“Peace and order,” murmured the sick man, turning his face away. “The dream of all men, a vain and hopeless dream. They cry peace but they prefer the sword.”
He thought of Caesar, condemned as a public enemy by the Senate. He would surely be tried and executed as a traitor, Caesar with the young and Pan-like face, the laughing voice, Caesar of the child’s hand greedily extending itself for hot and meaty pasties in the school of Pilo, Caesar with the child’s voice saying with wily affection, “I love you, Marcus.”
“Why do you weep?” asked the physician.
“It is the weakness of all humanity, which must love even when the love is undeserved,” said Cicero. He fell asleep, remembering his dream of Livia. All that had passed since his youth on the island was nothing but a bloody nightmare, exhausting and futile and defeating.
Out of mercy and respectful regard those remaining in the camp did not tell Cicero, during his convalescence, of the terrible events that followed one upon another. Caesar won a tremendous victory at Pharsalus, and Pompey fled to Egypt. There he was murdered by an anonymous soldier. When the news no longer could be hidden by the grief-stricken followers of Pompey and Cicero had to know what had transpired, he said, “My dream was true.”
He wrote to Atticus, “Pompey was illustrious at home and admirable abroad, a great and pre-eminent man and the glory and light of the Roman people. But I never doubted, knowing Caesar, that Pompey would end as he did. I cannot but lament his death for I knew him to be a man of virtue, sobriety, and integrity.”*
It was reported to Cicero that when Julius Caesar surveyed the battlefield at Pharsalus he wept and said, “Pompey would have it so. Even I, Caesar, after so many prodigious deeds, would have been condemned if I had not appealed to arms.”
On hearing this Cicero said, “He always appealed to virtue after he had wrought his destructions. Now we are utterly lost.”
*This letter later appeared in Cicero’s pamphlet attacking Mark Antony.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
It is the curse of the conciliator that he is forced to see both sides of a controversy, and therefore to have no peace of mind. “Oh, that I could have believed always that black was black, and white was purely white!” Cicero would often exclaim. His dream of Livia had been only the phantasy of a fevered mind. He quarreled at times with Cato and would cry out, “We are not living in the Republic of Plato or even in the Roman Republic any longer! We are living with the rabble of Romulus!” He detested the luxurious aristocrats and wealthy who preferred amusements and sports to politics—which they deplored as “sweaty”—and wrote of them, “They are fools enough to believe that even if the Constituttion were destroyed their fish ponds would be safe!”
So far as Cicero was concerned the disastrous civil war was over. Cato urged him that as Pompey was dead he should take over the struggle against Caesar. The sons of Pompey came to him and suggested that also. He refused with incredulous laughter. “The war is over!” he exclaimed. But Sextus and Gnaeus Pompey retreated to Spain to continue the war against Caesar. Cicero, in despair, decided to return to Rome no matter what greeted him there, even death. The rumor apparently reached Rome. Mark Antony wrote him a brutal letter declaring that Caesar had forbidden any of the supporters of Pompey to return to the city under pain of execution. Then it was that Cicero’s elegant and smiling son-in-law went to Caesar and said, “Lord, you have always loved my father-in-law and have admired him. We need men of integrity in Rome, and they are few indeed.”
Caesar laughed and said, “If there is one thing we do not need it is men of integrity! I fear them more than the Furies. However, as you have said, I love Cicero, who invariably chooses the losing side out of virtue. Write him that I wait to embrace him as my dear old friend.”
