The Dictator (9 page)

A crowd of several thousand cheered us all the way across the Forum and up the Capitoline steps to the Temple of Jupiter, where a fine white bull was waiting to be sacrificed. At every moment I feared an assault, despite my reason telling me it would have been suicidal: any attacker would have been torn apart by Cicero’s supporters, even assuming he could have got close enough to strike a blow. Nevertheless, I would have preferred it if we could have got into a place with walls and a door. But that was impossible: on this day Cicero belonged to Rome. First we had to listen to the priests recite their prayers, then Cicero had to cover his head and step forward to deliver his ritual thanks to the gods, and stand and watch while the beast was killed and its entrails examined until the auspices were pronounced propitious. Then he entered the temple and laid offerings at the feet of a small statue of Minerva he had placed there before his exile. Finally, when he emerged, he was surrounded by many of those senators who had campaigned hardest for his restoration—Sestius, Cestilius, Curtius, the Cispius brothers and the rest, led by the senior consul, Lentulus Spinther—each of whom had to be thanked individually. Many were the tears shed and the kisses exchanged, and it must have been well after noon before he was able to start walking home, and even then Spinther and the others insisted on accompanying him; Tullia, unnoticed by any of us, had already gone on ahead.

“Home” of course was no longer his own fine mansion on the slopes of the Palatine: looking up, I could see that it had been entirely demolished to make room for Clodius’s shrine to Liberty. Instead we were to be lodged just below it, in the house of Quintus, where we would live until such time as Cicero could get the site restored to him and begin rebuilding. This street, too, was packed with well-wishers, and Cicero had to struggle to reach the threshold. Beyond it, in the shade of the courtyard, waited his wife and children.

I knew, because he had so often spoken of it, how much Cicero had looked forward to this moment. And yet there was an awkwardness to it that made me want to hide my face. Terentia, decked out in her finery, had plainly been waiting for him for several hours, and in the interim little Marcus had grown bored and fretful. “So, husband,” she said, with a thin smile, tugging savagely at the boy to make him stand up properly, “you are home at last! Go and greet your father,” she instructed Marcus, and pushed him forwards, but immediately he darted around her and hid behind her skirts. Cicero stopped some distance short, his arms outstretched to the boy, uncertain how to respond, and in the end the situation was only retrieved by Tullia, who ran to her father, kissed him, led him over to her mother and gently pressed her parents together, and in this way at last the family was reunited.

—

Quintus’s villa was large, but not sufficiently spacious to accommodate two full households in any comfort, and from that first day there was friction. Out of respect for his brother’s superior age and rank, Quintus, with typical generosity, had insisted that Cicero and Terentia should take over the master’s quarters, which he usually shared with his wife, Pomponia, the sister of Atticus. It was clear she had objected bitterly to this, and could barely bring herself to give Cicero a civil greeting.

It is not my intention to dwell on personal gossip: such matters fall beneath the dignity of my subject. Nevertheless, I cannot give a proper account of Cicero’s life without mentioning what happened, for this was when his domestic unhappiness really started, and it was to have an effect upon his political career.

He and Terentia had been married for more than twenty years. They had often argued. But underlying their disputes was a mutual respect. She was a woman of independent wealth: that was why he had married her; it was certainly not for her looks or the sweetness of her temper. It was Terentia’s fortune that had enabled him to enter the Senate. In return, his success had increased her social standing. Now the disaster of his fall had exposed the inherent weaknesses of this partnership. Not only had she been obliged to sell a good part of her property in order to protect the family in his absence, she had been reviled and insulted and reduced to lodging with her in-laws—a family she snobbishly considered far beneath her own. Yes, Cicero was alive and he was back in Rome and I am sure she was glad for that. But she made no secret of her view that his days of political power were over, even if he—still floating on the clouds of popular adulation—had failed to grasp the fact.

I was not asked to dine with the family that first evening, and given the tensions between them, I cannot say I minded especially. I was, however, dismayed to find that I had been given a bed in the slaves’ quarters in the cellar, sharing a cubicle with Terentia’s steward, Philotimus. He was an oily, avaricious creature of middle age: we had never liked one another, and I should guess he was no happier to see me than I him. Still, his love of money at least made him a diligent manager of Terentia’s business affairs, and it must have pained him to see her fortune depleted month after month. The bitterness with which he assailed Cicero for placing her in this situation infuriated me, and after a while I told him curtly to shut his mouth and show some respect, or I would make sure the master gave him a whipping. Later, as I lay awake listening to his snores, I wondered how many of the complaints I had just heard were his, and how many he was merely repeating from the lips of his mistress.

