A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

  Quintus, the tall and burly soldier, met him at the door and not the overseer of the hall, and Quintus was weeping. Then Marcus knew immediately that his father was dead, and he steadied himself on his brother’s arm, feeling weak and undone and stricken. For all at once the house had suddenly come into focus before his eyes, and it was as he remembered, and it was a house of death, which he also remembered. The house no longer was the refuge of an unworldly old man who inspired his older son with mingled exasperation and guilt. It was the house of a father, and in his death he was more alive than he had seemed since Marcus’ early youth.

  Tullius lay on his bed in his small cubiculum which Marcus himself had occupied when he had lived here as a child, a youth, and a young unmarried man. The curtains over the small window had not yet been drawn. The first dull beams of cold sun fell over Tullius’ face and revealed it fully. It was not a face Marcus remembered. It was a calm, remote face, cleansed of the dusty webs of living and all its pains. That which had brought it age and uneasiness and torment had fled, leaving the exorcised flesh behind to join its peaceful earth. This was no longer Marcus Tullius Cicero the Elder; this was the tranquillity of tree and grass undisturbed by the alien human spirit.

  Marcus looked at his father’s hands, which were no longer wrinkled, but placid as marble. These, too, were not the hands he remembered. He bent and touched their coldness with his lips, and on the moment of touching he was completely alienated from the effigy on the bed, as he would have been alienated from stone. He murmured a prayer for his father’s spirit, but felt it a mockery for his father had no need of his prayers, he who had lived as sinless a life as possible and had never been part of the world he had thankfully deserted. He turned and left the chamber followed by Quintus, who was disturbed by his brother’s calm and vaguely resented it. Quintus blurted, “You never loved him. Therefore, you feel no sorrow.”

  Marcus hesitated. His brother would not understand if he could even find the words for what he felt. So he put his hand gently on the broad shoulder of Quintus and said, “We all have different ways of expressing grief.”

  But in the days that followed—and during the terrible panoply of death accompanying them—he was struck by the inconstancy of life and its fragility and by a sense of its meaninglessness, and, incongruously, by the mortification of death. His own existence was less secure because his father no longer existed. Another statue had crashed in his hall of life and its senseless rubble littered the floor.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Noë ben Joel wrote to his friend from Jerusalem:

  “Greetings, dearest friend! You have written to me in the kindest manner, with no hint of condescension or even of majesty! Yet, you have been elected Consul of Rome, the mightiest office of the mightiest nation in the world! How I rejoice, and with what affectionate amusement I recall your earlier letters in which you expressed your pessimism that such an office was within your reach! You did not believe for an instant that the Senatorial party (the Optimates) would support you, for always you have known their resentment and suspicion of the ‘new men,’ the middle-class. You claim that you received this support only because they feared the deranged and malignant Catilina more, who was one of the six candidates running for the same office against you. You defame yourself with this modesty; even venal Senators can sometimes be moved by the spectacle of public and private virtue and will support a wise man. Nor did you believe that the ‘new men,’ your own, would support you, out of envy that you were rising above them. Nor did you believe that the People’s party (the populares) would cast their votes in your behalf, for in these later years you have expressed, with bitterness, your conviction that the people prefer rascals who flatter, pamper, and buy them with gifts to a man who promises only that he will attempt to restore republican grandeur and honor to their nation, and speaks, not in glowing capitals of more and more free benefits to a depraved citizenry, but in the stern voice of patriotism.

  “Yet, all the people whom you mistrusted did not resort to the slow ballot at all, but unanimously elected you with acclamations, at once vehement and enthusiastic! You did not write of this to me, but I have other friends in Rome who have kept me informed concerning you through these years. You are greatly beloved, for all you complain that you are considered inconsistent, and for all your natural shyness and reserve. Moreover, God has strange ways of manifesting Himself when He realizes that a nation is in grave peril. Often, as in the history of Israel, He has called men from private lives and far places to lead their people to safety and life, when most threatened and most undone. I like to believe that He intervened in your behalf, out of love for you, and to save Rome from Catilina, in spite of bribes and lies and promises. But never must we forget that it was the people, at the last, who elected you in one spontaneous burst of affection and pride in you, and love of your genius and manhood.

  “Some time ago you wrote me that you felt that your life had come to an end, and that you faced the brick wall of ultimate achievement. Yet a door appeared in that wall, and led you to an infinite city of power and glory! Was not Moses only an unknown shepherd when God called to him to deliver His people, an exile known to none though he had been a prince in Egypt and beloved of his mother, the princess? He had fallen, through righteous anger and sorrow and grief, to the very abyss of loneliness and homelessness, in a far place, and believed that his life had ended. But, how great is God, and All-knowing! He prepared His prince in silence and in exile for a mighty destiny, greater than that of any man who has ever been born to this world. So long as man lives the name of Moses will live, and, as I feel prophetic at this hour, the name of Cicero will never pass away so long as men have tongues and memories and history is written.

  “Though you are amazed, you confess, and bewildered and bemused by your election, I am none of these. I expected heroic things of you since we were children together. Did I not always tell you of this? The light of the Finger of God lay on your brow even as a youth, and I saw it, and do not accuse me of the extravagances of one who still writes plays and has a rich imagination!

