The Dictator (32 page)

I think I shall go to Tusculum. Kindly see that everything is ready. I may have a number of people with me and shall probably make a fairly long stay there. If there is no tub in the bathroom, get one put in; likewise whatever else is necessary for health and subsistence. Goodbye.

There was no term of endearment, no expression of eager anticipation, not even an invitation to her to meet him. I knew then he had made up his mind to divorce her, whatever she might have decided.

We broke our journey for two nights at Cumae. The villa was shuttered; most of the slaves had been sold. Cicero moved through the stuffy, unventilated rooms and tried to remember what items were missing—a citrus-wood table from the dining room, a bust of Minerva that had been in the tablinum, an ivory stool from his library. He stood in Terentia’s bedroom and contemplated the bare shelves and alcoves. It was to be the same story in Formiae; she had taken all her personal belongings—clothes, combs, perfumes, fans, parasols—and he said, “I feel like a ghost revisiting the scenes of my life.”

At Tusculum she was waiting for us. We knew she was inside because one of her maids was looking out for us by the gate.

I recoiled at the prospect of another terrible scene, like the one between Cicero and his brother. In the event, she was gentler than I had ever known her. I suppose it was the effect of seeing her son again after such a long and anxious separation—he was certainly the person she ran to first and she clutched him to her tightly; it was the only time in thirty years I saw her cry. Next she embraced Tullia and finally she turned to her husband. Cicero told me later that he felt all his bitterness drain away the moment she came towards him, for he saw that she had aged. Her face was creased with worry; her hair flecked grey; her once proud back was slightly stooped. “Only at that moment did I realise how much she must have suffered, living in Caesar’s Rome and being married to me. I cannot say I felt love for her any more, but I did feel great pity and affection and sadness, and I resolved there and then to make no mention of money or property—it was all done with, as far as I was concerned.” They clung to one another like strangers who had survived a shipwreck, then parted, and as far as I know they never embraced again for the remainder of their lives.

—

Terentia returned to Rome the following morning, divorced. Some regard it as a threat to public morality that a marriage, however long its duration, may be broken so easily, without any form of ceremony or legal document. But such is the ancient freedom, and at least on this occasion the desire to end the partnership was mutual. Naturally I was not present for their private talk. Cicero said it was amicable: “We had been apart too much; amid the vast upheaval of public events our old shared private interests were gone.” It was agreed that Terentia would live in the house in Rome until she moved into a property of her own. In the meantime, Cicero would remain in Tusculum. Marcus chose to go back to the city with his mother; Tullia—whose faithless husband, Dolabella, was about to sail to Africa with Caesar to fight Cato—stayed with her father.

If one of the miseries of being human is that happiness can be snatched away at any moment, one of the joys is that it may be restored equally unexpectedly. Cicero had long relished the tranquillity and clear air of his house in the Frascati hills; now he could enjoy it uninterrupted, and in the company of his beloved daughter. As it was to become his principal residence from now on, I shall describe the place in more detail. There was an upper gymnasium that led to his library and which he called the Lyceum in honour of Aristotle: this was where he walked in the mornings, composed his letters and talked with his visitors, and where in the old days he had practised his speeches. From here one could see the pale undulation of the seven hills of Rome, fifteen miles in the distance. But because what went on there was now entirely beyond his control, he no longer had to fret about it and was free to concentrate on his books—in that sense paradoxically dictatorship had liberated him. Below this terrace was a garden with shady walks like Plato’s, in whose memory he called it his Academy. Both these areas, Lyceum and Academy, were adorned with beautiful Greek statues in marble and bronze, of which Cicero’s favourite was the Hermathena, a Janus-like bust of Hermes and Athena staring in opposite directions, given to him by Atticus. From the various fountains came the soft music of trickling water, and that combined with the birdsong and the scent of the flowers created an atmosphere of Elysian tranquillity. Otherwise the hillside was quiet because most of the senatorial owners of the neighbouring villas were either fled or dead.