The next day, because of my restlessness, I overslept and woke in a panic. Cicero was due to attend the Senate that morning to express his formal thanks for their support. Normally he learnt his speeches by heart and delivered them without a note. But it was so long since he had spoken in public he feared he might stumble over his words, therefore this oration had had to be dictated and written out during the journey from Brundisium. I took it from my dispatch box, checked I had the full text, and hurried upstairs, at the same time as Quintus’s secretary, Statius, was showing two visitors into the tablinum. One was Milo, the tribune who had visited us in Thessalonica; the other was Lucius Afranius, Pompey’s principal lieutenant, who had been consul two years after Cicero.

Statius said to me, “These gentlemen wish to see your master.”

“I’ll see if he’s available.”

At which Afranius remarked, in a tone I didn’t much care for, “He’d better be available!”

I went at once to the principal bedroom. The door was closed. Terentia’s maid put her finger to her lips and told me Cicero wasn’t there. Instead she directed me along the passage to the dressing room, where I found him being helped into his toga by his valet. As I was describing who had come to see him, I noticed over his shoulder a small makeshift bed. He caught my glance and muttered, “Something’s wrong but she won’t tell me what it is,” and then, perhaps regretting his candour, brusquely ordered me to go and fetch Quintus so that he too could hear what his visitors had come to say.

At first the meeting was friendly. Afranius announced that he brought with him the warmest regards of Pompey the Great, who hoped soon to welcome Cicero back to Rome in person. Cicero thanked him for the message and thanked Milo for all that he had done to bring about his recall. He described the enthusiasm of his reception in the countryside and of the crowds that had turned out to see him in Rome the previous day: “I feel it is a whole new life that I am beginning. I hope Pompey will be in the Senate to hear me praise him with such poor eloquence as I can muster.”

“Pompey won’t be attending the Senate,” Afranius said bluntly.

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“He doesn’t feel it appropriate, in view of the new law that is to be proposed.” Whereupon he opened a small bag and handed over a draft bill, which Cicero read with evident surprise and then gave to Quintus, who eventually handed it to me.

Whereas the people of Rome are being denied access to a sufficient supply of grain; and to the extent that this constitutes a grave threat to the well-being and security of the state; and mindful of the principle that all Roman citizens are entitled to the equivalent of at least one free loaf of bread per day—it is hereby ordained that Pompey the Great shall be granted the power as Commissioner of Grain to purchase, seize or similarly obtain throughout the entire world enough grain to secure a plentiful supply for the city; that this power should be his for a term of five years; and that to assist him in this task he shall have the right to appoint fifteen lieutenant commissioners of grain to carry out such duties as he directs.

Afranius said, “Naturally, Pompey would like you to have the honour of proposing the legislation when you address the Senate today.”

Milo said, “It’s a cunning stroke, you must agree. Having retaken the streets from Clodius, we shall now remove his ability to buy votes with bread.”

“Is the shortage really so serious it demands an emergency law?” asked Cicero. He turned to Quintus.

Quintus said, “It’s true, there’s little bread to be had, and what there is has risen to an extortionate price.”

“Even so, these are astonishing, unprecedented powers over the nation’s food supply to bestow upon one man. I’d really need to find out more about the situation before I offered an opinion, I’m afraid.”

He tried to hand the draft bill back to Afranius, who refused to take it. He folded his arms and glared at Cicero. “I must say, we expected a little more gratitude than that—after all we’ve done for you.”

“It goes without saying,” added Milo, “that you’d be one of the fifteen lieutenant commissioners.” And he rubbed his finger and thumb together to indicate the lucrative nature of the appointment.

The ensuing silence became uncomfortable. Eventually Afranius said, “Well, we’ll leave the draft with you, and when you address the Senate we’ll listen to your words with interest.”

After they had gone, it was Quintus who spoke first. “At least now we know their price.”

“No,” said Cicero gloomily, “this isn’t their price. This is merely the first instalment of their price—a loan that in their eyes will never be repaid, however much I give them.”