  “Even our wily and serpentine friend, Julius Caesar, supported you, and Crassus, himself. For what reason? God had moved their souls in your behalf, though you say they probably preferred you to Catilina for reasons of their own. Caesar, too, seems fast in the races also, for even before you wrote to me of him I had heard that he had been named Pontifex Maximus and Praetor of Rome. You regard this with your usual misgivings. But one must remember that men of force and ambition and intellect, such as Caesar, also inevitably arrive at power, and this too may be the will of God, Whose ways are exceeding mysterious. I agree that Caesar is a villain, but God often uses villains as well as good men, for His purposes. You doubt his patriotism. However, it is not absolutely impossible for a villain to be patriotic!

  “You have a son of whom you boast is, at the age of two, already a prodigy. How can he be otherwise with such a father? Do I not read your increasing writings, and your books, which friends in Rome send to me? I thought I was eloquent. Alas, compared with you I am a stone donkey. I rejoice with you in your beautiful young daughter’s marriage to the patrician, Piso Frugi, for I know how dear she is to your heart. Again, you express misgivings, but I detect in them the natural jealousy of a father of his one and beloved daughter. You would have her marry, for it is natural for girls to marry, but on the other hand you prefer that she not love another and leave your house! I felt so when my own daughter married, and when I delivered her under the canopy I hated her espoused husband and feared that he would make her unhappy. Nevertheless, she is happy and I am a grandfather and rejoice in the little ones who sit on my knee and adore me with their big eyes.

  “I often contemplate how strange it is that our fathers died two years ago on the same day and possibly the same hour. You wrote me that you did not grieve for him or miss him until almost six months had passed, and then you were stricken, fearing that you had not shown him enough affection in his li
fe and that you had caused him pain. But so I felt when my own father died, and I recalled his admonitions in my youth and how I disdained them as the prattlings of an aged and old-fashioned man. You should feel content that your father has been delivered from living, for did not Socrates maintain that a good man has nothing to fear in this life nor the one following?

  “You wrote me of Caesar’s infatuation with his newborn nephew, grandson of his sister, Caius Octavianus Caesar. Caesar does not possess a son as you do, at least not one he can publicly acknowledge. This is always a bitterness to an ambitious man, who thinks of dynasties.

  “You write ominously of Catilina, and you fear his present obscurity more than you feared him when he was Praetor of Rome. You say: ‘It is better to have your mortal enemy in full sight than to have him hidden and know not what he is doing in his dark silences.’ That may be true. But that he is in disfavor with Caesar and Crassus and Pompey, and all his friends should reassure you, for they are not reckless and heedless men. Be sure their eyes pierce his darkness and that they are sleepless concerning him.

  “You ask me again of the Messias, though more tentatively than usual. He is still hourly expected! The Pharisees send priests up and down the length of Israel searching for the Mother and the Holy Child, while the worldly Sadducees laugh at them. For the Sadducees call themselves pragmatic men, and scorn any teachings of the world hereafter and ridicule the prophesies of the Messias. They prefer Hellenistic reason. They pause in their gilded litters when a ragged rabbi, whose feet are dark with dust, speaks of Bethlehem and the One Who is to be born there of a Maiden Mother, the Lily of God. But they pause to express mirth and to shake their heads in wonder at the credulity of the poor and the homeless, who long for their Savior Who shall be called Emmanuel, for He will deliver His people from their sins. But I no longer smile with the Sadducees. Each night I stand in the cool brightness of the moon and the stars on the roof of my house and question Heaven: “Is He born this hour, and where shall I find Him?’

  “I embrace you with the arms of my soul, dearest friend, beloved Cicero. If we do not meet again in life, be assured that we shall meet beyond the grave, where the glory grows more imminent each day, and which will surely burst forth soon upon the world like a new sun.”

  If Marcus Tullius Cicero, even as Consul of Rome, continued to nurture misgivings and vague alarms and doubts, his wife, Terentia, glowed with elation and joy and contentment. She was now the first lady in Rome. Her litter, magnificent and carried by four huge Nubian slaves in gorgeous array, was recognized on the street and saluted. Her house on the Palatine thronged with ladies of high and patrician birth, seeking her intercessions in behalf of their ambitious husbands. She condescended graciously to them, and promised them what they asked, and duly presented the petitions to her husband with queenly words and queenly gestures, as one presents gifts. She could not understand his frowns and his impatient words, and his annoyance, and his assertions that if the petitions had merit he would consider them in his own orderly time. She thought him prosy and dull. Often she wondered how he had attained such high estate, a “new man,” a man of no high birth and a mere lawyer who had once been Praetor of Rome, and a man who did not surround himself solely with the powerful. She came to the extraordinary conclusion that Cicero was Consul only by the mysterious grace of her own merits, which the gods had honored publicly, and her virtues which they admired. For surely Cicero did not deserve what had been laid at his feet, for he had no splendor of appearance and he wrote books and essays which few among her friends appeared to have read, and his tastes were austere even though he lived in a tremendous house on the Palatine. He often walked to the Forum and to his offices on foot on fair days, which was plebeian of him.

