The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  It was not long after dawn yet already hot. In the valley beneath Pompey’s house loomed his newly opened theatre, with its temples and gardens and porticoes, its fresh white marble dazzling in the sun. Cicero had attended its dedication ceremony just a few months earlier—a spectacle that had included fights involving five hundred lions, four hundred panthers, eighteen elephants and the first rhinoceros ever seen in Rome. He had found it all revolting, especially the slaughter of the elephants: What pleasure can a cultivated man get out of seeing a weak human being torn to pieces by a powerful animal or a noble creature transfixed by a hunting spear? But naturally he had kept his feelings to himself.

  From the moment we entered the immense house it was clear something terrible had occurred. Senators and clients of Pompey stood in worried, silent groups. Someone whispered to Cicero that no announcement had been made, but Pompey’s failure to appear, and an earlier glimpse of several of Julia’s maids fleeing, weeping, across an inner courtyard, suggested the worst. Suddenly from the interior there was a flutter of activity, a curtain parted and Pompey emerged in the midst of a retinue of slaves. He stopped, as if shocked by the number of people waiting for him, and searched for a familiar face. His eye fell on Cicero. He raised his hand and walked towards him. Everyone watched. At first he seemed entirely calm and clear-eyed. But then as he reached his old ally the effort at self-control abruptly became too much. His whole body and face seemed to sag and with a terrible choking sob he cried out, “She’s dead!”

  A great groan went round the vast room—of genuine shock and grief, I have no doubt, but also of alarm, for these were politicians and this was a much bigger thing than the death of one young woman, tragic though it was. Cicero, in tears himself, put his arms round Pompey and tried to comfort him, and after a few moments Pompey asked him to come and see the body. Knowing how squeamish Cicero was about death, I thought he might try to refuse. But that would have been impossible. He was not being invited purely as a friend. He was to be an official witness on behalf of the Senate in what was a matter of state. He went off holding Pompey’s hand, and when he returned shortly afterwards, the others gathered round.

  “She started bleeding again soon after the birth,” reported Cicero, “and the flow could not be stopped. The end was peaceful and she was brave, as befits her lineage.”

  “And the child?”

  “He will not last the day.”

  More groans greeted this announcement and then everyone left to spread the news across the city. Cicero said to me, “The poor girl was whiter than the sheet in which they’d wound her. And the boy was blind and limp. I am truly sorry for Caesar. She was his only child. It’s as if Cato’s prophecies of the gods’ rage are starting to come true.”

  We went back to the house and Cicero wrote Caesar a letter of consolation. As ill luck would have it, Caesar was in the most inaccessible place it was possible for him to be, having crossed over to Britain again, this time with an invasion force of twenty-seven thousand men, including Quintus. It was not until he returned to Gaul several months later that he found the packets of letters informing him of his daughter’s death. He showed by all accounts not a tremor of emotion but retired to his quarters, never spoke of it, and after three days of official mourning went on with his normal duties. It was, I guess, the secret of his achievements that he was quite indifferent to the death of anyone—enemy or friend, his only child or even ultimately himself—a coldness of nature that he concealed beneath his famous layers of charm.

  Pompey was at the opposite end of the human spectrum. All his depths were on the surface. He loved his various wives with great (some said excessive) tenderness, and Julia most of all. At her funeral—which was, despite Cato’s objections, a state occasion held in the Forum—he found it hard to deliver the eulogy through his tears, and generally gave every appearance of being broken in spirit. The ashes were afterwards interred in a mausoleum in the precincts of one of his temples on the Field of Mars.

  It must have been perhaps two months later that he asked Cicero to come and see him and showed him the letter he had just received from Caesar. After commiserating with him on the loss of Julia, and thanking him for his condolences, Caesar proposed a new marital alliance, but of double the strength: he would give his sister’s granddaughter, Octavia, to Pompey, and Pompey in return would give him the hand of his daughter, Pompeia.

