The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  “People of Rome,” he said at last, gesturing to quiet the ovation, “after the agony and violence not just of the last few days but of the last few years, let past grievances and bitterness be set aside.” Just at that moment a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, gilding the bronze roof of Jupiter’s temple on the Capitol, where the white togas of the conspirators were plainly visible. “Behold the sun of Liberty,” cried Cicero, seizing the moment, “shining once again over the Roman Forum! Let it warm us—let it warm the whole of humanity—with the beneficence of its healing rays.”

  Shortly afterwards Brutus and Cassius sent a message down to Antony that in view of what had been decided at the Senate, they were willing to leave their stronghold, but only on condition that he and Lepidus sent hostages to remain on the Capitol overnight as a guarantee of their safety. When Antony went up on to the rostra and read this aloud, there were cheers. He said, “As a token of my good faith, I am willing to pledge to them my own son—a lad of barely three, who the gods know I love more than any living thing. Lepidus,” he said, holding out his hand to the Master of Horse who was standing next to him, “will you do the same with your son?”

  Lepidus had little choice but to agree, and so the two boys—one a toddler, the other in his teens—were collected from their homes and taken with their attendants up on to the Capitol. As dusk fell, Brutus and Cassius appeared, descending the steps without an escort. Yet again the crowd roared its pleasure, especially when they shook hands with Antony and Lepidus, and accepted a public invitation to dine with them as a symbol of reconciliation. Cicero was also invited but he declined. Utterly exhausted by his efforts over the past two days, he went home to sleep.

  —

  At dawn the following day the Senate met again in the temple of Tellus; and once again I went with Cicero.

  It was astonishing to enter and see Brutus and Cassius sitting a few feet away from Antony and Lepidus and even from Caesar’s father-in-law, L. Calpurnius Piso. There were far fewer soldiers hanging around the door and the atmosphere was tolerant, indeed notable for a certain dark humour. For example when Antony rose to open the session he welcomed back Cassius in particular and said that he hoped this time he wasn’t carrying a concealed dagger, to which Cassius replied that he wasn’t, but would certainly bring a large one if ever Antony tried to set himself up as a tyrant. Everyone laughed.

  Various items of business were transacted. Cicero proposed a motion thanking Antony for his statesmanship as consul, which had averted a civil war; it passed unanimously. Antony then proposed a complementary motion thanking Brutus and Cassius for their part in preserving the peace; that too was accepted without objection. Finally Piso rose to express his thanks to Antony for providing guards to protect his daughter Calpurnia and all Caesar’s property on the night of the assassination.

  He went on: “It remains for us now to decide what to do with Caesar’s body and with Caesar’s will. As regards the body, it has been brought back from the Field of Mars to the residence of the chief priest, has been anointed and awaits cremation. As regards the will, I must tell the house that Caesar made a new one six months ago, on the Ides of September, at his villa near Lavicum, and sealed and deposited it with the Chief Vestal. No one knows its contents. In the spirit of openness and trust that has now been established, I move that both these things—the funeral and the reading of the will—should be conducted in public.”

  Antony spoke strongly in favour of the proposal. The only senator who rose to object was Cassius. “This seems to me a dangerous course. Remember what happened the last time there was a public funeral for a murdered leader—when Clodius’s followers burned down the Senate house? Just as we’ve established a fragile peace, it would be insanity to put it at risk.”

  Antony said, “From what I’ve heard, Clodius’s funeral was allowed to get out of hand by some who might have known better.” He paused for laughter: everyone knew he was now married to Clodius’s widow, Fulvia. “As consul, I shall preside over Caesar’s funeral, and I can assure you order will be maintained.”

  Cassius indicated by an angry gesture that he was still opposed. For a moment the truce threatened to break. Then Brutus rose. He said, “Caesar’s veterans who are in the city will not understand it if their commander-in-chief is denied a public funeral. Besides, what sort of message will it send to the Gauls, already said to be contemplating rebellion, if we dump the body of their conqueror in the Tiber? I share Cassius’s unease, but in truth we have no alternative. Therefore in the interests of concord and amity I support the proposal.”

