western Turkey). Dolabella had wanted to pass through Asia on his way to Syria, but Trebonius refused to let him into the port of Smyrna, where he was based. The town was only lightly defended and Dolabella broke in by night. He captured Trebonius and tortured him for two days with a whip and rack before having him beheaded. Some soldiers kicked his head around like a football.

  The Senate was shocked and, with a rare unanimity, condemned the crime. Dolabella was declared a public enemy. But what could be done to arrest and punish him? Two motions were debated—one that a distinguished elder statesman should be given a special command to lead a campaign against Dolabella and the other that Hirtius and Pansa should be appointed governors of Syria and Asia for the following year. In his eleventh Philippic, Cicero opposed both proposals, saying that the matter should be left to Cassius, who was on the spot. But, as one of the leading conspirators, Cassius was a controversial figure and moderate Caesarians were offended. The Senate decided to give the Consuls the commission, once they had defeated Antony.

  This was a setback for Cicero, but with cheery unconcern he wrote to Cassius advising him to act on his own initiative. This was, in fact, exactly what he did. It did not take him long to hunt Dolabella down. The clever young opportunist realized that he had run out of opportunities and, perhaps fearing he would be given the same treatment he had meted out to Trebonius, had the good sense to commit suicide before being captured. Seeing that his position was hopeless, he asked a bodyguard to cut off his head. The man who had charmed Tullia clearly knew how to win the affection of those around him, for, having obeyed the order, the soldier then turned the sword against himself.

  In Italy, Antony’s supporters made a last desperate attempt to avert war. In Rome, Pansa put a motion before the Senate for yet another embassy, reporting that Antony was now pessimistic about his prospects and would be willing to make concessions. Cicero agreed to join a negotiating team of five ex-Consuls, but for some reason the project was abandoned after further discussion. In his twelfth Philippic Cicero regretted having agreed to be an envoy. He told the Senate that his duty lay elsewhere. “If I may, I will remain in the city. Here is my place. Here I keep watch. Here I stand sentinel. Here is my guardhouse.” The speech is interesting because it confirms that clemency was a discredited policy of the past. We learn that Antony had, in the event of victory, already decided to confiscate Cicero’s property and give it to a supporter. The orator’s life would almost certainly have been forfeit too. In this civil war there would be no pardons.

  In late March, Lepidus and Plancus wrote letters from their provinces in Spain and Gaul urging peace. The former implied that he would join forces with Antony if his advice was not heeded. This was potentially a serious threat. On the same evening Cicero sent firm replies, and in Lepidus’s case struck a distinctly brusque note. “In my opinion, you will be wiser not to meddle in a kind of peacemaking which is unacceptable to the Senate and the People�
��and to every patriotic citizen.” However, it was important not to give needless offense. At a Senate meeting called on April 9 to discuss the letters, Cicero moved a vote of thanks for Plancus. On the following day he seconded another for Lepidus, to which a rider was attached warning the governor to leave questions of peace to the Senate. This was his thirteenth Philippic, in which he also dealt with a long dispatch which Antony had sent Hirtius and Octavian.

  Antony’s dispatch was a very dangerous document, for it exposed Cicero’s policy of divide-and-rule with devastating clarity. It was written with passionate candor and had a ring of despair, as though Antony was at the end of his tether. He presented himself as the dead Dictator’s only sincere avenger and the letter must have made (as was surely intended) uncomfortable reading for Octavian. Antony made it threateningly clear that Lepidus was his ally and Plancus

  the partner of my counsels.… Whichever of us is defeated, our enemies will be the beneficiaries. So far Fortune has avoided such a spectacle, not wanting to see two armies of one body fighting each other under the supervision of Cicero in his role as a trainer of gladiators. He has deceived you with the same verbal trickery he has boasted he used to deceive Julius Caesar.