Cicero did not receive Dolabella’s letter. He was already in Italy, landing in Brundusium. There he was greeted by a letter from Mark Antony that graciously informed him that out of the love Caesar bore him a special edict had been issued in his behalf permitting his return home. At this Cicero was plunged into another of his vacillating moods, the affliction of all temperate men. The sons of Pompey were raising standards against Caesar in Spain. Cato, much loved by the Roman people for his virtue and manliness, had committed suicide rather than “to permit my eyes to gaze on tyranny in the city of my fathers.” The legions of Pompey were still fighting the armies of Caesar in Egypt. Cicero’s own private affairs were in the most desperate confusion. He received complaining letters from Terentia accusing him of never being able to make up his mind. Terentia also gave him the mournful news that Tullia, always frail, was now in the most serious ill-health. Dolabella, the profligate, had spent her dowry; she had returned to her mother and was reduced to penury. Young Marcus, her joy and pride, was “displaying some marks of easy dissipation, doubtless due to the desertion of his father.” Investments were in a bad state. “I have had to sell many of our most valuable slaves.” Affairs, both public and private, were due to nothing but Marcus Tullius Cicero. “You have never chosen the right side in all your life!” Terentia reproached him. “No doubt I am guilty of the civil war!” he wrote her in return.
Caesar was now in Egypt to destroy the remnants of Pompey’s legions. The young Pharoah there had joined his own army with the latter and was fighting Caesar in an effort to expel him “from our sacred soil.” There was more than a rumor that the aging Caesar was embroiled in a love-intrigue with the sister of Ptolemy, young Cleopatra, whose reputation for extraordinary beauty had reached Rome long ago. She had joined with Caesar for more than love, however; she wished to destroy her brother and assume his throne as queen of Egypt. Cicero thought of his vision of the beauteous woman he had seen embracing Caesar.
To his beloved publisher, whom he esteemed as the most faithful and devoted of friends, he wrote in his despair from Brundusium, where he had taken refuge in an humble inn: “I wish to God I had never been born! I am lost by my own fault! If only I had taken your advice to be more prudent! I owe no misfortune to chance. I have to blame myself for all the sorrows which have been brought upon me.” In that letter he displayed his gentle and conciliatory nature, the tender conscience of a moderate and reasonable man who never execrated others for his misfortunes, the affability which prevented him from impulsive hatred, and the confusion of a rational man when confronted by the world’s irrationality.
Atticus undertook to warn him to return to Rome and accept Caesar’s clemency. So Atticus wrote him that young Quintus, his nephew, had gone to Caesar, on one of Caesar’s usual lightning visits from foreign parts, and had falsely accused his uncle of “still plotting against your majesty, and by his obduracy inciting the continued resistance of Romans to your honorably accepted dictatorship for life in view of your efforts to save our country and restore law and order.” Cicero had dearly loved his aggressive nephew for all his deviousness, for he was a family man. The letter from Atticus did nothing to restore his tranquillity. He even heard rumors that his brother, Quintus, was now openly attacking him in Rome! He wrote sad letters concerning this to Atticus. In the meantime he was in financial difficulties. He directed Terentia to sell several of his villas and send him the money. The money lent to Pompey was lost.
In the midst of all his perplexity and anxiety his brother Quintus wrote him bitterly, saying he had heard in Rome that Cicero was blaming him for his troubles “in your safe spot in Brundusium, where you are not troubled due to the clemency of Caesar.” Cicero suspected the evil lies of young Quintus, his nephew. Overcome with sadness and bitterness he fell ill again. It was then that Tullia, his most beloved daughter, came to comfort him in his quarters, but to his immense sorrow he saw her fragility and her dwindling features. Only the great and changeful eyes she had inherited from him revealed any vitality at all. She had decided to divorce Dolabella. She was penniless. Cicero wrote to Atticus to sell many of his treasures in order to support his daughter. In return the kindly Atticus sent Cicero a large sum of money, claiming i
t was due Cicero on royalties. “Your books are selling in enormous quantities and are greatly acclaimed,” he wrote.
Stubbornly, Cicero would not leave Brundusium, though the climate was bad for his health and that of Tullia. He pined for Rome; he shuddered at the thought of seeing to what his city had been reduced under the dictatorship of Caesar. Though Caesar was again campaigning in Egypt he had left his “master of the horse, Mark Antony,” in command in Rome, and knowing the impulsiveness and temper of Antony, Cicero feared the worst, for Antony had never been famous for his temperance, his judgment, or even his intelligence. He was a brave soldier; he was also a militarist. Friends in Rome assured Cicero that Mark Antony was not departing from one single edict or slightest law Caesar had laid down, and that he, Cicero, should return quietly and resume his normal life. They were taciturn about the iron dictatorship, however.
