by Jack Lindsay
“I saw Trebonius today for a few moments.”
Brutus roused himself. “What did he have to say?”
“Nothing fresh. He knows his part. He’ll see that Marcus Antonius doesn’t cause trouble. I impressed on him how necessary it was to grab Antonius so that we can use him as president to declare the return of normal government.”
“I don’t like Antonius.”
“But you know we need him. He’ll be the sole consul. If he were killed too, there’d be chaos. Isn’t the whole point of our action that we want things to revert at once to the normal. Since the dictatorship’s an abnormal office, at Caesar’s death it will cancel itself and all its anomalies out? Things will be as if Caesar had never existed.”
“You know I know all that. Why keep on telling me? You don’t trust Antonius any more than I do, even if he did show the right spirit against the radicals two years ago. The man thinks only of himself.”
“Well, are we to reconsider our plans at the last moment? You’re for killing Antonius, I take it. There’s a wisdom in that, I’m the last to deny.”
“Of course we can’t kill him. You know we need him as consul. But he’s a coward for all his bull-neck. He’ll go with the tide. Besides, Decimus wants him saved — because they fought together in Gaul.”
Brutus spoke cynically, unlike his usual tone; and repented. Why shouldn’t Decimus want to save a comrade? But friendship must count for nothing in such a matter.
Cassius looked up sharply. “Decimus is jealous of Antonius, and doesn’t want us to know it. He’d be pleased if we overruled him.”
Brutus shook his head angrily. “What’s that to us? Good God, haven’t we enough to think about, without tearing the motives of one another to tatters?”
“I didn’t start the subject,” replied Cassius, feeling unjustly treated.
Brutus was about to retort, but he drew back, pressing his eyelids down over his eyes. “I’ve had no sleep for nights now. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.” He was haunted by the image of Porcia’s wound. The fountains of the night ran with blood. Blood drizzled from the nipples of the stars.
But Cassius had something he wanted to say. “Trebonius was telling me again how he decided Caesar must die months before we thought it all out.” This knowledge pleased Cassius deeply. It shifted the responsibility; it proved that the movement had grown, not out of any wilful scheme, but out of the gathering need of men’s spirits. Caesar had to die. The impulsion had come from justice, not Cassius. Trebonius was a man of considered judgments, a lawyer and a soldier. Whose decision could be more damning against Caesar?
“But look here,” said Brutus, peevishly, returning to a theme that he and Cassius had argued out to exhaustion. “How can you as an Epicurean be concerned whether Caesar tyrannises or not? You can’t admit justice or freedom as a motive-force. It’s different for me. I admit a moral power in the universe. You don’t.”
“You’re wrong,” said Cassius, pleased to have any subject of debate and repeating phrases without fully thinking what they meant. He seemed half-detached from his body: a condition of mingled anxiety and elation. “I follow justice and the good because I find pleasure in doing so. They’re part of an harmonious life — my shape of pleasure. All else is deception.”
“You can’t argue that,” said Brutus, with a deadened, argumentative voice. “According to your philosophy everything’s equally deceptive or equally real. There’s only individual choice.” He jeered. “You’re a virtuous hypocrite, Gaius Cassius.”
“Of course there’s only individual choice. That’s the whole meaning of it —”
But Brutus wasn’t listening. He was afflicted with horror. He had seen Caesar falling, stricken, stabbed in the thigh. He felt himself soaked in blood, damply embracing Porcia. O doomed child of the earth, where is your refuge, now that the womb has become the cavernous wound of time? Yet Cassius ranted and gesticulated confidently on. Sweat trickled from the forehead of Brutus.
“Stop, stop,” he implored in a thin, fainting voice. “I tell you my digestion’s out of order.”
Cassius thought he was joking, and went to reply sarcastically; but he saw a large tear start out from under each of the eyelids of Brutus and roll down his cheeks.
*
When Decimus Brutus arrived, both men were emptied of emotion. Marcus Brutus had reachieved the mask of impassive, sombre dignity that he never relaxed before the world, and Cassius showed only the taut, acrid eagerness of his usual manner. Decimus Brutus (no relation of Marcus) had a strong soldierly bearing, and his heavy-jowled, capable face displayed no sign of inner conflict. He had been dining with Caesar at the house of Lepidus, the master-of-horse, or second-in-rank to the dictator. Lepidus, a rough, amiable aristocrat who was married to Iunia, the elder daughter of Servilia, knew nothing of the conspiracy.
“Did he show any suspicions?” asked Cassius. Brutus sat stonily. Before others he could not reveal the slightest fear or even interest in such matters.
“Not a bit. But he wasn’t in one of his literary moods. In fact he spent most of the time signing letters and giving instructions aside to his damned freedmen. Balbus was there, of course, whispering away — but only about accounts and business.”
Decimus paused and licked his dry lips. There was clearly something else he wanted to say.
“What is it?” asked Cassius.
“He said one strange thing.” Decimus gave a short brutal laugh, not the kind of laugh he had meant to give. “Someone started talking about the best kind of deaths. Lepidus said that though not much of a musician he’d prefer an Orphic death — being pulled to pieces by women. Trebonius said that death in the midst of a dreamless sleep was best.”
