Cicero (30 page)

When Milo heard that Clodius had been wounded, he decided it would be more dangerous to leave him alive than to finish him off in the inn. When the deed was done, Clodius's body was hauled out into the road and abandoned. By a curious coincidence, a shrine of the Great Goddess stood nearby, into whose mysteries Clodius had intruded in search of dalliance.

Milo and his wife resumed their journey, as if nothing had taken place. Sometime later in the afternoon, a passing Senator, traveling back to Rome from the country, found Clodius's corpse and had it sent on in his litter. He himself returned the way he had come, presumably wishing to avoid becoming involved in what was certain to be a major scandal.

The body arrived at Clodius's new house, centrally located off the Holy Way, a couple of minutes from the Forum. It was placed in the hallway and surrounded by distraught followers and slaves. Clodius's wife, Fulvia (not the same woman as Cicero's informant against Catilina), did not hold back her grief and showed his wounds to visitors. The following morning a crowd gathered outside the front door. Some well-connected friends, including two Tribunes, called. At their suggestion, the body was taken, naked and battered, down to the Forum, and placed on the Speakers' Platform. The Tribunes then called an informal public meeting. They persuaded the crowd to take the body to the Senate House and cremate it there, in one final act of defiance against the powers-that-be. Benches, tables and other furniture, together with the clerks' notebooks, were piled up inside the building, which was then set alight. The fire spread to the Basilica Porcia next door.

Rumors had leapt from house to house throughout the city and by then there were few doubts as to who was responsible for Clodius's murder. The crowd swept to Milo's house, but it was driven back by a hail of arrows. Crowd members grabbed the Consular
fasces
from their place of safekeeping in the grove of Libitina, goddess of the dead, and presented themselves at Pompey's garden villa, “calling on him variously as Consul and Dictator.” They offered him the
fasces
as a sign of political authority. The political movement Clodius had led collapsed with his death. His power had been purely personal. After an orgy of destruction his supporters and street gangs could think of nothing better to do than ask Pompey, whom Clodius had bullied and undermined on and off for years, for justice.

That afternoon the Senate met in an emergency session and passed the
Final Act. They called on the only officeholders then in place, a Regent (
interrex
, an official appointed every five days in the absence of elected Consuls), on the Tribunes and on Pompey, with his Proconsular authority, to take steps to restore order. They authorized Pompey to raise troops.

Pompey was in no hurry to accept the Senate's commission. He wanted full powers without conditions and was eager to consult Caesar in Gaul, anxious to avoid any step that might unbalance the equal partnership agreed on at Luca. The delaying tactic worked, for the Senate, having lost whatever last vestige of control it could lay claim to, in desperation offered him what he wanted, full and complete authority. Even Cato approved, saying that any government was better than no government at all. The
optimates
cleverly arranged for Pompey to be appointed sole Consul rather than Dictator, the post he would have preferred. This was to close off any risk that he might repeat the precedent set by Sulla, who had extended his Dictatorship beyond the legal six-month limit. To make sure of Caesar's consent to the deal a sweetener was offered; all ten Tribunes put forward a bill allowing him to stand for a second-term Consulship
in absentia
. Once he was in charge, Pompey moved firmly. Troops were levied and the city was brought under control.

With characteristic managerial firmness, the sole Consul acted to restore law and order through the courts. A series of trials was undertaken of Clodius's men and Milo, for his part, was brought to justice for Clodius's murder. Cicero, the obvious choice, was asked to undertake the defense. When the case came up, troops lined the Forum. Milo knew of Cicero's tendency to be nervous at the beginning of a speech and was afraid that the presence of soldiers might alarm him. He persuaded him to come down from his home on the Palatine to the Forum in a closed litter and to wait quietly inside the litter until the jury had assembled and the court was ready. It was a good idea, but it didn't work. A
S
soon as Cicero emerged from the litter he saw Pompey standing on high ground as if commanding a military operation and weapons flashing in the sunlight from all sides. His body shook, his voice faltered and he could hardly start his speech. This was a potential catastrophe, for, unusually, he was Milo's only advocate.