  Cicero took the Senate through Antony’s charges one by one, using them to demonstrate his treasonable intentions. But the length and detail of his rebuttal and a certain shrillness of tone betrayed his unease. The dispatch may well have disturbed waverers, especially among moderate Caesarians. Fortunately for Cicero, events had traveled too far to be undone.

  A few days later battle commenced outside Mutina. On April 14 Antony led his army to intercept Pansa’s four newly recruited legions before they managed to join the other Republican forces already in the field. In order to keep these at bay he organized a simultaneous attack on their camp, not knowing that Hirtius had already sent Pansa the experienced Martian Legion the night before.

  Antony laid a trap. He kept his legions hidden in a village named Forum Gallorum and showed only his cavalry. The Martian Legion and some other troops moved forward without orders, marching through marsh and woodland. Antony suddenly led his forces out of the village before Pansa could bring up his legions.

  The mood among the soldiers of both sides was somber; instead of uttering their usual battle cries, they fought in grim silence. Surrounded by marshes and ditches it was difficult to charge or make flanking movements. Unable to push each other back, the two sides, as the historian Appian writes, were “locked together with their swords as if in a wrestling contest.” When a man fell he was carried away and another stepped forward to take his place.

  Eight cohorts of the Martian Legion repulsed Antony’s left wing and advanced about half a mile, only to find their rear attacked by his cavalry. Pansa was wounded in the side by a javelin and his inexperienced army was routed. But Hirtius had anticipated Antony’s tactics and, leaving Octavian to guard the camp, arrived with some veteran troops in support. They came too late to prevent the defeat, but were in time to fall on Antony’s triumphant but disordered troops, on whom they inflicted heavy casualties.

  A week later Hirtius, assisted by Decimus Brutus, who organized a sortie from Mutina, defeated Antony again and raised the siege of the town. Antony’s only hope now was to escape north with what was left of his army to the protection of Lepidus in Gaul, assuming that that weak but canny man would be willing to associate himself with an obviously lost cause.

  A false report of an Antonian victory arrived in Rome and people fled from the city. It was rumored that, to meet the crisis, Cicero intended to become Dictator, a charge he furiously denied. When the truth about the first battle became known, the city erupted in celebrations. Cicero wrote to Brutus in Macedonia:

  I reaped the richest of rewards for my many days of labor and sleepless nights—if there is any reward in true, genuine glory. The whole population of Rome thronged to my house and escorted me up to the Capitol, then set me on the Speakers’ Platform amid tumultuous applause. I am not a vain man, I do not need to be; but the unison of all classes in thanks and congratulations does move me, for to be popular in serving the People’s welfare is a fine thing.

  Cicero had every reason to be proud of himself. The Caesarian faction was broken. Antony was out of the game and time-servers like Lepidus and Plancus would quickly come to heel. Brutus and Cassius controlled the eastern half of the empire. All that needed to be done now was some mopping up: Cicero wrote to Plancus on May 5, asking him to make sure that “not a spark of this abominable war is left alive.”

  The only hostile, or potentially hostile, piece left on the board was Octavian, who was locked into the Republican cause. Cicero expected trouble from him but felt he could handle it. He told Brutus: “AS for the boy Caesar, his natural worth and manliness is extraordinary. I only pray that I may succeed in guiding and holding him in the fullness of honors and favor as easily as I have done hitherto. That will be more difficult, it is true, but still I do not despair.”

  It had been a close-run thing, but Cicero’s strategy had worked: the Republic was saved.

  16

  DEATH AT THE SEASIDE

  The End of the Republic: April–November 43 BC

  As so often happens in human affairs, fate intervened at the moment of victory and destroyed the best-laid plans. It soon emerged that Hirtius had been killed in the second battle at Mutina, and Pansa died of the wound incurred in the first. This created a power vacuum at the worst possible moment. The absence of Consuls left Rome in disarray. There would have to be elections and in the meantime the Republic was without an effective executive authority. In the field Pansa’s troops went over to Octavian. He stayed where he was and refused to have anything to do with Decimus Brutus, the ally for whom he had fought at Mutina and, as he had not forgotten, one of his adoptive father’s assassins. He left Decimus Brutus and his forces to chase after the fleeing Antony on their own.