Decimus paused again.
“Well, what of it?” said Cassius. “There’s only death at the end of it all, however death comes.”
It seemed that one had never realised it before. Death, the crumbling void, was all around. That was the sound that terrified in all silence. That was the voice of the stranger, the noiseless presence at one’s back on a lonely road. What was the merciful dullness that enabled one to forget it? Brutus passed his hand across his brow, and was again his impassive self. All the less reason for taking to heart the death of a single man. What did death matter? Thousands died with every breath one took. A man died; and the earth claimed his body, and the air claimed his breath, and into light went his starry energy; and there was an end of questions. Yet it was horrible.
Decimus gulped and spoke quickly. “Caesar looked up and said in a quiet voice: ‘Any death is good as long as it’s sudden.’”
“He shall have his wish,” said Cassius, with a soft ferocity. Brutus felt the sense of fate deepening, star beyond star, voice within voice. There was a peace in that.
*
Respectable citizens had gone to bed or were lying in family groups, conversing, yawning, asking if Antonius as consul would be able to control the rashly radical Dolabella. Antonius had stood up for order two years ago, but had it been partly because Dolabella seduced his wife? He was a libertine himself, but by no means unsober when he came up against administrative issues. Still, even the men who disapproved of Caesar were somewhat afraid of what would happen when his strong hand was removed. Parthia was so far away.
The taverns and brothels were warm with light and chatter, though Caesar’s police regulations were becoming stricter. But a cup of wine and a handful of woman-flesh were unforbidden. It was gambling that the authorities were trying to suppress; but they sought to catch, as well as the poor gambler, the rich indulger in rare meats. The problem of a fire-brigade was also taking up attention.
Amos walked home through the dark streets. He knew his way without the flares of light from doorways when the curtains lifted. Someone on a roof knocked a flowerpot down that fell at his feet. A sailor lurched up and tried to sell him a green parrot who could say a Hail-Caesar in Latin and obscenities in ten other languages. Amos shook the man off. Ka
rni was undoubtedly an astonishing woman. He could still feel her nearness, sinuously consoling. What if the establishment of Fabullus and Ezra would never gain the laundry patronage of Caesar. Caesar was the Mighty. Strength be with him, and let him dye his uniforms where he liked. But Karni belonged to Amos, not to Caesar.
Caesar. That name was the pulse-beat of the city, for friend and foe alike. Only seventy-five men lived outside the circle of its domination. Seventy-five men, many of whom had partaken of Caesar’s most open-handed bounty, men who were his high officials and had once been his generals. They were sworn to kill him on the morrow. Though many of them envied him, though many of them had grudges and complaints, none of them hated him. They were drawn together by a need outside themselves, an hypnotic word, a thought which had never been realised yet. Freedom.
They all knew of the cruelties and dissatisfaction, the inefficiencies and corruptions and money-grubbing of the Empire governed by the Republic; but such memories meant nothing. They saw only the other side of the past: the combination of free men for a purpose of necessary service and government. No one should be the master of his fellows except for short periods in terms of a strictly limited constitution. Since magistrates were required among weak and criminal men, the worthiest should take their turn at ordering and educating society, drawing it towards the rule of self-administered justice, the perfectly harmonised family of man. But such offices should be an acceptable burden, not a prize for the ambitious.
What did it mean to answer that such a condition never had existed, never would exist? A word was greater than such doubts. Freedom.
The net had closed round seventy-five men, and they could not escape. Once the confidence had been offered, they were bound. How could one of them betray, even if he feared and hated the act of murder? He would be an outcast forever, branded with unutterable shame among his fellows. There was nothing for it but to wait, and, when the hour came, to strike.
Quietly, with the aristocratic composure ingrained upon their lives, the seventy-five men had gone about their daily business, visiting one another, attending to their work in the Courts or the Army, exchanging the trite comments that hid their hearts. But in their hearts was a word of flame, a gnawing pang and exultation. What use to tell them that they were roused only because their class-interests were threatened, because behind Caesar stirred the awakening demands of the poor and the oppressed, because they were the tools of the moneyed interests that dreaded a clearer sense of human rights? Many of them were risking or discarding high rank under Caesar for the doubtful chances of the restored Republic. One and all they heard only a commanding word. Freedom.
*
No one had any intention yet of going to sleep at Dolabella’s house. There were eight guests, one of whom was Cytheris, the actress. She had been freedwoman and mistress of the banker Volumnius, then mistress of Antonius, who had carried her about while he governed Italy during the early years of the Civil War. But Fulvia had made him promise not to see her again; and for the moment Cytheris was unattached. She lay at the table like the men, though respectable women always sat in chairs. Much wine had been poured out.
Dolabella, a dark-eyed, small-bodied, elegant young noble who had joined the extreme radicals, was boasting how he would discomfiture Antonius on the morrow. He was a favourite of Caesar, and had no fear of failure. “Do you think Caesar’s got any sympathy for the financiers? All he wants is the glory of conquering the east. Can’t you see how that will finalise everything for him? He’s unconquerable, but so far he’s only beaten a pack of Gauls and won in a Civil War. When he’s broken Parthia and fixed the boundaries of the Empire on the Danube and the Persian Gulf, things will be different. He’ll be a real national leader.”