Cicero still vacillated. He was stricken in mind and body. Then Tullia became gravely ill, the climate overcoming her. No matter what happened to him, he decided, he must save his sweet and lovely daughter. Late in the year he left with her for one of his Tuscan villas, a modest place where, he wrote to Atticus, the air was salubrious and he would be able to forget the world and permit the world to forget him.
He knew, in Tuscany, the last peace he was ever to know in his life. The brilliant and golden air of the countryside restored his health, and he persuaded himself that it was of benefit to Tullia also. It was in Tuscany that he decided to divorce Terentia, whose rebuking letters and complaints and open contempt of him as a failure he now found intolerable. He had never loved her, and for this—again a sign of the constant self-reproach of a man of conscience—he blamed himself. He had failed everyone, he wrote to Atticus. His life had been one long blunder. Somewhere and at sometime, he had made a fatal mistake. He wrote bitterly, “When a people are determined to become slaves, and are degraded, it is folly to try to animate in them again the spirit of pride and honor and freedom and law. They enthusiastically embrace their chains in order that they may be fed without any effort on their parts. Therefore, I have been a fool.”
Julius Caesar during this time was gloriously destroying all his enemies in Africa and Spain. He had defeated Ptolemy’s armies in Alexandria; he had elevated his mistress, the beauteous Cleopatra, to the throne of Egypt, and had begotten a son by her. His energy seemed boundless; he was everywhere and anywhere. He was past fifty-five years of age. Yet he was like Hermes with winged feet. “The stamina of the evil comes not from human flesh,” Cicero wrote Atticus, “but from the evil one himself, of whom Noë ben Joel had often told me.” As for himself, he mentioned, “I wake no more in the fresh morning with any joy or hope. I am weary when I go to my bed; I am even more weary when I arise.” Nevertheless, he wrote a number of splendid and vigorous books, including his series on oratory, De Partione Oratoria, On Famous Orators, Academics, and De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. Only in his work did he feel refreshment, and in the sunshine with his beloved daughter. Atticus, well knowing the way of authors, did not tell him that misfortune was often their goad and their despair their inspiration.
Tullia fell more gravely ill. There were no adequate physicians in Tuscany, Cicero decided. No matter what happened to him, no matter what horror he would confront, he must take her to Rome. He notified his wife to leave his house on the Palatine. He would divorce her immediately on his return. He would return her dowry even if the event should reduce him to penury. As for young Marcus, “who has been deprived of a father so long, and been so long cosseted by you, he must leave for Athens for study, where in the climate of immortal philosophy and in the air of the golden mean, and in the contemplation of great and holy men, he will forget his dissipations and his idleness and become a man.”
He and Tullia returned to the empty house on the Palatine. A terrible and pervasive weariness fell on him immediately. When the physicians informed him that Tullia’s health could never be restored and her death only delayed he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of numbness and surrender. He moved through his days like one in a nightmare. He divorced Terentia; her very name made him ill. Young Marcus was in Athens, where his father hoped he was benefitting from the immortal ghosts remaining with the colonnades. He was reconciled with his brother, but something had gone from both their affections, though they wept together.
“There is such a thing as living too long,” he said to Quintus. “We are children until we are fourteen, we are youths until we are twenty-one. The period, then, of our youth encompasses only seven years! Seven years, you will note, out of a possible sixty-five of them. As children, we are not truly conscious. As aging men, after twenty-one, we are confronted by the cares, the ambiguities, the responsibilities, and the confusions of life. And, above all, by the despairs. For seven years only we are truly alive, like the gods, shining with splendor, believing in all the virtues, eager for life, crowned with dreams, desiring to change the world, hopeful, grand, heroic, beautiful. Therefore, like Athene, we should spring full-grown from our fathers’ brows when we are fourteen, and live no more than seven years thereafter. All else is misery.”