  “What do you make of this?” demanded Pompey. “I believe the barbarian air of Britain must have affected his brain! For one thing, my daughter’s already betrothed to Faustus Sulla—what am I supposed to tell him? ‘Very sorry, Sulla, someone more important has just come along?’ And then Octavia of course is married—and not to just some nobody, either, but to Caius Marcellus: how’s he going to feel about my stealing his wife? Damn it all, Caesar’s married himself, come to that, to that poor little drab Calpurnia! All these lives to be turned upside down, and meanwhile dear little Julia’s side of our bed is not yet cold! Do you know, I haven’t even had the heart to clear out her hairbrushes?”

  Cicero for once found himself speaking up for Caesar: “I’m sure he’s only thinking of the stability of the republic.”

  But Pompey was not to be pacified. “Well, I shan’t do it. If I marry for a fifth time, it will be to a woman of my choice; and as for Caesar, he will have to find himself a different bride.”

  Cicero, who loved gossip, could not resist describing Caesar’s letter to several friends, swearing each to secrecy. Naturally, after extracting a similar oath, each friend mentioned it to several others, and so it went on until the news of Caesar’s proposal was the talk of Rome. Marcellus especially was outraged that his wife was being spoken of by Caesar as if she were his chattel. Caesar was embarrassed when he heard what was being said; he blamed Pompey for revealing his plans. Pompey was unapologetic; he in turn blamed Caesar for the clumsiness of his matchmaking. Another crack had appeared in the monolith.

  The following year during the Senate recess Cicero set off as usual with his family for Cumae in order to continue work on his political book; and I, as usual, went with him. It was not long before my fiftieth birthday.

  For most of my life I had enjoyed good health. But when, to break the journey, we reached the cold mountain heights of Arpinum, I started to shiver, and the next morning I could barely move my limbs. When I tried to continue with the others I fainted and had to be carried to bed. Cicero could not have been kinder. He postponed his departure in the hope I would recover. But my fever worsened and I was told afterwards he spent long hours at my bedside. In the end he had to leave me behind, along with instructions to the household slaves that I should receive exactly the same care they would give to him. From Cumae two days later he wrote to say that he was sending me his Greek doctor, Andricus, and also a cook: If you care for me, see that you get well and join us when you are thoroughly strong again. Goodbye.

  Andricus purged and bled me. The cook produced delicious meals that I was too ill to eat. Cicero wrote constantly.

  You cannot imagine how anxious I feel about your health. If you relieve my mind on this score, I shall relieve yours of every worry. I should write more if I thought you could read with any pleasure. Put your clever brain, which I value so highly, to the job of preserving yourself for us both.

  After about a week, the fever eased. By then it was too late to travel to Cumae. Cicero wrote telling me to join him instead at Formiae, on his way back to Rome.

  Let me find you there, my dear Tiro, well and strong. My (our) literary brainchildren have been drooping their heads missing you. Atticus is staying with me, enjoying himself in cheerful mood. He wanted to hear my compositions but I told him that in your absence my tongue of authorship is tied completely. You must get ready to restore your services to my Muses. My promise will be performed on the appointed day. Now mind you get thoroughly well. I shall be with you soon. Goodbye.

  I shall relieve your mind of every worry…My promise will be performed on the appointed day�
��I read the letters over and over, trying to make sense of those two phrases. I deduced that he must have said something to me when I was delirious, but I had no recollection of what it was.

  As arranged, I arrived at the villa in Formiae on the afternoon of my fiftieth birthday, the twenty-eighth day of April. It was cold and blustery, not at all propitious, with rain gusting off the sea. I still felt frail. The effort of hurrying into the house so as not to be soaked left me dizzy. The place appeared deserted and I wondered if I had misunderstood my instructions. I went from room to room, calling out, until I heard a young boy’s stifled laughter coming from the triclinium. I pulled back the curtain and discovered the whole dining room crammed full of people trying to stay silent: Cicero, Terentia, Tullia, Marcus, young Quintus Cicero, all the household staff, and (even more bizarrely) the praetor Caius Marcellus with his lictors—that same noble Marcellus whose wife Caesar had tried to bestow on Pompey, and who had a villa nearby. At the sight of my astonished face they all started laughing, then Cicero took me by the hand and led me into the centre of the room while the others made space for us. I felt my knees weaken.

