Caesar is Dead

by Jack Lindsay

  As the two old friends silently greeted one another, that smile returned. Atticus noted how young Cicero suddenly seemed, and then realised with a chilling certainty how old he looked without the smile. They were both old men, loitering in the suburbs of a world that had outgrown them. He was very sorry for them both, for Cicero more than for himself, since Cicero clung so much more fervently to the world. Let go, Atticus said to himself, let go gently, and the end will be gentle. Let it come when it will.

  Cicero awoke from the meditation in which they had both fallen. “Time ceases here,” he said, with a quick harsh laugh. “There’s one thing that doesn’t change in this vaporous world, and that’s friendship — our friendship, anyway.”

  “You seem sad today,” said Atticus, quietly. “It’s no use, Marcus. Give up fretting about the world. Keep to your books. Write and read. What more could you want?”

  “As I passed through the Argiletum,” said Cicero, “I looked into a bookshop — the shop of Fannius. I wanted to find some Greek treatises for the essays I’m writing, and I put my hand on a copy of my Actions against Verres. I felt it badly. That old world is gone — the world where we could say what we felt.”

  “It wasn’t always such a good world,” said a smug bass voice. Cicero and Atticus turned with startled eyes and saw a bulky red-faced man confronting them. It was Volumnius, another banker, who had come up noiselessly over the grass. “Forgive me for surprising you,” he said, “but think of the things Verres was up to when you exposed him, Cicero — looting a province and disgracing Rome before the world. That’s what you said, anyway.”

  Cicero sighed. “Nothing matters but freedom.”

  “There’s no such thing,” said Volumnius. “There’s only the question as to whether one has food or hasn’t it. No one’s free. The reason why I’m so happy is that I know that obvious truth.” He slapped his chest. “I’m a slave. We’re all slaves to fate. We’re tied and shackled by every nerve and sinew we’ve got in our carcases. Look at Caesar.” He leaned forward confidentially. “He’s perpetual dictator. He’s got the world at his feet. But he isn’t free.”

  Volumnius made a dig at Atticus with his fat forefinger. Atticus smiled wryly but did not withdraw, and Volumnius went on, “Forgive my coarse manners, but you know you can’t disagree, Atticus. You’re an Epicurean like myself. You know the stars in the sky and the thoughts in your head are only the same buzz of accidental atoms. More, I can tell you the way you’ve tangled Caesar up about this estate of yours in Epirus — Buthrotum.”

  Atticus looked round with faint distaste and fear, but Volumnius had more to say. “We’re all friends together. I know how Caesar meant to confiscate Buthrotum, but you put financial pressure on him and he had to give up the idea. I’ll confess how I learnt it. Caesar’s careless. Tucca and I were asked to discount some of the bills you signed in payment of the fine. The wording interested me, and I made some inquiries at the Office of Works. A little bribery, my dear fellow. Why not? I believe in knowing what happens in this world of ours.”

  “Wait till I call for some wine,” said Atticus, “and you must tell us more that you know about this surprising world of yours.”

  “No, no,” said Volumnius, rising again. “I’ve got some business near the Colline Gate. What about dining with me this day week? Both of you?”

  They agreed to dine with him, and, puffing a little, he went off across the garden, stopping to pick a stockflower, wave it at the others, and then place it behind his ear.

  Cicero and Atticus sat silent. “He doesn’t know everything,” said Cicero, after a while. “He didn’t know that Caesar is so involved with these radical propagandists he doesn’t dare let on he’s dropped his plans about Buthrotum. I hear that the colony is still supposed to be going ahead. He’s keeping to his trick of shipping the colonists off and then at the last moment dumping them somewhere else.”

  “No one’s free,” murmured Atticus. “How is Caesar free when he has to play down to the popular agitators?”

  “I don’t like hearing how that fellow bribed the civil service,” said Cicero, once more assuming the state official.

  “He didn’t bribe anyone,” said Atticus, mildly. “That’s his way of boasting. He’s a friend of Marcus Antonius. He heard the story from him.”

