Dictator

by Robert Harris

  As matters stood, therefore, Caesar’s position was precarious. He had his back to the sea and was blockaded, with no chance of resupply, with winter coming on, and was about to be confronted by a much larger force.

  As we were nearing the end of our march, Cicero received a further dispatch from Pompey:

  Pompey Imperator to Cicero Imperator.

  I have received a proposal from Caesar that we should hold an immediate peace conference, disband both our armies within three days, renew our old friendship under oath, and return to Italy together. I regard this as proof not of his friendly intentions but of the weakness of his position and of his realisation that he cannot win this war. Accordingly, knowing that you would concur, I have rejected his offer, which I suspect was in any case a trick.

  “Is he right?” I asked him. “Would you have concurred?”

  “No,” responded Cicero, “and he knows perfectly well I wouldn’t. I would do anything to stop this war—which of course is why he never asked for my opinion. I cannot see anything ahead of us except slaughter and ruin.”

  At the time I thought that Cicero was being unduly defeatist even for him. Pompey deployed his vast army in and around Dyrrachium, and contrary to expectations, he once again settled down to wait. No one in the supreme war council could fault his reasoning: that with every passing day Caesar’s position became weaker; that he might eventually be starved into submission without the need for fighting; and that in any case, the best time to attack would be in the spring when the weather was less treacherous.

  The Ciceros were billeted in a villa just outside Dyrrachium, built up high on a headland. It was a wild spot, with commanding views of the sea, and I found it odd to think of Caesar encamped only thirty miles away. Sometimes I would lean out over the terrace and crane my neck to the south in the hope that I might see some evidence of his presence, but naturally I never did.

  And then at the beginning of April a very remarkable spectacle presented itself. The weather had been calm for several days, but suddenly a storm blew up from the south that howled around our house in its exposed position, the rain whipping down on the roof. Cicero was in the middle of composing a letter to Atticus, who had written from Rome to inform him that Tullia was desperately short of money. Sixty thousand sesterces was missing from the first payment of her dowry, and once again Cicero suspected Philotimus of shady dealing. He had just dictated the words You tell me she is in want of everything; I beg you not to let this continue when Marcus came running in and said that a great number of ships were visible out at sea and that he thought a battle might be in progress.

  We put on our cloaks and hurried into the garden. And there indeed was a vast fleet of several hundred vessels a mile or more offshore, being tossed up and down in the heavy swell and driven at speed by the wind. It reminded me of our own near-shipwreck when we were crossing to Dyrrachium at the start of Cicero’s exile. We watched for an hour until they had all passed out of sight, and then gradually a second flotilla began to appear—making, as it seemed to me, much heavier weather of it, but obviously trying to catch up with the ships that had gone before. We had no idea what it was that we were watching. To whom did these ghostly grey ships belong? Was it actually a battle? If so, was it going well or badly?

  The next morning Cicero sent Marcus to Pompey’s headquarters, to see what he could discover. The young man returned at dusk in a state of eager anticipation. The army would be breaking camp at dawn. The situation was confused. However, it appeared that the missing half of Caesar’s army had sailed over from Italy. They had been unable to make land at Caesar’s camp at Apollonia, partly because of our blockade but also because of the storm, which had blown them more than sixty miles north along the coast. Our navy had tried to pursue them, without success. Reportedly, men and materiel were now coming ashore around the port of Lissus. Pompey’s intention was to crush them before they could link up with Caesar.

  The next morning we rejoined the army and headed north. It was rumoured that the newly arrived general we would be facing was Mark Antony, Caesar’s deputy—a report Cicero hoped was true, for he knew Antony: a young man of only thirty-four with a reputation for wildness and indiscipline; Cicero said he was not nearly as formidable a tactician as Caesar. However, when we drew closer to Lissus, where Antony was supposed to be, we found only his abandoned camp, dotted with dozens of smouldering fires where he had burned all the equipment his men could not carry with them. It turned out that he had led them east into the mountains.

