Cicero

by Anthony Everitt

  Meanwhile, Pompey was still governor of Spain. (In fact, he had had his appointment renewed, although he never left Italy and sent out deputies to administer the province in his place.) So he would be in a position, if the Senate asked, to fight an invading Caesar. The terrible truth was dawning on intelligent people that the days of Sulla and Marius could be returning.

  Having provided a guarantee for Caesar with one hand, Pompey apparently withdrew it with the other. AS part of a package of measures designed to clean up public life, he promoted a law providing that candidates for office should canvass in person. When Caesar’s friends pointed out that this blatantly contradicted the previous law excusing him from this very obligation, the Consul brushed the matter aside. The new legislation was not aimed at Caesar, Pompey claimed, and, to prove it, he added a codicil excluding him by name. But he did so on his own authority and the exception probably did not have legal validity.

  A decision taken in Pompey’s private life had equally unfriendly implications. After Julia’s death, Caesar had hoped that his son-in-law would marry a young relative of his. Instead, Pompey chose a member of the Metellus clan, Cornelia, the daughter of a leading conservative, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica. He arranged for his new father-in-law to become his fellow Consul during the last months of his sole term. This demonstrated in the most obvious fashion his rapprochement with the Senate and distancing from Caesar.

  At about the same time, Pompey enacted another seemingly innocuous law, which imposed a five-year gap between the holding of a senior office and a subsequent governorship. Candidates for office frequently laid out huge bribes knowing that they could recoup the expenditure a year later by extorting money from their provinces. An immediate payback was now made impossible. In itself, this was a good reform, but it had unpleasant implications for Caesar. When the Senate came to discuss provincial appointments on the due date of March 50, they would not be allowed to choose from the senior officeholders of 49. They could select anyone who had held the Consulship five or more years previously, and their candidate would thus be free to take over the governorship at once rather than wait till the end of 49. The dangerous gap when Caesar would have no official post and so be liable for criminal prosecution had suddenly reappeared. The only escape from the trap was for Caesar to persuade a Tribune to veto any Senatorial decision to accelerate the appointment process in this way—something which in due course he managed to do. From now on he would have to be more vigilant.

  What were the real causes of the coming conflict? Plutarch saw the question as essentially one of personal relationships. According to him:

  Caesar had long ago decided that he must get rid of Pompey—just as Pompey, of course, had decided to get rid of Caesar. Crassus had been waiting for the outcome of this contest and intended to take on the winner himself, but he had died in Parthia. It was now left for the man who wanted the top position to remove the one who occupied it and for the man who occupied the top position to dispose of his feared rival. In fact, it was only recently that Pompey had come to fear Caesar. Previously he had despised him, feeling that it would be a simple task to put down the man he had raised up. But Caesar had laid his plans from the beginning.… In the wars in Gaul he had trained his troops and increased his reputation, reaching a height of success from which he was able to compete with Pompey’s past achievements.

  There is truth in this account, but it is too simply described. It is uncertain when Pompey made his final choice between loyalty to Caesar and joining the optimates to thwart him. This is because he was seldom clear, one suspects even to himself, about his true political intentions. He had a way of getting himself into morally uncomfortable positions from which he hoped to extricate himself without anyone noticing. AS a result it was often hard to know what he wanted and he pleased nobody. Caesar’s readiness to test the constitution to its limits, and even beyond them, disconcerted the former general. The sole Consulship had enabled Pompey to reassert himself and had given him an opportunity to edge slyly away from Caesar into the arms of the Senate.

  AS for Caesar, his aims and the precise nature of his relationship with Pompey were equally difficult to fathom. His public line was that he was simply claiming his rights and he used studiedly moderate language in putting them forward. He must have realized that his new preeminence would inevitably lead to a clash with Pompey, but it would seem he anticipated this rather than sought it. What is uncertain is whether the repeated attempts he made at compromise were public relations (that is, he knew they would fail) or whether he genuinely hoped for a peaceful solution.

