The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (35 page)

Alina, wife of Cornelius Nepos, to her sister Postumia, wife of Publius Ceccinius of Verona.

[
December 13
.]

Just a word in haste, dearest Postumia. Rome is standing on its head. There has never been such an uproar. Public offices have been closed and most of the shopkeepers don’t even open the shops. Word must have reached you before this: that Clodia Pulcher introduced her brother dressed as a votary into the Ceremonies of the Good Goddess. I was standing a few feet from him when he was discovered. They say it was the Lady Julia Marcia who called attention to it. Our singing had been going on for an hour, and the responses. Some women flew at him and tore off the turban and the bands. Such screaming you never heard. Soon women were striking him from all sides as hard as they could; others dashed about covering up the sacred things. Of course, there wasn’t any other man within shouting distance; but presently some guards came and picked him up, bleeding and groaning, and dragged him off.

This is the end; really, I don’t know what to say. Everybody says, This is the end. People are even saying, Now let Caesar move Rome to Byzantium. In a moment I must hurry down to the trial. Cicero made a terrible and wonderful speech against Clodius and Clodia yesterday. All sorts of people are being called to testify and rumours are flying about. Some think that the Queen of Egypt had a hand in it, because Clodia served as her instructress; but the Queen was indisposed and did not even go to the rites.

The strangest thing of all is the behavior of Caesar. As Supreme Pontiff he should be directing the inquiry. But from the beginning he’s refused to have anything to do with it. There’s no doubt that his wife is as guilty as they are. Isn’t it awful, awful, awful?

My husband has just come in. He says that Pompeia’s family – twenty of them – went to Caesar last night to urge him to speak in her defense. It seems that he was very quiet and listened to them for an hour. Then he rose and said he had no intention of appearing at the trial; that it was possible that Pompeia was not implicated in this matter, but that it was not difficult for a woman in her position so to conduct her life that such a suspicion would never fall upon her; that the suspicion was damaging enough, and that he was divorcing her the very next day – that is today.

I’m hurrying to the trial, dear. I may have to give evidence. It is a strange feeling to be hurrying through the streets of this city! It’s as though the city itself were in disgrace and that we all ought to move out of it.

Servilia in Rome to her son Marcus Junius Brutus.

[
August 8. This letter reached Brutus at Marseilles as he was about to return to Rome concluding his governorship of Hither Gaul
.]

R
eturn, Marcus, return to the city which is bending all its eyes upon you.

The hero whose name you bear [
Junius Brutus who had expelled the Tarquins
] lives in you, by spirit if not by blood, and his task is on your shoulders.

Return to the city whose health is your own health and whose freedom is your own freedom. Romans are again calling on the name of Brutus and all eyes are bent on you.

The man against whom Rome’s rage is directed is no little man. The man who now stifles Rome is great in all things and greatest in error. The murderer must be of equal stature with the murdered or Rome is twice enslaved. There is only one Roman at that height and all eyes are bent on you. The hand that strikes him down must be passionless as justice. The tyrannicide’s task is a holy task; it is remembered with grateful tears by generations unborn.

Come look on him; give him the honour that is his due; look on him as a great son looks on a great father, and with the blow not of one man but of ten thousand thousands – slay him.

Thinking of the child soon to be born to you, raise up your hand and strike.

Brutus to Servilia.

[
Returning the letter to her
.]

This letter is yours. That I have read it does not make it mine.

The words with which you direct me to murder a friend and benefactor are clear enough. The words with which you call my parentage in question are not clear.

By the age of twenty, madam, every man should be sufficiently his own father. His father by the body is of large, though lesser, importance. Those who call that parentage in question, however, should do so only under oath and under the most solemn oath and with the most absolute clearness.

This you have not done. Thereby I have lost, in two ways, a measure of the respect I am bound to owe you.

Cornelius Nepos: Commonplace Book.

[
Notes on Cicero’s conversation
.]

