The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March

by Thornton Wilder

  I find it difficult to believe that you had any hand in so inept an excursion into public affairs; but there is evidence to show that you were at least aware of it.

  For the sake of my long friendship with your father I am willing to deal leniently with these mistaken young men. I place their fortunes in your hands. If you are able to inform me that their part in the circulation of these letters will cease, I shall regard the matter as closed.

  I do not wish to hear any defense of their action. An affirmative word from you will be sufficient. That word you can give me day after tomorrow when I shall meet you, I am told, at the dinner being given by C. Publius Clodius and the Lady Clodia Pulcher.

  LXII-B

  Catullus to Caesar.

  [September 28.]

  The letters of which you speak were planned by me alone and the first copies of them were sent out by me alone. There is no Committee of Twenty.

  The means I have employed to remind Romans of their shrinking liberties may well seem inept to a Dictator. His powers are unlimited, as is his jealousy of any liberty other than his own. His powers extend to ransacking the private papers of the citizens.

  The composition of these letters by me has already ceased, since their efficacy is at an end.

  LXII-C

  Third Broadside of Conspiracy, written by Julius Caesar.

  [By ‘their efficacy is at an end’ Catullus meant that the country was now so flooded by letters written in imitation of his own that the movement was soon dissipated in the bewilderment and flagging interest of the citizens. This Third Broadside which appeared a few days after the Second received the widest circulation of all of them.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors, this third bulletin.

  The Council of Twenty now feels that these letters have received a sufficiently wide circulation. Hundreds of thousands have been aroused to a patriotic hatred of the oppressor and to an eager expectation of his death.

  In the meantime you are instructed to prepare the people for this happy event. Hence, lose no opportunity to ridicule the so-called achievements of the tyrant.

  Belittle his conquests. Remember that the territory was conquered by the Generals working under him to whom he denied all merit. He is called Unconquered, but it is well known that he suffered many costly defeats which were concealed from the Roman people. Spread about many stories of his personal cowardice before the enemy.

  Remember the Civil Wars; remember Pompey. Remind the people of the brilliance of his circuses.

  The distribution of lands: enlarge upon the injustice done to the large landholders. Intimate that the veterans received only stony or marshy land.

  The Council of Twenty has drawn up detailed plans for the control of public order and finance. The senile edicts of the Dictator will be revoked at once: the sumptuary laws, the reform in the calendar, the new currency, the ten-head system of distributing grain, the senseless expenditure of public funds on irrigation and the control of waterways. Prosperity and plenty will reign.

  Death to Caesar. For our country and our Gods. Silence and resolution.

  The Council of Twenty

  LXIII

  Caius Cassius at Palestrina to his mother-in-law, Servilia, in Rome.

  [November 3.]

  [Reading between the lines, the following letter discusses opportunities for assassinating Caesar and means of inducing Brutus to join the conspiracy.]

  The company which is seeking to do honour to our friend is increasing daily. There are many whose names we do not know. Our efforts to learn those of the admirers last month [Query: Those who attacked Caesar on September 27?] have been unavailing.

  It is difficult to find an occasion when an honour of this sort may be conferred, for it must both come as a surprise to the recipient and at the same time make as strong and agreeable an impression as possible upon the bystanders. Plans were well advanced to effect this at the conclusion of the Queen of Egypt’s reception. Our guest of honour mysteriously disappeared from the assembly, however, and it was thought that he had received some intimation of the ovation that was to be accorded him.

  I am increasingly of the opinion that this gratifying event should be delayed until at least one more of our friend’s closest associates be included among those conferring this honour. We are deeply indebted to you for your efforts toward this end. The person I have in mind has avoided my company and has even sent excuses that he is unable to see me in his home.

  We understand all the weight, honoured Madam, of your arguments urging haste. We also are alarmed at the possibility that others may forestall us in this laudable enterprise, and with results that could only be disastrous. I hope to call upon you when next I come to the City.

  Long life and health to the Dictator.

  LXIV

  Porcia, wife of M. Junius Brutus, to her aunt and mother-in-law, Servilia.

  [November 26.]

  It is with respect but firmness, Madam, that I must ask you to cease to pay visits to this house. My husband has not concealed from me the reluctance he has to receive you and the relief that he feels at your departure. You will not have failed to remark that he never calls upon you in your home; you may infer from that that he receives you here only from a sense of filial duty. His agitated behavior and his troubled sleep following your visits have led me to take this action. I might well have taken it earlier, for I feel it unsuitable that I, as his wife, should be sent out of the room at each of your interviews.

  You have known me for many years. You know that I am not a contentious woman and that I have previously acknowledged many an indebtedness to you. That my sisters have also been obliged to take this same action does not render it easier for me [i.e. her sisters-in-law; apparently the wives of Cassius and Lentulus had also closed their doors to their mother].

  My husband does not know that I am writing this letter to you. I am not averse to his knowing it, if you wish to tell him so.