It was here that Cicero lived with Tullia for the whole of the next year, apart from occasional excursions to Rome. Afterwards he regarded this interlude as the most contented period of his life, as well as his most creative, for he made good on his undertaking to Caesar to confine his activity to writing. And such was the force of his energy, no longer dispersed into the law and politics but channelled solely into literary creation, that he produced in one year as many books on philosophy and rhetoric as most scholars might in a lifetime, turning them out one after another without pause. His objective was to put into Latin a summary of all the main arguments of Greek philosophy. His method of composition was extremely rapid. He would rise with the dawn and go straight to his library, where he would consult whatever texts he needed and scrawl notes—he had poor handwriting: I was one of the few who could decipher it—and then when I joined him an hour or two later he would stroll around the Lyceum dictating. Often he would leave me to look up quotations, or even to write whole passages according to the scheme he had laid out; usually he did not bother to correct them, as I had learned very well how to imitate his style.

The first work he completed that year was a history of oratory, which he named
Brutus
after Marcus Junius Brutus and dedicated to him. He had not seen his young friend since their tents stood side by side in the army camp at Dyrrachium. Even to choose such a subject as oratory was provocative, given that the art was no longer much valued in a country where the elections, the Senate and the law courts were under the control of the Dictator:

I have reason to grieve that I entered on the road of life so late that the night which has fallen upon the republic has overtaken me before my journey was ended. But I grieve more deeply when I look on you, Brutus, whose youthful career, faring in triumph amidst the general applause, has been thwarted by the onset of a malign fortune.

A malign fortune…
I was surprised at the risk Cicero was willing to run in publishing such passages, especially considering that Brutus was now an important member of Caesar’s administration. Having pardoned him after Pharsalus, the Dictator had recently appointed him governor of Nearer Gaul, even though Brutus had never been praetor let alone consul. People said it was because he was the son of Caesar’s old mistress Servilia, and that the promotion was meant as a favour to her, but Cicero dismissed such talk: “Caesar never does anything out of sentiment. He has given him the job in part no doubt because he is talented, but mostly because he is Cato’s nephew and this is a good way for Caesar to divide his enemies.”

Brutus, who along with a certain lofty idealism also had a good share of his uncle’s perversity and stiffness, did not like the work named in his honour, nor a companion volume,
Orator,
which Cicero wrote not long afterwards and also dedicated to him. He sent a letter from Gaul to say that Cicero’s speaking style had been fine in its day but was too high-flown both for good taste and for the modern age—too full of tricks and jokes and funny voices: what was needed was absolute flat, emotionless sincerity. I considered it typical of Brutus’s conceit that he should presume to lecture the greatest orator of the age on how to speak in public, but Cicero always respected Brutus for his honesty and refused to take offence.

These were oddly happy, I would almost say carefree, days. The old Lucullus property next door, which had long stood empty, was sold, and the new occupant turned out to be Aulus Hirtius, the immaculate young aide to Caesar whom I had met in Gaul all those years ago. He was now praetor, though the law courts met so rarely he was mostly at home, where he lived with his elder sister. One morning he came round to invite Cicero to dinner. He was a noted gourmet and had grown quite plump on such delicacies as swan and peacock. He was still in his thirties, like nearly all Caesar’s inner circle, with impeccable manners and exquisite literary taste. He was said to have written many of Caesar’s
Commentaries,
which Cicero had gone out of his way to praise in
Brutus
(
they are like nude figures, upright and beautiful, stripped of all ornament of style as if they had removed a garment,
he dictated to me, before adding, not for publication, “yes, and as characterless as stick figures drawn in the sand by an infant”). Cicero saw no reason not to accept Hirtius’s hospitality. He went round that evening accompanied by Tullia, and so began an unlikely country friendship; often I was invited too.

One day Cicero asked if he could give Hirtius anything in return for all these splendid dinners he was enjoying, and Hirtius replied yes, as a matter of fact, he could: that Caesar had urged him, if he ever got the chance, to study philosophy and rhetoric “at the feet of the Master” and that he would appreciate some instruction. Cicero agreed and started to give Hirtius lessons in declamation, similar to those he had received as a young man from Apollonius Molon. The lessons took place in the Academy beside the water clock, where Cicero taught him how to memorise a speech, to breathe, project his voice and use his hands and arms to make gestures that would better convey his meaning. Hirtius boasted about his new skills to his friend Gaius Vibius Pansa, another young officer from Caesar’s Gallic staff, who was scheduled to replace Brutus as governor of Nearer Gaul at the end of the year. As a result, Pansa too became a regular visitor to Cicero’s villa that year and he also learned how to speak better in public.