I thought the moment propitious for asking the question which all Rome had wished to put to him for thirty years. ‘Tell me, my friend, what is your opinion – is Marcus Junius Brutus the son of Julius Caesar?’

He sobered at once.

‘Cornelius,’ he said, ‘we must be careful how we use the word ‘opinion.’ With much evidence I venture to say that I know a thing; with a more limited amount I venture to say that I have an opinion on it; with less still I venture a conjecture. In a matter of this kind I have not sufficient even for a conjecture. Suppose, however, that I felt I had a conjecture – should I give it to
you,
you who will undoubtedly put it in a book? In a book, conjectures have a way of looming larger than facts. Facts can be controverted; a gloss can nullify them; but conjectures are not easily dismissed. The histories we read are little more than processions of conjectures pretending they are facts.

‘Is Marcus Junius Brutus the son of Caesar? Put it this way: do I know, or have I any opinion as to whether this relationship is believed to exist by Brutus, by Caesar, or by Servilia?

‘Brutus is among my best friends. Caesar is . . . Caesar is the man whom I have observed most attentively for thirty, for forty, years. Servilia – well, overtures were once made that I should marry Servilia. Let us weigh this matter.

‘I have seen the first two together many, many times and I can affirm to you that I have never seen any faintest sign pass between them that could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of such a relationship. Caesar holds Brutus in high regard. He has for him the affection, the tacit affection, of an older man for a younger man of notable capability. Perhaps I should say grudging affection – that is to say, something like a fear of him, or at least a . . . come now, Cornelius, do we seniors always rejoice in the knowledge that there will be brilliant historians and orators in the generations that follow us? Do we not feel that it is the duty of our successors to be inferior? Moreover, Caesar has always maintained his distance from all men of incorruptible independence – from all twelve of them, from all six of them. It cannot be said too often that Caesar is unhappy in the society of capable men – or, rather, of men who are possessed of both ability and high character. Oh, yes, he is; oh, yes, he is. He likes ability if it’s unscrupulous, and he likes high character if it’s impractical, but he cannot endure both in one man. He’s surrounded himself with scoundrels; he likes the talk of scoundrels; he likes their jokes – Oppius, Mammurra, Milo – scoundrels all of them. When he works, he works with people like Asinius Pollio, honest, loyal, and a mediocrity.

‘Now Brutus’s deportment to Caesar differs at no point from his deportment to any of us seniors. Brutus feels affection for no one, never has, and never will – except, of course, for his wife, and perhaps because of her, a little for his father-in-law. You know that impassive and handsome face, that deliberate utterance, that austere courtesy. If he thought that Caesar were, or even might be, his father – no, I cannot believe it! I have seen him thank Caesar for favours; I have seen him disagree with Caesar; why, I have seen him present his wife to Caesar. Caesar is all actor and we shall never know what he thinks, but Brutus is no part an actor and I would take my oath that he has never even considered this possibility.

‘There remains our conjecture as to what Servilia thinks.

‘But before I come to that, there is one thing more that should be said: thirty years ago this relationship was firmly believed by many to be an undoubted fact. The dates, as one might say, support this paternity. At that time Caesar was consolidating his political advancement by a calculated succession of double adulteries. Women then played a far greater part in the life of the Republic and Servilia had one of the most brilliant political heads, male or female, in the entire aristocracy. She could sway the policies of twenty stupid and wavering multimillionaires; all she had to do was to tell them
what to be afraid of next.
Do not judge the Servilia of those years by the Servilia of today. Today she is merely a frantic intriguing woman, floundering amid preposterous and conflicting principles and flooding the city with anonymous but transparent letters. The weather of Rome has deteriorated for women. Do not even judge the Clodia of ten years ago by the Clodia of today. Rome twenty and thirty years ago was an arena of forceful women – think of Caesar’s mother, Pompey’s mother, and Caesar’s aunt. They thought of little else than politics and did not permit their husbands, lovers, guests, and children to think of anything else. People affect now to be shocked by the fact that their mothers and grandmothers appear to have been repeatedly married and divorced simply for reasons of political expediency. They forget that this was not only because these brides brought with them wealth and family connections – everyone knew that the bride was in herself a political general. Why, as the struggle between Sulla and Marius came to a head, poisoning was so frequent an occurrence that one thought twice before dining at the home of one’s own sister.

