The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  To his horror, Cicero now realised he was in danger of having to do what he had always sworn to avoid: sweating it out in some corner of the empire, administering justice to the natives. He went to see Pompey to plead to be excused. His health was poor, he said. He was getting old. He even suggested that the time he had spent in exile might be counted as his term abroad.

  Pompey wouldn’t hear of it. Indeed he seemed to take a malicious pleasure in running through all the possible commands that might now fall to Cicero, with their various unique drawbacks—extreme distance from Rome, rebellious tribesmen, ferocious customs, hostile climates, savage wild beasts, impassable roads, incurable local diseases and so forth. Lots to determine who went where were drawn at a special session of the Senate, with Pompey in the chair. Cicero went up and plucked his token from the urn and handed it to Pompey, who read out the result with a smile: “Marcus Tullius draws Cilicia.”

  Cilicia! Cicero could barely conceal his dismay. This mountainous, primitive homeland of pirates at the extreme eastern edge of the Mediterranean—which included within its administration the island of Cyprus—was about as far away from Rome as it was possible to get. It also shared a border with Syria, and so was within range of the Parthian army, if Cassius was unable to hold them in check. Finally, to cap Cicero’s woes, the current governor was Clodius’s brother, Appius Clodius Pulcher, who could be relied upon to make his successor’s life as difficult as possible.

  I knew he would expect me to go with him and I tried desperately to think of excuses why I should stay behind. He had just completed On the Republic. I told him that in my view I would be more use to him in Rome, overseeing its publication.

  “Nonsense,” he said, “Atticus will take care of copying and circulation.”

  “There’s also my health,” I continued, “I’ve never really recovered from that fever I contracted at Arpinum.”

  “In that case a sea voyage will do you good.”

  And so it went on. My every objection was met by an answer. He started to become offended. But I had a bad feeling about this expedition. Although he swore we would only be gone a year, I sensed it would be longer. Rome felt strangely impermanent to me. Perhaps it was a consequence of having to pass the burnt-out shell of the Senate house every day, or maybe it was my knowledge of the widening split between Pompey and Caesar. Whatever the reason, I had a superstitious dread that if I left I might never come back, and that even if I did return it would be to a different city.

  Eventually Cicero said, “Well, I cannot force you to come—you’re a free man now. But I feel you owe me this one last service, and I’ll make a bargain with you. When we return, I’ll give you the money to buy that farm you’ve always wanted, and I shan’t press you to perform any more duties for me. The rest of your life will be your own.”

  I could hardly refuse such an offer, and so I tried to ignore my forebodings and set about helping him plan his administration.

  As governor of Cilicia, Cicero would have command of a standing army of about fourteen thousand men, with every prospect of having to fight a war. He decided therefore to appoint two legates with military experience. One was his old comrade Caius Pomptinus, the praetor who had helped him round up Catilina’s co-conspirators. For the second he turned to his brother, Quintus, who had expressed a strong desire to quit Gaul. At first his service under Caesar had been a great success. He had taken part in the invasion of Britain, and on his return Caesar had placed him in command of a legion that soon afterwards was attacked in its winter camp by a vastly superior force of Gauls. The fighting had been fierce: nine tenths of the Romans had been wounded. But Quintus, although ill and exhausted, had kept a cool head and the legion had survived the siege long enough for Caesar to arrive and relieve them; afterwards he had been singled out for praise by Caesar in his Commentaries.

  The following summer he was promoted to command of the newly formed Fourteenth Legion. This time, however, he had disobeyed Caesar’s orders. Instead of keeping all his men in camp, he had sent out several hundred raw recruits to forage for food. They had been cut off by an invading force of Germans. Caught in the open, they had stood gaping at their commanders, unsure of what to do, and half of them had been massacred when they tried to make a run for it. All my previous good standing with Caesar has been destroyed, Quintus wrote sadly to his brother. He treats me to my face with civility but I detect a certain coldness, and I know he goes behind my back to consult with my junior officers; in short I fear I may never fully regain his trust. Cicero wrote to Caesar asking if his brother might be allowed to join him in Cilicia; Caesar readily agreed; and two months later Quintus arrived back in Rome.

