The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  “Ah well, I got as far as Sicily, whereupon the southerly winds got up and kept blowing us back into harbour and I began to wonder if the gods weren’t trying to tell me something. Then, while we were stuck in Regium waiting for better weather, I heard about this extraordinary attack on Antony made by Piso. You must have heard the commotion even here. After that, letters came from Brutus and Cassius saying that Antony was definitely starting to weaken—they were to be offered provinces after all, and he had written to them saying he hoped they would soon be able to come to Rome. He has summoned the Senate for a meeting on the first of September and Brutus has sent a letter to all former consuls and praetors asking them to attend.

  “So I said to myself: am I really going to run away at this of all moments, while there’s still a chance? Will I go down in history as a coward? I tell you, Tiro, suddenly it was as if a thick mist that had enshrouded me for months had cleared and I saw my duty absolutely. I turned right around and sailed back the way I had come. As it happened, Brutus was at Velia, preparing to set sail, and he practically went down on his knees to thank me. He’s been given Crete as his province; Cassius has Cyrene.”

  I could not help pointing out that these were hardly adequate compensation for Macedonia and Syria, which was what they had been allotted.

  “Of course not,” replied Cicero, “which is why they’re resolved to ignore Antony and his wretched illegal edicts and go straight to their original provinces. After all, Brutus has followers in Macedonia, and Cassius was the hero of Syria. They will raise legions and fight for the republic against the usurper. A whole new spirit has infused us—a flame pure white and sublime.”

  “And you will go to Rome?”

  “Yes, for the meeting of the Senate in nine days’ time.”

  “Then it sounds to me as though you have the most dangerous assignment of the three.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “So what is the worst that can happen? I’ll die. Very well: I’m past sixty; I’ve run my race. And at least this will be a good death—which as you know is the supreme objective of the good life.” He leaned forwards. “Tell me: do I seem happy to you?”

  “You do,” I conceded.

  “That’s because I realised when I was stuck in Regium that finally I have conquered my fear of death. Philosophy—our work together—has accomplished that for me. Oh, I know that you and Atticus won’t believe me. You’ll think that underneath I’m still the same timid creature I always was. But it’s true.”

  “And presumably you expect me to come with you?”

  “No, not at all—the opposite! You have your farm and your literary studies. I don’t want you to expose yourself to any more risk. But our earlier parting was not what it should have been, and I couldn’t pass your gate without remedying that.” He stood and opened his arms wide. “Goodbye, my old friend. Words are inadequate to express my gratitude. I hope we meet again.”

  He clasped me to him so firmly and for so long that I could feel the strong and steady beating of his heart. Then he pulled away, and with a final wave he walked towards his carriage and his bodyguards.

  I watched him go, his familiar gestures: the straightening of his shoulders, the adjustment of the folds of his tunic, the unthinking way he offered his hand to be helped into his carriage. I glanced around at my vines and my olive trees, my goats and my chickens, my dry-stone walls, my sheep. Suddenly it seemed a small world—a very small world.

  I called after him: “Wait!”

  If Cicero had pleaded with me to return with him to Rome, I probably would have refused. It was his willingness to set off without me on the last great adventure of his life that piqued my pride and sent me chasing after him. Of course my change of heart did not surprise him. He knew me far too well. He merely nodded and told me to gather what I required for the journey, and to be quick about it: “We need to make good progress before nightfall.”

  I called my little household together in the courtyard and wished them luck with the harvest. I told them I would come back as soon as possible. They knew nothing of politics or Cicero. Their expressions were bewildered. They lined up to watch me leave. Just before the place disappeared from view, I turned to wave, but they had already returned to the fields.

  It took us eight days to reach Rome, and every mile of the journey was fraught with peril, despite the guards that had been provided for Cicero by Brutus, and always the threat was the same: Caesar’s old soldiers, who had sworn oaths to hunt down those responsible for the assassination. The fact that Cicero had known nothing of it beforehand did not concern them: he had defended it afterwards, and that was enough to render him guilty in their eyes. Our route took us across the fertile plains that had been given to Caesar’s veterans to farm, and at least twice—once when we passed through the town of Aquinum and then soon afterwards at Fregellae—we were warned of ambushes up ahead and had to halt and wait until the road was secured.

