The Dictator

by Robert Harris

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  Terentia returned to Rome the following morning, divorced. Some regard it as a threat to public morality that a marriage, however long its duration, may be broken so easily, without any form of ceremony or legal document. But such is the ancient freedom, and at least on this occasion the desire to end the partnership was mutual. Naturally I was not present for their private talk. Cicero said it was amicable: “We had been apart too much; amid the vast upheaval of public events our old shared private interests were gone.” It was agreed that Terentia would live in the house in Rome until she moved into a property of her own. In the meantime, Cicero would remain in Tusculum. Marcus chose to go back to the city with his mother; Tullia—whose faithless husband, Dolabella, was about to sail to Africa with Caesar to fight Cato—stayed with her father.

  If one of the miseries of being human is that happiness can be snatched away at any moment, one of the joys is that it may be restored equally unexpectedly. Cicero had long relished the tranquillity and clear air of his house in the Frascati hills; now he could enjoy it uninterrupted, and in the company of his beloved daughter. As it was to become his principal residence from now on, I shall describe the place in more detail. There was an upper gymnasium that led to his library and which he called the Lyceum in honour of Aristotle: this was where he walked in the mornings, composed his letters and talked with his visitors, and where in the old days he had practised his speeches. From here one could see the pale undulation of the seven hills of Rome, fifteen miles in the distance. But because what went on there was now entirely beyond his control, he no longer had to fret about it and was free to concentrate on his books—in that sense paradoxically dictatorship had liberated him. Below this terrace was a garden with shady walks like Plato’s, in whose memory he called it his Academy. Both these areas, Lyceum and Academy, were adorned with beautiful Greek statues in marble and bronze, of which Cicero’s favourite was the Hermathena, a Janus-like bust of Hermes and Athena staring in opposite directions, given to him by Atticus. From the various fountains came the soft music of trickling water, and that combined with the birdsong and the scent of the flowers created an atmosphere of Elysian tranquillity. Otherwise the hillside was quiet because most of the senatorial owners of the neighbouring villas were either fled or dead.

  It was here that Cicero lived with Tullia for the whole of the next year, apart from occasional excursions to Rome. Afterwards he regarded this interlude as the most contented period of his life, as well as his most creative, for he made good on his undertaking to Caesar to confine his activity to writing. And such was the force of his energy, no longer dispersed into the law and politics but channelled solely into literary creation, that he produced in one year as many books on philosophy and rhetoric as most scholars might in a lifetime, turning them out one after another without pause. His objective was to put into Latin a summary of all the main arguments of Greek philosophy. His method of composition was extremely rapid. He would rise with the dawn and go straight to his library, where he would consult whatever texts he needed and scrawl notes—he had poor handwriting: I was one of the few who could decipher it—and then when I joined him an hour or two later he would stroll around the Lyceum dictating. Often he would leave me to look up quotations, or even to write whole passages according to the scheme he had laid out; usually he did not bother to correct them, as I had learned very well how to imitate his style.

  The first work he completed that year was a history of oratory, which he named Brutus after Marcus Junius Brutus and dedicated to him. He had not seen his young friend since their tents stood side by side in the army camp at Dyrrachium. Even to choose such a subject as oratory was provocative, given that the art was no longer much valued in a country where the elections, the Senate and the law courts were under the control of the Dictator:

  I have reason to grieve that I entered on the road of life so late that the night which has fallen upon the republic has overtaken me before my journey was ended. But I grieve more deeply when I look on you, Brutus, whose youthful career, faring in triumph amidst the general applause, has been thwarted by the onset of a malign fortune.

  A malign fortune…I was surprised at the risk Cicero was willing to run in publishing such passages, especially considering that Brutus was now an important member of Caesar’s administration. Having pardoned him after Pharsalus, the Dictator had recently appointed him governor of Nearer Gaul, even though Brutus had never been praetor let alone consul. People said it was because he was the son of Caesar’s old mistress Servilia, and that the promotion was meant as a favour to her, but Cicero dismissed such talk: “Caesar never does anything out of sentiment. He has given him the job in part no doubt because he is talented, but mostly because he is Cato’s nephew and this is a good way for Caesar to divide his enemies.”

