The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  After what felt like a long time, Brutus ended to applause best described as thoughtful. Cassius spoke next, and not badly either, for he had taken lessons in oratory from Cicero in Tusculum. But he was a professional soldier who had spent little time in Rome: he was respected but he was not much known, let alone loved. He received less applause even than Brutus. The disaster, however, was Cinna. He was an orator of the old-fashioned, melodramatic school, and tried to inject some passion into proceedings by tearing off his praetorian robe and hurling it from the rostra, denouncing it as the gift of a despot that he was ashamed to be seen wearing. The hypocrisy was too much to bear. Someone yelled out, “You didn’t say that yesterday!” The remark was cheered, which emboldened another heckler to shout: “You’d have been nothing without Caesar, you old has-been!” In the chorus of jeering, Cinna’s voice was lost—and the meeting with it.

  Cicero said, “Now this is a fiasco.”

  “You are the orator,” said Decimus. “Will you say something to retrieve the situation?” and to my horror I saw that Cicero was tempted. But at that moment Decimus was handed a new report that Lepidus’s legion appeared to be moving towards the city. He beckoned urgently to the praetors to come down off the rostra, and with as much confidence as we could muster, which was little, we all trooped back up to the Capitol.

  —

  It was typical of Brutus’s other-worldliness that he should have believed right up until the last moment that Lepidus would never dare to break the law by bringing an army across the sacred boundary and into Rome. After all, he assured Cicero, he knew the Master of Horse extremely well: Lepidus was married to his sister Junia Secunda (just as Cassius was married to his half-sister Junia Tertia).

  “Believe me, he’s a patrician through and through. He won’t do anything illegal. I have always found him an absolute stickler for dignity and protocol.”

  And at first it seemed he might be right, as the legion, after crossing the bridge and moving towards the city walls, halted on the Field of Mars and pitched camp about half a mile away. Then soon after nightfall, we heard the plaintive notes of the war horns. They set the dogs barking in the walled compound of the temple and sent us hurrying out to see what was going on. Heavy cloud obscured the moon and stars but the distant lights of the legion’s campfires shone clearly in the darkness. Even as we watched, the fires seemed to splinter and rearrange themselves into snakes of fire.

  Cassius said, “They are marching with torches.”

  A line of light began wavering along the road towards the Carmenta Gate. Presently on the moist night air we heard the faint tramp of the legionaries’ boots. The gate was almost directly beneath us, obscured from sight by outcrops of rock. Lepidus’s vanguard found it locked and hammered for admittance and cried out to the porter. But I guess he must have run away. There was a long interval when nothing happened. Then a battering ram was brought up. A series of heavy thuds was followed by the noise of splintering wood. Men cheered. Leaning over the parapet, we watched the legionaries with their torches slip quickly through the ruptured gate, deploy around the base of the Capitol and fan out across the Forum to secure the main public buildings.

  Cassius said, “Will they attack us tonight, do you think?”

  “Why should they,” replied Decimus bitterly, “when they can take us at their leisure in the daylight?” The anger in his tone suggested he held the others responsible, that he regarded himself as having fallen in among fools. “Your brother-in-law, Brutus, has proved more ambitious and more daring than you led me to believe.”

  Brutus, his foot tapping ceaselessly, did not respond.

  Dolabella said, “I agree, a night attack would be too hazardous. Tomorrow is when they’ll make their move.”

  Now Cicero spoke up. “The question is surely whether Lepidus is acting in alliance with Antony or not. If he is, then our position is frankly hopeless. If he isn’t, then I doubt Antony will want him to have the sole glory of wiping out Caesar’s assassins. That, gentlemen, I fear, is our best hope.”