  As far as I am aware, Cicero never uttered a word of reproach to his brother. Nevertheless, something was altered in their relationship. I believe Quintus felt a keen sense of failure. He had hoped to find fame and fortune and independence in Gaul; instead he came back tarnished, out of pocket and more dependent than ever on his famous sibling. His marriage remained bitter. He was still drinking heavily. And his only son, young Quintus, who was now fifteen, had all the charms of that particular age, being sullen, secretive, insolent and duplicitous. Cicero believed the boy needed more of his father’s attention and suggested he should accompany us to Cilicia, along with his own son, Marcus. My expectations of our trip, already low, receded further.

  When we left Rome at the start of the senatorial recess, we were a huge party. Cicero had been invested with imperium and was obliged to travel with six lictors as well as a great retinue of slaves carrying all our baggage for the voyage abroad. Terentia came part of the way to see her husband off, and so did Tullia, who had just been divorced by Crassipes. She was closer to her father than ever and read him poetry on the journey. Privately he fretted to me about her future: twenty-five years old, no child, no husband…We stopped off at Tusculum to say goodbye to Atticus, and Cicero asked him as a favour to keep an eye on Tullia and try to find her a new match while he was away.

  “Of course I shall,” Atticus replied, “and would you in return do a favour for me? Will you try to make Quintus just a little kinder to my sister? I know Pomponia is a difficult woman, but he has returned from Gaul in a permanent foul temper, and their constant arguments are having a bad effect on their boy.”

  Cicero agreed, and when we met up with Quintus and his family at Arpinum, he took his brother aside and repeated what Atticus had said. Quintus promised to do his best. But Pomponia, I’m afraid, was quite impossible, and it was not long before the couple were refusing to speak to one another, let alone share a bed, and they parted very coldly.

  Relations between Terentia and Cicero were more civil, apart from the one vexed area that had been a source of antagonism between them all their married life—money. In contrast to her husband, Terentia had welcomed his appointment as governor, seeing in it a wonderful opportunity for enrichment. She had even brought her steward, Philotimus, along on the journey south so that he could give Cicero the benefit of his various ideas for skimming off a profit. Cicero kept postponing the conversation and Terentia kept nagging him to have it until at last on their final day together he lost his temper.

  “This fixation of yours with making money is really most unseemly.”

  “This fixation of yours with spending it gives me no choice!”

  Cicero paused for a moment to control his irritation and then tried to explain the matter calmly. “You don’t seem to understand—a man in my position cannot risk the slightest impropriety. My enemies are just waiting for an opportunity to prosecute me for corruption.”

  “So you intend to be the only provincial governor in history not to come home richer than he went out?”

  “My dear wife, if you ever read a word I wrote, you would know I am just about to publish a treatise on good government. How will that sit with a reputation for thievery in office?”

  “Books!” said Terentia with great contempt. “Where is the money in books?”

  They re
paired their quarrel sufficiently to dine together that night, and to humour her Cicero agreed that at some stage in the coming year he would at least listen to Philotimus’s business proposals—but only on condition they were legal.

  The next morning the family parted, with many tears and much embracing—Cicero and Marcus, who was now fourteen, setting off on horseback together side by side, while Terentia and Tullia stood at the gate of the family farm, waving. I remember that just before the road carried us out of sight I took a final look over my shoulder. Terentia had gone in by then but Tullia was still there watching us, a fragile figure against the majesty of the mountains.

  —

  We were due to embark on the first leg of our voyage to Cilicia from Brundisium, and it was while we were on the road there, at Venusia, that Cicero received an invitation from Pompey. The great man was taking the winter sun at his villa in Tarentum and suggested that Cicero should come and stay for a couple of days “to discuss the political situation.” As Tarentum was only forty miles from Brundisium, and as our route would take us practically past the door, and as Pompey was not a man to whom it was easy to say no, Cicero had little option but to accept.

