The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  We lived in an army camp in the mountains for two months, and Quintus was as happy as a schoolboy building ramps and towers, digging moats and bringing up artillery. I found the whole adventure distasteful, and so I think did Cicero, for the rebels stood no chance. Day after day we launched arrows and flaming projectiles into the town, until eventually it surrendered and our legionaries poured into the place to ransack it. Quintus had the leaders executed. The rest were put in chains and led off to the coast to be shipped to Delos and sold into slavery. Cicero watched them go with a gloomy expression. “I suppose if I were a great military man like Caesar I would have all their hands amputated. Isn’t that how one brings peace to these people? But I can’t say I derive much satisfaction from using all the resources of civilisation to reduce a few barbarian huts to ashes.” Still, his men hailed him as imperator in the field, and afterwards he had me write six hundred letters—that is, one to every member of the Senate—requesting that he be awarded a triumph: a tremendous labour for me, working in the primitive conditions of an army camp, that left me prostrate with exhaustion.

  —

  Cicero placed Quintus in command of the army for the winter and returned to Laodicea. He was rather shocked by the relish with which his brother had crushed the rebellion, and also by his brusque manner with subordinates (irritable, rude, careless, as he described him to Atticus); he did not care much for his nephew, either—a boy with a fine conceit for himself. Quintus Junior liked to make sure everyone knew who he was—his name alone saw to that—and he treated the locals with great disdain. Still, Cicero tried to do his duty as an affectionate uncle, and at that spring’s Festival of Liberalia, in the absence of the boy’s father, he presided over the ceremony at which young Quintus became a man, personally helping him to shave his wispy beard and dress in his first toga.

  As for his own son, young Marcus gave him cause for concern in a different way. The lad was affable, lazy, fond of sport and somewhat slow on the uptake when it came to his schoolwork. Rather than study Greek and Latin, he liked to hang around the army officers and practise swordplay and javelin throwing. “I love him dearly,” Cicero said to me, “and he is certainly a good-hearted fellow, but sometimes I wonder where on earth he comes from—I detect nothing in him of me at all.”

  Nor was that the end of his family worries. He had left the choice of Tullia’s new husband up to her and her mother, having made clear simply that his own preference was for a safe, worthy, respectable young aristocrat such as Tiberius Nero or the son of his old friend Servius Sulpicius. But the women had set their hearts instead on Publius Cornelius Dolabella, a most unsuitable match in Cicero’s view. He was a notorious rake, only nineteen—about seven years younger than Tullia—yet remarkably he had already been married once, to a much older woman.

  By the time the letter announcing their choice reached him, it was too late for Cicero to intervene: the wedding would have taken place before his answer arrived in Rome—a fact the women must have known. “What is one to do?” he sighed to me. “Well, such is life—let the gods bless what is done. I can understand why Tullia wants it—no doubt he’s a handsome, charming type, and if anyone deserves a taste of life at last, it’s she. But Terentia! What is she thinking of? It sounds as though she’s half in love with the fellow herself. I’m not sure I understand her any more.”

  And here I come to the greatest of all Cicero’s personal worries: that something clearly was amiss with Terentia. Recently he had received a reproachful letter from the exiled Milo demanding to know what had happened to all that property of his that Cicero had bought so cheaply at auction: his wife, Fausta, had never received a penny. As it happened, the agent who had acted on Cicero’s behalf—Philotimus, Terentia’s steward—was still hoping to persuade Cicero to adopt some dubious money-making scheme and was due to visit him in Laodicea.

  Cicero received him in my presence and told him bluntly that there was no question of him or any member of his staff or family engaging in any shady business. “So you can save your breath as far as that’s concerned and tell me instead what’s become of Milo’s bankrupt estate. You remember the sale was fixed so you got it all for next to nothing, and then you were supposed to sell it at a profit and give the proceeds to Fausta?”

  Philotimus, plumper than ever and already sweating in the summer heat, flushed even redder and started to stammer that he couldn’t recall the details precisely: it was more than a year ago; he would have to consult his accounts and they were in Rome.