  Cicero was now obliged to take his chances with the rest: it would have been far too risky to attempt to leave—not in darkness, with the place surrounded by potentially hostile soldiers and with Antony at large in the city. So there was nothing for it except to settle down for the night. It was to our advantage that the summit of the Capitol can only be approached in four ways: by the Moneta Steps to the north-east, the Hundred Steps to the south-west (the route we had climbed that afternoon) and by the two routes that lead up from the Forum—one a flight of stairs, the other a steep road. Decimus strengthened the guard of gladiators at the top of each and then we all retreated to the Temple of Jupiter.

  I cannot say we got much rest. The temple was damp and chilly, the benches hard, the memory of the day’s events too vivid. The dim light from the lamps and candles played upon the stern faces of the gods; from the shadows of the roof the wooden eagles looked down with disdain. Cicero talked for a while with Quintus and Atticus—quietly, so as not to be overheard. He couldn’t believe how ill-thought-out the assassination had been. “Was ever a deed carried through with such manly resolution and yet such childish judgement? If only they had brought me into their confidence! I could at least have told them that if you are going to kill the devil, there’s no point in leaving his apprentice alive. And how could they have neglected Lepidus and his legion? Or let an entire day go by with no attempt to seize control of the government?”

  The edge of frustration in his voice, if not the words themselves, must have carried to Brutus and Cassius, who were sitting nearby, and I saw them look across at Cicero and frown. He noticed them too. He lapsed into silence and sat propped up against a pillar, huddled in his toga, doubtless brooding on what had been done, what hadn’t, and what might be done yet.

  With the dawn it became possible to see the main event that had occurred overnight. Lepidus had moved perhaps a thousand men into the city. The smoke from their cooking fires rose over the Forum. A further three thousand or so remained encamped on the Field of Mars.

  Cassius, Brutus and Decimus convened a meeting to discuss what should be done. Cicero’s proposal of the previous day, that they should summon the Senate to the Capitol, had plainly been overtaken by events. Instead it was decided that a delegation of ex-consuls, none of whom had been party to the assassination, should go to the house of Mark Antony and ask him formally, as consul, to convene the Senate. Servius Sulpicius, C. Marcellus and L. Aemilius Paullus, the brother of Lepidus, all volunteered to go, but Cicero refused to join them, arguing that the group would do better to approach Lepidus directly: “I don’t trust Antony. Besides, any agreement reached with him will only have to be approved by Lepidus, who at the moment is the man with the power, so why not deal with him and cut out Antony altogether?” But Brutus’s argument that Antony had legal if not military authority carried the day, and in the middle of the morning the former consuls set off, preceded by an attendant carrying a white flag of truce.

  We could do nothing now except wait and watch developments in the Forum—literally so, for if one was willing to scramble down to the roof of the public records office, one had a clear view of proceedings. The entire space was packed with soldiers and civilians listening to speeches from the rostra. They crammed the steps of the temples and clung to the pillars; more still were pressing to enter from the Via Sacra and the Argiletum, which were backed up as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately we were too far away to be able to hear what was being said. Around noon, a figure in full military uniform and the red cloak of a general began to address the crowd and spoke for well over an hour, receiving prolonged applause: that, I was told, was Lepidus. Not long afterwards, another soldier—his Herculean swagger and his thick black hair and beard identifying him unmistakably as Mark Antony—also appeared on the platform. Again, I could not hear his words, but it was significant simply that he was there at all, and I hastened back to tell Cicero that Lepidus and Antony were now apparently i
n alliance.

  The tension on the Capitol by this time was acute. We had had little to eat all day. Nobody had slept much. Brutus and Cassius expected an attack at any time. Our fate was out of our hands. Yet Cicero was oddly serene. He felt himself to be on the right side, he told me, and would take the consequences.

  Just as the sun was starting to go down over the Tiber, the delegation of ex-consuls returned. Sulpicius spoke for them all: “Antony has agreed to call a meeting of the Senate tomorrow at the first hour in the Temple of Tellus.”

  Joy greeted the first part of his statement, groans the second, for the temple was right across town, on the Esquiline, very close to Antony’s house. Cassius said at once, “That’s a trap, to lure us out of our strong position. They’ll kill us for sure.”