  Once again we found Pompey living in a state of great domestic happiness with a young bride: they seemed almost to be playing at being a married couple. The house was surprisingly modest; as governor of Spain Pompey had a mere fifty legionaries to protect him, and they were billeted on the neighbouring properties. Otherwise he was without executive authority, having given up his consulship amid universal praise for his wisdom. In fact I would say he was at the summit of his popularity. Crowds of locals stood around outside hoping to catch a glimpse of him; once or twice a day he would sally forth to shake hands and pat the heads of infants. He was quite corpulent now, breathless and rather an unhealthy purplish colour. Cornelia fussed over him like a little mother, trying to restrain his appetite at meals and encouraging him to take walks along the seashore, his guards following at a discreet distance. He was idle, somnolent, uxorious. Cicero presented him with a copy of On the Republic. He expressed great pleasure but immediately laid it aside and I never saw him open it.

  Whenever I look back at this three-day interlude, it seems to stand out in my memory like some sunlit glade in the middle of a vast and darkening forest. Watching the two ageing statesmen throwing a ball for Marcus, or standing with their togas hitched up, skimming stones across the waves, it was impossible to believe that anything sinister was impending—or if it was, that it would amount to much. Pompey exuded absolute confidence.

  I was not privy to all that passed between him and Cicero, although Cicero told me most of it afterwards. The political situation in essence was this: that Caesar had completed his conquest of Gaul; that the Gallic leader, Vercingetorix, had surrendered and was in custody; and that the enemy’s army was wiped out (the final engagement had been the capture of the hilltop fortress of Uxellodunum along with its garrison of two thousand Gallic fighters, all of whom, on Caesar’s orders, according to his Commentaries, had had both hands cut off before being sent home, so that everyone might see what punishment was meted out to those who resisted Rome’s rule; there had been no trouble since).

  Given all this, the question now arose of what to do with Caesar. His own preference was to be allowed to stand for a second consulship in absentia so that he could enter Rome with legal immunity for all the crimes and misdemeanours he had committed during his first; at the very least he wanted his command extended so that he could remain as ruler of Gaul. His opponents, led by Cato, believed that he should return to Rome and submit himself to the electorate just like any other citizen; and failing that, he should be forced to give up his army, it being intolerable to have a man in control of what was now eleven legions, sitting on the Italian border issuing diktats to the Senate.

  “And what is Pompey’s view?” I asked.

  “Pompey’s view varies according to the hour of the day you ask him. In the morning he thinks it entirely proper, as a reward for his achievements, that his good friend Caesar should be permitted to stand for the consulship without entering Rome. After lunch he sighs and wonders why Caesar can’t simply come home and canvass face to face like anybody else: after all, that was what he did in Caesar’s position, and what was so undignified about that? And then by evening, when—despite the best efforts of the good Lady Cornelia—he is flushed with wine, he starts shouting, ‘To hell with bloody Caesar! I’m sick of hearing about Caesar! Let him just try and set one toe in Italy with his bloody legions, and you’ll see what I can do—I’ll stamp my foot and a hundred thousand men will rise up at my command and come to the defence of the Senate!’ ”

  “And what do you think will happen?”

  “My guess is that if I were here I could probably just about persuade him to do the right thing and avoid civil war, which would be the ultimate calamity. My fear,” he added, “is that when the vital decisions are being taken, I shall be a thousand miles from Rome.”

  I do not propose to describe in any detail Cicero’s time as governor of Cilicia. I am sure history will judge it as of minor importance in the scale of things; Cicero judged it minor even at the time.