  I thank you for your letter of sympathy on my great loss [her miscarriage]. I would have been more sensible of your expressions of affection and esteem, had you elsewhere shown me that I was sufficiently a member of this household to be included in your agitating interviews with my husband.

  LXIV-A

  Inscription.

  [The following words were inscribed on a tablet of gold which, among other similar memorial tablets, were set into the wall behind the household altars of the Porcian and Junian families where they remained until the destruction of Rome.]

  Porcia, daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato of Utica, being married to Marcus Junius Brutus the tyrannicide, was aware that her husband was concealing from her the plans that he was then revolving for the liberation of the Roman people. On a night she plunged a dagger deep into her thigh. For many hours she gave no groan nor any sign of the great pain that consumed her. In the morning she showed her husband this wound, saying: If I have kept silent about this thing, can I not be trusted to keep the counsels of my lord? Thereupon her husband embraced her weeping and communicated all the thoughts that he had kept hidden in his soul.

  LXV

  The Lady Julia Marcia from the Dictator’s House in Rome to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  [December 20.]

  We have been going through a distressing time, my dear boy. You will forgive me, if I do not go into it at length. This terrible event [the profanation of the rites of the Good Goddess] has stricken us all. We leave the house as seldom as we can. We look into one another’s faces, like ghosts. We are expecting some punishment – I was about to say: we wish for some punishment. But, of course, we are punished already. As you can imagine it has robbed Rome of all joy in the Feast of Saturn [the Saturnalia began on December 17] and my bailiff writes me that a shadow has even fallen across our hill villages. I grieve particularly for the children and the slaves, for whom this season has always been the crown of the year.

  The latest news fills me with no less alarm than the
scandal itself. The wicked couple has been acquitted. There is no doubt that the judges were bribed with enormous sums by Clodius. What is there to say? We must live in a city where public opinion is overridden by money. They tell me that crowds gather all day before the houses of the judges and stand spitting against the walls and doorposts. I had a few words with Cicero this morning. He is overwhelmed with despair. His speech at the trial was the greatest he has ever made. I told him so, but he only waved his hands in the air and the tears streamed down his face.

  My nephew’s refusal to prosecute the matter is understandable, though I regret it profoundly. What he shrank from doing as a husband, he was not absolved of doing as the Supreme Pontiff. There is one detail about all this that I feel I must tell, though in great confidence. My nephew knew in advance that that dreadful man was coming to the rites. He could have had him seized at the door, but Caesar wished that the matter be exposed in the way it was done.

  How I wish you were here, my dear Lucius. He is not himself. He has asked me to stay with him for a while. At my urging we have remained in the Public House. [A Supreme Pontiff generally lived in the Public House on the Sacred Way, placed at his disposal by the State. Caesar, following on his wife’s implication in the scandal, would have preferred to move to his house on the Palatine Hill.] He has plunged even more deeply into work. It seems certain now that we are to go to war with the Parthians. The Isthmus of Corinth is to be pierced with a canal. The Field of Mars is to be transferred to the region at the foot of the Vatican Hill and the present Field is to contain a vast housing project. Libraries for the people are to be opened, six of them in various parts of the City. This is our tabletalk at dinner, but these are not the subjects weighing on his heart. Oh, that he had some friend here with whom he could be at ease. He does not invite his convivial companions. From time to time we are joined by Decimus Brutus and the other Brutus, but the evenings are not successful. Our friend can only extend friendship to those who first extend it warmly to him. As my husband used to say of certain people: ‘bold-in-love is shy-in-friendship.’

  Let me share another secret with you. Advance warning of Clodius’s sacrilegious effrontery came to us from – of all persons – the Queen of Egypt. It is widely believed in the City that he will marry her. That possibility would furnish ample motivation for her exposure of the dreadful plan. You have my complete assurance, however, that there is no truth in that rumour. Something happened between them; I do not know what it was. I think it plays a large part in his present dejection; I know that she is suffering. It is generally believed that we older women are very clever at divining the sentimental histories that are being lived in our vicinity. Not I. All I can say is that some stupid impediment arose to interrupt a most happy conversation. I observe that my great-nephew [Marc Antony] has made a journey to the east coast.

  It is absurd that Caesar live here alone. We have been talking it over. The season of pretty young girls has passed. Who would be more suitable as a wife for him than our good Calpurnia, whom we have all known so long and who has carried herself with such quiet dignity through so many difficult circumstances? I think you will soon hear that she has moved into this house after the quietest of weddings.

  The dogs are barking. He has just returned. I hear him greeting the household. Only one who loves him deeply can know that the good cheer in his voice is assumed. I am astonished at myself: I have loved and lost many in my long life, but never have I felt so great a helplessness before another’s suffering. I do not even know its spring – or of its many possible springs, the principal one.

  The next day.

  This is written in haste, my dear Lucius. To whom can I speak but to you?

