Dictator:

by Robert Harris

  Caesar Dictator to Cicero Imperator.

  I have received various messages from your brother complaining of dishonesty on your part towards me and insisting that but for your influence he would never have taken up arms against me. I have sent these letters to Balbus to pass on to you. You may do with them as you wish. I have pardoned him, and his son. They may live where they please. But I have no desire to renew relations with him. His behaviour towards you confirms a certain low opinion I had begun to form of him in Gaul.

  I am travelling ahead of my army and will return to Italy earlier than expected next month, landing at Tarentum, when I hope it will be possible for us to meet to settle matters regarding your own future once and for all.

  Tullia was greatly excited when she read this: she called it ‘a handsome letter’. But Cicero was secretly thrown into confusion. He had hoped he would be allowed to make his way back quietly to Rome, without fuss. He viewed the prospect of actually meeting Caesar with dread. The Dictator would doubtless be friendly enough, even if the gang around him were rough and insolent. However, no amount of politeness could disguise the basic truth: that he would be begging for his life from a conqueror who had usurped the constitution. Meanwhile fresh reports were coming in almost every day from Africa, where Cato was raising a huge new army to continue to uphold the republican cause.

  He put on a cheerful face for Tullia’s sake, only to collapse into agonies of conscience once she had gone to bed. ‘You know that I have always tried to steer the right course by asking myself how history would judge my actions. Well, in this instance I can be certain of the verdict. History will say that Cicero wasn’t with Cato and the good cause because in the end Cicero was a coward. Oh, I have made such a mess of it all, Tiro! I actually believe Terentia is quite right to salvage what she can from the wreckage and divorce me.’

  Soon afterwards Vatinius brought the news that Caesar had landed at Tarentum and wished to see Cicero the day after tomorrow.

  Cicero said, ‘Where exactly are we to go?’

  ‘He is staying in Pompey’s old villa by the sea. Do you know it?’

  Cicero nodded. No doubt he was recalling his last visit, when he and Pompey had skimmed stones across the waves. ‘I know it.’

  Vatinius insisted on providing a military escort, even though Cicero said that he would prefer to travel without ostentation: ‘No, I’m afraid that’s out of the question: the countryside is too dangerous. I hope we will meet again soon in happier circumstances. Good luck with Caesar. You will find him gracious, I’m sure.’

  Afterwards, as I was showing him out, Vatinius said, ‘He doesn’t seem very happy.’

  ‘He feels his humiliation keenly. The fact that he will have to bow the knee in his old chief’s former home will only add to his discomfort.’

  ‘I might let Caesar know that.’

  We set off the next morning – ten cavalrymen in the vanguard, followed by the six lictors; Cicero, Tullia and me in a carriage; Marcus on horseback; a baggage train of pack mules and servants; and finally another ten cavalry bringing up the rear. The Calabrian plain was flat and dusty. We saw almost no one apart from the occasional shepherd or olive farmer, and I realised that of course our escort wasn’t for our protection at all, but to make sure Cicero didn’t escape. We stayed overnight at a house reserved for us in Uria and continued the following day until around the middle of the afternoon, when we were only two or three miles from Tarentum, and then we saw a long column of horsemen in the distance, coming towards us.

  In the rising heat and dust they seemed mere watery apparitions. It wasn’t until they were only a few hundred paces away that I recognised by the red crests on their helmets and the standards in their midst that they were soldiers. Our column halted, and the officer in charge dismounted and hurried back to tell Cicero that the oncoming cavalry was carrying Caesar’s personal standard. They were his praetorian guard and the Dictator was with them.

  Cicero said, ‘Dear gods, is he planning to have me done in by the roadside, do you suppose?’ Then, seeing Tullia’s horrified expression, he added, ‘That was a joke, child. If he’d wanted me dead it would have happened long ago. Well, let’s get it over with. You’d better come, Tiro. It will make a scene in your book.’

