Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

It was a great moment, but Cicero already detected difficulties ahead. He suspected disaffection among the aristocrats, whom he still blamed for his misfortunes. “It is a sort of second life I am beginning. Already, now that I am here, secret resentment and open jealousy are setting in among those who championed me when I was away.”

  The day after his arrival Cicero gave a speech in the Senate before later offering his thanks briefly to the People. It was not one of his most brilliant performances. The speech was little more than a list, larded with invective, of those whom he believed to have betrayed him, contrasted with praise for those who had helped secure his return. He described Gabinius, one of the two Consuls of 58 who had refused to lift a finger on his behalf, as “heavy with wine, somnolence and debauchery, with hair well-oiled and neatly braided, with drooping eyes and slobbering mouth.” AS for his colleague Calpurnius Piso, “talking with him is much the same as holding a discussion with a wooden post in the Forum … a dull and brutish clod … profligate, filthy and intemperate.” On the credit side of the account, pride of place went to Pompey, “whose courage, fame and achievements are unparalleled in the records of any nation or any age.” It was the first indication that, far from being an independent political operator as he had tried to be in the past, Cicero was now, in effect, a creature of the First Triumvirate.

  Meanwhile, Clodius had been busy. He was not finished with Cicero. For some time there had been a growing food shortage, exacerbated by Clodius’s extension of the free corn dole to the urban poor. He now spread it about that a sudden scarcity during the past few weeks was all Cicero’s fault. There was a riot and stones were thrown at Consul Metellus Nepos. Cicero reacted firmly and immediately. In the Senate he proposed Pompey for a special commission to take charge of grain supplies. A decree authorizing the preparation of appropriate legislation was passed. Cicero was delighted at having outmaneuvered Clodius so quickly and comprehensively. “The decree was read out immediately,” he told Atticus, “and the People applauded in the silly new fashion by chanting my name.”

  The following day the Consuls drafted a law giving Pompey control over grain supplies for five years. He asked for fifteen Lieutenant-Commissioners, one of whom was to be Cicero (who accepted, typically, on condition that he would not have to leave Rome). The special command was agreed and Pompey left Rome at once to relieve the shortage, which he did with his customary efficiency.

  The Senate’s position was becoming increasingly weak. This was almost entirely its own fault, even if its blunders were not exclusively the products of stupidity. In the eyes of the Senate, the integrity of the constitution was at stake, and in particular the fundamental principle that no single member of the ruling class should be allowed to predominate. This was the cause for which the optimates had driven Pompey into the arms of Caesar and Crassus. Although Cicero was not such a powerful figure, they were ill-advised to alienate him, for his intelligent and flexible conservatism could have helped them to resist radical outsiders like Caesar and to attract Pompey into their camp by judicious concessions. The Senate acted in ways that made its worst fears likely to come to pass. It lost control of the domestic security situation and now found itself compelled to do what it most wanted to avoid: give yet another special command to Pompey.

  Having plunged more or less successfully into the political melee, Cicero had some domestic worries to exercise him. His property was to be returned to him, but the question arose of compensation for the demolition of his house on the Palatine and of his country villas. He had been unable to work at the bar for a year and a half and was in urgent need of funds. Also there was the problem of the temple that Clodius had erected on the site of his home; unless the consecration could be annulled, rebuilding would be out of the question. The matter was put before the relevant religious authority, the College of Pontiffs.

  Like the Senate, the College of Pontiffs wanted to avoid a full-scale confrontation with Clodius. It came up with a clever formulation which invalidated the consecration without discrediting its originator. At a meeting of the Senate on October 1, the College’s findings were discussed. Given the absence in Long-haired Gaul of the Chief Pontiff (who might well have taken a view less friendly to Cicero), a spokesman for the College emphasized that it saw its role as judge of the religious issue and that the Senate was judge of the law. Those Pontiffs who were also Senators then asked to speak in their latter capacity and did so on Cicero’s behalf. Clodius was present; after some futile filibustering, he saw that further opposition in the Senate would be pointless. On the following day a decree was passed and the Consuls, with the help of surveyors, proceeded to agree to a financial valuation of the house and villas. To Cicero’s annoyance, the house on the Palatine was estimated at 2 million sesterces (much less than the original purchase price of 3.5 million sesterces), the villa at Tusculum at 500,000 sesterces and the one at Formiae at 250,000 sesterces.

