‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why are you so upset?’
Cicero sighed and sat up straight. To my alarm I saw that he had tears in his eyes. ‘Because it means he intends to join forces with Antony and is providing himself with an alibi in advance. His duplicity is so clumsy it’s almost endearing.’
He was right of course. On that very day, the thirtieth of May, when Cicero was receiving Lepidus’s false assurances, Antony himself – long-haired and bearded after almost forty days on the run – was arriving on the riverbank opposite Lepidus’s camp. He waded chest-deep through the water wearing a dark cloak, went up to the palisade and began talking to the legionaries. Many recognised him from the Gallic and the civil wars; they flocked to hear him. The next day he brought all his forces over the river and Lepidus’s men welcomed them with outstretched arms. They tore down their fortifications and let Antony stroll unarmed into the camp. He treated Lepidus with the greatest respect, called him by the title ‘Father’ and insisted that if he joined his cause he would retain the rank and honours of a general. The soldiers cheered. Lepidus agreed.
Or that at least was the story they cooked up together. Cicero was sure they had been partners from the start and that their rendezvous had been arranged in advance. It simply made Lepidus seem less of the traitor he was if he could pretend he had bowed to force majeure.
It took nine days for Lepidus’s dispatch announcing this shattering turn of events to reach the Senate, although panicky rumours ran ahead of his messenger. Cornutus read it out in the Temple of Concordia:
I call on gods and men to witness how my heart and mind have ever been disposed towards the commonwealth and freedom. Of this I should shortly have given you proof, had not Fortune wrested the decision out of my hands. My entire army, faithful to its inveterate tendency to conserve Roman lives and the general peace, has mutinied; and, truth to tell has compelled me to join them. I beg and implore you, do not treat the compassion shown by myself and my army in a conflict between fellow countrymen as a crime.
When the urban praetor finished reading, there was a great collective sigh, a groan almost, as if the whole chamber had been holding its breath in the hope that the rumours would turn out not to be true. Cornutus gestured to Cicero to open the debate. In the ensuing silence as Cicero rose to his feet one could feel an almost childlike yearning for reassurance. But Cicero had none to offer.
‘This news from Gaul, which we have long suspected and dreaded, comes as no surprise, gentlemen. The only shock is the impudence of Lepidus in taking us all to be idiots. He begs us, he implores us, he entreats us – this creature! No, not even that: these bitter, squalid dregs of a noble line that merely assume the form of a human being! – he begs us not to regard his treachery as a crime. The cowardice of the fellow! I would have more respect for him if he came right out and told the truth: that he sees an opportunity to further his monstrous ambitions and has found a fellow thief to be his partner in crime. I propose that he be declared a public enemy forthwith and that all his property and estates be confiscated to help us pay for the fresh legions we shall require to replace those he has stolen from the state.’
This drew loud applause.
‘But it will take us a while to raise new forces, and in the meantime we must face the salutary fact that our strategic situation is perilous in the extreme. If the fires of rebellion in Gaul spread to Plancus’s four legions – and I fear we must brace ourselves for that possibility – we may have the best part of sixty thousand men ranged against us.’
Cicero had decided beforehand that he would not try to disguise the extent of the crisis. Silence gave way to murmurs of alarm.
‘We should not despair,’ he continued, ‘not least because we have that number of soldiers ourselves, assembled by the noble and gallant Brutus and Cassius – but they are in Macedonia; they are in Syria; they are in Greece; they are not in Italy. We also have one legion of new recruits in Latium, and the two African legions that are even now at sea and on their way home to defend the capital. And then there are the armies of Decimus and Caesar – although the one is enfeebled and the other truculent.
‘We have every chance, in other words. But there is no time to be lost.
‘I propose that this Senate orders Brutus and Cassius immediately to send back to Italy sufficient forces to enable us to defend Rome; that we intensify our levies to raise new legions; and that we impose an emergency tax on property of one per cent to enable us to purchase arms and equipment. If we do all of this, and if we draw strength from the spirit of our ancestors and the justice of our cause, it remains my confident belief that liberty will triumph in the end.’