  Of course, there was much more to the origins of the civil war than a clash of individual wills, important as that was. Its inception can be traced much farther back to the long struggle between the optimates and the populares which opened with the attempted reforms of Tiberius Gracchus almost a century before: between those who saw the need to modernize the Republic and those who stood for the established order of things. Marius, Sulla, even Catilina in his desperate way had tried to resolve matters, but they had all failed. Sooner or later a final decision between the contending sides had to be reached.

  The new rules on governorships were a tedious irritation to Cicero. Former Consuls were being dragged out of retirement to run the empire. One of these was Cicero and much against his will he accepted the governorship of Cilicia in present-day southern Turkey. He made it clear he would do so for the minimum time possible, twelve months; he would resist any idea of an extension. “My one consolation for this colossal bore,” he told Atticus, “is that I expect it will only last a year.”

  Despite his irritation Cicero rose to the challenge. AS during his Quaestorship in Sicily many years before, he was an able, hardworking and fair-minded administrator. Following Crassus’s defeat and death, the region was uneasily anticipating incursions, perhaps a full-scale invasion, by the aroused and victorious Parthians. Since he himself had practically no military experience, he made sure that his Legates, or deputies, did. One of these was his brother, Quintus, whose background both as a governor and as a general in Gaul would make him an invaluable adviser and aide. Another was the able Caius Pomptinus, who had led the ambush at the Milvian Bridge during Cicero’s Consulship and had later efficiently put down a revolt of the Allobroges in Gaul in the wake of Catilina’s conspiracy.

  On the domestic as well as the political front, the two brothers were leaving trouble behind them. They spent the May Day holiday, a time of symbolic misrule when servants and slaves were waited on by their masters, at Quintus’s hideaway farm near Arpinum. Pomponia decided to stage a monumental sulk. Her casus belli was Quintus’s continuing fondness for his freedman, Statius—a subject on which in principle she and her brother-in-law agreed. Cicero told Atticus, Pomponia’s brother, what had happened:

  When we arrived, Quintus said in the kindest way: “Pomponia, will you ask the women in and I’ll get the boys? [i.e., the slaves and servants].” Both what he said and his intention and manner were perfectly pleasant, at least it seemed so to me. Pomponia however answered in our hearing, “I am a guest here myself.” That, I imagine, was because Statius had gone ahead of us to see to our luncheon. Quintus said to me: “There! This is the sort of thing I have to put up with all the time.” You’ll say, “What is there in that, pray?” A good deal. I myself was quite shocked. Her words and manner were gratuitously rude. I concealed my feelings, painful as they were, and we all took our places except the lady. Quintus however had some food sent to her, which she refused. In a word, I felt my brother could not have been more forbearing nor your sister ruder.… [Quintus] came over to see me the following day. He told me that Pomponia had refused to spend the night with him and that her attitude when she said good-bye was just as I had seen it. You may tell her to her face that in my judgment her manners that day left something to be desired.

  Tullia, now probably in her mid- to late twenties, presented another difficulty. The marriage with her second husband
, Crassipes, had not been a success and about this time they were divorced. Cicero was worried about Tullia’s future marital prospects, although—or perhaps because—she appears to have been quite a strong-minded young woman.

  Leaving his domestic affairs in Terentia’s hands, Cicero and his entourage made their leisurely way south to the port of Brundisium, where they were to take a ship for Athens and the east. Marcus and young Quintus, who were in their early and middle teens, were old enough to accompany their fathers and joined the expedition. Cicero called in at his villa at Cumae, where he was gratified to receive a visit from his old rival Hortensius, who had come a long way to see him despite being in poor health. Cicero pressed him to do all he could to prevent an extension of his Cilician penance, if anyone were unkind enough to propose such a thing in the Senate.