  We performed an abrupt about-turn and marched back south again. I thought we would return to Dyrrachium. Instead we passed by it in the distance, pressed on further south and after a four-day march took up a new position in a vast camp around the little town of Apsos. And now one began to get a sense of just how brilliant a general Caesar was, for we learned that somehow he had linked up with Antony, who had brought his army through the mountain passes, and that although Caesar’s combined force was smaller than ours, nevertheless he had retrieved a hopeless position and was now on the offensive. He captured a settlement to our rear and cut us off from Dyrrachium. This was not a fatal disaster—Pompey’s navy still commanded the coast, and we could be resupplied by sea across the beaches as long as the weather was not too rough. But one began to experience the uneasy sensation of being hemmed in. Sometimes we could see Caesar’s men moving on the distant slopes of the mountains: he had control of the heights above us. And then he began a vast programme of construction—felling trees, building wooden forts, digging trenches and ditches and using the excavated earth to erect ramparts.

  Naturally, our commanders tried to interrupt these works, and there were many skirmishes—sometimes four or five in a day. But the labour went on more or less continuously for several months until Caesar had completed a fifteen-mile fortified line that ran all the way round our position in a great loop, from the beaches to the north of our camp to the cliffs to the south. Within this loop we built our own system of trenches facing theirs, with perhaps fifty or a hundred paces of no man’s land between the two sides. Siege engines were brought up and the artillerymen would lob rocks and flaming missiles at one another. Raiding parties would creep across the lines at night and slit the throats of the men in the opposing trench. When the wind dropped, we could hear them talking. Often they shouted insults at us; our men yelled back. I remember a constant atmosphere of tension. It began to prey on one’s nerves.

  Cicero fell ill with dysentery and spent most of his time reading and writing letters in his tent. “Tent” was something of a misnomer. He and the leading senators seemed to vie with one another to see who could make their accommodation the most luxurious. There were carpets, couches, tables, statues and silverware shipped over from Italy on the inside, and walls of turf and leafy bowers outside. They dined with one another and bathed together as if they were still on the Palatine. Cicero became particularly close to Cato’s nephew Brutus, who had the tent next door, and who was seldom seen without a book of philosophy in his hand. They would spend hours sitting up talking late into the night. Cicero liked him for his noble nature and his learning but worried that his head was actually crammed too full of philosophy for him to make practical use of it: “I sometimes fear he may have been educated out of his wits.”

  One of the peculiarities of this style of trench warfare was that one could also have quite friendly contact with the enemy. The ordinary soldiers would periodically meet in the unoccupied middle ground to talk or gamble, although our officers inflicted severe penalties for fraternisation. Letters were lobbed over from one side to the other. Cicero received several messages by sea from Rufus, who was in Rome, and even one from Dolabella, who was with Caesar less than five miles away, and who sent a courier under a flag of truce:

  If you are well I am glad. I myself am well and so is our Tullia. Terentia has been rather out of sorts, but I know for certain that she has now recovered. Otherwise all your domestic affairs are in excellent shape.
>
  You see Pompey’s situation. Driven out of Italy, Spain lost, he is now, to crown it all, blockaded in his camp—a humiliation which I fancy has never previously befallen a Roman general. One thing I do beg of you: if he does manage to escape from his present dangerous position and takes refuge with his fleet, consult your own best interests and at long last be your own friend rather than anybody else’s.

  My most delightful Cicero, if it turns out that Pompey is driven from this area too and forced to seek yet other regions of the earth, I hope you will retire to Athens or to any peaceful community you please. Any concessions that you need from the commander-in-chief to safeguard your dignity you will obtain with the greatest ease from so kindly a man as Caesar. I trust to your honour and kindness to see that the courier I am sending you is able to return to me and brings a letter from you.