He delivered his closing remarks with all his usual force and vigour. But when he sat down, there was scant applause. The dreadful stench of likely defeat hung in the air, as acrid as burning pitch.
Isauricus rose next. Hitherto this haughty and ambitious patrician had been the staunchest senatorial opponent of the presumptuous Octavian. He had denounced his elevation to a special praetorship; he had even tried to deny him the relatively modest honour of an ovation. But now he delivered a paean of praise to the young Caesar that amazed everyone. ‘If Rome is to be defended against Antony’s ambitions, backed up now by the forces of Lepidus, then I have come to believe that Caesar is the man upon whom we must chiefly rely. His is the name that can conjure armies from thin air and make them march and fight. His is the shrewdness that can bring us peace. As a symbol of my faith in him, I have to tell you, gentlemen, that I have lately offered him the hand of my daughter in marriage, and I am gratified to be able to tell you he has accepted.’
Cicero twitched suddenly in his seat as if he had been caught by some invisible hook. But Isauricus hadn’t finished yet: ‘To bind this excellent young man to our cause still further, and to encourage his men to fight against Mark Antony, I propose the following motion: that in view of the grave military situation created by the treachery of Lepidus, and mindful of the service he has already rendered to the republic, the constitution be so amended that Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus may be permitted to stand for the office of consul in absentia.’
Afterwards Cicero cursed himself for not having seen this coming. It was obvious, once one stopped to think about it, that if Octavian could not persuade Cicero to stand for the consulship as his partner, then he would ask someone else. But occasionally even the shrewdest statesman misses the obvious, and now Cicero found himself in an awkward spot. He had to assume that Octavian had already done a deal with his putative father-in-law. Should he accept it with good grace or should he oppose it? He had no time to think. All around him the benches were abuzz with speculation. Isauricus was sitting with his arms folded, looking very pleased with the sensation he had created. Cornutus called upon Cicero to respond to the proposition.
He stood slowly, adjusting his toga, glancing around, clearing his throat – all his familiar delaying tactics to purchase some time to think. ‘May I first of all congratulate the noble Isauricus on the excellent family connection he has just announced? I know the young man to be honourable, moderate, modest, sober, patriotic, valiant in war and of calm good judgement – everything in short that a son-in-law should be. He has had no stronger advocate in this Senate than I. His future career in the republic is both glittering and assured. He will be consul, I am sure. But whether he should be consul when he is not yet twenty and solely because he has an army is a different matter.
‘Gentlemen, we embarked upon this war with Antony for a principle: the principle that no man – however gifted, however powerful, however ambitious for glory – should be above the law. Whenever in the course of my thirty years in the service of the state we have yielded to temptation and ignored the law, often for what seemed at the time to be good reasons, we have slipped a little further toward the precipice. I helped to pass the special legislation that gave Pompey unprecedented powers to fight the war against the pirates. The war was a great success. But the most lasting consequence was no
t the defeat of the pirates: it was to create the precedent that enabled Caesar to rule Gaul for almost a decade and to grow too mighty for the state to contain him.
‘I do not say that the younger Caesar is like the elder. But I do say that if we make him consul, and in effect give him control of all our forces, then we will betray the very principle for which we fight: the principle that drew me back to Rome when I was on the point of sailing to Greece – that the Roman Republic, with its division of powers, its annual free elections for every magistracy, its law courts and its juries, its balance between Senate and people, its liberty of speech and thought, is mankind’s noblest creation, and I would sooner lie choking in my own blood upon the ground than betray the principle on which all this stands – that is, first and last and always, the rule of law.’
His remarks elicited warm applause and entirely set the course of the debate – so much so that Isauricus, with icy formality and a glare at Cicero, later withdrew his proposal and it was never voted upon.