  He clambered out of the carriage and called to Marcus to join us.

  Caesar’s column had drawn up about a hundred paces away and deployed across the road as if for battle. It was huge: there must have been four or five hundred men. We walked towards them. Cicero was between Marcus and me. At first I couldn’t make out which of them was Caesar. But then a tall man swung himself out of his saddle, took off his helmet and gave it to an aide, and began to advance towards us, stroking his thin hair flat across his head.

  How unreal it felt to watch the approach of this titan who had so dominated everyone’s thoughts for so many years – who had conquered countries and upended lives and sent thousands of soldiers marching hither and thither and had smashed the ancient republic to fragments as if it were nothing more substantial than a chipped antique vase that had gone out of fashion – to watch him, and to find him, in the end … just an ordinary breathing mortal! He walked in short strides with great rapidity – there was something curiously birdlike about him, I always thought: that narrow avian skull, those glittering watchful dark eyes. He stopped just in front of us. We stopped too. I was close enough to see the red indentations that his helmet had made in his surprisingly soft pale skin.

  He looked Cicero up and down and said in his rasping voice, ‘Entirely unscathed, I am glad to see – exactly as I would have expected! I have a bone to pick with you,’ he said, jabbing a finger at me, and for a moment I felt my insides turn to liquid. ‘You assured me ten years ago that your master was at death’s door. I told you then he would outlive me.’

  Cicero said, ‘I’m glad to hear of your prediction, Caesar, if only because you are the one man in a position to make sure it comes true.’

  Caesar threw back his head and laughed. ‘Ah yes, I’ve missed you! Now look here – do you see how I’ve come out of the town to meet you, to show you my respect? Let’s walk in the direction you’re headed and talk a little.’

  And so they strolled on together for perhaps half a mile towards Tarentum, Caesar’s troops parting to allow them through. A few bodyguards walked behind them, one leading Caesar’s horse. Marcus and I followed. I could not hear what was said, but observed that Caesar occasionally took Cicero’s arm while gesturing with his other hand. Afterwards Cicero said that their conversation was friendly enough, and he roughly summarised it for me as follows:

  Caesar: ‘So what is it you would like to do?’

  Cicero: ‘To return to Rome, if you’ll permit it.’

  Caesar: ‘And can you promise you will cause me no trouble?’

  Cicero: ‘I swear it.’

  Caesar: ‘What will you do there? I’m not sure I want you making speeches in the Senate, and the law courts are all closed.’

  Cicero: ‘Oh, I’m finished in politics, I know that. I shall retire from public life.’

  Caesar: ‘And do what?’

  Cicero: ‘I thought I might write philosophy.’

  Caesar: ‘Excellent. I approve of statesmen who write philosophy. It means they have given up all hope of power. You may go to Rome. Will you teach the subject as well as write it? If so, I might send you a couple of my more promising men for instruction.’

  Cicero: ‘Aren’t you worried I might corrupt them?’

  Caesar: ‘Nothing worries me when it comes to you. Do you have any other favours to ask?’

  Cicero: ‘Well, I would like to be relieved of these lictors.’

  Caesar: ‘It’s done.’

  Cicero: ‘Doesn’t it require a vote of the Senate?’

  Caesar: ‘I am the vote of the Senate.’

  Cicero: ‘Ah! So I take it you have no intention of restoring the republic …?’

  Caesar: ‘One cannot rebuild using rotten timbe
r.’

  Cicero: ‘Tell me – did you always aim at this outcome: a dictatorship?’

  Caesar: ‘Never! I sought only the respect due to my rank and achievements. For the rest, one merely adapts to circumstances as they arise.’

  Cicero: ‘I wonder sometimes, if I had come out to Gaul as your legate – as you were kind enough once to suggest – whether all of this might have been averted.’

  Caesar: ‘That, my dear Cicero, we shall never know.’

  ‘He was perfectly amiable,’ recalled Cicero. ‘He allowed no glimpse of those monstrous depths. I saw only the calm and glittering surface.’