  Cicero looked with admiring astonishment at his astute friend; but Atticus was drowsing with half-closed eyes. “No one’s free.”

  “We won’t debate about that,” said Cicero. He opened his mouth to argue convincingly, his mind stirring with the rhetoric of political liberty, all the catchwords which he had written and spoken so endlessly, and which never palled for him. But something’s snapped within. “What’s the use of it? All my friends are dead, all but you. Caesar has killed them all. They’re rotting from one end of the world to the other. Ah, but I’d like to see some return made to the tyrant before I die!”

  “Perhaps you will — soon.”

  Cicero was astounded at the fierceness that hissed in the voice. Atticus prided himself on self-control; and Cicero, though finding him at times grumpy, had never yet heard him expose hate. But hate it had been this time, a kind of triumphal bitterness of hate. He stared at Atticus questioningly, but Atticus sat back as if dismayed at an utterance so unlike his usual self. “Don’t ask me what I mean,” he said in a weak pleading voice. “Please don’t.”

  Cicero forced the questions to stay mute on his lips, but he was deeply aroused. Atticus knew so much, he was close in the counsels of so many men. What did this queer disclosure portend? Cicero’s thoughts swarmed in his head, excitingly, darkly. He felt an exultation soaring through his blood. So be it. Death to the usurper — but how, when, where? What did Atticus know? “Such old friends—” he began; but Atticus, with closed eyes, waved at him in alarm.

  “Don’t, don’t,” he said in a choking voice, and Cicero perforce stopped. He knew that it wasn’t distrust on the part of Atticus, whatever lay behind the agitation. It was an effort to protect him, to keep him safely out of things; and much as he disliked this attitude, he had no choice. Then, behind these thoughts, he felt a darkening of his own mind. He didn’t want to know; he didn’t want to speak of such things. Atticus was silent because his tongue was tied by the same unnerving sense of mystery, of incredulous fear.

  But Atticus had now recovered. “I know nothing,” he said, his old suave self. “I watch, and I guess, and perhaps I hope. You know what we both hope. No need to say anything more. There may be another Volumnius peeping and listening.”

  Cicero was disappointed. He was sure that there was something more, but he did not like to ask. Yet it disquieted, saddened him, to be left out of the confidence of Atticus. In a way it saddened him more than anything else he had ever known. The sadness clenched into a loathing rage against Caesar, the tyrant who had insinuated himself into the affairs and minds of men so cruelly that he came even with a knife-blade of silence between dreaming friends. Nobody trusted his fellow, and Rome was a city of scheming blackguards, all vilely afraid of one another.

  “No one’s free,” mused Atticus. “Only the man without emotion. Think of poor Caesar. Why do you imagine he’s rushing off to Parthia if it isn’t because things here are getting into a worse and worse mess? It’s the only way out for him. But he’s been very good to us, Marcus — as good as Caesar can be.”

  Cicero objected to this statement, as Atticus had known he would. He rambled into a diatribe on the glories of Republican freedom — or rather, the glories that there would be in a Republic where financiers and the official classes worked unselfishly for the common good. But today the platitudes, consecrated as watchwords of a lifelong political strife, sounded hollow.

  *

  In the taverns it was unsafe to say a word against Caesar. Crowds of veterans had come up from Campania and Etruria, where they had been given plots of land. Though they had clamoured for the land, they were jealous of the new legions that would march against Parthia. Many a man, who
had promised his wife to be back in a few weeks, had decided to re-enlist. All the populace were loyal to Caesar. They objected to many of his measures; they hated the means test that he was imposing on the dole; they wanted more laws passed against the landlord-classes; they disliked his high-handed way of treating the tribunes, the traditional defenders of the plebs; they resented his curtailment of the powers claimed by the trade unions and street associations; they did not care for his policy of emigration or toilsome public-works; but they were loyal to him all the same. Somehow or other he would change things yet. He would finally smash the capitalists and bring the Age of Gold back — the time when food grew in the pantry and houses shot up like trees.