  We reached Athens in the spring and stayed for ten days with Aristus, the principal professor of the Academy, who was at that time the greatest living exponent of the philosophy of Epicurus. Like Atticus, who was also a devoted Epicurean, Aristus took a practical, material view of what makes for a happy life: a healthy diet, moderate exercise, pleasant surroundings, congenial company and the avoidance of stressful situations. Cicero, whose god was Plato and whose life was full of stress, disputed this. He believed that Epicureanism amounted to a kind of antiphilosophy: “You say happiness depends on bodily well-being. But continual physical well-being is beyond our control. If a man is suffering an agonising illness, say, or if he is being tortured, then in your philosophy he cannot be happy.”

  “Perhaps he cannot be supremely happy,” conceded Aristus, “but happiness will still be there in some form.”

  “No, no, he cannot be happy at all,” insisted Cicero, “because his happiness is entirely contingent on the physical. Whereas the most magnificent and fruitful promise in the entire history of philosophy is the simple maxim: nothing is good except what is morally good. From this we can prove that moral goodness is sufficient by itself to create the happy life. And from that derives a third maxim: moral goodness is the only sort of good there is.”

  “Ah, but if I torture you,” objected Aristus, with a knowing laugh, “you will be every bit as unhappy as I am.”

  Cicero, however, was very serious. “No, no, because if I remain morally good—which I am not claiming is easy, by the way, let alone that I have achieved it—then I must remain happy, however great my pain. Even as my torturer falls back in exhaustion there will be something beyond the physical that he cannot reach.”

  Naturally I am simplifying a long and complicated discussion that lasted several days as we toured the buildings and antiquities of Athens. But this was what it boiled down to, and it was now that Cicero began to conceive of the idea of writing some work of philosophy that would not be a set of high-flown abstractions but rather a practical guide to achieving the good life.

  From Athens we sailed down the coast and then hopped from island to island across the Aegean in a fleet of a dozen vessels. The Rhodian boats were large, cumbersome and slow; they pitched and rolled in even moderate seas and were open to the elements. I remember how I shivered in a rainstorm as we passed Delos, that melancholy rock where up to ten thousand slaves are said to be sold in a single day. Everywhere the crowds that turned out to see Cicero were immense; among Romans only Pompey and Caesar, and I suppose just possibly Cato, can have been more famous in the world. At Ephesus our teeming expedition of legates, quaestors, lictors and military tribunes, with all their slaves and baggage, was transferred to a convoy of ox carts and pack mules and we set off along the dusty mountain roads into the int
erior of Asia Minor.

  It was a full fifty-two days after leaving Italy that we reached Laodicea, the first town in the province of Cilicia, where Cicero was immediately required to begin hearing cases. The poverty and exhaustion of the common people, the endless shuffling queues of petitioners in the gloomy basilica and the glaring white-stone forum, the constant moans and groans about customs officials and poll taxes, the petty corruption, the flies, the heat, the dysentery, the sharp stink of goat and sheep dung that seemed always in the air, the bitter-tasting wine and oily spicy food, the small scale of the town and the lack of anything beautiful to look at, or sophisticated to listen to, or savoury to eat—oh, how Cicero hated being stuck in such a place while the fate of the world was being decided back in Italy without him! I had barely unpacked my ink and stylus before he was dictating letters to everyone he could think of in Rome, pleading with them to make sure his term was restricted to a year.

  We had not been there long when a dispatch arrived from Cassius reporting that the King of Parthia’s son had invaded Syria at the head of such a massive force he had been obliged to withdraw his legions to the fortified city of Antioch. This meant Cicero had to set off immediately to join his own army at the foot of the Taurus mountains, the immense natural barrier separating Cilicia from Syria. Quintus was greatly excited, and for a month there seemed a real possibility that Cicero might have to command the defence of the entire eastern flank of the empire. But then a fresh report came from Cassius: the Parthians had retreated before the impregnable walls of Antioch; he had pursued and defeated them; the king’s son was dead and the threat was over.

  I am not sure whether Cicero was more relieved or disappointed. However, he still managed to have a war of sorts. Some of the local tribes had taken advantage of the Parthian crisis to rise in revolt against Roman rule. There was one fortress in particular, named Pindessium, where the rebel forces were concentrated, and Cicero laid siege to it.