‘Of course I shall,’ Atticus replied, ‘and would you in return do a favour for me? Will you try to make Quintus just a little kinder to my sister? I know Pomponia is a difficult woman, but he has returned from Gaul in a permanent foul temper, and their constant arguments are having a bad effect on their boy.’
Cicero agreed, and when we met up with Quintus and his family at Arpinum, he took his brother aside and repeated what Atticus had said. Quintus promised to do his best. But Pomponia, I’m afraid, was quite impossible, and it was not long before the couple were refusing to speak to one another, let alone share a bed, and they parted very coldly.
Relations between Terentia and Cicero were more civil, apart from the one vexed area that had been a source of antagonism between them all their married life – money. In contrast to her husband, Terentia had welcomed his appointment as governor, seeing in it a wonderful opportunity for enrichment. She had even brought her steward, Philotimus, along on the journey south so that he could give Cicero the benefit of his various ideas for skimming off a profit. Cicero kept postponing the conversation and Terentia kept nagging him to have it until at last on their final day together he lost his temper.
‘This fixation of yours with making money is really most unseemly.’
‘This fixation of yours with spending it gives me no choice!’
Cicero paused for a moment to control his irritation and then tried to explain the matter calmly. ‘You don’t seem to understand – a man in my position cannot risk the slightest impropriety. My enemies are just waiting for an opportunity to prosecute me for corruption.’
‘So you intend to be the only provincial governor in history not to come home richer than he went out?’
‘My dear wife, if you ever read a word I wrote, you would know I am just about to publish a treatise on good government. How will that sit with a reputation for thievery in office?’
‘Books!’ said Terentia with great contempt. ‘Where is the money in books?’
They repaired their quarrel sufficiently to dine together that night, and to humour her Cicero agreed that at some stage in the coming year he would at least listen to Philotimus’s business proposals – but only on condition they were legal.
The next morning the family parted, with many tears and much embracing – Cicero and Marcus, who was now fourteen, setting off on horseback together side by side, while Terentia and Tullia stood at the gate of the family farm, waving. I remember that just before the road carried us out of sight I took a final look over my shoulder. Terentia had gone in by then but Tullia was still there watching us, a fragile figure against the majesty of the mountains.
We were due to embark on the first leg of our voyage to Cilicia from Brundisium, and it was while we were on the road there, at Venusia, that Cicero received an invitation from Pompey. The great man was taking the winter sun at his villa in Tarentum and suggested that Cicero should come and stay for a couple of days ‘to discuss the political situation’. As Tarentum was only forty miles from Brundisium, and as our route would take us practically past the door, and as Pompey was not a man to whom it was easy to say no, Cicero had little option but to accept.
Once again we found Pompey living in a state of great domestic happiness with a young bride: they seemed almost to be playing at being a married couple. The house was surprisingly modest; as governor of Spain Pompey had a mere fifty legionaries to protect him, and they were billeted on the neighbouring properties. Otherwise he was without executive authority, having given up his consulship amid universal praise for his wisdom. In fact I would say he was at the summit of his popularity. Crowds of locals stood around outside hoping to catch a glimpse of him; once or twice a day he would sally forth to shake hands and pat the heads of infants. He was quite corpulent now, breathless and rather an unhealthy purplish colour. Cornelia fussed over him like a little mother, trying to restrain his appetite at meals and encouraging him to take walks along the seashore, his guards following at a discreet distance. He was idle, somnolent, uxorious. Cicero presented him with a copy of On the Republic. He expressed great pleasure but immediately laid it aside and I never saw him open it.
Whenever I look back at this three-day interlude, it seems to stand out in my memory like some sunlit glade in the middle of a vast and darkening forest. Watching the two ageing statesmen throwing a ball for Marcus, or standing with their togas hitched up, skimming stones across the waves, it was impossible to believe that anything sinister was impending – or if it was, that it would amount to much. Pompey exuded absolute confidence.