  Cicero said, “You may be right. But you could all stay here and I could go. I doubt they’d kill me. And if they did—well, what does it matter? I’m old, and there could be no better death than in defence of freedom.”

  His words lifted our hearts. They reminded us why we were here. It was agreed on the spot that while the actual assassins would remain on the Capitol, Cicero would lead a delegation to speak on their behalf in the Senate. It was also decided that rather than spend another night in the temple, he and all the others who were not actually part of the original conspiracy would return to their homes to rest before the debate. Accordingly, after an emotional farewell, and under the flag of truce, we set off down the Hundred Steps into the gathering twilight. At the foot of the stairs, Lepidus’s soldiers had erected a checkpoint. They demanded Cicero go forward and show himself. Fortunately he was recognised, and after he had vouched for the rest of us, we were all allowed to go through.

  —

  Cicero worked on his speech late into the night. Before I went to bed he asked if I would accompany him to the Senate the next day and take it down in shorthand. He thought it might be his last oration and he wanted it recorded for posterity: a summation of all he had come to believe about liberty and the republic, the healing role of the statesman and the moral justification for murdering a tyrant. I cannot say I relished the assignment but of course I could not refuse.

  Of all the hundreds of debates Cicero had attended over the past thirty years none promised to be tenser than this one. It was scheduled to begin at dawn, which meant that we had to leave the house in darkness and pass through the shuttered streets—a nerve-racking business in itself. It was held in a temple that had never before served as a meeting place for the Senate, surrounded by soldiers—and not just those of Lepidus but many of Caesar’s roughest veterans, who on hearing the news of their old chief’s murder had armed themselves and come to the city to protect their rights and take revenge on his killers. And finally when we had run the gauntlet of pleas and imprecations and entered the temple, it proved so cramped that men who hated and distrusted one another were nonetheless packed into close proximity so that one sensed that the slightest ill-judged remark might turn the thing into a bloodbath.

  And yet from the moment Antony rose to speak it became clear that the debate would be different from Cicero’s expectation. Antony was not yet forty—handsome, swarthy, his wrestler’s physique fashioned by nature for armour rather than a toga. Yet his voice was rich and educated, his delivery compelling. “Fathers of the nation,” he declared, “what is done is done and I profoundly wish it were not so, because Caesar was my dearest friend. But I love my country more even than I loved Caesar, if such a thing is possible, and we must be guided by what is best for the commonwealth. Last night I was with Caesar’s widow, and amid her tears and anguish that gracious lady Calpurnia spoke as follows: ‘Tell the Senate,’ she said, ‘that in the agony of my grief I wish for two things only: that my husband be given a funeral appropriate to the honours he won in life, and that there be no further bloodshed.’ ”

  This drew a loud, deep-throated growl of approval, and to my surprise I realised the mood was more for compromise than revenge.

  “Brutus, Cassius and Decimus,” continued Antony, “are patriots just as we are, men from the most distinguished families in the state. We can salute the nobility of their aim even as we may despise the brutality of their method. In my view enough blood has been shed over these past five years. Accordingly I propose that we show the same clemency towards his assassins that was the mark of Caesar’s statecraft—that in the interests of civic peace we pardon them, guarantee their safety, and invite them to come down from the Capitol and join us in our deliberations.”

  It was a commanding performance, but then of course Antony’s grandfather was regarded by many, including Cicero, as one of Rome’s greatest orators, so perhaps the gift was in his blood. At any rate he set a tone of high-minded moderation—so much so that Cicero, who spoke next, was entirely wrong-footed and could do little except praise him for his wisdom and magnanimity. The only point with which he took issue was Antony’s use of the word “clemency”:

  “Clemency in my view means a pardon, and a pardon implies a crime. The murder of the Dictator was many things but it was not a crime. I would prefer a different term. Do you remember the story of Thrasybulus, who more than three centuries ago overthrew the Thirty Despots of Athens? Afterwards he instituted what was called an amnesty for his opponents—a concept taken from their Greek word amnesia, meaning “forgetfulness.” That is what is needed here—a great national act not of forgiveness but of forgetfulness, that we may begin our republic anew freed from the enmities of the past, in friendship and in peace.”