“So what will you do?”

“Well, it’s a devil’s alternative, is it not? Propose the bill, and everyone will say I’m Pompey’s creature; say nothing, and he’ll turn against me. Whatever I do, I lose.”

As was often the case, he had not decided which course to take even when we set off to attend the Senate. He always liked to take the temperature of the chamber before he spoke—to listen to its heartbeat like a doctor with a patient. Birria, the scarred gladiator who had accompanied Milo when he visited us in Macedonia, acted as a bodyguard, along with three of his comrades. In addition, I suppose there must have been twenty or thirty of Cicero’s clients, who served as a human shield; we felt quite safe. As we walked, Birria boasted to me of their strength: he said that Milo and Pompey had a hundred pairs of gladiators on standby in a barracks on the Field of Mars, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice if Clodius tried any of his tricks.

When we reached the Senate building, I handed Cicero the text of his speech. On entering he touched the ancient doorpost and looked around him at what he called “the greatest room in the world” in thankful amazement that he should have lived to see it again. As he approached his customary position on the front bench nearest to the consuls’ dais, the neighbouring senators rose to shake his hand. It was an ill-attended house—not just Pompey was absent, I noticed, but also Clodius, and Marcus Crassus, whose pact with Pompey and Caesar was still the most powerful force in the republic. I wondered why they had stayed away.

The presiding consul that day was Metellus Nepos, the long-standing enemy of Cicero who was nevertheless now publicly reconciled with him—albeit only grudgingly and under pressure from the majority of the Senate. He made no acknowledgement of Cicero’s presence but instead rose to announce that a new dispatch had just arrived from Caesar in Further Gaul. The chamber fell silent and the senators listened intently as he read out Caesar’s account of yet more brutal encounters with savage and exotically named tribes—the Viromandui, the Atrebates and the Nervii—fought out amid those gloomy echoing forests and swollen impassable rivers. It was clear that Caesar had pushed much further north than any Roman commander before him, almost to the cold north sea, and again his victory was little short of an annihilation: of the sixty thousand men who had made up the army of the Nervii, he claimed to have left alive only five hundred. When Nepos had finished, the house seemed to let out its breath; only then did the consul call on Cicero to speak.

It was a difficult moment to make a speech, and in the event Cicero mostly restricted himself to a list of thanks. He thanked the consuls. He thanked the Senate. He thanked the people. He thanked the gods. He thanked his brother. He thanked just about everybody except Caesar, whom he did not mention. He thanked especially Pompey (“whose courage, fame and achievements are unapproached in the records of any nation or any age”) and Milo (“his whole tribunate was nothing but a firm, unceasing, brave and undaunted championship of my well-being”). But he did not raise either the grain shortage or the proposal to give Pompey extra powers, and as soon as he sat down, Afranius and Milo promptly got up from their places and left the building.

Afterwards, as we walked back to Quintus’s house, I noticed that Birria and his gladiators were no longer with us, which I thought was odd, for the danger had hardly gone away. There were a great many beggars among the streams of spectators milling around, and perhaps I was mistaken, but it seemed to me that the number of hostile looks and gestures Cicero attracted was substantially greater than before.

Once we were safely indoors, Cicero said, “I couldn’t do it. How could I take the lead in a controversy I know nothing about? Besides, it wasn’t the proper occasion to make a proposal of that sort. All anyone could talk about was Caesar, Caesar, Caesar. Perhaps now they’ll leave me alone for a while.”

The day was long and sunny, and Cicero spent much of it in the garden reading or throwing a ball for the family dog, a terrier named Myia, whose antics greatly delighted young Marcus and his nine-year-old cousin, Quintus Junior, the only child of Quintus and Pomponia. Marcus was a sweet, straightforward lad whereas Quintus, spoilt by his mother, had a streak of something nasty in him. But they played together happily enough. Occasionally the roar of the crowd in the Circus Maximus carried up from the valley on the other side of the hill—a hundred thousand voices crying out or groaning in unison: a sound at once exhilarating and frightening, like the growl of a tiger; it made the hairs tingle on my neck and arms. In the middle of the afternoon Quintus suggested that perhaps Cicero should go down to the Circus and show himself to the audience and watch at least one of the races. But Cicero preferred to stay where he was: “I am tired of exhibiting myself to strangers.”