  We saw burnt-out villas, scorched fields, slaughtered livestock; even once a body hanging from a tree with a placard reading “Traitor” round its neck. Caesar’s demobbed legionaries roamed Italy in small bands as if they were back in Gaul, and we heard many stories of looting, rape and atrocities. Whenever Cicero was recognised by the ordinary citizens, they flocked to him, kissed his hands and clothes and pleaded with him to deliver them from terror. Nowhere was the common population’s devotion more evident than when we reached the gates of Rome on the day before the Senate was due to meet. His welcome was even warmer than when he returned from exile. There were so many deputations, petitions, greetings, handshakes and sacrifices of thanks to the gods that it took him nearly all day to cross the city to his house.

  In terms of reputation and renown I guess he was now the pre-eminent figure in the state. All his great rivals and contemporaries—Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Crassus, Clodius—had died violent deaths. “They are not cheering me as an individual so much as the memory of the republic,” he said to me when finally we got inside. “I don’t flatter myself—I’m merely the last left standing. And of course demonstrating in support of me is a safe way of protesting against Antony. I wonder what he makes of today’s outpouring. He must want to crush me.”

  One by one the leaders of the opposition to Antony in the Senate trooped up the slope to pay their respects. There were not many but I must mention two in particular. The first was P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus, the son of the old consul who had recently died aged ninety: he had been a strong supporter of Caesar and had only just returned from governing Asia—a difficult and arrogant man, he was deeply envious of Antony’s dominant position in the state. The second opponent of Antony I have already mentioned: Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father of Caesar’s widow, who had been the first to raise his voice against the new regime. He was a sallow, stooping, hairy-faced old man with very bad teeth who had been consul at the time Cicero went into exile: for years he and Cicero had hated one another, but now they both hated Antony even more, and so in politics at least that made them friends. There were others present, but this was the pair who mattered most and they were of one voice in warning Cicero to stay away from the Senate the next day.

  “Antony has laid a trap for you,” said Piso. “He plans to propose a resolution tomorrow calling for fresh honours in memory of Caesar.”

  “Fresh honours!” cried Cicero. “The man is already a god. What other honours does he need?”

  “The motion will state that every public festival of thanksgiving should henceforth include a sacrifice in honour of Caesar. Antony will demand to know your opinion. The meeting will be surrounded by Caesar’s veterans. If you support the proposal, your return to public life will be destroyed before it even starts—all the crowds who cheered you today will jeer you as a turncoat. If you oppose it, you will never reach home alive.”

  “But if I refuse to attend I’ll look like a coward, and what sort of leadership is that?”

  Isauricus said, “Send word that you’re too exhausted from your
journey. You’re getting on in years. People will understand.”

  “None of us is going,” added Piso, “despite his summons. We’ll show him up as a tyrant whom no one will obey. He’ll look like a fool.”

  This was not the heroic return to public life that Cicero had planned, and he was reluctant to hide away at home. Still, he saw the wisdom of what they were saying and the following day he sent a message to Antony pleading tiredness as his excuse for not attending the session. Antony’s response was to fly into a rage. According to Servius Sulpicius, who gave Cicero a full report, in front of the Senate he threatened to send a team of workmen and soldiers round to Cicero’s house to tear down his door and drag him to the meeting. He was only deterred from such extreme action when Dolabella pointed out that Piso, Isauricus and a few others had also stayed away: he could hardly round up all of them. The debate went ahead and Antony’s proposal to honour Caesar was passed, but only under duress.

