Caesar is Dead

by Jack Lindsay

  But to his surprise the senators on whom he called, men who had never before shown a spark of courage, proposed that the session be adjourned till certain members of the House now detained by circumstances on the Capitol should be enabled to join in the deliberation. The proposal was tantamount to a pardon. Worse, the next speakers, encouraged by seeing the ground broken, launched into panegyrics of Brutus and Cassius. One, Tiberius Nero, even called them noble Tyrranicides and proposed rewards. The discussion changed into a debate whether rewards, praise, or mere immunity would meet the case. In astonished rage Antonius saw that the House was completely out of his control.

  He sent messengers out to bid the crowd roar for the blood of the conspirators; he saw that the doors were left open so that the furious cries penetrated terrifyingly into the Temple. But still the senators persisted. For once they put aside their timidities; they felt only the ancient dignity of their Order, its tradition of aristocratic brotherhood. Had not that Order vindicated itself by striking down its destroyer, Caesar? Who then could call it decadent? The excitement of the last two days had ended by fusing the frightened Senate into a stubborn spirit of zeal. Let the mob howl. The louder the outcry in the streets became, the calmer and more scrupulously austere became the debate. The House was unanimous in supporting the Liberators.

  Antonius saw the malicious grin on the small, dark, regularly modelled face of Dolabella, but had no emotion to spare for vendettas. He felt his strength ooze from him, leaving him weak and clammied in the chair. As if there were wounds in the soles of his feet, the energy which had been fermenting in his veins dripped slowly out, leaving his body a floundering husk. He could not have raised his hand to ward off a blow. To the ravens with Fulvia and her hot-brained schemes. The only possible course was to acquiesce and get out of the difficulty in the least compromised way. Both parties were mad.

  Then he caught Dolabella’s smiling glance again, and rage returned to give him strength. At least he would upset these talkers. They were now arguing that there was only one question before the House: either Caesar was a tyrant or Brutus was an assassin; the answer was obvious.

  Antonius rose and cut the speakers short. Words came to him easily, and for the first time he enjoyed addressing a formal meeting. Cut-and-dried definitions, he said, were for the schools; let the House look to consequences as of more practical interest. If Caesar was a tyrant his body would have to be thrown into the Tiber with obloquy, and all his acts declared null and void; the State would resume all lands that he had granted or sold; all the officials that he had appointed, including Brutus and Cassius, would have their tenure cancelled; many of the present senators would lose their seats; the State, lacking all officials, would be in the utmost confusion.

  At that moment there was a tremendous uproar outside. The news of the senatorial resistance had percolated through the crowd; and the senators, though determined not to abandon their fellows on the Capitol, blenched at the sound. After all, what Antonius said was right; the problem was not to vilify Caesar but to extenuate the conspiracy and stabilise the State as quickly and simply as possible.

  “Antonius! Lepidus!”

  The noise grew louder. The speakers in the House could only be heard by those close at hand. The building seemed to rock. The clang of arms rang through the tumult. Antonius announced that he would go out, address the crowd, and calm them. Followed by Lepidus, he left the Temple, fretting at the thought of what would happen to the debate in his absence, but glad to reach the open air again.

  “Marcus Antonius!”

  The mob screamed with joy to see him, and he flushed with pride, though he could not forget the rebellious Senate at his rear. With the Senate lay the ultimate power; he could not believe otherwise; in the Senate alone was preserved, however tainted, the tradition of Rome. A noisy mob was no creator of empire; but he went, happily, with the tide of the flowing figures.

  “To the Forum!”

  *

  In the Senate Antonius had unwittingly left a strong ally in Dolabella. Dolabella, as he had already shown, cared little for party faith, though he preferred revolutionary measures. What he cared supremely for at the moment was the consulship. He saw at once that if Caesar was declared a tyrant he would lose his rank, and his record would at once blacken him, for the victorious conservatives who would no longer need his support. Taking charge of the proceedings, he made it clear that if there was any suggestion of nullifying Caesar’s acts he would oppose all proposals to relieve the conspirators of their blood-guilt. It was ridiculous to talk of throwing Caesar’s body into the Tiber when the mob was roaring in the streets. How could Caesar’s acts be repudiated when the Liberators in the Capitol were at this moment circulating pamphlets to say that they struck only at Caesar personally and meant to respect all his legislation?

  He waved one of the sheets in the face of the Senate and succeeded at last in shaking their eagerness to clarify issues by denouncing Caesar as a tyrant.

  Cicero listened in despair. His legal mind saw the impasse of the situation: a point that no one had considered before Caesar’s death. The last thing the conspirators wanted was to lose their appointments; their whole plan had aimed at using those appointments, Caesar’s work, to tide over the stressful period until fully normal functioning returned to the Republic. If utter confusion was created, who would profit by it more than the mob? How could elections be held in a city terrorised by armed soldiers? The results would be a foregone conclusion for the extreme revolutionists.

  The Liberators were thus faced with a miserable dilemma. The only way to justify their act and bring about the state at which they aimed was to declare Caesar a tyrant; yet to do this would be in effect to destroy the whole procedure and hand Rome over to the mob.