  “Wait till he takes Parthia. Everything’s gold there, even the chamber pots; and there’s real gold-dust on the flowers.”

  “He’ll make people sit up when he comes back. No half-measures then.”

  A freedman was telling his wife, scrawling a map on the plaster-wall in defiance of landlords: “Caesar is going to cut a great road across the Apennines to the Adriatic coast. It’ll change the whole trade outlook. I’m to do some of the surveying — part of the first report.”

  “I’m so glad,” said his plump little wife, rocking the beechwood cradle with her bare foot. “Can we rent a whole storey then? It’ll make that rat-faced Annia bite on her sore tooth.”

  Around the corner the officer of a workers’ club was holding forth. “The revolution’s only begun. If Caesar puts it off after he comes back, then he’ll have to be told where he stands.”

  “And who’ll tell him, in front of a hundred thousand veterans?”

  “That’s the whole point. How’s he going to disband them? The rich will have to pay.”

  Next door the housekeeper was raging. “To hell with these new laws!” He’d been fined for not keeping his portion of the pavement in order. Due notice had been given by the aedile; a contractor had been appointed; and the householder had not paid within thirty days. As a result he’d been fined in the civil courts the sum due plus a third more; and the contractor got it all. Was that fair? “To hell with Caesar and his new laws. Who wants the pavements mended?”

  “Sssh, dear. Someone will hear you.”

  *

  Through the crowded city walked young Amos, the son of Ezra, a Jew. He had come down from his home on the Aventine, and was walking briskly through the lanes leading off the dockyards. He knew all the short-cuts and did not care that they were disreputable. Sailors bickering with loose-breasted women; two negroes on a doorstep tearing at a melon; gamblers squatting in the dust; a drunkard retching on the cobbles; a dog and a scabby child nosing together at a rubbish heap; a woman crying and nursing a baby; a sailor’s family — wife, sister, and six children — sitting round in the open while the sailor opened his knapsack and displayed, to the envy of the neighbours, the cheap finery and carvings bought at Alexandria or Tyre; water emptied out of a top window with a warning cry; the flash of knives where two Cilicians fought over a girl, who lolled against the doorpost, her arms on her hips, insulting both of them; touts with furtive persistence describing a wonderful and voluminous woman — Amos was used to it all. He liked it on the whole. It was better than being at home in the fuller’s shop. He gave the women a veiled sidelong glance, bit his lip, and walked on; but sometimes he spent a copper or two to hear the great lies of the sailors. For he loved stories. Today, however, he was careful not to dirty his brown tunic and had no wish to stop.

  He emerged from the criss-crossing lanes and found himself at the top of the Food Market. On the left stretched the entrance to the Pons Sublicius, the old wooden bridge, and, on the further side of the river, the blue Ianiculan Hills, dotted with villas. He walked over the bridge, idly watching some barges that floated through the piles cargoed with rubble for concrete. Building, always building, were these Romans, and more than ever now that Caesar was undisputed ruler. The rubble came from further up the river; it was quarried and crushed towards the Alban Hills; its fineness and strength were the cause of the Roman success with concreting and had enabled the architects to develop their schemes of vaulting. Amos knew all about it. He was a lad with a curious mind, and considered all facts worth gathering. They would come in handy some day. But today he was not curious.

  His hair was well oiled with Syrian oil filched from his mother’s cupboard, and combed in waves over his ears. He had washed and scented himself with some scents filched from under the bed of the maidservant Rachel, who was not supposed to own such things; and he wore his best shoes, dyed brown but a little lighter than the tunic. That was his only grief. The shoes should have been the same hue or slightly darker; they showed up garishly and got spotted too easily. He would have to pay for re-dyeing them. Why on earth hadn’t he done so before? But as shoes couldn’t be dyed at a few moments’ notice, he had had to wear them: which made him sad, but not very sad, for he only remembered them occasionally. His thoughts were too busy with the visit he was making.