  At the end of their talk, Caesar shook Cicero’s hand. Then he mounted his horse and galloped away in the direction of Pompey’s villa. His action took his praetorian guard by surprise. They set off quickly after him, and the rest of us, Cicero included, had to scramble into the ditch to avoid being trampled.

  Their hooves threw up the most tremendous cloud of dust. We choked and coughed, and when they had thundered past, we climbed back up on to the road to clean ourselves off. For a while we stood watching until Caesar and his followers had dissolved into the haze of heat, and then we began our journey back to Rome.

  PART TWO

  REDUX

  47 BC–43 BC

  Defendi rem publicam adulescens; non deseram senex.

  I defended the republic in my youth; I will not desert it in old age.

  Cicero, Second Philippic, 44 BC

  XII

  THIS TIME NO crowds turned out to cheer Cicero on his way home. With so many men away at war, the fields we passed looked untended, the towns dilapidated and half empty. People stared at us sullenly; either that or they turned away.

  Venusia was our first stop. From there Cicero dictated a chilly message to Terentia:

  I think I shall go to Tusculum. Kindly see that everything is ready. I may have a number of people with me and shall probably make a fairly long stay there. If there is no tub in the bathroom, get one put in; likewise whatever else is necessary for health and subsistence. Goodbye.

  There was no term of endearment, no expression of eager anticipation, not even an invitation to her to meet him. I knew then he had made up his mind to divorce her, whatever she might have decided.

  We broke our journey for two nights at Cumae. The villa was shuttered; most of the slaves had been sold. Cicero moved through the stuffy, unventilated rooms and tried to remember what items were missing – a citrus-wood table from the dining room, a bust of Minerva that had been in the tablinum, an ivory stool from his library. He stood in Terentia’s bedroom and contemplated the bare shelves and alcoves. It was to be the same story in Formiae; she had taken all her personal belongings – clothes, combs, perfumes, fans, parasols – and he said, ‘I feel like a ghost revisiting the scenes of my life.’

  At Tusculum she was waiting for us. We knew she was inside because one of her maids was looking out for us by the gate.

  I recoiled at the prospect of another terrible scene, like the one between Cicero and his brother. In the event, she was gentler than I had ever known her. I suppose it was the effect of seeing her son again after such a long and anxious separation – he was certainly the person she ran to first and she clutched him to her tightly; it was the only time in thirty years I saw her cry. Next she embraced Tullia and finally she turned to her husband. Cicero told me later that he felt all his bitterness drain away the moment she came towards him, for he saw that she had aged. Her face was creased with worry; her hair flecked grey; her once proud back was slightly stooped. ‘Only at that moment did I realise how much she must have suffered, living in Caesar’s Rome and being married to me. I cannot say I felt love for her any more, but I did feel great pity and affection and sadness, and I resolved there and then to make no mention of money or property – it was all done with, as far as I was concerned.’ They clung to one another like strangers who had survived a shipwreck, then parted, and as far as I know they never embraced again for the remainder of their lives.

  Terentia returned to Rome the following morning, divorced. Some regard it as a threat to public morality that a marriage, however long its duration, may be broken so easily, without any form of ceremony or legal document. But such is the ancient freedom, and at least on this occasion the desire to end the partnership was mutual. Naturally I was not present for their private talk. Cicero said it was amicable: ‘We had been apart too much; amid the vast upheaval of public events our old shared private interests were gone.’ It was agreed that Terentia would live in the house in Rome until she moved into a property of her own. In the meantime, Cicero would remain in Tusculum. Marcus chose to go back to the city with his mother; Tullia – whose faithless husband Dolabella was about to sail to Africa with Caesar to fight Cato – stayed with her father.

