Cicero (35 page)

When Caesar crossed the river, he quoted a phrase from the Greek comic playwright Menander, “Let the dice fly high,” and rushed south towards Rome. He had long been known for his luck and he would need it now.

It is to Caesar's credit as a leader that his soldiers and their officers loyally followed him. Only one senior commander defected, Titus Labienus,
who had helped him with the Rabirius trial in 63 and been the most able of his deputies in Gaul. They went back a long way together and it must have been a personal blow.

Caesar's troops met no resistance and town after town fell to him. In Rome discussions were under way on recruitment and the distribution of provinces. The news of Caesar's rapid advance brought them to an abrupt halt. Pompey declared, to widespread amazement and dismay, that the government should evacuate Rome. Plutarch's account captures the fevered atmosphere:

On January 17 large numbers of Senators and magistrates accompanied him en route to Campania, abandoning the city so hurriedly that they forgot to take the contents of the Treasury with them. A few days later, Caesar entered Rome.

Cicero met Pompey just before his departure and recalled a couple of months later that he had found him “thoroughly cowed. Nothing he did after that was to my liking. He went on blundering now here now there.” Cicero was shocked as much by the incompetence and rashness of the
optimates
as by the catastrophe itself. On January 18 he wrote to Atticus from
the outskirts of Rome: “I have decided on the spur of the moment to leave before daybreak so as to avoid looks or talk, especially with these laureled lictors. A
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for what is to follow, I really don't know what I am doing or going to do, I am so confounded by our crazy way of going on.” He retreated to his villa at Formiae, where he could watch developments in safety and consider his next move. A few days later he accepted Pompey's request that he take responsibility for northern Campania and the sea-coast. He could not decently refuse, but he assumed his duties without enthusiasm.

Cicero was naturally worried about his family's safety. His imagination ran riot as he thought of what the “barbarians” might do to Terentia and Tullia when they took Rome. Perhaps, he suggested to Atticus, the boys should be sent to Greece where they would be out of the way. His fears were in part allayed by Tullia's new husband, Dolabella; he was a passionate Caesarian and would guarantee the safety of Terentia and the others. Cicero arranged for the house on the Palatine to be properly barricaded and guarded; but he soon decided that the family, including (it seems) Quintus and his son, should join him at Formiae. He was greatly put out when he learned that the boys' tutor, Dionysius, refused to come with them. A few weeks later he remarked: “He scorns me in my present plight. It is disgusting. I hate the fellow and always shall. I wish I could punish him. But his own character will do that.” Typically, Cicero could not stay angry for long and there was a reconciliation in due course, if a grudging one.

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for the nonpolitical Atticus, his friend had few anxieties. “It looks to me as though you yourself and Sextus [an intimate friend of Atticus] can properly stay on in Rome. You certainly have little cause to love our friend Pompey. Nobody has ever knocked so much off property values in town. I still have my joke, you see.”

Cicero condemned Pompey's abandonment of Rome and was afraid that the Commander-in-Chief was thinking of evacuating Italy, for Greece or perhaps Spain, where there were loyal legions. There can be little doubt that Pompey had been knocked off balance. He had exaggerated his personal popularity and was depressed both by the easy progress Caesar was making and by his own difficulties of recruitment. The psychological impact of the evacuation of Rome had been tremendous. The damage to
public opinion if Pompey now abandoned Italy would be even greater. Yet there was strategic sense in basing himself in Greece, where he would have all the resources of Asia Minor at his back. With the army of Spain in the west, commanded by Lucius Afranius, the reputed dancer, and Marcus Petreius, Caesar would then be gripped in a vise. Once he had mustered his full strength, Pompey would descend on Italy, as Sulla had done, and meet Caesar with overwhelming force. In addition he controlled a large fleet and had unchallenged mastery of the seas. Unfortunately this plan left out of account the fact that it handed the initiative to Caesar.

Cicero had still not given up all hopes of peace. His disgust at the conduct of the war made him reluctant to join Pompey as an active supporter. More important, he felt that his hand as an intermediary would be strengthened if he could present himself as (more or less) neutral. His motives were mixed, but he was right to believe that it was in his and the Republic's interest to play a lone hand. His stance became increasingly untenable as it became clear that the war was going to continue. Unfriendly voices were already criticizing him for not joining the rest of the evacuees in Campania. His mood became volatile and edgy. It was not helped by a painful bout of ophthalmia, which lasted until May. He was finding it hard to sleep. He relied more and more on Atticus, whom he showered with letters, often daily, appealing for advice.

The military situation did not improve. Towards the middle of February Cicero visited Pompey at his headquarters in Capua before he moved his forces farther south to avoid being cornered by the enemy. What he found deepened his pessimism. The recruiting officers were afraid to do their work; the Consuls were hopeless and, as for Pompey, “How utterly down he is! No courage, no plan, no forces, no energy.” Cicero resigned
his Campanian commission, saying he could do nothing without troops and money. Letters came from Caesar full of kind words and peace proposals and so did curt missives from Pompey asking Cicero to join him. Balbus and Oppius, Caesar's confidential agents, were in constant touch. To these correspondents Cicero responded with fair words and no commitments.

Caesar was briefly delayed at the town of Corfinium where a reckless aristocrat, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus made a vain stand. He was acting against the instructions of Pompey, who refused to come to his aid. When the town fell Caesar found about fifty Senators and
equites
in it, all of whom he immediately released on condition that they not take arms against him again—an assurance many of them swiftly broke. This act of clemency had a huge impact on public opinion, which began to swing in his direction, and a number of
optimates
returned to Rome. Caesar maintained this policy of leniency for the rest of his life. He intended it as vivid proof that he was no Sulla, set on the armed overthrow of the state.