  The affair confirmed Cicero’s continuing resentment against fair-weather friends in the Senate, who he believed would never let slip an opportunity to harm his interests. He told Atticus: “Those same gentlemen (you don’t need me to tell you their names) who formerly clipped my wings don’t want to see them grow back to their old size. However, I hope they are growing already.”

  It turned out that Clodius had only appeared to accept defeat in the gang wars: he was running for Aedile in 56—an important venture, for, if successful, he would once again have a constitutional position. When the elections were postponed Clodius stepped up the pressure on the streets. He let it be known that if elections were not held soon, he would carry out reprisals against the city. In November he staged a series of riots. On November 3 an armed gang drove away the workmen who were rebuilding Cicero’s house on the Palatine. From this vantage point they threw stones at Quintus’s house nearby and set it on fire. A few days later Clodius mounted an attack on Cicero in person. Cicero wrote excitedly to Atticus:

  On November 11 as I was coming down the Holy Way, he came after me with his men. Uproar! Stones flying, cudgels and swords in evidence. And like a bolt from the blue! I retired into Tettius Damio’s forecourt, and my companions had no difficulty keeping out the rowdies. Clodius himself could have been killed, but I am becoming a dietitian, I’m sick of surgery.

  The next morning, in broad daylight, Clodius led a force armed with swords and shields to storm and burn the house of Milo, his competitor for mastery of the streets. A counterattack beat them off and a number of leading Clodians were killed. For the time being, this was a decisive encounter, and Clodius temporarily lost control of the situation.

  In general, Cicero was in a remarkably good mood, considering the political disarray, his continuing money worries and the threats to his physical safety. “My heart is high,” he wrote to Atticus, “higher even than in my palmy days, but my purse is low.” We do not know the reason for his elation, because the surviving correspondence with Atticus is sparse for a number of months, but he may have been buoyed by signs of strain among the First Triumvirate. In December, apparently with Pompey’s tacit support, a long-standing Senatorial grievance received a new airing: a Tribune criticized Caesar’s second Land Reform Act, which had removed from state ownership the profitable Capuan Marches and had been a sore point with the optimates ever since. The Senate had been forced to authorize 40 million sesterces to pay for the corn supply and this new expenditure went to highlight the loss of state revenues that the law had brought about.

  In the new year a problem with the Egyptian Pharaoh led to a falling out between Pompey and Crassus. Although nominally a freestanding kingdom, Egypt was effectively a Roman dependency. Its importance was not merely its legendary wealth but its grain production, which served as an increasingly valuable complement to Sicilian supplies. King Ptolemy had been expelled from his country by his subjects and the question arose of who should reinstall him. A stable Egypt was in Rome’s interest and, what was more, the king could be counted on to pay a generous reward to his lucky s
avior. The Senate thought that the former Consul Lentulus, now governor of Cilicia, should be given the commission. However, as it promised to be an extremely lucrative operation, Pompey was understood not to be averse to accepting it himself.

  This was most embarrassing to Cicero, who was indebted to both men for their help in ending his exile. He was seeing a good deal of Pompey at this time, who as usual failed to make his wishes explicit. For once, Cicero found this vagueness helpful, for it allowed him to press Lentulus’s qualifications for the job without causing offense. He describes these attempts in laborious detail in a sequence of long letters to Lentulus. Reading between the lines, one senses that he knew he was fighting for a lost cause. The optimates were determined to prevent Pompey from winning the commission under any circumstances and, with breathtaking shortsightedness, allied themselves with Clodius to present a common front. Pompey strongly suspected that Crassus was behind this curious turn of events.