  Cicero threw up his hands. “Come now, man, you must remember. It’s not that long ago. We’re talking about tens of thousands. What has become of it all?”

  But Philotimus would only repeat the same tale over and over: he was very sorry; he couldn’t remember; he would need to check.

  “I’m beginning to think you’ve pocketed the money yourself.”

  Philotimus denied it.

  Suddenly Cicero said, “Does my wife know about this?”

  At the mention of Terentia, a remarkable change came over Philotimus. He stopped squirming and became completely silent, and no matter how many times Cicero pressed him, he refused to say another word. Eventually Cicero told him to clear off out of his sight. After he had gone he said to me, “Did you note that last piece of impertinence? Talk about defending a lady’s honour—it was as if he thought I wasn’t fit to utter my own wife’s name.”

  I agreed it was remarkable.

  “Remarkable—that’s one word for it. They were always very close, but ever since I went into exile…”

  He shook his head and didn’t finish the sentence. I made no reply. It did not seem proper to comment. To this day I have no idea whether his suspicions were correct. All I can say is that he was deeply perturbed by the whole affair and wrote at once to Atticus asking him to investigate discreetly: I can’t put all I fear into words.

  —

  A month before the end of his official term as governor, Cicero, escorted by his lictors, set off back to Rome taking me and the two boys with him and leaving his quaestor in charge of the province.

  He knew he could face censure for abandoning his post prematurely and for placing Cilicia in the hands of a first-year senator, but he calculated that with Caesar’s governorship of Gaul about to come to an end, most men would have bigger issues on their minds. We travelled via Rhodes, which he wanted to show to Quintus and Marcus. He also desired to visit the tomb of Apollonius Molon, the great tutor of oratory whose lessons almost thirty years before had started him on his political ascent. We found it on a headland looking across the Carpathian Straits. A simple white marble stone bore the orator’s name, and beneath it was carved in Greek one of his favourite precepts: Nothing dries more quickly than a tear. Cicero stood looking at it for a long time.

  Unfortunately the diversion to Rhodes slowed our return considerably. The Etesian winds were unusually strong that summer, blowing in from the north day after day, and they trapped our open boats in harbour for three weeks. During that period the political situation in Rome worsened sharply, and by the time we reached Ephesus there was a sackful of alarming news waiting for Cicero. The nearer the struggle approaches, wrote Rufus, the plainer the danger appears. Pompey is determined not to allow Caesar to be elected consul unless he surrenders his army and provinces; whereas Caesar is persuaded that he cannot survive if he leaves his army. So this is what their love affair, their scandalous union has come to—not covert backbiting, but outright war!

  In Athens, a week later, Cicero found more letters, including ones from both Pompey and Caesar, each complaining about the other and appealing to his loyalty. As far as I am concerned, he may be consul or he may keep his legions, wrote Pompey, but I am certain that he cannot do both; I assume that you agree with my policy and will stand resolutely on my side and on the side of the Senate as you have always done. And from Caesar: I fear that Pompey’s noble nature has blinded him to the true intentions of those individuals who have always wished me harm; I
rely upon you, dear Cicero, to tell him that I cannot be, should not be, and will not be left defenceless.

  The two letters plunged Cicero into a state of acute anxiety. He sat in Aristus’s library with both laid on the table before him and looked back and forth from one to the other. I fancy I see the greatest struggle that history has ever known, he wrote to Atticus. There looms ahead a tremendous contest between them. Each counts me as his man. But what am I to do? They will try to draw a statement of my views. You will laugh when I say it, but I wish to heaven I was still back in my province.

  That night I lay shivering despite the Athens heat, my teeth chattering, hallucinating that Cicero was dictating a letter to me, a copy of which had to go to both Pompey and Caesar, assuring each of his support. But a phrase that would please one would infuriate the other, and I spent hour after hour in a panic trying to construct sentences that were utterly neutral. Whenever I thought I had managed it, the words would become disorganised in my head and I would have to start again. It was utter madness yet at the same time it seemed absolutely real, and when morning came I realised in a lucid interval that I had lapsed back into the fever that had afflicted me at Arpinum.