  Brutus, who along with a certain lofty idealism also had a good share of his uncle’s perversity and stiffness, did not like the work named in his honour, nor a companion volume, Orator, which Cicero wrote not long afterwards and also dedicated to him. He sent a letter from Gaul to say that Cicero’s speaking style had been fine in its day but was too high-flown both for good taste and for the modern age—too full of tricks and jokes and funny voices: what was needed was absolute flat, emotionless sincerity. I considered it typical of Brutus’s conceit that he should presume to lecture the greatest orator of the age on how to speak in public, but Cicero always respected Brutus for his honesty and refused to take offence.

  These were oddly happy, I would almost say carefree, days. The old Lucullus property next door, which had long stood empty, was sold, and the new occupant turned out to be Aulus Hirtius, the immaculate young aide to Caesar whom I had met in Gaul all those years ago. He was now praetor, though the law courts met so rarely he was mostly at home, where he lived with his elder sister. One morning he came round to invite Cicero to dinner. He was a noted gourmet and had grown quite plump on such delicacies as swan and peacock. He was still in his thirties, like nearly all Caesar’s inner circle, with impeccable manners and exquisite literary taste. He was said to have written many of Caesar’s Commentaries, which Cicero had gone out of his way to praise in Brutus (they are like nude figures, upright and beautiful, stripped of all ornament of style as if they had removed a garment, he dictated to me, before adding, not for publication, “yes, and as characterless as stick figures drawn in the sand by an infant”). Cicero saw no reason not to accept Hirtius’s hospitality. He went round that evening accompanied by Tullia, and so began an unlikely country friendship; often I was invited too.

  One day Cicero asked if he could give Hirtius anything in return for all these splendid dinners he was enjoying, and Hirtius replied yes, as a matter of fact, he could: that Caesar had urged him, if he ever got the chance, to study philosophy and rhetoric “at the feet of the Master” and that he would appreciate some instruction. Cicero agreed and started to give Hirtius lessons in declamation, similar to those he had received as a young man from Apollonius Molon. The lessons took place in the Academy beside the water clock, where Cicero taught him how to memorise a speech, to breathe, project his voice and use his hands and arms to make gestures that would better convey his meaning. Hirtius boasted about his new skills to his friend Gaius Vibius Pansa, another young officer from Caesar’s Gallic staff, who was scheduled to replace Brutus as governor of Nearer Gaul at the end of the year. As a result, Pansa too became a regular visitor to Cicero’s villa that year and he also learned how to speak better in public.

  A third pupil in this informal school was Cassius Longinus, the battle-hardened survivor of Crassus’s expedition to Parthia and the former ruler of Syria, whom Cicero had last seen at the war conference on the island of Corcyra. Like Brutus, to whose sister he was married, he had surrendered to Caesar and been pardoned; now he was impatiently awaiting a senior appointment. I always found him hard company, taciturn and ambitious, and Cicero didn’t much care for his philosophy either, which was extreme Epicureanism: he picked
at his food, never touched wine and exercised fanatically. He once confided to Cicero that the greatest regret of his life was accepting his pardon from Caesar: that it ate away at his soul from the start and that six months after his surrender he attempted to kill Caesar when the Dictator was returning from Egypt after the death of Pompey. He would have succeeded, too, if only Caesar had moored for the night on the same side of the Cydnus river as Cassius’s triremes; instead he had unexpectedly chosen the opposite bank, and by then it was too late at night and he was too far away for Cassius to reach him. Even Cicero, who was not easily shocked, was alarmed by his indiscretion and advised him not to repeat it, and certainly not to do so under his roof in case Hirtius and Pansa got to hear of it.