I was not privy to all that passed between him and Cicero, although Cicero told me most of it afterwards. The political situation in essence was this: that Caesar had completed his conquest of Gaul; that the Gallic leader, Vercingetorix, had surrendered and was in custody; and that the enemy’s army was wiped out (the final engagement had been the capture of the hilltop fortress of Uxellodunum along with its garrison of two thousand Gallic fighters, all of whom, on Caesar’s orders, according to his Commentaries, had had both hands cut off before being sent home, so that everyone might see what punishment was meted out to those who resisted Rome’s rule; there had been no trouble since).
Given all this, the question now arose of what to do with Caesar. His own preference was to be allowed to stand for a second consulship in absentia so that he could enter Rome with legal immunity for all the crimes and misdemeanours he had committed during his first; at the very least he wanted his command extended so that he could remain as ruler of Gaul. His opponents, led by Cato, believed that he should return to Rome and submit himself to the electorate just like any other citizen; and failing that, he should be forced to give up his army, it being intolerable to have a man in control of what was now eleven legions, sitting on the Italian border issuing diktats to the Senate.
‘And what is Pompey’s view?’ I asked.
‘Pompey’s view varies according to the hour of the day you ask him. In the morning he thinks it entirely proper, as a reward for his achievements, that his good friend Caesar should be permitted to stand for the consulship without entering Rome. After lunch he sighs and wonders why Caesar can’t simply come home and canvass face to face like anybody else: after all, that was what he did in Caesar’s position, and what was so undignified about that? And then by evening, when – despite the best efforts of the good Lady Cornelia – he is flushed with wine, he starts shouting, “To hell with bloody Caesar! I’m sick of hearing about Caesar! Let him just try and set one toe in Italy with his bloody legions, and you’ll see what I can do – I’ll stamp my foot and a hundred thousand men will rise up at my command and come to the defence of the Senate!”’
‘And what do you think will happen?’
‘My guess is that if I were here I could probably just about persuade him to do the right thing and avoid civil war, which would be the ultimate calamity. My fear,’ he added, ‘is that when the vital decisions are being taken, I shall be a thousand miles from Rome.’
IX
I DO NOT propose to describe in any detail Cicero’s time as governor of Cilicia. I am sure history will judge it as of minor importance in the scale of things; Cicero judged it minor even at the time.
We reached Athens in the spring and stayed for ten days with Aristus, the principal professor of the Academy, who was at that time the greatest living exponent of the philosophy of Epicurus. Like Atticus, who was also a devoted Epicurean, Aristus took a practical, material view of what makes for a happy life: a healthy diet, moderate exercise, pleasant surroundings, congenial company and the avoidance of stressful situations. Cicero, whose god was Plato and whose life was full of stress, disputed this. He believed that Epicureanism amounted to a kind of anti-philosophy: ‘You say happiness depends on bodily well-being. But continual physical well-being is beyond our control. If a man is suffering an agonising illness, say, or if he is being tortured, then in your philosophy he cannot be happy.’
‘Perhaps he cannot be supremely
happy,’ conceded Aristus, ‘but happiness will still be there in some form.’
‘No, no, he cannot be happy at all,’ insisted Cicero, ‘because his happiness is entirely contingent on the physical. Whereas the most magnificent and fruitful promise in the entire history of philosophy is the simple maxim: nothing is good except what is morally good. From this we can prove that moral goodness is sufficient by itself to create the happy life. And from that derives a third maxim: moral goodness is the only sort of good there is.’
‘Ah, but if I torture you,’ objected Aristus, with a knowing laugh, ‘you will be every bit as unhappy as I am.’
Cicero, however, was very serious. ‘No, no, because if I remain morally good – which I am not claiming is easy, by the way, let alone that I have achieved it – then I must remain happy, however great my pain. Even as my torturer falls back in exhaustion there will be something beyond the physical that he cannot reach.’