  Cicero’s breast could barely contain all the conflicting emotions aroused by reading this extraordinary missive—delight that Tullia was well, outrage at his son-in-law’s impudence, guilty relief that Caesar’s policy of clemency still extended to him, fear that the letter could fall into the hands of a fanatic like Ahenobarbus who might use it to bring a charge of treason against him…

  He scribbled a cautious line to say that he was well and would continue to support the Senate’s cause, and then he had the courier escorted back across our lines.

  As the weather began to turn hotter, life became more unpleasant. Caesar had a genius for damming springs and diverting water—it was how he had often won sieges in France and Spain, and now he used the same tactic against us. He controlled the rivers and streams coming down from the mountains and his engineers cut them off. The grass turned brown. Water had to be brought in by sea in thousands of amphorae and was rationed. The senators’ daily baths were forbidden on Pompey’s orders. More importantly, the horses began to fall sick from dehydration and lack of forage. We knew that Caesar’s men were in an even worse state—unlike us, they could not be resupplied with food by sea, and both Greece and Macedonia were closed to them. They were reduced to making their daily bread out of roots they grubbed up. But Caesar’s battle-hardened veterans were tougher than our men; they showed no sign of weakening.

  I am not sure how much longer this could have gone on. But about four months after our arrival in Dyrrachium, there was a breakthrough. Cicero was summoned to one of Pompey’s irregular war councils in his vast tent in the centre of the camp, and returned a few hours later looking almost cheerful for once. He told us that two Gallic auxiliaries serving in Caesar’s army had been caught stealing from their legionary comrades and sentenced to be flogged to death. Somehow they had managed to escape and come over to our side. They offered information in return for their lives. There was, they said, a weakness in Caesar’s fortifications some two hundred paces wide, close to the sea: the outer perimeter appeared sound but there was no secondary line behind it. Pompey warned them they would die the most horrible death if what they had said proved to be false. They swore it was true, but begged him to hurry before the hole was plugged. He saw no reason to disbelieve them, and an attack was fixed for dawn the following day.

  All that night our troops moved stealthily into position. Young Marcus, now a cavalry officer, was among them. Cicero fretted sleeplessly about his safety, and at first light he and I, accompanied by his lictors and Quintus, went over to watch the battle. Pompey had brought up a huge force. We could not get close enough to see what was happening. Cicero dismounted and we walked along the beach, the waves lapping at our ankles. Our ships were anchored in a line about a quarter of a mile offshore. Up ahead we could hear the noise of fighting mingling with the roar of the sea. The air was dark with clouds of arrows, occasionally lit up by flaming missiles. There must have been five thousand men on the beach. We were asked by one of the military tribunes not to proceed any further because of the danger, so we sat down under a myrtle tree and had something to eat.

  Around midday the legion moved off and we followed it cautiously. The wooden fort Caesar’s men had built in the dunes was in our hands, and in the flat lands beyond it thousands of men were deploying. It was very hot. Bodies lay everywhere, pierced by arrows and javelins or with horrible gaping wounds. To our right we saw several squadrons of cavalry galloping towards the fighting. Cicero was sure he spotted Marcus among them and we all cheered them loudly, but then Quintus recognised their colours and announced that they were Caesar’s. At that point Cicero’s lictors hustled him away from the battlefield and we returned to camp.

  The battle of Dyrrachium, as it became known, was a great victory. Caesar’s line was irretrievably broken and his entire position thrown into danger. Indeed he would have been utterly defeated that very day had it not been for the network of trenches that slowed up our advance and meant we had to dig in for the night. Pompey was hailed as imperator by his men on the field, and when he got back to the camp in his war chariot, attended by his bodyguards, he raced around inside the perimeter and up and down the torchlit tented streets, cheered by his legionaries.

  The next day, towards the end of the morning, far in the distance in the direction of Caesar’s camp, columns of smoke began to rise over the plain. At the same time reports started coming in from all around our front lines that the trenches opposite were empty. Our men ventured out cautiously at first but were soon wandering over the enemy’s fortifications, astonished that so many months of labour could be so readily abandoned. But there was no doubt about it: Caesar’s legionaries were marching off to the east along the Via Egnatia. We could see the dust. Whatever equipment they could not take was burning behind them. The siege was over.