  Finally she concluded that he owed all things to her, for had she not stimulated him to try for the greatest of offices, and had she not been sleepless in her urgings, and was not her family very distinguished? Her innate genius was manifest in the fact that she had been able to secure a husband for her daughter who was of a great house. Without her, Cicero would have remained an obscure lawyer dependent on the good will and indulgence of petty magistrates. When friends said to her, “Cicero is greatly beloved of the people, and the Senators bow to him,” she smiled cryptically and raised her eyebrows in a peculiar and knowing fashion. When Crassus kissed her hand, or Caesar, or Pompey, and complimented her on her husband and declared that they rejoiced in him and all that he was, she was absolutely convinced that they were really complimenting her, and lowering their mighty heads in admiration of her character, her dauntlessness, her valor and her attributes.

  Terentia, who had never been devoted to Tullia, said to her daughter, “What fortune has come to us, and honor, and glory, and adulation, is due solely to my efforts and do not forget that, my daughter, if you ever are puffed up with pride because of your father.”

  Tullia, alarmed, began to consider her mother mad but her young husband, Piso, laughed merrily and said, “Your mother is swollen with her own vanity and she is becoming old. Therefore, permit her to have her conceits.”

  “But she has nothing but contempt for my wise father, who is the noblest man in Rome, and that is unpardonable, my husband, and not to be understood.”

  “It is not unknown,” said the young Piso, “that the family of an acclaimed man believe they have really accomplished his fame, themselves, and that it is a mischief and an injustice on the part of the gods that they do not receive those acclamations instead. For, are they not worthier, wiser, more intelligent, more learned, than the hero?”

  I care nothing for adulation and public honors, Cicero would think. They weary me and take my time, which should be devoted only to my God and my country. What is famous today is thrown to the dust tomorrow, with execrations. I love law and justice and I will work for them, though there is such a weariness in my heart and such a premonition of disaster. My very bones ache with tiredness; I shrink from the hailings of my fellows. What is it that has come to me, that I should be convinced that nothing is of worth among men?

  He consulted physicians. They could not understand his sickness of spirit. They told him with respectful indulgence that he did not truly cringe from public honor, for did not all politicians crave it? Why else did they strive? They thought Cicero precious.

  “Do not all lesser men envy you, lord?” they asked him with envy.

  “I do not want envy,” he said. They were incredulous, and they gave him potions and pills and told each other that he was affected and that he desired greater honors and more wealth. And so he created more enemies for himself, who whispered meaningly of him and murmured of his avaricious ambition.

  In the meantime he worked prodigiously, and only in his work, dedicated to his country, and to the moral law and virtue, did he find surcease for the strange pain that lay at his heart like a sickness. He found personal pleasure in his daughter and his son, but his wife was a weariness to him and a vexation. He began to suffer from headaches the moment he returned to his house, and a curious but overwhelming fatigue. He had already tired of Clodia, who was now more interested in young Mark Antony and his virility in any event, for his youth gave her a feeling that she, too, was young again. No other woman, in the duress of his days and his awesome responsibilities, attracted Cicero.

  C. Antonius Hybrida, a patrician in early middle-age, a man of wealth, style, and presence, had won the second place as Consul of Rome after Cicero, and therefore became his colleague. Like many wealthy patricians his manners and thoughts and mode of living were easy and tolerant. He detested vehement and insistent men, and men given to outbursts of passion—except if they were patricians like himself. It was not that Antonius was arrogant or haughty; he truly believed that the gods had created a few who were superior to the many, and therefore that few should rule by divine right. Accepting his native superiority as a matter of fact, he was therefore free of envy and overweening ambition. He was much loved in Rome for his democratic approach to the
people, to whom he never condescended because he felt assured that they understood that the gods had created him their master, and honored the gods in his person. He was also handsome and had many public virtues.

  But like many men of his birth and station in life, he was the victim of a fatal fallacy: that the majority of mankind, if given an opportunity, would rise to great and selfless heights, that man was naturally good and preferred virtue to evil, that man’s heart was inclined to the noble and that only circumstance and environment distorted that heart. Patrician or lowly worker, rich or poor, hailed or obscure, man was the crown of nature according to Antonius’ philosophy. This belief gave him a beneficent expression, which drew thousands to him, and his manner was always gentle and temperate. Lucius Sergius Catilina was an old acquaintance of his, and a fellow patrician, and though Antonius had heard many vile and wicked things concerning Catilina he discounted them with a measure of indulgence.

  There were some of Antonius’ friends who thought his liberality childish, if touching, but none thought it dangerous except Cicero, who liked him exceedingly for his earnest desire not to be in error, and his anxiety never to offend anyone. When Antonius had generously and sincerely embraced Cicero on the occasion of the vote by acclamation, he had paused a moment to say, “But how sad, perhaps, it is that Catilina was third in the measure of votes for the Consulship. He must be mortified, and we must hasten to console him.” To this Cicero replied with quiet passion, “It is hard to believe that the people of Rome give him the third highest vote! It is very ominous.”