  Finally I must mention a fourth visitor, and he in many ways was the least likely of the lot, for this was Dolabella, Tullia’s errant husband. She believed he was in Africa, campaigning with Caesar against Cato and Scipio, but at the beginning of spring Hirtius received a report that the campaign was finished and that Caesar had just won a great victory. Hirtius cut short his lesson and hastened back to Rome, and a few days later, first thing in the morning, a messenger brought Cicero a letter:

  From Dolabella to his dear father-in-law, Cicero.

  I have the honour to inform you that Caesar has beaten the enemy and that Cato is dead by his own hand. I arrived in Rome this morning to give a report to the Senate. I called at my house and was told that Tullia is with you. May I have your permission to come out to Tusculum and see the two people who are dearest to me in the world?

  “Shock after shock after shock,” observed Cicero. “The republic beaten, Cato dead and now my son-in-law asks to see his wife.” He stared bleakly over the countryside towards the distant hills of Rome, blue in the early spring light. “The world will not be the same place without Cato in it.”

  He sent a slave to fetch Tullia, and when she came, he showed her the letter. She had spoken so often of Dolabella’s cruelty towards her that I assumed, as did Cicero, that she would insist she didn’t want to see him. Instead she said it was up to her father and that she didn’t much care either way.

  Cicero said, “Well, if that is really how you feel, then perhaps I shall let him come—if only so that I can tell him what I think of the way he’s treated you.”

  Tullia said quickly, “No, Father, I beg you, please don’t do that. He’s too proud to submit to a scolding, and besides, I have only myself to blame—everyone warned me what he was like before I married him.”

  Cicero was uncertain what to do, but in the end, his desire to hear at first hand what had happened to Cato overcame his distaste at having such a scoundrel under his roof—a scoundrel not just as a husband, incidentally, but as a rabble-rousing politician in the mould of Catilina and Clodius, who favoured the cancellation of all debts. He asked me if I would go to Rome at once with an invitation for Dolabella. Just before I left, Tullia took me aside and asked if she could have her husband’s letter. Naturally I gave it to her; only afterwards did I discover she had none of her own and wanted it as a keepsake.

  By midday I was in Rome—a full five years after I had last set foot in the city. In the fervid dreams of my exile I had pictured wide streets, and fine temples and porticoes clothed in marble and gold, all filled with elegant, cultured citizens. I found instead filth, smoke, rutted muddy roads much narrower than I remembered them, unrepaired buildings and limbless, disfigured veterans begging in the Forum. The Senate building was still a blackened shell. The places in front of the temples where the law courts used to meet were deserted. I was amazed at the general emptiness. When a census was taken later that year, the population was found to be less than half what it had been before the civil war.

  I thought I might find Dolabella attending the Senate, but no one seemed to know where it was or even if it was in session these days. In the end I went to the address on the Palatine that Tullia had given me, which was where she said she had last lived with her husband, and there I found Dolabella in the company of an elegant, expensively dressed woman who I later discovered was Metella, daughter of Clodia. She behaved as if she was the mistress of the house, ordering refreshment for me and a chair to be brought, and I saw at a glance the hopelessness of Tullia’s situation.

  As for Dolabella, he was striking for three attributes: the fierce handsomeness of his features, the obvious strength of his physique, and the shortness of his stature. (Cicero once joked, “Who has tied my son-in-law to that sword?”) This pocket Adonis, for whom I had long tended an intense dislike because of the way he treated Tullia, even though I had never met him, read Cicero’s invitation and declared that he would return with me immediately. He said, “My father-in-law writes here that this message is brought to me by his trusted friend Tiro. Would that be the Tiro who created the famous shorthand system? Then I am delighted to meet you! My wife has always talked of you most fondly, as a kind of second father to her. May I shake your hand?” And such was the charm of the rogue that I felt my hostility immediately begin to wilt.

  He asked Metella to send his slaves after him with his luggage, and then joined me in the carriage for the journey to Tusculum. Most of the way he slept. By the time we reached the villa, the slaves were preparing to serve dinner, and Cicero ordered an extra place to be set. Dolabella made straight for Tullia’s couch and reclined with his head in her lap. After a while I noticed she began to stroke his hair.

