The day was the tenth one of December when Cicero learned how Pompey felt about civil war; on the same day in Rome, Mark Antony took office as a tribune of the plebs. And proceeded to demonstrate that he was as able a speaker as his grandfather the Orator, not to mention quick-witted. He spoke tellingly of the offering of the sword and the illegality of the junior consul's actions in such a stentorian voice that even Cato understood he could not be shouted down or drowned out. "Furthermore," he thundered, "I am authorized by Gaius Julius Caesar to say that Gaius Caesar will be happy to give up the two provinces of Gaul on the far side of the Alps together with six of his legions, if this House permits him to keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions." "That's only eight legions, Marcus Antonius," said Marcellus Major. "What happened to the other legion and those twenty-two cohorts of recruits?" "The ninth legion, which for the moment we will call the Fourteenth, will vanish, Gaius Marcellus. Caesar doesn't hand over an under-strength army, and at the moment all his legions are well under strength. One legion and the twenty-two cohorts of new men will be incorporated into the other eight legions." A logical answer, but an answer to an irrelevant question. Gaius Marcellus Major and the two consuls-elect had no intention of putting Antony's proposal to a vote. The House was, besides, barely up to quorum number, so many senators were absent; some had already left Rome for Campania, others were desperately trying to squirrel away assets or collect enough cash to be comfortable in an exile long enough to cover the period of the civil war. Which now seemed to be taken for granted, though it was also becoming generally known that there were no extra legions in Italian Gaul, and that Caesar sat quietly in Ravenna while the Thirteenth Legion enjoyed a furlough on the nearest beaches. Antony, Quintus Cassius, the consortium of bankers and all of Caesar's most important adherents inside Rome fought valiantly to keep Caesar's options open, constantly assuring everyone from the Senate to the plutocrats that Caesar would be happy to hand over six of his legions and both the further Gauls provided he could keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions. But on the day following Curio's arrival in Ravenna, Antony and Balbus both received curt letters from Caesar which said that he could no longer entirely ignore the possibility that he would need his army to protect his person and his dignitas from the boni and Pompey the Great. He had therefore, he said, sent secretly to Fabius in Bibracte to ship him two of the four legions there, and sent with equal secrecy to Trebonius on the Mosa to ship three of his four legions at once to Narbo, where they were to go under the command of Lucius Caesar and prevent Pompey's Spanish legions from marching toward Italia. "He's ready," said Antony to Balbus, not without satisfaction. Little Balbus was less plump these days, so great had been the strain; he eyed Antony apprehensively with those big, brown, mournful eyes, and pursed his full lips together. "Surely we will prevail, Marcus Antonius," he said. "We must prevail!" "With the Marcelli in the saddle and Cato squawking from the front benches, Balbus, we don't stand a chance. The Senate at least that part of it which can still pluck up the courage to attend meetings will only go on saying that Caesar is Rome's servant, not Rome's master." "In which case, what does that make Pompeius?" "Clearly Rome's master," said Antony. "But who runs whom, do you think? Pompeius or the boni?" "Each is sure he runs the other, Marcus Antonius."