The line of defense Cicero chose was controversial. Some advised that the best thing would be to admit to the killing but to claim bluntly that it had been in the public interest. Cicero chose instead to trump the prosecution,
which claimed that Milo had ambushed Clodius, with the counterargument that it was Clodius who had ambushed Milo. Of course, both accounts were wrong, for the encounter had come about by chance.

When Cicero began to speak, followers of Clodius in the square, undaunted by the presence of troops, created an uproar. He did not completely break down, but his performance fell a long way short of his usual standards. He spoke briefly and soon withdrew. It was the most embarrassing moment in his professional life.

Milo was convicted and exiled from Rome. He retired to Massilia. Cicero sent him a copy of the fully worked-up address, which he had prepared for publication. It was an accomplished piece of work. Milo sent a letter back saying that it was lucky for him that this had not been what had been said in court, for he would not now be eating such wonderful Massilian mullets.

During these years when his own career had stalled, Cicero developed an interest in nurturing the prospects of promising young men. There was Caius Trebatius Testa, a lawyer in his late twenties or early thirties, for whom he arranged a job with Caesar in Gaul. And in 53 the reprobate Curio made a reappearance, now an ardent conservative and ready for public life. Cicero recalled the good advice he had given him “in the days of your boyhood.”

But perhaps the most important of Cicero's youthful correspondents in those years was his personal slave and secretary, Tiro. It is not certain when Tiro was born, but he was probably a young man at this time. His name is a Latin word (meaning “newcomer,” “recruit” or “beginner”) and this suggests that he may have been born in the Cicero household rather than bought at a sale. Cicero was deeply attached to him and the references in his letters present him almost as a member of the family (“a friend to us rather than a slave,”
Cicero wrote to Quintus). Tiro was given his freedom in 53 but, like most former slaves in Roman society, continued to work for his onetime owner.

Tiro was the man who looked after confidential financial matters. Every month he chased up debtors and pacified creditors. He checked the management accounts of the steward Eros, which were sometimes incorrect. He negotiated with moneylenders on the not infrequent occasions when Cicero found himself embarrassed for ready cash. Once he was even
commissioned with the sensitive task of pursuing an aristocratic debtor for a repayment. He was also involved in superintending building works, watching over the upkeep of gardens and generally harassing workmen. He looked after Cicero's social life and organized the guest lists for dinner parties, often a delicate matter. “See about the dining room,”
Cicero once instructed him. “Tertia will be there—provided that Publilius is not invited.”

But Tiro's main duties were secretarial and even editorial. He devised a shorthand which allowed him to write as fast as Cicero dictated. It is reported that he even helped Cicero with his writing and this is confirmed by a letter his master sent him in 53 when he was unwell. “My (or
our
) literary brainchildren have been drooping their heads missing you.… Pompey is staying with me as I write, enjoying himself in cheerful mood. He wants to hear my compositions, but I told him that in your absence my tongue of authorship is tied completely.”

Tiro's health was poor and Cicero often had reason to be seriously worried. “Aegypta arrived today,” Cicero once wrote to him solicitously. “He told me you were quite free of fever and in pretty good shape but said that you had not been able to write to me.… You cannot imagine how anxious I feel about your health.” Cicero told Atticus that Tiro “is extraordinarily useful to me when well in all sorts of ways, both in business and in my literary work, but I hope for his recovery more because he is such a nice, modest fellow than for my own convenience.” Although he was always complaining about Quintus's overdependence on his freedman, Statius, his relationship with Tiro was just as close and trusting.

Tiro seems to have been popular with other members of the family too. In the following decade, when he had saved up enough money to buy a small farm, young Marcus congratulated him in a letter that is full of affection and good humor. “Well, you are a man of landed property! You must shed your town-bred ways—you are now a Roman squire! How amusing to picture the delightful sight of you now. I imagine you buying farm tackle, talking to the bailiff, hoarding pips at dessert in your jacket pockets!”