  Cicero found widespread anxiety about the future among all he met. No chief political players had shown their hands. Cicero’s own view remained much as it had always been; he preached moderation, compromise and reconciliation. He was pleased to have the chance to talk things over with Pompey in the few days he spent with him at his villa outside the Greek city of Tarentum and was relieved to find that he understood where his duty lay. “I leave him in the most patriotic frame of mind,” he told Atticus, “fully prepared to be a bulwark against the dangers threatening.”

  For all his reservations about the die-hard optimates, Cicero’s deepest instincts were to support the Senate against Caesar. But he was seriously embarrassed by the fact that he had allowed himself to yield to Caesar’s blandishments; he owed him many favors and, worst of all, the large loan of 800,000 sesterces Caesar had made him in 54 had yet to be liquidated. He was desperate to return the money to Caesar, but it was an awkward moment to have to do so. His personal finances were coming under additional strain, for his outlay as governor promised to be high and he would not be earning any money while he was absent.

  It was the worst possible time to be away from Rome and Cicero made sure that he was kept fully up-to-date about the latest developments. He arranged for Marcus Caelius to be his political correspondent. Despite Caelius’s rascally past, when he had been a friend of Clodius and a lover of his sister Clodia, Cicero had always had a soft spot for him. Even if he exercised little judgment over his own life, he was an amusing and well-informed commentator on the actions and motives of others. Caelius accepted the commission with boyish enthusiasm. Once he realized that what Cicero wanted was not gossip, rumors or even news stories but intelligent commentary, he proceeded to offer just that. He was candid as well as witty. When Cicero told him he would be meeting Pompey at Tarentum, Caelius warned him with unkind accuracy that Pompey “is apt to say one thing and think another, but is not clever enough to keep his real aims out of sight.”

  Caelius was not the kind of man to forgo his expectation of a return for his services. He had a tendency to pester Cicero with inappropriate requests, at one time asking him to dedicate a book to him. Elected Aedile for 50, he was keen to stage some impressive games (one of an Aedile’s main duties) and asked Cicero to send him some Cilician leopards. This would have entailed exactly the kind of abuse of office which Cicero denounced in others and disapproved of. Pressed into a corner, Cicero claimed to have engaged hunters to find some. This was probably a white lie and he told a joke to extricate himself. “The creatures are in remarkably short supply, and those we have are complaining bitterly because they are the only beings in my province who have to fear designs against their safety. So they are reported to have decided to leave the province and emigrate to Caria.”

  After a long journey which included stopovers in Athens and the island of Delos, Cicero set foot in his province on July 31, 51, exactly three months after his departure from Rome. He was in a gloomy frame of mind and felt homesick. “When all’s said,” he wrote to Atticus, “this isn’t the kind of thing I’m pining for, it’s the world, the Forum, Rome, my house, my friends. But I’ll stick it out as best I can so long as it’s only for a year.”

  Cilicia was a large mixed bag of a territory stretching along the southern coast of Asia Minor to the Amanus Mountains, which provided a natural frontier with Syria. It also included the island of Cyprus which Cato had annexed a few years previously. (There had been no very obvious reason for this, except, presumably, that the island was too small to qualify as a province in its own right and someone had to look after it.) In western Cilicia mountains ran down to the sea and an abundance of wood made it a center for shipbuilding. In the lawless years after the decline of the Seleucid Empire, the region became a base for the pirate fleets which had disrupted trade and commerce for more than a century until Pompey solved the pirate problem once and for all in 67. He had acted with comparative leniency and settled some of the former buccaneers in the Cilician town of Soli. In the east of the province lay its main city, the port of Tarsus, and a fertile coastal plain crisscrossed by rivers. Not far to the south was the site of the battle of ISSUS, one of Alexander the Great’s victories over the Persians.