‘You can imagine what art it required of Caesar to glide in and out of the beds of these warring Clytemnestras! The story has never been told. The prodigy of it lies in the fact that each of his successive paramours worships him to this day. How often, finding myself in the company of one or other of our aging matrons, I have turned the conversation to praise of this man, only to discover that I am being listened to by a breathless and half-swooning girl, convinced that she was the only inspiratrix of that parded career.’

Here Cicero fell to laughing and choking again and had to be beaten encouragingly on the back.

‘Now, notice,’ he continued, ‘Caesar who in wedlock has only been able to achieve one child, outside wedlock went far toward justifying his appellation of ‘the Father of his Country.’ I think there is little doubt that he made every effort to bind these influential paramours to him by the bond of a child. Furthermore, it was often observed that when the woman of his attentions announced to him that she was pregnant . . . are you following me? . . . and when he was convinced that he was indeed the father of this . . . this expectation, he invariably made a very handsome return; he presented the lady with a gift, and with no mean gift.

‘During the years we are speaking of, however, never forget that Caesar was penniless. Yes, throughout the twenty most critical years of his career, Caesar was . . . spendthrift without income and lavish with another’s gold.

[
Here follows Cicero’s digression on Caesar and money, already given in Document XII.
]

At all events, Caesar rescued from inactivity enough of his friends’ money to present Volumnia with the ‘Andromache’ of Apelles (fit subject for an adulteress), the greatest painting in the world, though a fading relic of its former self. Can you doubt that her twin daughters are the daughters of Caesar? Isn’t that the
nose
– the nose, twice? And to Servilia he gave the rose-coloured pearl that she wears so religiously at every celebration of the Founding of the City. That is the first pearl in the world and at the time it was the most talked-of object in Rome. The unappetising bosom on which it now reposes, my friend (in defiance of the sumptuary laws) was once as beautiful as itself. Is it the reward for bearing Marcus Junius Brutus? We shall never know, we shall never know.’

Caesar, in Rome, to Brutus, at Marseilles.

[
August 17
.]

[
By private courier
.]

I do not have to tell you with what satisfaction I have received reports from many sources of the exemplary manner in which you have fulfilled your high office. I trust that my commendation is a satisfaction to you for two reasons; the lesser reason is that it comes from a friend who takes pride and pleasure in all you do; the greater reason is that I, too, am a servant of the Roman state and suffer when she is injured and rejoice when she is nobly served. By the immortal Gods I would that from all the provinces I heard news of such justice, such tireless concern for all her subjects, and such energy in the execution of her laws. To thousands awaking from the sleep of barbarism you have made Rome loved and honoured; you have made her feared only so far as equity should be feared by us all.

Return, my dear young man, to the country which asks increasingly greater labors of you.

The letter I now write you is for your eyes alone and I direct you to destroy it when it has been read. Take what time you wish to write me a reply; my courier will await your convenience.

I do not believe that in a republic it is among the responsibilities of a leader to indicate or appoint his successor. Similarly, I do not believe that the head of a republic should be invested with dictatorial powers. Yet I am Dictator, and I am convinced that the powers I have been obliged to assume are necessary for the State and I am convinced that only my appointment of a successor can save that State from another long and exhausting civil war. You and I have had many long conversations concerning the nature of government and the degree to which our Roman citizens at this time can be left to govern themselves. We have not always been in agreement as to the extent to which they are capable of governing themselves. I appointed you to the post which you are now leaving in order that you might learn through the daily exercise of administration the enormous extent to which the rank and file of men are dependent on those placed over them. I now wish you to hold a similar position in the capital and to discover for yourself a similar truth concerning our citizens in Italy.