  It was a fair spring evening with the nightingales calling to one another, and the incongruity between the charm of the setting and the horror of the story Dolabella unfolded made it all the more unsettling. First there was the battle itself, named Thapsus, at which Scipio had commanded the republican force of seventy thousand men in alliance with King Juba of the Numidians. They had used a shock force of elephant cavalry to try to break Caesar’s line, but volleys of arrows and flaming missiles from the ballistae had caused the wretched beasts to panic, turn and trample their own infantry. Thereafter it was the same story as at Pharsalus: the republican formations had broken on the iron discipline of Caesar’s legionaries, only this time Caesar had decreed there would be no prisoners taken: all ten thousand who surrendered were massacred.

  “And Cato?” asked Cicero.

  “Cato was not present at the battle but was three days’ journey away, commanding the garrison at Utica. Caesar went there straight away. I rode with him at the head of the army. He wanted very much to capture Cato alive so that he could pardon him.”

  “A wasted mission, I could have told you that: Cato would never have accepted a pardon from Caesar.”

  “Caesar was sure he would. But you are right, as always: Cato killed himself the night before we arrived.”

  “How did he do it?”

  Dolabella pulled a face. “I’ll tell you if you really want to know, but it’s not a fit subject for a woman’s ears.”

  Tullia said firmly, “I’m quite strong enough, thank you.”

  “Even so, I think it would be better if you withdrew.”

  “I shall certainly do no such thing!”

  “And what does your father say about that?”

  “Tullia is stronger than she looks,” said Cicero, adding pointedly, “She has had to be.”

  “Well, you asked for it. According to Cato’s slaves, when he learned that Caesar would arrive the next day, Cato bathed and dined, discussed Plato with his companions, and retired to his room. Then when he was alone he took his sword and slashed himself just here.” Dolabella reached up and drew a finger under Tullia’s breastbone. “All his guts spilled out.”

  Cicero, squeamish as ever, winced, but Tullia said, “That’s not so bad.”

  “Ah,” said Dolabella, “but that’s not the end of the story. He failed to make the wound fatal and the sword slipped out of his bloodied hand. His attendants heard his groans and rushed in. They summoned a doctor. The doctor arrived and pushed his intestines back in to the cavity and sewed up the wound. I might add that Cato was entir
ely conscious throughout. He promised he would not make another attempt, and his staff believed him, although as a precaution they took his sword away. As soon as they had gone, he tore the wound open with his fingers and dragged his intestines out again. That killed him.”

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  The death of Cato had a powerful effect on Cicero. As the lurid details became more widely known, there were those who said it was proof that Cato was insane; certainly this was Hirtius’s view. Cicero disagreed. “He could have had an easier death. He could have thrown himself from a building, or opened his veins in a warm bath, or taken poison. Instead he chose that particular method—exposing his entrails like a human sacrifice—to demonstrate the strength of his will and his contempt for Caesar. In philosophical terms it was a good death: the death of a man who feared nothing. Indeed I would go so far as to say he died happy. Neither Caesar, nor any man, nor anything in the world could touch him.”

  The effect on Brutus and Cassius—both of whom were related to Cato, the one by blood and the other by marriage—was if anything even stronger. Brutus wrote from Gaul to ask if Cicero would compose a eulogy of his uncle. His letter arrived at the same time as Cicero learned that he had been named in Cato’s will as one of the guardians of his son. Like the others who had accepted Caesar’s pardon, Cicero found the suicide of Cato shaming. So he ignored the risk of offending the Dictator, complied with Brutus’s request, and dictated a short work, Cato, in little more than a week.

  Sinewy in thought and person; indifferent to what men said of him; scornful of glory, titles and decorations, and even more of those who sought them; defender of laws and freedoms; vigilant in the public interest; contemptuous of tyrants, their vulgarities and presumptions; stubborn, infuriating, harsh, dogmatic; a dreamer, a fanatic, a mystic, a soldier; willing at the last to tear the very organs from his stomach rather than submit to a conqueror—only the Roman Republic could have bred such a man as Cato, and only in the Roman Republic did such a man as Cato desire to live.