They drank and argued. The room had been decorated in the latest style. The love of the Romans for the open air had shown itself in an effort to make the walls express space; and the realistic attitude had dictated the method, a fresco of landscapes painfully exact in perspective. But there was also a decorative richness in the great swags of fruit and foliage that hung between the mock-pillars; and the colour was subdued and harmonious. A continuous frieze ran round the room, revealing meadows, islands, lakes, hills and vineyards, which looked fantastically, garishly real to the half-closed eyes of the drinkers in the lamp-lit room.
Bored with politics, they let Nicias, a scholar whom Dolabella patronised, draw them into a discussion on the meaning of various words in Homer. All took a part, for well-educated Romans knew the poems thoroughly.
“Sparta isn’t the Spanish-broom used for plaiting ship-ropes,” said Nicias. “It’s a kind of hemp with the same name grown in Thebes.”
“The Liburnians used to tie their ships with thongs,” said one of the guests, stirring his wine with a slip of parsley, and nodding his head.
Gallus, a young man from Southern Gaul, was listening intently; for he prided himself as a poet, and, being yet unknown, he hoped that these discussions would give him a chance to make some magnificently illuminating remark — a comment at once simple and profound that would declare itself to even the dullest as inspired. But the others were more learned than he was at these philological inquiries; he had nothing to say, and a deep malaise overcame him. Everyone fitted into the world but himself, and Cytheris did not spare him a glance.
Dolabella also wearied. He clapped his hands and called for a buffoon, Lalon, who ran in and turned somersaults. “He cost me a pretty sum,” said Dolabella, complacently. “He’s got artificially deformed genitals. Strip and dance for us, you frog-begotten creature of God.”
The buffoon, chanting in a strange tongue, leaped and somersaulted while the guests applauded, splashing him with wine. Dolabella shouted for music. Flute-players and cymbalists appeared; and dancing-girls, shimmering in gold and unguents, swayed at the room’s farther end, against the fresco of the orange-garden, while the buffoon spun round, uttering short sharp screams.
“Dull stuff!” said Dolabella. Taking up a silver jar of nuts, he pelted the performers out of the room. Then he turned to his guest. “Why doesn’t Cytheris distract us?”
She had been lying quietly, toying with a salad, and saying nothing. Gallus had not ceased watching her for a moment. Never before had he felt so tormenting the allurement of distance that lay between him and a beautiful woman. Nicias had introduced him, and he did not feel at home, pleased and excited as he was to meet such people. Some day he’d win a name, and then the exclusive folk would hunt for him. But not yet. Now there was the disturbing essence of Cytheris, the sleek shape of warmth that he could feel even with his eyes shut. By reaching out his hand he could touch her hip. She was half-turned away and hadn’t looked at him once. A tall woman, with a merry, full-fleshed face, long blue eyes, a little chin, and curly brown hair. The curls hung down over her forehead, and over them a thicker mass of hair was raised into a filleted band across the head. Her green gown was figured with crocuses. She had slipped off her sandals, and her bare left foot was stretched out towards Gallus. He looked at its grained surface. Even a delicate well-washed foot was coarse underneath. We are all beasts of burden, he thought; but he would have loved to kiss her sole, nevertheless, to place his fingers round that shapely ankle and raise the sole to his mouth — even when it was sweaty with walking in the open. Bah, thought Gallus, she would kick me in the face, and rightly too; a kiss should aim higher.
“I have retired from the stage,” she said, with a tranquil laugh. “I’m rich enough to rest now.”
There was something pathetic in the words, in their very simplicity and lack of self-pity — so thought Gallus. But the others shouted with laughter and crowded round. Gallus watched the toes on the near foot wriggling — was it dismay at the others or invitation to him? But before he could make up his mind, the drinkers had dragged her from the couch and made her stand on a blue woollen rug for a platform.
“What shall it be?” she asked, placing her hands behind her back and swaying girlishly on h
er left foot.
“The Sick Whore’s Lament,” hiccupped one of the guests, spilling his wine.
“Sing us The Girl from Capua.”
“No,” said Dolabella, “act us that soliloquy from the mime of Laberius — I forget its name, but here’s the chief tune.” He whistled a few notes.
Cytheris smiled; then, pulling out her dress over her girdle, she disordered her hair and said, “Now, lads, you behold in me a full-length woman disguised as herself with the aid of wine and a sense of injury.”
Gallus watched in sorrow and shame. She really shouldn’t do such things; but she was a consummate actress, he had to admit. She seemed to puff out, grow blousy and drunkenly fat before his eyes. She tottered slightly and began the soliloquy, complaining how she was cheated. The others bellowed their applause, but Gallus felt sadder than ever. Couldn’t the fools see how painfully long-suffering she made it? All the trials and troubles that she had encountered and overcome in her own career spoke grossly, wretchedly, compassionately in this caricature. Could no one see it but himself?