  If one of the miseries of being human is that happiness can be snatched away at any moment, one of the joys is that it may be restored equally unexpectedly. Cicero had long relished the tranquillity and clear air of his house in the Frascati hills; now he could enjoy it uninterrupted, and in the company of his beloved daughter. As it was to become his principal residence from now on, I shall describe the place in more detail. There was an upper gymnasium that led to his library and which he called the Lyceum in honour of Aristotle: this was where he walked in the mornings, composed his letters and talked with his visitors, and where in the old days he had practised his speeches. From here one could see the pale undulation of the seven hills of Rome, fifteen miles in the distance. But because what went on there was now entirely beyond his control, he no longer had to fret about it and was free to concentrate on his books – in that sense paradoxically dictatorship had liberated him. Below this terrace was a garden with shady walks like Plato’s, in whose memory he called it his Academy. Both these areas, Lyceum and Academy, were adorned with beautiful Greek statues in marble and bronze, of which Cicero’s favourite was the Hermathena, a Janus-like bust of Hermes and Athena staring in opposite directions, given to him by Atticus. From the various fountains came the soft music of trickling water, and that combined with the birdsong and the scent of the flowers created an atmosphere of Elysian tranquillity. Otherwise the hillside was quiet because most of the senatorial owners of the neighbouring villas were either fled or dead.

  It was here that Cicero lived with Tullia for the whole of the next year, apart from occasional excursions to Rome. Afterwards he regarded this interlude as the most contented period of his life, as well as his most creative, for he made good on his undertaking to Caesar to confine his activity to writing. And such was the force of his energy, no longer dispersed into the law and politics but channelled solely into literary creation, that he produced in one year as many books on philosophy and rhetoric as most scholars might in a lifetime, turning them out one after another without pause. His objective was to put into Latin a summary of all the main arguments of Greek philosophy. His method of composition was extremely rapid. He would rise with the dawn and go straight to his library, where he would consult whatever texts he needed and scrawl notes – he had poor handwriting: I was one of the few who could decipher it – and then when I joined him an hour or two later he would stroll around the Lyceum dictating. Often he would leave me to look up quotations, or even to write whole passages according to the scheme he had laid out; usually he did not bother to correct them, as I had learned very well how to imitate his style.

  The first work he completed that year was a history of oratory, which he named Brutus after Marcus Junius Brutus and dedicated to him. He had not seen his young friend since their tents stood side by side in the army camp at Dyrrachium. Even to choose such a subject as oratory was provocative, given that the art was no longer much valued in a country where the elections, the Senate and the law courts were under the control of the Dictator:

  I have reason to grieve that I entered on the road of life so late that the night which has fallen upon the republic has overtaken me before my journey was ended. B
ut I grieve more deeply when I look on you, Brutus, whose youthful career, faring in triumph amidst the general applause, has been thwarted by the onset of a malign fortune.

  A malign fortune … I was surprised at the risk Cicero was willing to run in publishing such passages, especially considering that Brutus was now an important member of Caesar’s administration. Having pardoned him after Pharsalus, the Dictator had recently appointed him governor of Nearer Gaul, even though Brutus had never been praetor let alone consul. People said it was because he was the son of Caesar’s old mistress Servilia, and that the promotion was meant as a favour to her, but Cicero dismissed such talk: ‘Caesar never does anything out of sentiment. He has given him the job in part no doubt because he is talented, but mostly because he is Cato’s nephew and this is a good way for Caesar to divide his enemies.’

  Brutus, who along with a certain lofty idealism also had a good share of his uncle’s perversity and stiffness, did not like the work named in his honour, nor a companion volume, Orator, which Cicero wrote not long afterwards and also dedicated to him. He sent a letter from Gaul to say that Cicero’s speaking style had been fine in its day but was too high-flown both for good taste and for the modern age – too full of tricks and jokes and funny voices: what was needed was absolute flat, emotionless sincerity. I considered it typical of Brutus’s conceit that he should presume to lecture the greatest orator of the age on how to speak in public, but Cicero always respected Brutus for his honesty and refused to take offence.