  Marcellus said, “Who wishes this day to free this slave?”

  Cicero replied, “I do.”

  “You are the legal owner?”

  “I am.”

  “Upon what grounds is he to be freed?”

  “He has shown great loyalty and given exemplary service to our family ever since he was born into the condition of slavery, and to me in particular, and also to the Roman state. His character is sound and he is worthy of his freedom.”

  Marcellus nodded. “You may proceed.”

  The lictor briefly touched his rod of office to my head. Cicero stepped in front of me, grasped my shoulders and recited the simple legal formula: “This man is to be free.” He had tears in his eyes; so had I. Gently he turned me round until I had my back to him, and then he let me go, as a father might release a child to take its first steps.

  It is difficult for me to describe the joy of becoming free. Quintus expressed it best when he wrote to me from Gaul: I could not be more delighted, my dear Tiro, believe me. Before you were our slave but now you are our friend. Outwardly, nothing much changed. I continued to live under Cicero’s roof and to perform the same duties. But in my heart I was a different man. I exchanged my tunic for a toga—a cumbersome garment that I wore without ease or comfort, but with intense pride. And for the first time I began to make plans of my own. I started to compile a comprehensive dictionary of all the symbols and abbreviations used in my shorthand system, together with instructions on how to use it. I drew up a scheme for a book on Latin grammar. I also went back through my boxes of notes whenever I had a spare hour and copied down particularly amusing or clever quotations thrown out by Cicero over the years. He greatly approved of the idea of a book of his wit and wisdom. Often after a particularly fine remark he would stop and say, “Note that down, Tiro—that’s one for your compendium.” Gradually it became understood between us that if I outlived him, I would write his biography.

  I asked him once why he had waited so long to set me free, and why he had decided to do it at that moment. He answered, “Well, you know I can be a selfish man, and I rely on you entirely. I thought to myself, ‘If I free him, what’s to stop him going off and transferring his allegiance to Caesar or Crassus or someone? They’d certainly pay him plenty for all he knows about me.’ Then when you fell ill in Arpinum I realised how unjust it would be if you died in servitude, and so I made my pledge to you, even though you were too feverish to understand it. If ever there was a man who deserved the nobility of freedom, it is you, dear Tiro. Besides,” he added with a wink, “nowadays I have no secrets worth selling.”

  Love him though I did, I nevertheless wanted to end my days under my own roof. I had some savings and now was paid a salary; I dreamed of buying a smallholding near Cumae where I could keep a few goats and chickens and grow my own vines and olives. But I feared loneliness. I suppose I could have gone down to the slave market and bought myself a companion, but the idea repulsed me. I knew with whom I wanted to share this dream of a future life: Agathe, the Greek slave girl whom I had met in the household of Lucullus and whose freedom I had asked Atticus to purchase on my behalf before I went into exile with Cicero. Atticus confirmed he had done as I asked and that she had been manumitted. But although I made enquiries as to what had happened to her, and always kept an eye out whenever I walked through Rome, she had vanished into the teeming multitudes of Italy.

  —

  I did not have long to enjoy my freedom in tranquillity. My modest plans, like everyone else’s, were about to be mocked by the immensity of events. As Plautus has it:

  Whatever the mind may hope for

  The future is in the hands of the gods.

  A few weeks after my liberation, in the month that was then named Quintilis but that we are now required to call July, I was hurrying along the Via Sacra, trying not to trip over my new toga, when I saw a crowd gathered ahead. They were deathly still—not at all animated as they usually were when news of one of Caesar’s victories was posted on the white board. I thought immediately that he must have suffered a terrible defeat. I joined the back of the throng and asked the man in front of me what was happening. Irritated, he glanced over his shoulder and muttered in a distracted voice, “Crassus has been killed.”

  I stayed just long enough to pick up the few details that were available. Then I hastened back to tell Cicero. He was working in his study. I gasped out the news and he quickly stood up, as if such grave information should not be acknowledged sitting down.