  That day we were due to set off again by ship to Corinth. I tried hard to carry on as normal. But I guess I must have looked ghastly and hollow-eyed. Cicero tried to persuade me to eat but I was unable to keep food in my stomach. Although I managed to board the boat unaided, I spent the day’s voyage almost comatose, and when we landed at Corinth that evening, apparently I had to be carried off the ship and put to bed.

  The question now arose of what should be done with me. I was desperate not to be left behind, and Cicero did not want to abandon me. But he needed to get back to Rome, firstly to do what little was in his power to avert the impending civil war, and secondly to try to lobby for a triumph, of which, unrealistically, he still had slight hopes. He could not afford to waste days in Greece waiting for his secretary to recover. In retrospect I should have stayed in Corinth. Instead we gambled that I would be strong enough to withstand the two-day journey to Patrae, where a ship would be waiting to take us to Italy. It was a foolish decision. I was wrapped in blankets and placed in the back of a carriage and conveyed along the coastal road in great discomfort. When we reached Patrae, I begged them to go on without me. I was sure a long sea voyage would kill me. Cicero was still reluctant, but in the end he agreed. I was put to bed in a villa near the harbour belonging to Lyso, a Greek merchant. Cicero, Marcus and young Quintus gathered around my bed to say goodbye. They shook my hand. Cicero wept. I made some feeble joke about our parting scene resembling the deathbed of Socrates. And then they were gone.

  —

  Cicero wrote me a letter the following day and sent it back with Mario, one of his most trusted slaves.

  I thought I could bear the want of you not too hard, but frankly I find it unendurable. I feel I did wrong to leave you. If after you are able to take nourishment you think you can overtake me, the decision is in your hands. Think it over in that clever head of yours. I miss you but I love you. Loving you I want to see you fit and well; missing you I want to see you as soon as possible. The former therefore must come first. So make it your chief concern to get well. Of your countless services to me this is the one I shall most appreciate.

  He wrote me many such letters during the time I was ill—once he sent three in a single day. Naturally I missed him as much as he missed me. But my health was broken. I could not travel. It was to be eight months before I saw him again, and by then his world, our world, was utterly transformed.

  Lyso was an attentive host and brought in his own doctor, a fellow Greek named Asclapo, to treat me. I was purged and sweated and starved and hydrated: all the standard remedies for a tertian fever were attempted when what I really needed was rest. Cicero, however, fretted that Lyso was a little casual: all Greeks are, and arranged for me to be moved after a few days to a larger and more peaceful house up the hill, away from the noise of the harbour. It belonged to a childhood friend of his, Manius Curius: All my hopes of your getting proper treatment and attention are pinned on Curius. He has the kindest of hearts and the truest affection for me. Put yourself entirely in his hands.

  Curius was indeed an amiable, cultured man, a widower, a banker by profession, and he looked after me well. I was given a room with a terrace looking westwards to the sea, and later, when I started to feel strong enough, I would sit outside for an hour in the afternoons watching the merchant ships going in and out of the harbour. Curius was in regular touch with all sorts of contacts in Rome—senators, equestrians, tax farmers, shipowners—and his letters, plus mine, together with the geographical situation of Patrae as the gateway to Greece, meant that we received the political news as quickly as anyone could in that part of the world.

  One day around the end of January—this must have been about three months after Cicero’s departure—Curius came into my room with a grim expression and asked me whether I was strong enough to take bad news. When I nodded, he said, “Caesar has invaded Italy.”

  Years afterwards, Cicero used to wonder whether the three weeks we had lost on Rhodes might have made the difference between war and peace. If only, he lamented, he could have reached Rome a month earlier! He was one of the few who was listened to by both sides, and in the short time he was on the outskirts of Rome before the conflict broke out—which was barely a week—he told me he had begun to broker the beginnings of a compromise: Caesar to give up Gaul and all his legions apart from one, and in return to be allowed to stand for the consulship in absentia. But by then it was far too late. Pompey was dubious about the deal; the Senate rejected it; and Caesar, he suspected, had already made up his mind to strike, having calculated that he would never be stronger than at that moment: “In short, I was among madmen wild for war.”