  An old beggar passed with palsied hand twisted up against his loins, and Amos recalled the chase of Mamurius Veturius witnessed earlier in the day. Suddenly a thought came. March 14th: the day before the Ides, that was the day before the full moon; and his friend Gallus, full of out-of-the-way information, had told Amos that March was the first month of the year in the old calendar of Rome. The 14th March: that was to the Romans as the 14th Nissen to the Jews. Nissen was the first month according to the priests; and on the 14th day, between noon and sunset, the paschal lamb was to be slain and no leavened bread was to be eaten; and on the 15th was eaten the lamb that had been slain and offered to Yahwe in token of the Deliverance of the Chosen from Egyptian bondage. That lamb had to be flawless, yeaned that year. Each family must sacrifice, and the doorposts must be smeared with blood of the sacrifice. The lamb of perfect deliverance must be eaten entire, head, bowels and all, with the unleavened bread and the wild herbs of bitterness. Amos decided that he must tell Gallus this discovery. Today began the Passover according to the Romans.

  Amos reached the further bank, and looked scornfully at the shop-and-factory district; for it was there that Jews and other easterners mostly congregated, and he felt superior, even if the section of the Aventine where he lived was rather shabby. At least it was Rome proper, not “across the river.” But he was not going to wander among the signs of Aramaic, Greek, and Syrian that met his eye. He continued along the well-paved river-road, enviously watching a youth dressed in a fashionably-cut short cloak who drove past in a racing-gig. Although Amos couldn’t drive at all, he felt contempt for the youth. Obviously horses weren’t meant to be lashed like that. The thought salved his hurt, and he stepped out light-heartedly, quite forgetting his yellowish shoes, and whistling a dockyard tune that he wouldn’t dare whistle at home. Life was all very easy and fine-tasting. The chant of a fellow poling by in a skiff through the shallows pleased him. Yes, life was a songbird that he held in a cage. To whom would he give it — ah, to whom?

  Several houses were passed, standing back from the road with cypress hedges and impressive drives; and at last Amos reached the grounds that he was seeking. The Gardens of Caesar. Amos faltered. How could he enter, even though it was a side gate and the house only one of the several villas on the estate? He made an irresolute movement forward, and then halted sweating before the postern. A tall Ethiopian stood forward at once, coming sheer through the wall it seemed to the startled Amos, and proceeded to ask the intruder’s business by opening wide a huge-fanged mouth.

  “I’ve come to see Karni that works in the kitchen,” said Amos, terrified. “She said everything would be all right. It’s her fault if it isn’t. Didn’t she speak to you?” He hated the girl and wanted to run.

  But the Ethiopian clapped his back and invited him to go on; and instead of being annoyed that the man’s greasy hand had disarranged his tunic, Amos was grateful. He smiled, and offered a copper coin. The Ethiopian smiled, took the coin, placed it inside his mouth, and the
n held out his hand for another. Amos had only some silver denars beside the copper, and he cursed himself for not bringing more change; but in his misery he took out two denars and did not dare to keep one back. He dropped them both into the vast palm, and watched them disappear into the vast mouth. Then he passed quickly on, muttering curses, “May he swallow them, and may they quarrel in his belly like three crows over a maggot. May they rattle like three stones in an old woman’s shoe. May they stop his food-pipes till he bursts like a squeezed worm.”

  Still muttering sadly, he wandered round the house, afraid to approach close or to attempt the porticoed front. At length he noticed a side-door, and, slinking up, he looked in. He saw a girl bending down and fastening her sandal strap. Her breasts, pushed close together, showed very charmingly, as Amos noticed with a sense detached from his more urgent interests. She started and looked up angrily with flushed face.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to see Karni that works in the kitchen.” Amos wondered if he ought to sacrifice another of his coins. “She said it would be all right.”

  “Well, go and find her,” said the girl crossly. “If she isn’t out, she’ll be in.”

  Amos saw that he would have to beggar himself. He took two denars and held them out. “Please help me,” he said, piteously.

  “I don’t want your rubbishy coins,” said the girl, touched. “She needs them more than I do, the poor creature. Give me a kiss and I’ll find her for you. I hate her face whichever way I look at it.”