  About this time an old prophecy was discovered in the Sibylline Books, stored in a vault in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol Hill and consulted in times of emergency. Cicero had little faith in them, though he admired the ingenuity by which they avoided specific references to persons and place and so appeared to predict everything that happened. On this occasion, they conveniently but unconvincingly pronounced that the Egyptian king should not be restored “with a host.” The point was that the Senate did not want to see the great commander in charge of another army. To their disappointment Pompey let it be known that he would be willing to restore Ptolemy without military assistance.

  With typical impudence Clodius, who had by now won election as Aedile and was back in office, brought Milo to court in February 56 for the illegal use of force. Milo appeared with Pompey as his supporting counselor. The Forum was packed with supporters of both sides. Clodius’s people tried to shout Pompey down when he got up to speak, but he plowed doggedly on. He concluded with some highly scabrous verses about Clodius and Clodia. Cicero described the scene in a letter to his brother, Quintus:

  Pale with fury, [Clodius] started a game of question and answer in the middle of the shouting:

  “Who’s starving the people to death?”

  “Pompey,” answered his gang.

  “Who wants to go to Alexandria?”

  “Pompey.”

  “Who do you want to go?”

  “Crassus …”

  About quarter past two the Clodians started spitting at us, as though on a signal. Sharp rise in temperature! They made a push to dislodge us, our side countercharged. Flight of gang. Clodius was hurled from the Speakers’ Platform, at which point I too made off for fear of what might happen in the free-for-all.

  Pompey found it hard to handle this kind of abuse and, nervous, stayed away from the Forum. He eventually abandoned the idea of the Egyptian command (as did Lentulus, who had no intention of proceeding without an army behind him) and came to believe that there was a plot against his life. Soon after he decided to bring men to the city from his country estates in northern Italy to protect him.

  Cicero continued to speak in the courts as and when the opportunity arose. Sometime in the spring of 56 he gave his entertaining (and successful) defense of young Marcus Caelius Rufus, his former pupil, against Clodia’s charge of attempted murder. This allowed him plenty of opportunity to amuse himself and his listeners with jabs at her brother. AS ever, he could not resist a joke. “My refutation would be framed in considerably more forcible terms,” he said, “if I did not feel inhibited by the fact that the woman’s husband—sorry, I mean brother, I always make that slip—is my personal enemy.”

  In February accusations of bribery and breach of the peace were laid against Sestius, the Tribune who had pressed for Cicero’s recall. Cicero agreed at once to represent him. In the meantime, he was involved in a separate trial defending a former Aedile on a bribery charge. By a happy chance the man had saved Sestius’s life in a riot in the Forum and Cicero was able to use the speech to lay down the outline of his defense of Sestius. This had the helpful effect of preparing public opinion.

  By the time the case against Sestius came to court in early March, political observers in Rome were convinced that the First Triumvirate was in serious trouble. There were rumors that it was teetering and might even collapse. Now that Pompey had broken with Clodius and Crassus, perhaps he could be persuaded to distance himself from Caesar, preoccupied in Gaul. Cicero judged the moment right to set out a viable political alternative. In his defense of Sestius he restated his political philosophy. Although he showed little sign of understanding the true balance of forces, he offered a rational and civilized alternative to the policies of the reactionaries in the Senate. Rome no longer faced any foreign dangers, Cicero claimed; the threat now came from within. Radicals like Clodius were not true friends of the People and, by the same token, the term optimates should not be restricted to a small backwards-looking circle of aristocrats. All men of goodwill were optimates now.

  To summarize his message he invented a famous but almost untranslatable slogan: otium cum dignitate. By otium he meant “peace” as distinct not only from war but also from engagement in public affairs. This is what Cicero promised the People, security at the price of minimum involvement in the political process. Peace could be achieved only if respect was given to the traditional political establishment. In other words, social harmony could be achieved only if the balance of power was shifted from the People back to the Senate. Cicero was presenting himself as a Sulla without blood and tears—but also, unfortunately, a Sulla without a method, for he had little idea how reconciliation and reform might be attained in practice.