  Cicero said nothing and the motion carried.

  —

  The reading of Caesar’s will took place the following day, a little way up the hill in Antony’s house. Cicero knew the place well. It had been Pompey’s main residence before he moved out to his palace overlooking the Field of Mars. Antony, in charge of auctioning the confiscated assets of Caesar’s opponents, had sold it to himself at a knockdown price. It was not much changed. The famous battering rams of the pirate triremes, trophies of Pompey’s great naval victories, were still set into the outside walls. Inside, the elaborate decoration had scarcely been touched since the old man’s day.

  Cicero found it unsettling to be back—the more so when he was confronted by the scowling face of the villa’s new mistress, Fulvia. She had hated him when she was married to Clodius, and now that she was married to Antony she hated him all over again—and made no attempt to hide it. The moment she saw him, she ostentatiously turned her back and began talking to someone else.

  “What a shameless pair of grave-robbers,” Cicero whispered to me, “and how typical of that harpy to be here. Why is she, in fact? Even the widow isn’t here. What business of Fulvia’s is the reading of Caesar’s will?”

  But that was Fulvia. More than any other woman in Rome—more even than Servilia, Caesar’s old mistress, who at least had the grace to operate behind the scenes—Fulvia loved meddling in politics. And watching her move from visitor to visitor, ushering them towards the room where the will was to be read, I felt a sudden sense of unease: what if hers was the brain behind Antony’s skilful policy of reconciliation? That would put it in a very different light.

  Piso stood on a low table so that everyone could see him, and with Antony on one side and the Chief Vestal on the other, and with all the most prominent men of the republic listening in the audience, he first displayed the wax seal to show that it had not been tampered with, then broke it open and started to read.

  To begin with, its meaning buried in legal jargon, the will seemed entirely innocuous. Caesar left his whole estate to any son that might be born to him after the drawing up of the document. However, in the absence of such a son, his wealth passed to the three male descendants of his late sister: that is to Lucius Pinarius, Quintus Pedius and Gaius Octavius, to be divided in the proportions one eighth each to Pinarius and Pedius and three quarters to Octavius, whom he now adopted as his son, henceforth to be known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus…

  Piso stopped reading and frowned, as if he was not sure what he had just announced. An adopted son? Cicero glanced at me, screwed up his eyes in an effort at memory and mouthed, “Octavius?” Antony meanwhile looked as if he had been struck in the face. Unlike Cicero, he knew at once who Octavius was—the eighteen-year-old son of Caesar’s niece Atia—and for him it must have been a bitter disappointment as well as a total surprise: I am sure he must have hoped to be named as the Dictator’s main heir. Instead, he was merely mentioned as an heir in the second degree—that is, one who would inherit only if the first heirs died or turned down their legacy—an honour he shared with Decimus, one of the assassins! In addition, Caesar bequeathed every citizen of Rome the sum of three hundred sesterces in cash, and decreed that his estate beside the Tiber should become a public park.

  The meeting broke up into puzzled groups, and afterwards, walking home, Cicero was full of foreboding. “That will is a Pandora’s box—a posthumous
poisoned gift to the world that lets loose all manner of evils amongst us.” He was thinking not so much of the unknown Octavius, or Octavian as he was now restyled, who promised to be a short-lived irrelevance (he was not even in the country but was in Illyricum); it was the mention of Decimus combined with the gifts to the people that troubled him.

  All through the remainder of that day and throughout the next, preparations went on in the Forum for Caesar’s funeral. Cicero watched them from his terrace. A golden tabernacle, built to resemble the Temple of Venus the Victorious, was erected on the rostra for the body to lie in. Barriers were put up to control the crowds. Actors and musicians rehearsed. Hundreds more of Caesar’s veterans began to appear on the streets, carrying their weapons: some had travelled a hundred miles to attend. Atticus came round and remonstrated with Cicero for having allowed such a spectacle to go ahead: “You and Brutus and the others have all gone mad.”