  To Cicero’s annoyance and disappointment, Decimus Brutus made little progress. He wrote in extenuation that his “apology for an army” had hardly recovered from the privations of a siege. He had no cavalry and no pack animals. He was short of money. Also, although he did not admit this to Cicero, he was alarmed by the growing strength of Octavian’s military position and may not have wanted to see the young man’s only effective military rival in the west destroyed for good. Soon Antony joined forces with a supporter of his who had been raising troops in central Italy on his behalf: he was now back in charge of a powerful force and made his way north with greater confidence towards Lepidus. If he could win Lepidus (and Plancus in Long-haired Gaul) to his side, the defeat of Mutina would be reversed.

  It took some time for the Senate to take in the significance of the loss of its Consuls. One of Cicero’s correspondents, surveying the scene at a distance, wrote wisely that those who were rejoicing at the moment “will soon be sorry when they contemplate the ruin of Italy.” However, for the moment the constitutionalists could think only of victory. In his fourteenth and last Philippic, Cicero called for an official Thanksgiving to last for an unprecedented period of fifty days. Antony was finally declared a public enemy. Decimus Brutus was voted a Triumph. There were to be ceremonies and a monument to honor the fallen. Cassius was confirmed in place in Asia Minor and Sextus Pompey, still in Spain with his guerrilla forces, was given a naval command.

  Careful thought should have been given to Octavian’s position, but it was not. He was an ally of the Senate and had played his part, a minor one though useful for all that, in the battles at Mutina. But would he continue to obey its orders? The answer to that question depended on whether his rapprochement with Cicero was sincere or tactical. Whatever the leadership in Rome might propose, he disposed of the only significant army in Italy and was now at last in a position to act as he pleased. He could see that he was stronger than Antony—but was it really in his interest to see him swept away? If Brutus and Cassius were to come to Italy with their seventeen legions, he might wonder what hi
s fate would be.

  It would have been wise to placate him, but the Senate took the contrary view. It was reluctant to grant him the same honors as Decimus Brutus and excluded them both from membership of a commission established to distribute land allotments to the veterans who (it was presumed) would soon be demobilized. The Senate ruled that the commissioners should deal directly with the soldiers and not go through their commanders. It also reduced their promised bonuses. These were extraordinarily shortsighted measures, for they were bound to irritate rank-and-file opinion, which was fundamentally Caesarian. The Senators must have known this but presumably thought it did not matter. So far as they were concerned the war was over.

  Cicero saw the dangers in this attitude and tried to have both generals appointed as commissioners, but the Senate, complacent now that the crisis was over, was less willing to do his bidding than it had used to be. He praised Octavian as highly as the other generals, despite the fact that he had played a subordinate role in the fighting. He proposed an Ovation for him, but it is not certain that the motion was passed.

  Completely unexpectedly, Cicero’s policy was on the verge of collapse. Critics, even friendly critics, began to speak openly of the unwisdom of his cultivation of the young Caesar. In the middle of May an anxious Marcus Brutus wrote to him from Macedonia about reports that the young man was seeking the Consulship. “I am alarmed,” he commented. “I fear that your young friend Caesar may think he has climbed too high through your decrees to come down again if he is made Consul.… I only wish you could see into my heart, how I fear that young man.”

  Privately, Brutus was increasingly unhappy about his friend’s behavior. He confided his feelings to Atticus, in a letter one hopes its subject never read. His judgment was that Cicero was swayed by vanity. “We’re not bragging every hour of the day about the Ides of March like Cicero with his Nones of December [the date in 63 when he put down the Catilinarian conspiracy].” The kernel of Brutus’s complaint was that Cicero was too eager to please.