“We should, then, have no past and no future,” said Quintus; his son was with the ebullient Caesar whose strange energy never lessened.
“Good!” cried Cicero. “For, in truth, man has no past and no future, for he learns nothing from the first and darkens the second.”
He was now sixty-one years of age. His body was almost skeletal. He moved like an old man. He did not know that his strange eyes still glowed and sparkled with passion, and that his spirit shone from them, indomitable and brave though sad. His hair was as white as the first snows; his face was deeply furrowed. But his humorous lips still could be charming in their smile, and his voice was still like powerful music. He told himself that he felt nothing any longer, not even anxiety. But his days had no peace, and he listened acutely to rumor.
In the autumn he went to the island with Tullia. There, in the blue shine of the days, and in autumnal clarified light, he could see that despite his hopes and his prayers his daughter was dying, his sweetness, his life, his consolation, his dearest companion. She never complained. Her smile was always tender, her remarks always amusing, her ministrations to her father fruited with love. He recalled that never had she made a vicious remark, no, never in her life, that never had she been pettish or disagreeable or mean or small. All that was Tullia was graciousness and serenity, even in the midst of sorrow. One so lovely must be coveted by God to enhance his Isles of the Blessed. But Cicero, who believed he had been numbed by life, was suddenly rebellious and embittered. He, Cicero, had nothing but his daughter, Tullia. He gazed for hours at her as she spun with Eunice, now a white-haired old woman in charge of the women slaves. He would listen to her delicate laughter, her gentle voice. She played with the lambs; she petted the horses. She sat for dreaming hours by the river. Her smile made her face glow like light, for her flesh was as transparent as alabaster. Do not leave me, he would pray, as he embraced her. I have lived too long and you are all I have. He would smooth the torrent of her light brown hair, and touch her pallid cheek and his heart would break all over again.
One day, breathless and white, she rushed into his library. “Forgive me!” she cried, for she knew he never liked to be disturbed here. “But, I have seen a phantom, or if not a phantom, then the most mysterious of women!”
Cicero rose and hastily forced a goblet of wine into her frail hand, and wiped her sweating forehead with his kerchief. “Be calm,” he implored her. “You have seen but a wandering slave girl from Arpinum.”
But she shook her head vehemently. “No, it is not so! She was no slave girl! She was clothed in white and blue and was younger than I, far younger. She had hair like an autumn leaf and as shining, and it flowed over her shoulders and far down her back in a tumult of fire. She came across the bridge and paused near me to gaze at me with seriousness.”
Cicero’s heart began a wild plunging. He sat down near his d
aughter and took her tremulous hand. He could not speak.
“And her eyes,” said Tullia, gasping to regain her breath, “were so blue that the color filled its sockets, and they were as radiant as a spring dawn. Her lips were deeply red and her face was like marble. She trembled in light like a goddess.”
“She spoke to you?” asked Cicero in a hoarse voice.
“No. She looked toward the farmhouse as if she knew you were there, my father. And she smiled to herself like one with a deep and loving secret. Then she began to sing softly, forgetting me. It was the strangest of songs, like a harp in the wind, murmurous and far, and had no words, but as she sang I seemed to see distant places filled with luminous shadows and discerned forms like divinities. And then she stretched forth her hand to this house and smiled and beckoned. I was affrighted. She must have known, for she fled across the bridge again and was lost among the trees.”
Livia, thought Cicero, and his spirit seemed to spread wings and shake them in light and he was filled with joy and enchantment, and he was young again and immortal.
“You were dreaming,” he said to his daughter, but she saw his enraptured smile and was afraid. She shook her head and her hair flew. “No,” she said, “I was not dreaming. Was she a nymph or a dryad, and is she a sign of ill omen?”
“No,” he said. He could not say to his daughter, “She is the core of my life, my delight, my darling, and my soul yearns for her.” He said, “Was there nothing else about her that you remember?”
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