  A senator, with a last effort to keep the original programme, suggested that all Caesar’s acts should be decreed null, and then at once passed anew under a different name by the Comitia. But Dolabella laughed.

  “There is your Comitia.” He pointed out towards the tumult.

  The debate drifted weakly on. How could the dilemma be removed? Where was the formula of reconciliation?

  Into the midst of the enfeebled Senate Antonius and Lepidus returned, brisk, with the air of men heartened by action. They had harangued the crowd and promised to see the popular will carried out, though they knew as little as their audience what precisely was meant by the promise; but the crowd was temporarily appeased, and Antonius was relieved to find that the Senate, so far from becoming more doctrinaire, was relapsing into dismay. But amid all its wavering it persisted adamantinely, with a mulish vagueness, in the resolve to stand by the Liberators. Indeed that now was its only wish; it was ready to accept any compromise that would save Brutus and hold intact the senatorial order.

  Cicero now spoke — He had wanted Caesar defamed as tyrant, but saw that it would be suicidal to make that proposal. He spoke therefore for a truce. The great need was an end of hostilities; let Caesar and his work stand; but let an amnesty be declared on the precedent adopted by the Athenians to close periods of political violence.

  No proposal could have suited the mood of the House better, though in fact it solved nothing except the problem of releasing the men on the Capitol — being a foreign form counter to both the letter and spirit of the Roman constitution. Cicero knew the weakness of the method, but what else would serve? As long as he could produce an open door whereby the Liberators might re-enter the State, the main end would be effected. But it was dangerous that the State had not declared the slain man to be a tyrant; it left the Liberators in the position of common cut-throats irrationally pardoned.

  The Senate hurriedly passed Cicero’s proposal. Their decree ratified all Caesar’s laws, both those already issued and those which might be found among his papers if properly drawn up and in accordance with the powers granted. To Antonius, in gratitude for his good work in keeping order, was left the task of sorting the papers. At the last moment a senator, reminded by the
menacing clamour of the streets, added the amendment that all Caesar’s colonies should be duly carried out.

  Then the House broke up, and the ordeal of the streets remained once more for the home-going senators.

  *

  But equally great was the ordeal that Antonius had to face in his magnificent house in the Carinae, decorated with the trophies of Pompeius, hung with purple and embroidered cloths of the East, guarded at the doorway by ship-beaks captured from the Cilician pirates. Leaving his brothers in the cool Atrium, where delicately fronded ferns grew under the rain-hole, he walked into Fulvia’s room.

  She already had her tidings from a slave sent to watch, but she read them again from his pleading face. “So you failed,” she said, curtly.

  “Caesar’s papers have been left with me.” He tried to assume a jovial air of matter-of-factness. “Quite a concession considering.”

  “Don’t act the clown. You failed.”

  “I did my best.”

  “That’s what my chairman said yesterday when he stumbled and made me bump my head. He had a boil on his neck and said it galled him. So I had him beaten.”

  Antonius felt a fierce anger against the complacent woman. “O to hell with you. You think dealing with the Senate is the same as giving your unfortunate slaves a bad time. No one could have done more than I did. And I’m glad at the way things turned out. I don’t want more than my fair share. Everyone’s willing to give me that. Why should I cause further trouble?”

  She came up close to him, holding out her open arms. A burning film came over her dark eyes. “I’ve given myself to you. Every bit of me. And you’ve got to give me some return.”

  He laughed coarsely. “I’ve given you back as much as you gave. You know I smacked Cytheris and showed her the door. And there’s been no one else. I’m faithful to you — and so I’ll continue to be.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  Her dark eyes embarrassed him; he loathed and desired her; the nearness of her made his palms sweat and tingle. She had been the wife of Clodius and Curio, his friends — though he had quarreled with Clodius over trying to kiss her — and both those friends had died bloody deaths. They had been the stormy-petrels of the generation; and she had married one after the other, and they died under the swords, and now she was his. In her flesh he felt the embraces of Clodius and Curio; she dominated him by the power of the dead; it was a filthy magic; he wouldn’t have it.

  She went on talking. “When a woman gives herself entirely, she gives more than a man could ever give. What do you feel when you take me? Do you feel that you’re being torn to pieces? Do you feel that your flesh is possessed and given over to something you hate as well as desire? O you can’t guess how it feels for a woman like me to give her body to a child — to become a breeding-slab. You throw off your lust, but I take it in; it remains to pang me and burn me. Do you hear?”

  He stood stupefied. He felt ashamed for her, frightened that someone else had overheard her cry of suffering; he wanted to cover her mouth with his hand and say she lied, to laugh at her gaily, to insult her. He wanted to make her become the thing of shame that she confessed to be; to possess her obscenely. He wanted to leave the room, but could not resist her.

  “I hear,” he said, grimly.

  Yes, he heard; he swore to himself that he would never touch her again; he would give up women altogether.

  There were tears in her strained eyes. “You’ve got to do something.” She clenched her fists and they trembled pathetically. “You’ve got to fight. Do you hear?” Her voice grated insistently. “You mustn’t let them get you down. You must stand up for yourself. I’ll leave you if you don’t. Do you hear?”