Naturally I am simplifying a long and complicated discussion that lasted several days as we toured the buildings and antiquities of Athens. But this was what it boiled down to, and it was now that Cicero began to conceive of the idea of writing some work of philosophy that would not be a set of high-flown abstractions but rather a practical guide to achieving the good life.
From Athens we sailed down the coast and then hopped from island to island across the Aegean in a fleet of a dozen vessels. The Rhodian boats were large, cumbersome and slow; they pitched and rolled in even moderate seas and were open to the elements. I remember how I shivered in a rainstorm as we passed Delos, that melancholy rock where up to ten thousand slaves are said to be sold in a single day. Everywhere the crowds that turned out to see Cicero were immense; among Romans only Pompey and Caesar, and I suppose just possibly Cato, can have been more famous in the world. At Ephesus our teeming expedition of legates, quaestors, lictors and military tribunes, with all their slaves and baggage, was transferred to a convoy of ox carts and pack mules and we set off along the dusty mountain roads into the interior of Asia Minor.
It was a full fifty-two days after leaving Italy that we reached Laodicea, the first town in the province of Cilicia, where Cicero was immediately required to begin hearing cases. The poverty and exhaustion of the common people, the endless shuffling queues of petitioners in the gloomy basilica and the glaring white-stone forum, the constant moans and groans about customs officials and poll taxes, the petty corruption, the flies, the heat, the dysentery, the sharp stink of goat and sheep dung that seemed always in the air, the bitter-tasting wine and oily spicy food, the small scale of the town and the lack of anything beautiful to look at, or sophisticated to listen to, or savoury to eat – oh, how Cicero hated being stuck in such a place while the fate of the world was being decided back in Italy without him! I had barely unpacked my ink and stylus before he was dictating letters to everyone he could think of in Rome, pleading with them to make sure his term was restricted to a year.
We had not been there long when a dispatch arrived from Cassius reporting that the King of Parthia’s son had invaded Syria at the head of such a massive force he had been obliged to withdraw his legions to the fortified city of Antioch. This meant Cicero had to set off immediately to join his own army at the foot of the Taurus mountains, the immense natural barrier separating Cilicia from Syria. Quintus was greatly excited, and for a month there seemed a real possibility that Cicero might have to command the defence of the entire eastern flank of the empire. But then a fresh report came from Cassius: the Parthians had retreated before the impregnable walls of Antioch; he had pursued and defeated them; the king’s son was dead and the threat was over.
I am not sure whether Cicero was more relieved or disappointed. However, he still managed to have a war of sorts. Some of the local tribes had taken advantage of the Parthian crisis to rise in revolt against Roman rule. There was one fortress in particular, named Pindessium, where the rebel forces were concentrated, and Cicero laid siege to it.
We lived in an army camp in the mountains for two months, and Quintus was as happy as a schoolboy building ramps and towers, digging moats and bringing up artillery. I found the whole adventure distasteful, and so I think did Cicero, for the rebels stood no chance. Day after day we launched arrows and flaming projectiles into the town, until eventually it surrendered and our legionaries poured into the place to ransack it. Quintus had the leaders executed. The rest were put in chains and led off to the coast to be shipped to Delos and sold into slavery. Cicero watched them go with a gloomy expression. ‘I suppose if I were a great military man like Caesar I would have all their hands amputated. Isn’t that how one brings peace to these people? But I can’t say I derive much satisfaction from using all the resources of civilisation to reduce a few barbarian huts to ashes.’ Still, his men hailed him as imperator in the field, and afterwards he had me write six hundred letters – that is, one to every member of the Senate – requesting that he be awarded a triumph: a tremendous labour for me, working in the primitive conditions of an army camp, that left me prostrate with exhaustion.
Cicero placed Quintus in command of the army for the winter and returned to Laodicea. He was rather shocked by the relish with which his brother had crushed the rebellion, and also by his brusque manner with subordinates (irritable, rude, careless, as he described him to Atticus); he did not care much for his nephew, either – a boy with a fine conceit for himself. Quintus Junior liked to make sure everyone knew who he was – his name alone saw to that – and he treated the locals with great disdain. Still, Cicero tried to do his duty as an affectionate uncle, and at that spring’s Festival of Liberalia, in the absence of the boy’s father, he presided over the ceremony at which young Quintus became a man, personally helping him to shave his wispy beard and dress in his first toga.