December continued to run away with frightening rapidity attendance in the Senate dwindled even more; quite a number of houses on the Palatine and the Carinae were shut up fast, their knockers removed from their doors; and many of Rome's biggest companies, brokerages, banks and contractors were using the bitter experience accumulated during other civil wars to shore up their fortifications until they were capable of resisting whatever was to come. For it was coming. Pompey and the boni would not permit that it did not. Nor would Caesar bend until he touched the ground. On the twenty-first of December, Mark Antony gave a brilliant speech in the House. It was superbly structured and rhetorically thrilling, and detailed with scrupulous chronology the entire sum of Pompey's transgressions against the mos maiorum from the time, aged twenty-two, when he had illegally enlisted his father's veterans and marched with three legions to assist Sulla in that civil war; it ended with the consulship without a colleague, and appended an epilogue concerning the acceptance of illegally tendered swords. The peroration was devoted to a mercilessly witty analysis of the characters of the twenty-two wolves who had succeeded in cowing the three hundred and seventy senatorial sheep. Pompey shared his copy of the speech with Cicero; on the twenty-fifth day of December they encountered each other in Formiae, where both had villas. But it was to Cicero's villa that they repaired, therein to spend many hours talking. "I am obdurate," said Pompey after Cicero had exhausted himself finding reasons why conciliation with Caesar was still possible. "There can be absolutely no concessions made to Caesar. The man does not want a peaceful settlement, I don't care what Balbus, Oppius and the rest say! I don't even care what Atticus says!" "I wish Atticus were here," said Cicero, blinking wearily. "Then why isn't he? Am I not good enough company?" "He has a quartan ague, Magnus." "Oh." Though his throat hurt and that wretched inflammation of the eyes threatened to return, Cicero resolved to plod on. Hadn't old Scaurus once single-handedly turned around the entire Senate united against him? And Scaurus wasn't the greatest orator in the annals of Rome! That honor belonged to Marcus Tullius Cicero. The trouble was, reflected the greatest orator of all time, that ever since his illness at Neapolis, Pompey had grown overweeningly confident. No, he hadn't been there to witness it, but everyone had told him about it, first in letters, then in person. Besides, he could see for himself some of the same smugness Pompey used to own in abundance when he was seventeen years old, had still owned when he marched to help Sulla conquer. Spain and Quintus Sertorius had beaten it out of him, even though he ended in winning that tortuous war. Nor had it ever re-emerged until now. Perhaps, thought Cicero, in this cataclysmic confrontation with another military master, Caesar, he thought to relive that youth, to entrench himself for all time as the greatest man Rome produced. Only was he? No, he surely couldn't lose (and had decided that for himself, else he wouldn't be so determined on civil war) because he was busy making sure he outnumbered Caesar at least two to one. And would forever after be hailed as the savior of his country because he refused to fight on his country's soil. That was self-evident too. "Magnus, what's the harm in making a tiny concession to him? What if he were to agree to keep one legion and Illyricum?" "No concessions," said Pompey firmly. "But surely somewhere along the way we've all lost the plot? Didn't this start over refusing Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia? So that he could keep his imperium and avoid being tried for treason? Wouldn't it be more sensible to let him do that? Take everything from him except Illyricum take all his legions! Just let him keep his imperium intact and stand for the consulship in absentia!" "No concessions!" snapped Pompey. "In one way Caesar's agents are right, Magnus. You've had many concessions greater than that. Why not Caesar?" "Because, you fool, even if Caesar were reduced to a privatus no provinces, no army, no imperium, no anything! he'd still have designs on the State! He'd still overthrow it!" Ignoring the reference to foolishness, Cicero tried again. And again. But always the answer was the same. Caesar would never willingly give up his imperium, he would elect to keep his army and his provinces. There would be civil war. Toward the end of the day they abandoned the major issue and concentrated instead on the draft of Mark Antony's speech. "A distorted tissue of half truths" was Pompey's final verdict. He sniffed, flicked the paper contemptuously. "What do you think Caesar will do if he succeeds in overthrowing the State, when a tawdry, penniless minion like Antonius dares to say such things?" With the result that a profoundly glad Cicero saw his guest off the premises, then almost resolved to get drunk. What stopped him was a horrible thought: Jupiter, he owed Caesar millions! Millions which would now have to be found and repaid. For it was the height of bad form to owe money to a political opponent.
THE RUBICON from JANUARY 1 until APRIL
5 of 49 B.C.