  “It’s easy for you to say that,” replied Cicero, “but how was it to be prevented? We control neither the city nor the Senate. The crucial mistakes were made not after the assassination but before it—a child should have foreseen the consequences of simply removing Caesar and leaving it at that. And now we have the Dictator’s will to contend with.”

  Brutus and Cassius sent messages to say that they intended to remain indoors throughout the day of the funeral: they had hired guards and advised Cicero to do the same. Decimus with his gladiators had barricaded his house and turned it into a fortress. Cicero, however, refused to take such precautions, although he prudently decided not to show himself in public. He suggested instead that I might attend the funeral and report back to him.

  I did not mind going. No one would recognise me. Besides, I wanted to see it. I could not help feeling a certain secret regard for Caesar, who over the years had always been civil to me. Accordingly I went down into the Forum before dawn (this was now five days after the assassination—it was hard, amid the rush of events, to keep track of time). The centre of the city was already packed with thousands, women as well as men—not so much the polite citizenry but mostly old soldiers, the urban poor, many slaves, and a large contingent of Jews, who revered Caesar for allowing them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I managed to work my way around the vast crowd to the corner of the Via Sacra, where the cortège would pass, and a few hours after daybreak I saw in the distance the procession start to leave the official residence of the chief priest.

  It paraded right in front of me, and I was amazed by the planning that had gone into it: Antony and I am sure Fulvia had left out nothing that might be relied upon to inflame the emotions. First came the musicians, playing their haunting plangent dirges; then dancers dressed as spirits from the Underworld, who ran up shrieking to the front of the crowd striking poses of grief and horror; then came household slaves and freedmen carrying busts of Caesar; then not one but five actors went marching past representing each of Caesar’s triumphs, wearing masks of the Dictator fashioned from beeswax that were so incredibly lifelike one felt he had risen from the dead five-fold in all his glory; then, carried on an open litter, came a life-size model of the corpse, naked except for a loincloth, with each of the stab wounds, including that to his face, depicted as deep red gashes in the white wax flesh—this caused the spectators to gasp and cry and some of the women to swoon; then came the body itself, lying on an ivory couch, carried on the shoulders of senators and soldiers and shrouded from view by covers of purple and gold, followed by Caesar’s widow Calpurnia and niece Atia, veiled in black and holding on to one another, accompanied by their relatives; and finally came Antony and Piso, Dolabella, Hirtius, Pansa, Balbus, Oppius, and all the leading supporters of Caesar.

  After the cortège had passed, there was a strange hiatus while the body was taken to the steps behind the rostra. Neither before nor afterwards did I ever hear such a profound silence in the centre of Rome in the middle of the day. During this ominous lull the leading mourners were filing on to the platform, and when at last the corpse appeared, Caesar’s veterans began banging their swords against their shields as they must have done on the battlefield—a terrific, warlike, intimidating din. The body was placed carefully into the golden tabernacle; Antony stepped forward to deliver the eulogy, and held up his hand for silence.

  “We come to bid farewell to no tyrant!” he declared, his powerful voice ringing round the temples and statues. “We come to bid farewell to a great man foully murdered in a consecrated place by those he had pardoned and promoted!”

  He had assured the Senate he would speak with moderation. He broke that assurance with his opening words, and for the next hour he worked the vast assembly, already aroused by the spectacle of the procession, to a pitch of grief and fury. He flung out his arms. He sank almost to his knees. He beat his breast. He pointed to the heavens. He recited Caesar’s achievements. He told them of Caesar’s will—the gift to every citizen, the public park, the bitter irony of his honouring of Decimus. “And yet this Decimus, who was like a son to him—and Brutus and Cassius and Cinna and the rest—these men swore an oath—they made a sacred promise—to serve Caesar faithfully and to protect him! The Senate has given them amnesty, but by Jupiter what revenge I should like to take if prudence did not restrain me!” In short he used every trick of oratory that the austere Brutus had rejected. And then came his—or was it Fulvia’s?—masterstroke. He summoned up on to the platform one of the actors wearing Caesar’s lifelike mask, who in a rasping voice declaimed to the crowd that famous speech from Pacuvius’s tragedy The Trial for Arms:

  That ever I, unhappy man, should save

  Wretches, who thus have brought me to the grave!