  Cicero was outraged when he heard what Antony had said. He insisted he would go to the Senate the next day and make a speech, regardless of the risk: “I haven’t returned to Rome in order to cower under my blankets!” Messages went back and forth between him and the others, and in the end they agreed to attend together, reasoning that Antony wouldn’t dare to massacre them all. The following morning, shielded by bodyguards, they walked down in a phalanx from the Palatine—Cicero, Piso, Isauricus, Servius Sulpicius and Vibius Pansa (Hirtius could not join them because he really was ill)—all the way through the cheering crowds to the Temple of Concordia on the far side of the Forum, where the Senate was due to meet. Dolabella was waiting on the steps with his curule chair. He came over to Cicero and announced that Antony was sick and that he would be presiding in his place.

  Cicero laughed. “So much illness going around at the moment—the entire state seems to be ailing! One might almost imagine that Antony shares the common characteristic of all bullies: eager to dish out punishment, unable to take it.”

  Dolabella replied coldly: “I trust you won’t say anything today that will put our friendship in jeopardy: I’ve reconciled with Antony and any attack on him I’d regard as an attack on myself. Also I’d remind you that I did give you that legateship on my staff in Syria.”

  “Yes, although actually I’d prefer the return of my dear Tullia’s dowry, if you don’t mind. And as far as Syria is concerned—well, my young friend, I should make haste to get there, or Cassius might be in Antioch before you.”

  Dolabella glared at him. “I see you have abandoned your usual affability. Very well, but be careful, old man. The game is getting rougher.”

  He stalked away. Cicero watched him go with satisfaction. “I have wanted to say that for a long time.” He was like Caesar, I thought, sending his horse to the rear before a battle: he would either win where he stood or die.

  The Temple of Concordia was the place where Cicero had convened the Senate as consul all those years before, in order to debate the punishment of the Catiline conspirators; from here he had led them to their deaths in the Carcer. I had not set foot in it since and I felt the oppressive presence of many ghosts. But Cicero seemed immune to such memories. He sat on the front bench between Piso and Isauricus and waited patiently for Dolabella to call him—which he did, as late in the proceedings as he could and with insulting offhandedness.

  Cicero started quietly, as was his way: “Before I begin to speak on public affairs, I will make a brief complaint of the wrong done to me yesterday by Antony. Why was I so bitterly denounced? What subject is so urgent that sick men should be carried to this chamber? Was Hannibal at the gates? Who ever heard of a senator being threatened with having his house attacked because he failed to appear to discuss a public thanksgiving?

  “And in any case, do you think I would have supported his proposal if I had been here? I say: if a thanksgiving is to be given to a dead man, let it be given to the elder Brutus, who delivered the state from the despotism of kings and who nearly five hundred years later has left descendants prepared to show similar virtue to achieve a similar end!”

  There was a gasp. Men’s voices are supposed to weaken as they age; but not Cicero’s on that day.

  “I am not afraid to speak out. I am not afraid of death. I am grieved that senators who have achieved the rank of consul did not support Lucius Piso in June, when he condemned all the abuses now widespread in the state. Not one single ex-consul seconded him by his voice—no, not even by a look. What is the meaning of this slavery? I say these men have fallen short of what their rank requires!”

  He put his hands on his hips and glared around him. Most senators could not meet his eye.

  “In March I accepted that the acts of Caesar should be recognised as legal, not because I agreed with them—who could do that?—but for the sake of reconciliation and public harmony. Yet any act that Antony disagrees with, such as that which limits provincial commands to two years, has been repealed, while other decrees of the Dictator have been miraculously discovered and posted after his death, so that criminals have been brought back from exile—by a dead man. Citizenship has been given to whole tribes and provinces—by a dead man. Taxes have been imposed—by a dead man.

  “I wish Mark Antony were here to explain himself—but apparently he is unwell: a privilege he did not grant me yesterday. I hear he is angry with me. Well, I will make him an offer—a fair one. If I say anything against his life and character, let him declare himself my most bitter enemy. Let him keep an armed guard if he really feels he needs it for his own protection. But don’t let that guard threaten those who express their own free opinions on behalf of the state. What can be fairer than that?”