A third pupil in this informal school was Cassius Longinus, the battle-hardened survivor of Crassus’s expedition to Parthia and the former ruler of Syria, whom Cicero had last seen at the war conference on the island of Corcyra. Like Brutus, to whose sister he was married, he had surrendered to Caesar and been pardoned; now he was impatiently awaiting a senior appointment. I always found him hard company, taciturn and ambitious, and Cicero didn’t much care for his philosophy either, which was extreme Epicureanism: he picked at his food, never touched wine and exercised fanatically. He once confided to Cicero that the greatest regret of his life was accepting his pardon from Caesar: that it ate away at his soul from the start and that six months after his surrender he attempted to kill Caesar when the Dictator was returning from Egypt after the death of Pompey. He would have succeeded, too, if only Caesar had moored for the night on the same side of the Cydnus river as Cassius’s triremes; instead he had unexpectedly chosen the opposite bank, and by then it was too late at night and he was too far away for Cassius to reach him. Even Cicero, who was not easily shocked, was alarmed by his indiscretion and advised him not to repeat it, and certainly not to do so under his roof in case Hirtius and Pansa got to hear of it.

Finally I must mention a fourth visitor, and he in many ways was the least likely of the lot, for this was Dolabella, Tullia’s errant husband. She believed he was in Africa, campaigning with Caesar against Cato and Scipio, but at the beginning of spring Hirtius received a report that the campaign was finished and that Caesar had just won a great victory. Hirtius cut short his lesson and hastened back to Rome, and a few days later, first thing in the morning, a messenger brought Cicero a letter:

From Dolabella to his dear father-in-law, Cicero.

I have the honour to inform you that Caesar has beaten the enemy and that Cato is dead by his own hand. I arrived in Rome this morning to give a report to the Senate. I called at my house and was told that Tullia is with you. May I have your permission to come out to Tusculum and see the two people who are dearest to me in the world?

“Shock after shock after shock,” observed Cicero. “The republic beaten, Cato dead and now my son-in-law asks to see his wife.” He stared bleakly over the countryside towards the distant hills of Rome, blue in the early spring light. “The world will not be the same place without Cato in it.”

He sent a slave to fetch Tullia, and when she came, he showed her the letter. She had spoken so often of Dolabella’s cruelty towards her that I assumed, as did Cicero, that she would insist she didn’t want to see him. Instead she said it was up to her father and that she didn’t much care either way.

Cicero said, “Well, if that is really how you feel, then perhaps I shall let him come—if only so that I can tell him what I think of the way he’s treated you.”

Tullia said quickly, “No, Father, I beg you, please don’t do that. He’s too proud to submit to a scolding, and besides, I have only myself to blame—everyone warned me what he was like before I married him.”

Cicero was uncertain what to do, but in the end, his desire to hear at first hand what had happened to Cato overcame his distaste at having such a scoundrel under his roof—a scoundrel not just as a husband, incidentally, but as a rabble-rousing politician in the mould of Catilina and Clodius, who favoured the cancellation of all debts. He asked me if I would go to Rome at once with an invitation for Dolabella. Just before I left, Tullia took me aside and asked if she could have her husband’s letter. Naturally I gave it to her; only afterwards did I discover she had none of her own and wanted it as a keepsake.

By midday I was in Rome—a full five years after I had last set foot in the city. In the fervid dreams of my exile I had pictured wide streets, and fine temples and porticoes clothed in marble and gold, all filled with elegant, cultured citizens. I found instead filth, smoke, rutted muddy roads much narrower than I remembered them, unrepaired buildings and limbless, disfigured veterans begging in the Forum. The Senate building was still a blackened shell. The places in front of the temples where the law courts used to meet were deserted. I was amazed at the general emptiness. When a census was taken later that year, the population was found to be less than half what it had been before the civil war.