  The impersonation was uncannily good. It was like a message from the Underworld. And then, to groans of horror, the manikin of Caesar’s corpse was raised by some mechanical contraption and rotated full circle so that all the wounds were shown.

  From that point onwards Caesar’s funeral followed the pattern of Clodius’s. The body was supposed to be burned on a pyre already prepared on the Field of Mars. But as it was being borne down from the rostra, angry voices cried out that it should instead be cremated in Pompey’s Senate chamber, where the crime was committed, or on the Capitol, where the conspirators had taken refuge. Then the crowd, with some collective impulse, changed its mind and decided that it should be burned on the spot. Antony did nothing to stop any of this but looked on indulgently as once again the bookshops of the Argiletum were ransacked and the benches of the law courts were dragged into the centre of the Forum and stacked in a pile. Caesar’s bier was set upon the bonfire and torched. The actors and dancers and musicians pulled off their robes and masks and threw them into the flames. The crowd followed suit. They tore at their own clothes in their hysteria and these along with everything else flammable went flying on to the fire. When the mob started running through the streets carrying torches, looking for the houses of the assassins, I finally lost my nerve and headed back to the Palatine. On my way I passed poor Helvius Cinna, the poet and tribune, who had been mistaken by the mob for his namesake the praetor Cornelius Cinna, whom Antony had mentioned in his speech. He was being dragged away screaming with a noose around his neck, and afterwards his head was paraded around the Forum on a pole.

  When I staggered back into the house and told Cicero what had happened, he put his face in his hands. All that night the sounds of destruction went on and the sky was lit up by the houses that had been set on fire. The following day Antony sent a message to Decimus warning that the lives of the assassins could no longer be protected and urging them to withdraw from Rome. Cicero advised them to do as Antony suggested: they would be more useful to the cause alive than dead. Decimus went to Nearer Gaul to try to take control of his allotted province. Trebonius travelled by a circuitous route to Asia to do the same. Brutus and Cassius retreated to the coast at Antium. Cicero headed south.

  He was finished with politics, he said. He was finished with Italy. He would go to Greece. He would stay
with his son in Athens. He would write philosophy.

  We packed up most of the books he needed from his libraries in Rome and Tusculum and set off with a large entourage, including two secretaries, a chef, a doctor and six bodyguards. The weather had been unseasonably cold and wet ever since the assassination, which of course was taken as yet another sign of the gods’ displeasure at Caesar’s murder. My strongest memory of those days spent travelling is of Cicero in his carriage composing philosophy with a blanket over his knees while the rain drummed continuously on the thin wooden roof. We stayed one night with Matius Calvena, the equestrian, who was in despair over the future of the nation: “If a man of Caesar’s genius could find no way out, who will find one now?” But apart from him, in contrast to the scenes in Rome, we found no one who was not glad to see the back of the Dictator. “Unfortunately,” as Cicero observed, “none of them has control of a legion.”

  He sought refuge in his work, and by the time we reached Puteoli on the Ides of April, he had completed one entire book—On Auguries—half of another—On Fate—and had begun a third—On Glory—three examples of his genius that will live for as long as men are still capable of reading. And no sooner had he got out of his carriage and stretched his legs along the seashore than he began sketching the outline of a fourth, On Friendship (With the single exception of wisdom, I am inclined to regard it as the greatest of all the gifts the gods have bestowed upon mankind), which he planned to dedicate to Atticus. The physical world might have become a hostile and dangerous place for him, but in his mind he lived in freedom and tranquillity.