  He bowed his head, to stop himself from crying out, imploring her to leave him; but at the same time he was scared she would catch that voice in his heart. The last thing he wanted was that she should catch it.

  “Do you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  He turned with slackened arms and walked out of the room,

  Striding down the corridor, he tasted freedom as he had never tasted it before. He was damned if he’d stir another step in this futile battle of wits. Let the conspirators have their little crow. A man spewed over his drink, whatever his title was.

  In the Atrium he paused to speak to a slave, and then rejoined his brothers. In a few moments another slave was cringing before him.

  “So you’re the chairman that was beaten yesterday for slipping.”

  The man cringed and nodded. “I couldn’t help it, sir —”

  “Shut up. I’m going to manumit you.” Antonius turned to Gaius. “Here, you’re a praetor. I free this man before you.” He cuffed the slave. “There’s your dismissal. Get out now. You’re a free man.”

  The slave fell to the floor and kissed his feet. Antonius kicked him in the face. “Get out, I told you.”

  *

  So that day passed, with noise among the people; and the upper classes grew more sure of themselves and even more convinced that Caesar was only a dead man. The conspirators on the Capitol, hearing the Senate’s decree, were thankful, and quickly ratified the terms; but they didn’t like to venture down in haste from their refuge. Again they spent a chilling night among the statues; and in the morning they were formally summoned to descend. The baby sons of Antonius and Lepidus were sent up as hostages (and only Antonius and Lucius knew how Fulvia had had to be held down on the bed while her son was taken away); and Brutus agreed to dine with Lepidus that evening, Cassius with Antonius.

  All the news of the day Gallus heard from Cytheris. There was little reason for him to lie abed now, save that he felt weak. One thought kept him feverish; he did not like to admit to Cytheris that he owned only one nondescript slave and had no clean toga in his clothes-chest. But finally he had to send for Leonidas, his devoted but useless valet; and once he had started the subject, he took pleasure in exposing his poverty. He insisted on detailing at length how thinly he lived, how empty his purse, what a blow it was to have had his dinner-suit ruined.

  Cytheris listened with a smile. She didn’t mind what he talked about as long as it wasn’t love; and soon now she would be able to get rid of him, but she liked him nevertheless, which surprised her as she sat being undressed by two slave-girls that night, for she had never merely liked anyone before. She had had no time for such a quietly luxurious emotion, she ruefully told herself — not that her career hadn’t been lucky enough on the whole, lucky in comparison with that of others of her class. She would have been pleased to have the friendship of Gallus. But a woman such as she was couldn’t have a friendship with a man; perhaps no woman could. There was something unspoiled about Gallus, for all his foolish ways; he didn’t seem to want her to be loose so as to have her the easier for his own plucking.

  She surprised herself further by giving the slave-girls some clothes that she hadn’t really finished with; and then she lay awake in bed.

  And Gallus also lay awake, and wondered what she would do if he tiptoed across to her room; and he rose and went to the door, but grew giddy and was glad to creep back to bed.

  “If he really wanted me, he would come in now,” said Cytheris; and she knew that she would surrender if he came in, merely out of habit; and so she decided that he must go the next day.

  “She will see that I am not as the others,” thought Gallus. “I can’t take advantage of her hospitality.”

  So neither slept, till near dawn; and awakening unrefreshed, they felt still shyer, yet enveloped in faint veils of a sweetness which they knew must shortly be dissipated. Both wished to say something pleasantly memorable, a phrase that would pin down the day in the cabinet of memory, a butterfly, but they feared the luminous powder of the wings would not endure their touch, and the moments fluttered past, intolerably sweet in a faint, despairing way.

  Leonidas appeared; and his slight squint reduced Gallus to actualities. He sent him off to bring back the best, five-times-washed toga from the wardrobe, and
refused the toga which Cytheris offered him. Then she grew confused, feeling that she must explain why she had such a garment in the house. She had worn it in some farcical parts on the stage; and Gallus smiled sadly, believing that the toga had been left by some lover, and she thought that he was thinking how the street-prostitutes wore the male gown, and that angered her.

  Seeing that she was angry, he changed his mind, and agreed to take the toga; and she relented a little. But they squabbled over the soiled dinner-tunic. She wanted to have it cleaned for him, but that he wouldn’t allow. After surrendering about the toga, he felt that he must be bitterly firm about the tunic. He declared that he would carry it to his own fullery; and she declared that he couldn’t carry a parcel through the streets, he must at least leave it for his slave to collect. But he refused. So she gave him back the tunic, having her way to the extent of making him take it in a satchel of soft doe-skin.

  Then she left him, and the maids came in with ewers of warm water and washed him with clouts of fine linen while he still lay abed. After that he arose and clad himself with the help of the maids in the clothes that Cytheris had brought; and he was overjoyed that there was a shift smelling of a violet-scent that she used. As he drew the shift down and felt it lying with cool looseness against his newly washed body, he knew that he must possess her or be unhappy forever. The knowledge made him keen to go; for while he was her guest, he saw that he would never say anything about love, but when he was no longer under any such obligation he would be able to speak.