  For the first time his words drew murmurs of agreement.

  “Gentlemen, I have already reaped the reward of my return simply by making these few remarks. Whatever happens to me, I have kept faith with my beliefs. If I can speak again here safely, I shall. If I can’t, then I shall hold myself ready in case the state should call me. I have lived long enough for years and for fame. Whatever time remains to me will not be mine, but will be devoted to the service of our commonwealth.”

  Cicero sat to a low rumble of approval and some stamping of feet. The men around him clapped him on the shoulder.

  When the session ended, Dolabella swept out with his lictors, no doubt heading straight to Antony’s house to tell him what had happened, while Cicero and I went home.

  —

  For the next two weeks the Senate did not meet and Cicero stayed barricaded in his house on the Palatine. He recruited more guards, bought a ferocious new watchdog, and fortified the villa with iron shutters and doors. Atticus lent him some scribes, and these I set to work making copies of his defiant speech to the Senate, which he sent to everyone he could think of—to Brutus in Macedonia, to Cassius en route to Syria, to Decimus in Nearer Gaul, to the two military commanders in Further Gaul, Lepidus and L. Munatius Plancus, and to many others. He called it, half seriously and half in self-mockery, his Philippic, after the famous series of orations Demosthenes had delivered in opposition to the Macedonian tyrant Philip II. A copy must have reached Antony: at any rate, he made known his intention to reply in the Senate, which he summoned to meet on the nineteenth day of September.

  There was never any question of Cicero attending in person: being unafraid of death was one thing, committing suicide another. Instead he asked if I would go and make a record of what Antony said. I agreed, reasoning that my natural anonymity would protect me.

  The moment I entered the Forum, I thanked the gods that Cicero had stayed away, for Antony had filled every corner with his private army. He had even stationed a squadron of Iturean archers on the steps of the Temple of Concordia—wild-looking tribesmen from the borders of Syria, notorious for their savagery. They watched as each senator entered the temple, occasionally fitting arrows into their bows and pretending to take aim.

  I managed to squeeze in at the back and take out my stylus and tablet just as Antony arrive
d. In addition to Pompey’s house in Rome, he had also commandeered Metellus Scipio’s estate at Tibur, and it was there that he was said to have composed his speech. He looked badly hungover as he passed me, and when he reached the dais, he leaned forward and vomited a thick stream into the aisle. This drew laughter and applause from his supporters: he was notorious for being sick in public. Behind me his slaves locked and barred the door. It was against all custom to take the Senate hostage in this manner, and clearly intended to intimidate.

  As to his harangue against Cicero, it was in essence a continuation of his vomit. He spewed forth years of swallowed bile. He gestured around the temple and reminded senators that it was in this very building that Cicero had arranged for the illegal execution of five Roman citizens, among them P. Lentulus Sura, Antony’s own stepfather, whose body Cicero had refused to return to his family for a decent burial. He accused Cicero (“this bloodstained butcher who lets others do his killing”) of having masterminded the assassination of Caesar, just as he had the murder of Clodius. He maintained that it was Cicero who had artfully poisoned the relations between Pompey and Caesar that had led to civil war. I knew the charges were all lies, but also that they would be damaging, as would the more personal accusations he made—that Cicero was a physical and moral coward, vain and boastful and above all a hypocrite, forever twisting this way and that to keep in with all factions, so that even his own brother and nephew deserted him and denounced him to Caesar. He quoted from a private letter Cicero had sent him when he was trapped in Brundisium: I shall always, without hesitation and with my whole heart, do anything that I can to accord with your wishes and interests. The temple rang with laughter. He even dragged up Cicero’s divorce from Terentia and his subsequent marriage to Publilia: “With what trembling, debauched and covetous fingers did this lofty philosopher undress his fifteen-year-old bride on her wedding night, and how feebly did he perform his husbandly duties—so much so that the poor child fled from him in horror soon afterwards and his own daughter preferred to die rather than live with the shame.”