As for his own son, young Marcus gave him cause for concern in a different way. The lad was affable, lazy, fond of sport and somewhat slow on the uptake when it came to his schoolwork. Rather than study Greek and Latin, he liked to hang around the army officers and practise swordplay and javelin throwing. ‘I love him dearly,’ Cicero said to me, ‘and he is certainly a good-hearted fellow, but sometimes I wonder where on earth he comes from – I detect nothing in him of me at all.’
Nor was that the end of his family worries. He had left the choice of Tullia’s new husband up to her and her mother, having made clear simply that his own preference was for a safe, worthy, respectable young aristocrat such as Tiberius Nero or the son of his old friend Servius Sulpicius. But the women had set their hearts instead on Publius Cornelius Dolabella, a most unsuitable match in Cicero’s view. He was a notorious rake, only nineteen – about seven years younger than Tullia – yet remarkably he had already been married once, to a much older woman.
By the time the letter announcing their choice reached him, it was too late for Cicero to intervene: the wedding would have taken place before his answer arrived in Rome – a fact the women must have known. ‘What is one to do?’ he sighed to me. ‘Well, such is life – let the gods bless what is done. I can understand why Tullia wants it – no doubt he’s a handsome, charming type, and if anyone deserves a taste of life at last, it’s she. But Terentia! What is she thinking of? It sounds as though she’s half in love with the fellow herself. I’m not sure I understand her any more.’
And here I come to the greatest of all Cicero’s personal worries: that something clearly was amiss with Terentia. Recently he had received a reproachful letter from the exiled Milo demanding to know what had happened to all that property of his that Cicero had bought so cheaply at auction: his wife, Fausta, had never received a penny. As it happened, the agent who had acted on Cicero’s behalf – Philotimus, Terentia’s steward – was still hoping to persuade Cicero to adopt some dubious money-making scheme and was due to visit him in Laodicea.
Cicero received him in my presence and told him bluntly that there was no question of him or any member of his staff or family engaging in any shady business. ‘So you can
save your breath as far as that’s concerned and tell me instead what’s become of Milo’s bankrupt estate. You remember the sale was fixed so you got it all for next to nothing, and then you were supposed to sell it at a profit and give the proceeds to Fausta?’
Philotimus, plumper than ever and already sweating in the summer heat, flushed even redder and started to stammer that he couldn’t recall the details precisely: it was more than a year ago; he would have to consult his accounts and they were in Rome.
Cicero threw up his hands. ‘Come now, man, you must remember. It’s not that long ago. We’re talking about tens of thousands. What has become of it all?’
But Philotimus would only repeat the same tale over and over: he was very sorry; he couldn’t remember; he would need to check.
‘I’m beginning to think you’ve pocketed the money yourself.’
Philotimus denied it.
Suddenly Cicero said, ‘Does my wife know about this?’
At the mention of Terentia, a remarkable change came over Philotimus. He stopped squirming and became completely silent, and no matter how many times Cicero pressed him, he refused to say another word. Eventually Cicero told him to clear off out of his sight. After he had gone he said to me, ‘Did you note that last piece of impertinence? Talk about defending a lady’s honour – it was as if he thought I wasn’t fit to utter my own wife’s name.’
I agreed it was remarkable.
‘Remarkable – that’s one word for it. They were always very close, but ever since I went into exile …’
He shook his head and didn’t finish the sentence. I made no reply. It did not seem proper to comment. To this day I have no idea whether his suspicions were correct. All I can say is that he was deeply perturbed by the whole affair and wrote at once to Atticus asking him to investigate discreetly: I can’t put all I fear into words.
Dictator: Page 17