Meanwhile Pompey continued to rebuff Caesar's offers of peace and decided to extricate himself and his legions from Italy. He marched to Brundisium, where he intended to leave for Greece. Caesar followed him at top speed. On February 20 Pompey dispatched an abrupt note to “M. Cicero Imperator,” telling him to meet him at Brundisium. Cicero wrote a long, detailed reply in which he explained why it was unsafe and impractical for him to do so. He also set out a justification of his role as peacemaker, adding oblique criticisms of Pompey's performance and failure to inform him of his plans. The truth was, as Cicero admitted to Atticus, he had not yet made up his mind what to do. He was coming to believe that there was less to choose between the opposing sides than he had originally thought. The constitution would probably be destroyed whoever won the impending struggle.

On March 9 Caesar arrived outside Brundisium, but it was too late. The Consuls had already left with part of the army to set up headquarters in Greece. Pompey was still in town, but towards nightfall on March 17 he followed after them, evading Caesar's attempt at a blockade with few losses and escaping with the remainder of his troops. Caesar was left fuming outside the walls, from which vantage point he could see the fleet's sails grow smaller in the darkening light.

“I was made anxious before … by my inability to think of any solution,”
Cicero told Atticus, who was comfortably settled in Rome. “But now that Pompey and the Consuls have left Italy, I am not merely distressed, I am consumed with grief.” He wrote in the language of a disconsolate lover: “Nothing in [Pompey's] conduct seemed to deserve that I should join him as his companion in flight. But now my affection comes to the surface, the sense of loss is unbearable, books, writing, philosophy are all to no purpose.” The presence of his brother doubled his anxiety: Quintus, having spent some years fighting under Caesar in Gaul, owed much more to his old commander than Cicero did and could expect to suffer the severest consequences if he defected. Nevertheless, he told Cicero that he would follow his lead.

Now that a long war was more or less certain, Caesar's interest in Cicero shifted from his potentially useful role as mediator to his value as a propaganda asset. He wanted to attract as many senior figures to his side as possible, in order to legitimize his authority, and Cicero would be a great prize. Stressing his policy of clemency and their ties of
amicitia
(it is not known whether Cicero had yet been able to pay back Caesar's loan), he tried to persuade the reluctant statesman to come to Rome. Caesar's plan was to visit the city briefly to meet the remnants of the Senate, after which he would go to Spain and deal with Pompey's legions there. On March 28, on his journey back from Brundisium, Caesar stopped off at Formiae for an encounter which Cicero had been dreading for some time.

Caesar was not in an accommodating mood. He complained that Cicero was passing judgment against him and that “the others would be slower to come over” to his side if he refused to do so. Cicero replied that they were in a different position. A long discussion followed, which Cicero recorded for Atticus. It went badly.

“Come along then [to a Senate meeting called for April 1] and work for peace,” Caesar said.

“At my own discretion?”

“Naturally, who am I to lay down the rules for you?”

“Well, I shall take the line that the Senate does not approve of an expedition to Spain or of the transport of armies into Greece, and I shall have much to say in commiseration of Pompey.”

“This is not the kind of thing I want said.”

“So I supposed, but that is just why I don't want to be present. Either I must speak in that strain or stay away—and much else besides which I could not possibly suppress if I was there.”

Caesar closed the conversation by asking Cicero to think matters over. He added menacingly as he left: “If I cannot make use of your advice, I will take it where I can find it. I will stop at nothing.” He meant that if moderates like Cicero would not work with him, his only alternative would be to seek help from revolutionaries.

The encounter was decisive, for both parties. Caesar must have realized that he could not push an obviously unhappy man any further. He now proceeded to Rome, where he spent a few uncomfortable days in discussion with a reluctant and much-thinned Senate. He broke into the Treasury at the Temple of Saturn and removed its contents: 15,000 bars of gold, 30,000 of silver and 30 million sesterces—a move for which he paid with the total collapse of his popularity. Then he hurried away to fight in Spain, leaving the Tribune Mark Antony in charge of Italy and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in charge of Rome.

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for Cicero, the conversation and the behavior of Caesar's raffish entourage—he nicknamed them the “underworld”—persuaded him that, for all his reservations, he had to side with those who were (if only ostensibly) fighting for the Republic. He could do this only by leaving Italy. But when should he set off and how? And where should he go? He thought of Athens or, somewhere completely off the beaten track, Malta. Soon he realized he was being watched by Caesar's spies.

The time had come for Marcus's coming-of-age ceremony and the family moved to the ancestral home of Arpinum for the purpose. It was a melancholy trip: everyone they met was in low spirits and, as a result of Caesar's levies, men were being led off to winter quarters. On his return to Formiae, Cicero made a most unpalatable discovery. Quintus, now seventeen, had made off to Rome, claiming that he wanted to see his mother.
He had written to Caesar and perhaps even obtained an interview with him (or one of his lieutenants), in which he revealed that his uncle was disaffected and intended to leave the country. The elder Quintus was beside himself with misery. In a hierarchical society where a
paterfamilias
had theoretically unlimited power over his children, it was an almost unbelievable betrayal. Although Cicero was upset, he seems to have taken the affair in stride. After a few days he calmed down, deciding that the boy had acted out of greed rather than hatred. The runaway was brought back, and his uncle decided that “severity” was the best policy.