I asked Cicero if he intended to write to Octavian to explain his stand. He shook his head. ‘My reasons are in my speech and he will have it in his hands soon enough – my enemies will see to that.’
In the days that followed he was as busy as he had ever been – writing to Brutus and Cassius to urge them to come to the aid of the tottering republic (the commonwealth is in the gravest peril because of the criminal folly of M. Lepidus), overseeing the tax inspectors as they set about raising revenue, touring the blacksmiths’ yards to cajole them into making more weapons, inspecting the newly raised legion with Cornutus, who had been appointed military defender of Rome. But he knew the cause was hopeless, especially when he saw Fulvia being carried openly in a litter across the Forum, accompanied by a large entourage.
‘I thought we were rid of that shrew, at least,’ he complained over dinner, ‘yet here she is, still in Rome and flaunting herself around, even though her husband has at last been declared a public enemy. Is it in any wonder we’re in such desperate straits? How is it possible, when all her property is supposed to have been seized?’
There was a pause and then Atticus said quietly, ‘I lent her some money.’
‘You?’ Cicero leaned across the table and peered at him as if he were some mysterious stranger. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’
‘I felt sorry for her.’
‘No you didn’t. You wanted to put Antony under an obligation to you. It’s insurance. You think we’re going to lose.’
Atticus did not deny it, and Cicero left the table.
At the end of that wretched month, ‘July’, reports reached the Senate that Octavian’s army had struck camp in Nearer Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and was marching on Rome. Even though he had been half expecting it, the news still struck Cicero as a tremendous blow. He had given his word to the Roman people that if ‘the heaven-sent boy’ was given imperium, he would be a model citizen. Every imaginable evil chance has dogged us in this war, he lamented to Brutus. As I write, I am in great distress, because it hardly looks as though I can make good my promises in respect to the young man, boy almost, for whom I went bail to the republic. It was then he asked me if I thought he was honour-bound to kill himself, and for the first time I saw that he was not saying it for effect. I replied that I did not think it had come to that yet.
‘Perhaps not, but I must be ready. I don’t want these veterans of Caesar’s torturing me to death as they did Trebonius. The question is how to do it. I’m not sure I could face a blade – do you think posterity will reckon the less of me if I choose Socrates’s method and take hemlock instead?’
‘I am sure not.’
He asked me to acquire some of the poison on his behalf and I went to see his doctor that same day, who gave me a small jar. He did not ask why I wanted it; I suppose he knew. Despite the wax seal, I could smell its rank odour, like mouse droppings. ‘It’s made from the seeds,’ he explained, ‘the most poisonous part of the plant, which I have crushed into a powder. The smallest dose, no more than a pinch, swallowed with water, should do the trick.’
‘How long does it take to work?’
‘Three hours or thereabouts.’
‘Is it painful?’
‘It induces slow suffocation – what do you think?’
I put the jar into a box in my room, and placed the box inside a locked chest, as if by hiding it away, death itself could be postponed.
The next day, gangs of Octavian’s legionaries began to appear in the Forum. He had sent four hundred on ahead of his main army, with the aim of intimidating the Senate into granting him the consulship. Whenever they saw a senator, they surrounded him and jostled him and showed him their swords, although they never actually drew their weapons. Cornutus, as an old soldier, refused to be threatened. Determined to visit Cicero on the Palatine, the urban praetor pushed and shoved them back until they let him through. But he advised Cicero that on no account should he venture out himself unless he had a strong escort: ‘They hold you as much responsible for Caesar’s death as they do Decimus or Brutus.’
‘If only I had been responsible! Then we would have taken care of Antony at the same time and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.’
‘Well here is some better news for you: the African legions arrived last night, and we didn’t lose a single ship. Eight thousand men and a thousand cavalry are disembarking at Ostia even as I speak. That should be enough to hold off Octavian, at least until Brutus and Cassius send us help.’
‘But are they loyal?’
‘So their commanders assure me.’
‘Then bring them here as quickly as possible.’