  Strange things are happening. He too could not contain himself and spoke of it to me, with a feigned lightness. He was speaking of the many conspiracies that are continually being uncovered, plots to overturn the State and to assassinate him. He was folding and unfolding some papers in his hand. ‘Last year it was Marc Antony,’ he said. ‘Now it appears that Junius Brutus is thinking of these things.’ I drew back with horror. He leaned over me and said with a strange smile: ‘He cannot wait until these old bones are quiet.’

  Oh, that you were with us here.

  LXVI

  Cleopatra to the Lady Julia Marcia, on her farm in the Alban Hills.

  [January 13.]

  Your assurance to me that you are completely recovered of your indisposition has given me great joy. I trust that the messengers I sent daily to your door did not become a burden to those who were attending you.

  I have waited for your restoration to health to lay before you a most urgent question. I am surrounded by a wall of enemies; I am fortunate in this, however, that you are not only the sole person to whom I can turn, but that you are the person best fitted to advise me.

  Gracious lady, I came to Rome in order to further the interests of the great country over which I rule. I came here as a stranger ignorant of the customs of the Romans and exposed to the danger of making errors which might jeopardise my entire mission. To protect myself I organised a system of observers whereby I might be kept informed of much that was passing in the City. At no time have I used the information which I have received in any way that might disturb the best interests of the citizens; on a number of occasions I have been able to serve the public order.

  Through diligence and good fortune I am in a position to follow most closely the plans of a group which designs to overturn the State and assassinate the Dictator. The group I speak of is not the first that has been brought to my attention; it is the most determined. It is not advisable that I include the names of these conspirators in this letter.

  Most gracious lady, it would be difficult for me to lay my information before the Dictator at this time. In the first place, he might well be vexed that for a second time a woman and a foreigner should be informing him of a matter that so closely concerns him. In the second place, a grievous mischance has separated me from his trust and confidence. My only consolation is that he knows that my loyalty to his position in the Roman Republic is unshaken and unshakable.

  The conspiratorial group to which I refer planned to murder the Dictator as he returned at midnight on January 6 from supervising the elections of the aldermen. Their plan was to lie in wait about and under the bridge that crosses the rivulet by the shrine of Tebetta. On that occasion I sent anonymous letters to four of their members telling them that Caesar was aware of their intentions. They now plan to attack him as he leaves the games on 28 th of January. You can understand that it would be unwise for me again to write to the conspirators and I have promised my informant who is enrolled in their number that I shall not do so.

  I most urgently ask your advice on this matter, noble lady. The most obvious recourse, I realise, would be to submit this information to the head of the Dictator’s confidential police. That I cannot do, however. I am only too well aware of the incompetence of that organisation. It submits reports to the Dictator wherein misrepresentation masks negligence and private prejudice is set forth as assertion, important information is withheld, and trifles are enlarged.

  Let me hear from you.

  LXVI-A

  The Lady Julia Marcia to Cleopatra.

  [By return messenger.]

  I thank you, great Queen, for your letters and again for the many marks of your concern for me during my illness.

  Of this last letter: my nephew is aware in general terms of the group that you speak of. That it is the same organisation and that he knows their names I am assured by the fact that he discussed the ambush at the bridge. I have no doubt, however, that your information is more detailed than his and that it is of the greatest importance. It has been a constant anxiety with me, great Queen, that he does not bring to the suppression of such conspiracies the energy and attention which he devotes to the dangers to the State.

  I shall see that he learns of the plans drawn up for an attack on his life to be made on the 28th. When a suitab
le moment presents itself I shall let him know that we are indebted to you for this warning.

  The season we are going through has been filled with so many reasons for distress and confusion that the happy hour I spent with you seems to have taken place many years ago. May the Immortal Gods soon restore to Rome a measure of tranquility and may they avert from us Their just anger.

  LXVII

  Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  [The following entries appear to have been written throughout January and February.]

  1017. [Arguments for and against constructing a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth.]

  1018. [On the increasing demand for Roman luxuries in the cities of Gaul.]

  1019. [Request for volumes to stock the new public libraries.]

  1020. You once asked me, laughing, whether I had ever experienced the dream of the void. I told you I had, and I have dreamed it since.

  It is perhaps occasioned by a chance posture of the sleeping body or by some indigestion or derangement within us, but the terror in the mind is no less real for that. It is not, as I once thought, the image of death and the grin of the skull. It is the state in which one divines the end of all things. This nothingness, however, does not present itself to us as a blank and a quiet, but as a total evil unmasked. It is at once laughter and menace. It turns into ridicule all delights and sears and shrivels all endeavor. This dream is the counterpart of that other vision which comes to me in the paroxysm of my illness. Then I seem to grasp the fair harmony of the world. I am filled with unspeakable happiness and confidence. I wish to cry out to all the living and all the dead that there is no part of the universe that is untouched by bliss.

  [The entry continues in Greek.]

  Both states arise from vapors in the body, yet of both of them the mind says: henceforth this I know. They cannot be dismissed as illusions. To each our memory brings many a radiant and many a woeful corroboration. We cannot disown the one without disowning the other, nor would I – like a village peacemaker reconciling the differences of two contending parties – accord to each a shrunken measure of the right.