  “How did it happen?”

  “In battle, it’s reported—in the desert, near a town in Mesopotamia named Carrhae.”

  “And his army?”

  “Defeated—wiped out.”

  Cicero stared at me for a few moments. Then he shouted to one slave to bring his shoes and another to arrange a litter. I asked him where he was going. “To see Pompey, of course—come too.”

  It was a sign of Pompey’s pre-eminence that whenever there was a major crisis in the state, it was to his house that people always flocked—be it the ordinary citizens, who that day crowded the surrounding streets in silent, watchful multitudes; or the senior senators, who even now were arriving in their litters and being ushered by Pompey’s attendants into his inner sanctum. As luck would have it, both the elected consuls, Calvinus and Messalla, were under indictment for bribery and had been unable to take up office. Present instead was the informal leadership of the Senate, including senior ex-consuls such as Cotta, Hortensius and the elder Curio, and prominent younger men like Ahenobarbus, Scipio Nasica and M. Aemilius Lepidus. Pompey took command of the meeting. No one knew the eastern empire better than he: after all, much of it he had conquered. He announced that a dispatch had just been received from Crassus’s legate, G. Cassius Longinus, who had managed to escape from enemy territory and get back into Syria, and that if everyone was in agreement he would now read it out.

  Cassius was a cold, austere man—“pale and thin,” as Caesar later complained—not given to boastfulness or lying, so his words were heard with all the greater respect. According to him, the Parthian king, Orodes II, had sent an envoy to Crassus on the eve of the invasion to say that he was willing to take pity on him as an old man and allow him to return in peace to Rome. But Crassus had boastfully replied that he would give his answer in the Parthian capital, Seleucia, at which the envoy had burst out laughing and pointed to the palm of his upturned hand, saying, “Hair will grow here, Crassus, before you set eyes on Seleucia!”

  The Roman force of seven legions, plus eight thousand cavalry and archers, had bridged the Euphrates at Zeugma in a thunderstorm—itself a bad omen—and at one point during the traditional offerings to placate the gods, Crassus had dropped the entrails of the sacrificial animal into the sand. Although he had tried to make a joke of it—“That’s what comes of being an old man, lads, but I can grip my
sword tightly enough!”—the soldiers groaned, remembering the curses that had accompanied their departure from Rome. Already, wrote Cassius, they sensed that they were doomed.

  From the Euphrates [he continued] we advanced ever deeper into the desert, with insufficient supplies of water and no clear sense of a route or objective. The land is trackless, flat, with no living tree to offer shade. After wading for fifty miles with full packs through soft sand in desert storms during which hundreds of our men succumbed to thirst and heat, we reached a river called the Balissus. Here for the first time our scouts sighted elements of the enemy’s forces on the opposite bank. On the orders of M. Crassus we crossed the river at noon and set off in pursuit. But by now the enemy had entirely disappeared again. We marched for several more hours until we were in the midst of a wilderness. Suddenly from all around us we heard the beating of kettle drums. At that moment, as if springing out of the sand, arose in every direction an immense horde of mounted archers. The silken banners of the Parthian commander, Sillaces, were visible behind.

  Against the advice of more experienced officers, M. Crassus ordered the army to be drawn up in a single large square, twelve cohorts across. Our archers were then sent forward to engage the enemy. However, they were soon obliged to retreat in the face of the Parthians’ vastly superior forces and speed of manoeuvre. Their arrows spread much slaughter through our packed ranks. Nor did death come easily or quickly. In the convulsion and agony of their pain, our men would writhe as the arrows struck them; they would snap them off in their wounds and then lacerate their flesh by trying to tear out the barbed arrowheads that had pierced through their veins and muscles. Many died in this way, and even the survivors were in no state to fight. Their hands were pinioned to their shields and their feet nailed through to the ground so that they were incapable of either running away or defending themselves. Any hopes that this murderous rain would exhaust itself were dashed by the sight of fresh supplies of arrows appearing on the battlefield on heavily laden camel trains.