The legions were only a day’s march from Rome. As they approached the city, Octavian’s men slipped away into the surrounding countryside. When the vanguard reached the salt warehouses, Cornutus ordered the column to parade through the Trigemina Gate and across the Forum Boarium in full view of the crowds in order to steady civilian morale. Then they took up position on the Janiculum. From these strategic heights they controlled the western approaches to Rome and could deploy rapidly to block any invading force. Cornutus asked Cicero if he would come out and inspire the men with a rousing speech. Cicero agreed, and he was carried out of the city gates in a litter accompanied by fifty legionaries on foot. I rode on a mule.
It was a hot, muggy day without a tremor of wind. We crossed the River Tiber over the Sublician Bridge and traipsed along a road of dried mud through the shanty towns that have for as long as I can remember filled the flat plain of the Vaticanum. It was notoriously malarial in the summer, and swarming with hostile insects. Cicero’s litter had the protection of a mosquito net but I did not, and the insects whined in my ears. The whole place stank of human filth. Children, pot-bellied with hunger watched us listlessly from the doorways of tumbling shacks, while all around them, disregarded and pecking away at the rubbish, were hundreds of the crows that nest in the nearby sacred grove. We passed through the gates of the Janiculum and went up the hill. The place was teeming with soldiers. They had pitched their tents wherever they could find some space.
On the flatter ground at the top of the slope Cornutus had drawn up four cohorts – almost two thousand men. They stood in lines in the heat. The light on their helmets dazzled as brightly as the sun, and I had to shield my eyes. When Cicero stepped out of his litter there was absolute silence. Cornutus conducted him to a low platform beside an altar. A sheep was sacrificed. Its guts were pulled out and examined by the haruspices and declared propitious: ‘There is no doubt of ultimate victory.’ The crows circled overhead. A priest read a prayer. Then Cicero spoke.
I cannot remember exactly what he said. All the usual words were there – liberty, ancestors, hearths and altars, laws and temples – but for once I listened without hearing. I was looking at the faces of the legionaries. They were sunburnt, lean, impassive. Some were chewing mastic. I saw the scene through their eyes. They had been recruited by Caesar to fight against King Juba and the army
of Cato. They had slaughtered thousands and had been stuck in Africa ever since. They had travelled hundreds of miles crammed together in boats. They had been force-marched for a day. Now they were lined up in the heat in Rome and an old man was talking at them about liberty, ancestors, hearths and altars – and it meant nothing.
Cicero finished speaking. There was silence. Cornutus ordered them to give three cheers. The silence continued. Cicero stepped off the platform and got back into his litter and we returned down the hill, past the saucer-eyed starving children.
Cornutus came to see Cicero the following morning and told him that the African legions had mutinied overnight. It seemed that Octavian’s men had crept back from the countryside in the darkness, infiltrated the camps and promised the soldiers twice as much money as the Senate could afford to pay them. Meanwhile Octavian’s main army was reported to be moving south along the Via Flaminia and was barely a day’s march away.
‘What will you do now?’ Cicero asked him.
‘Kill myself,’ came the reply, and he did, that same evening, pressing the tip of his sword to his stomach and falling upon it heavily rather than surrender.
He was an honourable man and deserves to be remembered, not least because he was the only member of the Senate who took that course. When Octavian was close to the city, most of the leading patricians went out to meet him on the road to escort him into Rome. Cicero sat in his study with the shutters closed. The air was so close it was hard to breathe. I looked in from time to time but he did not seem to have moved. His noble head, staring straight ahead and silhouetted against the faint light from the window, was like a marble bust in a deserted temple. Finally he noticed me and asked where Octavian had set up his headquarters.
I replied that he had moved into the home of his mother and stepfather on the Quirinal.
‘Perhaps you could send a message to Philippus and ask him what he suggests I should do.’
I did as he requested and the courier returned with a scrawled reply that Cicero ought to go and talk to Octavian: ‘You will find him, I am sure, as I did, disposed to mercy.’
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