  Cicero received the same applause as Antony and a motion was immediately proposed by Dolabella offering amnesty to all those who had taken part in the assassination and urging them to come to the Senate. Only Lepidus was opposed: not I am sure out of principle—Lepidus was never a man for principles—so much as because he saw his chance of glory slipping away. The motion passed and a messenger was dispatched to the Capitol. During the recess while this was being done, Cicero came to the door to talk to me. When I congratulated him on his speech, he said, “I arrived expecting to be torn to pieces and instead I find myself drowning in honey. What is Antony’s game, do you suppose?”

  “Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps he is sincere.”

  Cicero shook his head. “No, he has some plan, but he’s keeping it well hidden. Certainly he’s more cunning than I gave him credit for.”

  When the session resumed, it soon became not so much a debate as a negotiation. First Antony warned that when the news of the assassination reached the provinces, particularly Gaul, it might lead to widespread rebellion against Roman rule: “In the interests of maintaining strong government in a time of emergency, I propose that all the laws promulgated by Caesar, and all appointments of consuls, praetors and governors made before the Ides of March should be confirmed by the Senate.”

  Then Cicero rose. “Including your own appointment, of course?”

  Antony replied, with a first hint of menace, “Yes, obviously including my own—unless, that is, you object?”

  “And including Dolabella’s, as your fellow consul? That was Caesar’s wish as well, as I recall, until you blocked it by your auguries.”

  I glanced across the temple to Dolabella, suddenly leaning forward in his place.

  This was obviously a bitter draught for Antony to swallow—but swallow it he did. “Yes, in the interests of unity, if that is the will of the Senate—including Dolabella’s.”

  Cicero pressed on. “And you confirm therefore that both Brutus and Cassius will continue as praetors, and afterwards will be the governors of Nearer Gaul and Syria, and that Decimus will in the meantime take control of Nearer Gaul, with the two legions already allotted to him?”

  “Yes, yes and yes.” There were whistles of surprise, some groans and some applause. “And now,” continued Antony, “will your side agree: all acts and appointments issued before Caesar’s death are to be confirmed by the Senate?”

  Later Cicero said to me that before he rose to make
his answer, he tried to imagine what Cato would have done. “And of course he would have said that if Caesar’s rule was illegal, it followed that his laws were illegal too and we should have new elections. But then I looked out of the door and saw the soldiers and asked myself how we could possibly have elections in these circumstances—there would be a bloodbath.”

  Slowly Cicero got to his feet. “I cannot speak for Brutus, Cassius and Decimus, but speaking for myself, since it is to the advantage of the state, and on condition that what goes for one goes for all—yes, I agree that the Dictator’s appointments should be allowed to stand.”

  “I cannot regret it,” he told me afterwards, “because I could have done nothing else.”

  —

  The Senate continued its deliberations for the whole of that day. Antony and Lepidus also laid a motion calling for Caesar’s grants to his soldiers to be ratified by the Senate, and in view of the hundreds of veterans waiting outside, Cicero could hardly dare to oppose that either. In return Antony proposed abolishing forever the title and functions of dictator; it passed without protest. About an hour before sunset, after issuing various edicts to the provincial governors, the Senate adjourned and walked through the smoke and squalor of the Subura to the Forum, where Antony and Lepidus gave an account to the waiting crowd of what had just been agreed. The news was greeted with relief and acclamation, and this sight of Senate and people in civic harmony was almost enough to make one imagine the old republic had been restored. Antony even invited Cicero up onto the rostra, the first time the ageing statesman had appeared there since he had addressed the people after his return from exile. For a moment he was too emotional to speak.