  The moment he heard that Caesar had invaded, he went straight to Pompey’s house on the Pincian hill to pledge his support. It was packed with the leaders of the war party—Cato, Ahenobarbus, the consuls Marcellinus and Lentulus: fifteen or twenty men in all. Pompey was enraged, and he was panicking. He was under the misapprehension that Caesar was advancing at full strength, with perhaps fifty thousand troops. In fact, that inveterate gambler had crossed the Rubicon with only a tenth of that number and was relying on the shock effect of his aggression. But Pompey did not yet know that, and so he decreed that the city should be abandoned. He was ordering every senator to leave Rome. Any who remained behind would be regarded as traitors. When Cicero demurred, arguing that this was a mad policy, Pompey turned on him: “And that includes you, Cicero!” This war would not be decided in Rome, he declared, or even in Italy—that was to play into Caesar’s hands. Instead it would be a world war, fought in Spain, Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and especially at sea. He would blockade Italy. He would starve the enemy into submission. Caesar would rule over a charnel house.

  I shuddered at the kind of war intended, wrote Cicero to Atticus, savage and vast beyond what men yet envision. Pompey’s personal hostility towards him was also a shock. He left Rome as ordered and withdrew to Formiae and brooded on what course to take. Officially he was placed in charge of sea defences and recruitment in northern Campania; practically he did nothing. Pompey sent him a cold reminder of his duties: I strongly urge you, in view of your outstanding and unswerving patriotism, to make your way over to us, so that in concert we may bring aid and comfort to our afflicted country.

  Around this time, Cicero wrote to me: I received the letter about three weeks after I learned of the outbreak of war.

  From Cicero to his dear Tiro, greetings.

  My existence and that of all honest men and the entire commonwealth hangs in the balance, as you may tell from the fact that we have left our homes and the mother city herself to plunder or burning. Swept along by some spirit of folly, forgetting the name he bears and the honours he has won, Caesar seized Ariminium, Pisaurum, Ancona and Arretium. So we abandoned Rome—how wisely or how courag
eously it is idle to argue. We have reached the point when we cannot survive unless some god or accident comes to our rescue. To add to my vexations, my son-in-law Dolabella is with Caesar.

  I wanted you to be aware of these facts. Mind you don’t let them upset you and hinder your recovery. Since you could not be with me when I most needed your services and loyalty, make sure you do not hurry or be so foolish as to undertake the voyage either as an invalid or in winter.

  I obeyed his instruction and thus I found myself following the collapse of the Roman Republic from my sick room—and in my memory, my illness and the madness being played out in Italy are forever merged in a single fevered nightmare. Pompey and his hastily assembled army headed to Brundisium to embark for Macedonia to begin their world war. Caesar chased after him to stop him. He tried to blockade the harbour. He failed. He watched the sails of Pompey’s troopships dwindle into the distance, then turned round and marched back the way he had come, towards Rome. His route along the Via Appia took him past Cicero’s door in Formiae.

  Formiae, 29 March

  From Cicero to his dear Tiro, greetings.

  So I have seen the madman at last—for the first time in nine years, can one believe it? He appeared quite unchanged. A little harder, leaner, greyer, and more lined perhaps; but I fancy this life of brigandage suits him. Terentia, Tullia and Marcus are with me (they send their love, by the way).

  What happened was this. All yesterday his legionaries were streaming past our door—a wild-looking lot, but they left us unmolested. We were just settling down to dinner when a commotion at the gate signalled the arrival of a column of mounted men. What an entourage, what an underworld! A grimmer group of desperadoes you have never seen! The man himself—if man he is: one starts to wonder—was alert and audacious and in a hurry. Is he a Roman general or is he Hannibal? “I could not pass so close without stopping for a moment to see you.” As if he was a country neighbour! To Terentia and Tullia he was most civil. He refused all hospitality (“I must press on”) and we went into my study to talk. We were quite alone. He came straight to the point. He was summoning a meeting of the Senate in four days’ time.