  One of the witnesses for the prosecution of Sestius was Publius Vatinius, who as Tribune in 59 had helped Caesar with his legislation and had proposed the law giving him his special five-year command. In cross-examination Cicero “cut him up to the applause of gods and men” with extraordinary, but probably calculated, fury. There was growing talk that the Gallic command was unconstitutional and an attack on Vatinius was a good way to soften up the terrain for a later assault.

  This was playing a dangerous game. Quintus was worried and told his brother that he might be going too far for Caesar’s comfort. Cicero did his best to reassure him. In April, flush with his victory in the case against Sestius, who was acquitted unanimously, he felt bold enough to place the question of Caesar’s second Land Reform Act on the agenda of a Senate meeting in May. Its repeal would be an open attack on Caesar. Cicero’s move was received with unusual warmth. His confidence was at its height and he was sure that his political career was back on track. He had regained his lost prestige and was delighted to see that his house was as full of visitors and petitioners as it had been in his heyday.

  One evening in early April Cicero called on Pompey, who informed him he was leaving shortly for Sardinia to buy grain. Pompey was being more than ordinarily economical with the truth. When he left the city he in fact made a detour before setting sail for Sardinia and first made his way to Luca, a town at the extreme limit of Italian Gaul, where Caesar had secretly summoned him for emergency talks. Taking time off from his operations in Gaul, Caesar had already met Crassus in Ravenna and was planning a counterstroke which would silence his opponents in Rome.

  Caesar had spent the last two years in a series of brilliantly conducted military campaigns. When taking up his governorship, he hoped for an opportunity to build on the military reputation he had won three years previously during his governorship in Spain. He was in luck, for long-standing hostilities between two Germanic tribes led one of them to invade Gaul from what is now Switzerland. Caesar claimed to see a potential threat to Italy from barbarian hordes and reacted vigorously. He routed the enemy with ease and then turned his attention to the other tribe, led by a charismatic chieftain who had incautiously reminded him when they once met that Caesar’s death would not be unwelcome in certain circles in Rome. This accurately aimed insult was not left unavenged. A victory, this
time hard won, ensued.

  “The Germans’ left was routed,” Caesar wrote, “but their right began to press our troops hard by weight of numbers. Their perilous position attracted the attention of young Publius Crassus [son of Caesar’s political partner], better able to move about and see what was happening than those in the fighting line. He therefore sent up a third line to their relief. This move turned the battle once more in our favor, and the enemy’s whole army broke and fled without stopping until they came to the Rhine, some fifteen miles away. A very few of the strongest tried to swim the river and a few others saved themselves by finding boats … but all the rest were hunted down and killed by our cavalry.”

  Risings in the northeast gave Caesar the pretext to proceed to the subjugation of the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Channel. He briefly visited that remote, almost mythical island, Britannia, an exploit that was militarily insignificant but was received as a huge propaganda coup back home.

  Propaganda was a matter of some moment. His political opponents looked for any opportunity to criticize him and argued that the war itself was illegal on the grounds that he had not had sufficient excuse to intervene. To promote his cause, Caesar devoted great care to his dispatches to the Senate and in due course wrote them up as a history of the Gallic wars.

  He was proving to be a field commander of the first rank. Pompey and Crassus were gradually coming to realize that their junior partner was growing into a serious competitor in both wealth and reputation. He was no longer the “young man” they had seen him to be in 59.

  Caesar was always on the move, ready to react to the latest military threat as it arose. But wherever he was stationed, he assiduously nurtured his links with the capital. After the campaigning season he spent every winter in Italian Gaul, a vantage point from which he could keep a close eye on political developments. His newfound riches were at the disposal of anyone who would sign up (literally in many cases, with oaths and written guarantees) to protect his interests. Few applicants were turned away.