ROME
At dawn on the first day of the new year, Gaius Scribonius Curio arrived at his house on the Palatine, where he was greeted ecstatically by his wife. "Enough, woman!" he said, hugging the breath out of her, so glad was he to see her. "Where's my son?" "You're just in time to see me give him his first meal of the day," Fulvia said, took him by the hand and led him to the nursery, where she lifted the snoozing baby Curio from his cradle and held him up proudly. "Isn't he beautiful? Oh, I always wanted to have a red-haired baby! He's your image, and won't he be naughty? Urchins always are." "I haven't seen any urchin in him. He's absolutely placid." "That's because his world is ordered and his mother transmits no anxieties to him." Fulvia nodded dismissal to the nursery maid and slipped her robe off her shoulders and arms. For a moment she stood displaying those engorged breasts, milk beading their nipples: to Curio, the most wonderful sight he had ever seen and all because of him. His loins ached with want of her, but he moved to a chair as she sat down in another and held the baby, still half asleep, to one breast. The reflex initiated, baby Curio began to suck with long, audible gulps, his tiny hands curled contentedly against his mother's brown skin. "I wouldn't care," he said in a gruff voice, "if I were to die tomorrow, Fulvia, having known this. All those years of Clodius, and I never realized what a true mother you are. No wet nurses, just you. How efficient you are. How much motherhood is a part of living for you, neither a nuisance nor a universe." She looked surprised. "Babies are lovely, Curio. They're the ultimate expression of what exists between a husband and wife. They need little in one way, lots in another. It gives me pleasure to do the natural things with them and for them. When they drink my milk, I'm exalted. It's my milk, Curio! I make it!" She grinned wickedly. "However, I'm perfectly happy to let the nursery maid change the diapers and let the laundry maid wash them." "Proper," he said, leaning back to watch. "He's four months old today," she said. "Yes, and I've missed three nundinae of seeing him grow." "How was Ravenna?" He shrugged, grimaced. "Ought I to have asked, how is Caesar?" "I don't honestly know, Fulvia." "Haven't you talked with him?" "Hours every day for three nundinae." "And yet you don't know." "He keeps his counsel while he discusses every aspect of the situation lucidly and dispassionately," said Curio, frowning and leaning forward to caress the undeniably red fuzz on his son's working scalp. "If one wanted to hear a master Greek logician, the man would be a disappointment after Caesar. Everything is weighed and defined." "So?" "So one comes away understanding everything except the single aspect one wants most to understand." "Which is?" "What he intends to do." "Will he march on Rome?" "I wish I could say yes, I wish I could say no, meum mel. But I can't. I have no idea." "They don't think he will, you know. The boni and Pompeius." "Fulvia!" Curio exclaimed, sitting up straight. "Pompeius can't possibly be that naive, even if Cato is." "I'm right," she said, detaching baby Curio from her nipple, sitting him up on her lap to face her and bending him gently forward until he produced a loud eructation. When she picked him up again, she transferred him to her other breast. This done, she resumed speaking as if there had been no pause. "They remind me of certain small animals the kind which own no real aggression, but make a mock show of it because they've learned that such mock shows work. Until the elephant comes along and treads on them because he simply doesn't see them." She sighed. "The strain in Rome is enormous, husband. Everyone is petrified. Yet the boni keep on behaving like those mock-aggressive little animals. They posture and prate in the Forum, they send the Senate and the Eighteen into absolute paroxysms of fear. While Pompeius says all sorts of weighty and gloomy things about civil war being inevitable to mice like poor old Cicero. But he doesn't believe what he says, Curio. He knows that Caesar has only one legion this side of the Alps, and he has had no evidence that more are coming. He knows that were more to come, they'd be in Italian Gaul by now. The boni know those things too. Don't you see? The louder the fuss they make and the more upsetting it is, the greater their victory will appear when Caesar gives in. They want to cover themselves in glory." "What if Caesar doesn't give in?" "They'll be stepped on." She looked at Curio keenly. "You must have some sort of instinct about what will happen, Gaius. What does your instinct say?" "That Caesar is still trying to solve his dilemma legally." "Caesar doesn't dither." "I am aware of that." "Therefore it's all sorted out in his mind already." "Yes, in that I think you're right, wife." "Are you here for a purpose, or are you home for good?" "I've been entrusted with a letter from Caesar to the Senate. He wants it read today at the inaugural meeting of the new consuls." "Who's to read it out?" "Antonius. I'm a privatus these days; they wouldn't listen." "Can you stay