  Cicero insisted from the outset that he meant to run a clean administration. He did his best to make sure that no provincial had to spend money entertaining him and his staff. He opened his own quarters to local people (or at least to those “whom he found agreeable”), where he offered generous if not lavish hospitality. There was no gatekeeper at his official residence to deter visitors and Cicero had a habit of rising early so that he was ready at first light to greet those who came to pay their respects. Following the advice he had once given Quintus during his governorship, he kept his temper in public and was careful not to inflict insulting punishments. He avoided traditional brutalities such as beating offenders with rods or stripping them of their clothes. AS he intended, this behavior had a powerful effect on local opinion, and Cicero made sure that the political world in Rome knew of it too. He was keenly aware of the damage done to Roman interests by bad government and meant to set an example for others to follow.

  He also wanted to draw the sharpest possible distinction between his regime and that of his predecessor, Clodius’s brother, Appius Claudius Pulcher. (It must sometimes have seemed to Cicero that, wherever he turned, he could not escape this domineering and hostile family.) Appius’s policy as governor had been simply to enrich himself. Cicero was shocked when he saw the consequences. Writing while on the road, he described a “forlorn and, without exaggeration, permanently ruined province.” Local communities had been forced to sell prospective tax revenues to tax farmers in order to meet Appius’s rapacity for cash. “In a phrase, these people are absolutely tired of their lives.”

  However, Cicero had no intention of broaching these issues directly with Appius, to whom he wrote before his arrival with scrupulous politeness. He had learned from bitter experience that one baited a Claudius at one’s peril. He tried to arrange a meeting for a debriefing, but Appius seems to have done his best to avoid Cicero and showed signs of a reluctance to lay down his authority. While knowing perfectly well that the new governor had arrived at one end of the province, he continued to hold assizes at the other.

  Cicero’s patience was sorely tried and eventually he wrote to Appius in terms of firm but courteously indirect protest. He also inquired nervously of the whereabouts of three military cohorts.

  Malicious persons … said you were holding assizes in Tarsus, making both administrative and judicial decisions, although you had reason to think that your successor had arrived.… Their talk had no effect on me.… But I must own candidly that I am disturbed to find three cohorts missing from my exiguous force, and those the most nearly up to strength, and to be ignorant of their whereabouts.

  Cicero was right to be worried about the state of the armed forces at his disposal. Persistent reports were coming in that the Parthians were on the move and he would be expected to do what he could to resist them. The allied kingdoms, which Pompey had arranged as buffer states in his eastern settlement, looked increasingly unreliable.

  Cicer
o urgently needed to lay his hands on the missing soldiers. Cilicia was garrisoned with two legions, but both were under strength. Some had been mutinous, although Appius had eventually pacified them by settling their arrears of pay. When campaigning abroad, the Romans usually employed as soldiers only their own citizens and relied on local levies for cavalry and lightly armed soldiers; but Cilicia was a recent acquisition and had no tradition of supplying troops to the Romans. Recruitment promised to be difficult. Caelius in Rome was just as worried about the military situation as Cicero was, but he warned that there would be little sympathy back home for his predicament. “Your army is hardly capable of defending a single pass. Unfortunately nobody allows for this: a man holding public office is expected to cope with any emergency, as though every item in complete preparedness had been put at his disposal.”

  Cicero joined his army and did his best to enlist locals. AS a precaution, he sent the boys, Marcus and Quintus, north to the friendly kingdom of Galatia (in modern-day Turkey), where he hoped they would be out of harm’s way at the court of its ruler, Deiotarus. Deiotarus sent him a Roman-style legion of Galatians, who turned out to be surprisingly good soldiers.

  AS the autumn came on, the news grew worse. The Parthians were reported to have crossed the Euphrates and there was talk that the King of Armenia was planning to invade Cappadocia, an allied kingdom to the northeast of Cilicia, in support. No word had come from the nearest province, Syria, where the new governor was the stubborn and luckless Bibulus, Caesar’s fellow Consul in 59. In fact, it was not even clear if he had arrived yet to take up his duties. Cicero commented dryly: “My best resource is winter.” He positioned his troops in the Taurus Mountains, from where he could either march north to meet a threat to Cappadocia or descend into the flatlands of eastern Cilicia near the Syrian border. In a dispatch to the Senate in mid-September he urgently appealed for more troops.