  Pompey summoned a meeting of the Senate-in-exile late in the afternoon to decide what should be done next. Cicero asked me to accompany him and Quintus so that he could have a record of what was decided. The sentries guarding Pompey’s tent nodded me through without question and I took up a discreet position, standing at the side, along with the other secretaries and aides-de-camp. There must have been almost a hundred senators present, seated on benches. Pompey, who had been out all day inspecting Caesar’s positions, arrived after everyone else, and was given a standing ovation, which he acknowledged with a touch of his marshal’s baton to the side of his famous quiff.

  He reported on the situation of the two armies after the battle. The enemy had lost about a thousand men killed and three hundred taken prisoner. Immediately Labienus proposed that the prisoners should all be executed. “I worry they will infect our own men who guard them with their treasonous thoughts. Besides, they have forfeited the right to life.”

  Cicero, with a look of distaste, rose to object. “We have achieved a mighty victory. The end of the war is in sight. Isn’t now the time to be magnanimous?”

  “No,” replied Labienus. “An example must be made.”

  “An example that can only cause Caesar’s men to fight with even more determination once they learn the fate that awaits them if they surrender.”

  “So be it. This tactic of Caesar’s of offering clemency is a danger to our fighting spirit.” He glanced pointedly at Afranius, who lowered his head. “If we take no prisoners, Caesar will be forced to do the same.”

  Pompey spoke with a firmness that was designed to settle the matter. “I agree with Labienus. Besides, Caesar’s soldiers are traitors who have taken up arms illegally against their own countrymen. That puts them in a different category to our troops. Let’s move on.”

  But Cicero wouldn’t let the matter drop. “Wait a moment. Are we fighting for civilised values or are we wild beasts? These men are Romans just like us. I would like it to be recorded that in my view this is a mistake.”

  “And I would like it to be recorded,” said Ahenobarbus, “that it isn’t only those who have fought openly on Caesar’s side who should be treated as traitors, but all those who have tried to be neutral, or have argued for peace, or had contact with the enemy.”

  Ahenobarbus was warmly applauded. Cicero’s face flush
ed and he fell silent.

  Pompey said, “Well then, that’s settled. Now it is my proposal that the entire army, bar let’s say fifteen cohorts which I’ll leave behind to defend Dyrrachium, should set off in pursuit of Caesar with a view to offering him battle at the first opportunity.”

  This fateful pronouncement met with loud grunts of approval.

  Cicero hesitated, glanced around and then stood up again. “I seem to find myself playing the role of perennial contrarian. Forgive me—but is there not a case for seizing this opportunity and instead of chasing Caesar eastwards, sailing west instead to Italy and regaining control of Rome? That is after all supposed to be the point of this war.”

  Pompey shook his head. “No, that would be a strategic error. If we return to Italy, there will be nothing to stop Caesar conquering Macedonia and Greece.”

  “Let him—I’d trade Macedonia and Greece for Italy and Rome any day. Besides, we have an army there under Scipio.”

  “Scipio can’t beat Caesar,” retorted Pompey. “Only I can beat Caesar. And this war won’t end merely because we’re back in Rome. This war will end only when Caesar is dead.”

  —

  At the end of the conference, Cicero approached Pompey and asked for permission to remain behind in Dyrrachium rather than join the army on the campaign. Pompey, plainly irritated by his criticism, looked him up and down with something like contempt, then nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.” He turned from Cicero as if dismissing him, and began discussing with one of his officers the order in which the legions should depart the next day. Cicero waited for their conversation to end, presumably intending to wish Pompey good fortune. But Pompey was too engrossed in the logistics of the march, or at any rate he pretended to be, and eventually Cicero gave up and left the tent.