with me for a few days at least?" "I hope I never have to leave again, Fulvia." Shortly thereafter Curio departed for the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol, wherein the New Year's Day meeting of the Senate was always held. When he returned several hours later, he brought Mark Antony with him. The preparations for dinner took some moments; prayers had to be said, an offering made to the Lares and Penates, togas doffed and folded, shoes removed, feet washed and dried. During all of which Fulvia held her peace, then usurped the lectus imus for herself she was one of those scandalously forward women who insisted on reclining to eat. "Tell me everything," she said as soon as the first course was laid out and the servants had retired. Antony ate, Curio talked. "Our wolfing friend here read Caesar's letter out so loudly that nothing could overcome his voice," said Curio, grinning. "What did Caesar have to say?" "He proposed that either he should be allowed to keep his provinces and his army, or else that all other holders of imperium should step down at one and the same moment he did." "Ah!" Fulvia exclaimed, satisfied. "He'll march." "What makes you think that?" asked her husband. "He made an absolutely absurd, unacceptable request." "Well, I know that, but..." "She's right," mumbled Antony, hand and mouth full of eggs. "He'll march." "Go on, what happened next?" "Lentulus Crus was in the chair. He refused to throw Caesar's proposal open to debate. Instead, he filibustered on the general state of the nation." "But Marcellus Minor is the senior consul; he has the fasces for January! Why wasn't he in the chair?" "Went home after the religious ceremonies," mumbled Antony, "Headache or something." "If you're going to speak, Marcus Antonius, take your snout out of the trough!" said Fulvia sharply. Startled, Antony swallowed and achieved a penitent smile. "Sorry," he said. "She's a strict mother," said Curio, eyes adoring her. "What happened next?" asked the strict mother. "Metellus Scipio launched into a speech," said Curio, and sighed. "Ye Gods, he's boring! Luckily he was too eager to get to his peroration to waffle on interminably. He put a motion to the House. The Law of the Ten Tribunes was invalid, he said, and that meant Caesar had no right whatsoever to his provinces or his army. He would have to appear inside Rome as a privatus to contest the next consular elections. Scipio then moved that Caesar be ordered to dismiss his army by a date to be fixed, or else be declared a public enemy." "Nasty," said Fulvia. "Oh, very. But the House was all on his side. Hardly anyone voted against his motion." "It didn't pass, surely!" Antony gulped hastily, then said with commendable clarity, "Quintus Cassius and I vetoed it." "Oh, well done!"
Pompey, however, didn't consider the veto well done at all. When the debate resumed in the House on the second day of January and resulted in another tribunician veto, he lost his temper. The strain was telling on him more than on anyone else in that whole anguished, terrified city; Pompey had the most to lose. "We're getting nowhere!" he snarled to Metellus Scipio. "I want to see this business finished! It's ridiculous! Day after day, month after month if we're not careful, the anniversary of the Kalends of March last year will roll around and we'll still have come no closer to putting Caesar in his place! I have the feeling that Caesar is running rings around me, and I don't like that feeling one little bit! It's time the comedy was ended! It's time the Senate acted once and for all! If they can't secure a law in the Popular Assembly to strip Caesar of everything, then they'll have to pass the Senatus Consultum Ultimum and leave the matter to me!" He cl
apped three times, the signal for his steward. "I want a message sent immediately to every senator in Rome," he told his steward curtly. "They are to report to me here two hours from now." Metellus Scipio looked worried. "Pompeius, is that wise?" he ventured. "I mean, summon censors and consulars?" "Yes, summon! I'm fed up, Scipio! I want this business with Caesar settled!" Like most men of action, Pompey found it extremely difficult to coexist with indecision. And, like most men of action, Pompey wanted to be in absolute command. Not pushed and pulled by a parcel of incompetent, shilly-shallying senators who he knew were not his equals in anything. The situation was totally exasperating! Why hadn't Caesar given in? And, since he hadn't given in, why was he still sitting in Ravenna with only one legion? Why wasn't he doing something? No, clearly he didn't intend to march on Rome but if he didn't, what did he think he was going to do? Give in, Caesar! Give up, give way! But he didn't. He wouldn't. What tricks did he have up his sleeve? How could he extricate himself from this predicament if he didn't intend to give in, nor intend to march? What was going on in his mind? Did he think to prolong this senatorial impasse until the Nones of Quinctilis and the consular elections? But he would never get permission to stand in absentia, even if he managed to hang onto his imperium. Was it in his