The past few years had been deeply unsatisfactory for Cicero, who felt he had been unfairly sidelined by the rise of the First Triumvirate. He did not anticipate the future with any greater confidence. Diehards in the Senate were determined to take revenge on Caesar for the illegalities of his
Consulship. Political stability hung on the permanence of his partnership with Pompey and there were signs that this was coming under strain. In one sense, a breakdown in relations between the two men would be welcome to Cicero, for it would lift what he saw as a serious threat to the rule of law; but, from another perspective, it might transform civil discord into civil war.

Writing about Politics: 55–43
BC

N
ow that he was no longer able to play an active role in the conduct of affairs, Cicero decided to find time for another kind of political intervention. It took the form of extended critiques of the crisis facing the Republic, in which he offered his own proposals for reform. By writing books, he believed he could still influence the course of events. If he could no longer promote his cure-all for the Republic's ills, the “harmony of the classes,” in the Senate House and the Forum, then he would do so from the study.

Nothing like the modern publishing industry existed in ancient Rome, of course, nor were there public libraries, until Caesar founded the first one in the 40s. Books were written out by hand on papyrus rolls (sometimes as long as thirty feet), which were then passed around to friends and acquaintances and stored on shelves. The task of copying was usually given to highly trained slaves. Atticus employed a large number and seems to have acted as a prototypical publisher, probably selling books for a profit. He had many of Cicero's speeches and books copied and distributed.

Readers had to work hard. Characters took one form only, without differentiation into capital and lowercase letters. There were no spaces between words or punctuation, and texts were unparagraphed.

Like many Romans, Cicero was a great collector of books. He was proud to acquire rare editions and enjoyed visiting other people's libraries. Despite the technical production difficulties, upper-class Romans were eager to buy the latest works of contemporary writers, which were carefully studied and much discussed. Political pamphlets were an accepted part of public life. Although copying runs must have been small, books appear to have been in plentiful supply. (According to Catullus, they could end up wrapping mackerel in fish shops.)

Cicero's literary career was checkered. The precocious teenage poet had grown into an overprolific windbag with his endless autobiographical epic. It was as an orator that he really made his reputation as a writer. He understood that a speech was a one-time, live event like an actor's performance and that, in the public eye, he would be only as good as his latest appearance. So, like other successful public speakers of his day, he took great pains to work up his speeches on paper and publish them as books. In this way, past rhetorical triumphs became permanent records of achievement.

But he had long been acknowledged as a leader, if not the leader, in this field and he sought a new, more demanding challenge. His first step was to set out his views on political education. This he did in
The Ideal Orator
(
De oratore
), a substantial work which he first mentioned to Atticus in November 55. What Cicero had in mind was a justification of rhetoric not as a technique but as an approach to the morally good life, a means of expressing and enforcing morality. Ever since his student days when he toured Greece and Asia Minor and studied both philosophy and rhetoric, he had been convinced that the two disciplines were intertwined. This was the proposition he now sought to demonstrate.

The book was written as a dialogue (following the Greeks, this was a common convention for philosophical writing) and was imagined as an actual event taking place some years earlier, in 91. The leading figures were two of the great political and legal personalities of his adolescence, Lucius Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius. Cicero argued for a broadly based and well-integrated liberal education in which the
discidium linguae atque cordis
, the split between word and heart, would be healed.

Modeling himself largely on Plato's
Republic
, from which there is a substantial direct quotation, he then composed another dialogue.
On the State
(
De re publica
), which he followed in due course with
On Law
(
De
legibus
). Both books have only partially survived;
On the State
was discovered as late as 1820, when fragments amounting to about one third of the original were found in a palimpsest also containing St. Augustine's commentary on the Psalms. Even in truncated form, while purporting to give an account of states in general, these works provide a comprehensive analysis of the weaknesses of the Roman constitution and proposals for its reform.