mind to send a few thousand of his loyalest soldiers to Rome on an innocent furlough at the time of the elections? He'd done that already, to secure the consulship for Pompeius and Crassus six years ago. But nothing got round the in absentia, so why? Why? Did he think to terrorize the Senate into yielding permission to stand in absentia? By sending thousands of his loyalest soldiers on furlough? Up and down, up and down; Pompey paced the floor in torment until his steward came, very timidly, to inform him that there were many senators waiting in the atrium. "I've had enough!" he shouted, striding into the room. "I have had enough!" Perhaps one hundred and fifty men stood gaping at him in astonishment, from Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor to the humble urban quaestor Gaius Nerius. A pair of angry blue eyes raked the ranks and noted the omissions: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censor, both the consuls, many of the consulars, every senator known to be a partisan of Caesar's and several who were known not to favor Caesar but didn't favor being summoned by a man with no legal right to summon either. Still, there were sufficient to make a good beginning. "I have had enough!" he said again, climbing onto a bench of priceless pink marble. "You cowards! You fools! You vacillating milksops! I am the First Man in Rome, and I am ashamed to call myself the First Man in Rome! Look at you! For ten months this farce has been going on over the provinces and the army of Gaius Julius Caesar, and you've gotten nowhere! Absolutely nowhere!" He bowed to Cato, Favonius, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio and two of the three Marcelli. "Honored colleagues, I do not include you in these bitter words, but I wanted you here to bear witness. The Gods know you've fought long and hard to terminate the illegal career of Gaius Caesar. But you get no real support, and this evening I intend to remedy that." Back to the rest, some of them, like Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor, none too pleased. "I repeat! You fools! You cowards! You weak, whining, puny collection of has-beens and nowheres! I am fed up!" He drew a long, sucking breath. "I have tried. I have been patient. I have held back. I have suffered all of you. I have wiped your arses and held your heads while you puked. And don't stand there looking mortally offended, Varro! If the shoe fits, wear it! The Senate of Rome is supposed to set the tone and serve as the example to every other body politic and body public from one end of Rome's empire to the other. And the Senate of Rome is a disgrace! Every last one of you is a disgrace! Here you are, faced by one man one man! yet for ten months you've let him shit all over you! You've wavered and shivered, argued and sniveled, voted and voted and voted and voted and gotten nowhere! Ye Gods, how Gaius Caesar must be laughing!" By this everyone was stunned far beyond indignation; few of the men present had served in the field with Pompey in a situation which revealed his ugly side, but many of them were now grasping why Pompey got things done. Their affable, sweet-tempered, self-deprecating Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was a martinet. Many of them had seen Caesar lose his temper, and still shivered in their boots at the memory of it. Now they saw Pompey lose his temper, and shivered in their boots. And they began to wonder: which of the two, Caesar or Pompey, would prove the harder master? "You need me!" roared Pompey from the superior height of his bench. "You need me, and never forget it! You need me! I'm all that stands between you and Caesar. I'm your only refuge because I'm the only one among the lot of you who can beat Caesar on a field of battle. So you'd better start being nice to me. You'd better start bending over backward to please me. You'd better smarten up your act. You'd better resolve this mess. You'd better pass a decree and procure a law in the Assembly to strip Caesar of army, provinces and imperium! I can't do it for you because I'm only one man with one vote, and you haven't got the guts to institute martial law and put me in charge!" He bared his teeth. "I tell you straight, Conscript Fathers, that I don't like you! If I were ever in a position to proscribe the lot of you, I would! I'd throw so many of you off the Tarpeian Rock that you'd end in falling on a senatorial mattress! I have had enough. Gaius Caesar is defying you and defying Rome. That has to stop. Deal with him! And don't expect mercy from me if I see any one of you tending to favor Caesar! The man's an outcast, an outlaw, though you don't have the guts to declare him one legally! I warn you, from this day on I will regard any man who favors Caesar as an outcast, as an outlaw!" He waved his hand. "Go home! Think about it! And then, by Jupiter, do something! Rid me of this Caesar!" They turned and left without a word. Pompey jumped down, beaming. "Oh, that feels better!" he said to the little group of boni who remained. "You certainly rammed a red-hot poker up their arses," said Cato, voice for once devoid of expression. sol_ "Pah! They needed it, Cato. Our way one day, Caesar's way the next. I'm fed up. I want an end to the business." "So we gathered," said Marcellus Major dryly. "It wasn't politic, Pompeius. You can't order the Senate of Rome around like raw recruits on a drill ground." "Someone's got to!" snapped Pompey. "I've never seen you like this," said Marcus Favonius. "You'd better hope you never see me like this again," said Pompey grimly. "Where are the consuls? Neither of them came." "They couldn't come, Pompeius," said Marcus Marcellus. "They are the consuls; their imperium outranks yours. To have come would have been tantamount to acknowledging you their master." "Servius Sulpicius wasn't here either." "I don't think," said Gaius Marcellus Major, walking toward the door, "that Servius Sulpicius answers summonses." A moment later only Metellus Scipio was left. He gazed at his son-in-law reproachfully. "What's wrong with you?" demanded Pompey aggressively. "Nothing, nothing! Except perhaps that I think this wasn't wise, Magnus." He sighed dolefully. "Not wise at all." An opinion echoed the next day, which happened to be Cicero's fifty-seventh birthday, and the day upon which he arrived outside Rome to take up residence in a villa on the Pincian Hill; granted a triumph, he could not cross the pomerium. Atticus came out of the city to welcome him, and was quick to apprise him of the extraordinary scene of the evening before. "Who told you?" asked Cicero, horrified at the details. "Your friend the senator Rabirius Postumus, not the banker Rabirius Postumus," said Atticus. "Old Rabirius Postumus? Surely you mean the son." "I mean old Rabirius Postumus. He's got a new lease on life now that Perperna is failing, wants the cachet of being the oldest." "What did Magnus do?" asked Cicero anxiously. "Intimidated most of the Senate still in Rome. Not many of them had seen Pompeius like that so angry, so scathing. No elegant language, just a traditional diatribe but delivered with real venom. He said he wanted an end to the senatorial dithering about Caesar. What he really wants he didn't say, but everyone was able to guess." Atticus frowned. "He threatened to proscribe, which may give you an idea of how upset he was. He followed that by threatening to throw every senator from the Tarpeian Rock until the last fell on a mattress of the first, was how he put it. They're terrified!" "But the Senate has tried and tried hard!" protested Cicero, reliving those hours at the trial of Milo. "What does Magnus think it can do? Th
e tribunician veto is inalienable!" "He wants the Senate to enact a Senatus Consultum Ultimum and institute martial law with himself in command. Nothing less will satisfy him," Atticus declared strongly. "Pompeius is wearing down under the strain. He wishes it were over, and for most of his life his wishes have come true. He is an atrociously spoiled man, used to having things all his own way. For which the Senate is at least partially responsible, Cicero! Its members have given in to him for decades. They've dowered him with one special command after another and let him get away with things they won't condone in, for instance, Caesar. A man with the birthright is now demanding that the Senate treat him as it has treated Pompeius. Who do you think is really at the back of opposition to that?" "Cato. Bibulus when he's here. The Marcelli. Ahenobarbus. Metellus Scipio. A few other diehards," said Cicero. "Yes, but they're all political creatures, which Pompeius is not," said Atticus patiently. "Without Pompeius, they couldn't have marshaled the resistance they have. Pompeius wants no rivals, and Caesar is a formidable rival." "Oh, if only Julia hadn't died!" said Cicero miserably. "That's a non sequitur, Marcus. In the days when Julia was alive, Caesar was no threat. Or so Pompeius saw it. He's not a subtle creature, nor gifted with foresight. If Julia were alive today, Pompeius would be behaving no differently." "Then I must see Magnus today," said Cicero with decision. "With what intention?" "To try to persuade him to come to an agreement with Caesar. Or, if he refuses, to quit Rome, retire to Spain and his army, and wait the matter out. My feeling is that, despite Cato and the rabid boni, the Senate will come to some sort of compromise with Caesar if they believe they haven't got Magnus to fall back on. They see Magnus as their soldier, the one capable of beating Caesar." "And I note," said Atticus, "that you don't think he can." "My brother doesn't think he can, and Quintus would know." "Where is Quintus?" "He's here, but of course he's not exiled from the city, so he's gone home to see if your sister has improved in temper." Atticus laughed until the tears came. "Pomponia? Improve in temper? Pompeius will find harmony with Caesar before that can ever happen!" "Why is it that neither of us Cicerones can manage to exist in domestic peace? Why are our wives such incorrigible shrews?" Said Atticus, pragmatist supreme, "Because, my dear Marcus, both you and Quintus had to marry for money, and neither of you has the birth to find moneyed wives other men fancied."
5. Caesar Page 54
