by Jack Lindsay
Yes, it was bad enough to put up with a dictatorship at Rome, though, after all, Caesar was one of them, an aristocrat from one of the great governing families. But to be ruled by an absent despot, to be forced to bow to his nominated puppets while he fought thousands of miles away, perhaps for years — that was too much. Why couldn’t the Parthians be left alone? The man was a sham. He needed some gaudy decoy for the mob.
Caesar. A million voices hemmed him in at Rome, hating, loving, dependent. And beyond them millions more. In the well-fed municipalities men shrugged their shoulders: if he kept money cheap, other antics could be condoned. But outside Italy, throughout the provinces, except in the Roman clubs, there was a reverence in the voices that spoke the name. Was the weary world to find its saviour at last? Ah, Caesar was going to bring just government. He would destroy the pitiless tax-gatherer. He would abolish the legates and their guards that raped and looted. He would give peace at last.
Peace with heaven and earth. And the praise to Caesar.
*
A creak. Cleopatra, dozing, looked up to see her brother standing over her. He was worse than a nuisance, fifteen years old now. Was there a dagger behind his back?
“What do you want?”
“I’m your husband, aren’t I?” he asked, sulkily.
He irritated her; he was so like his elder brother who had been drowned, her first husband.
“O go away.”
He caught her wrist. “Look here. You’ve got to make me a proper king or let me go to the war with Caesar.”
“You can’t go.”
“Then I’m going back to Egypt.”
“You’re not.”
He leaned down and took her tightly in his arms. How strong he was growing. Vainly she struggled; but, satisfied with his show of strength, he dropped her on the couch, grinning.
“You didn’t know I could do as I liked with you, eh? You’d better take care. But I don’t want you. I only can’t bear you thinking I’m fooled. I’m not. I know all about you.”
“Get out.” She pointed to the door, panting.
With an insulting gesture of the thumb, “That to you and Caesar,” he strode out, whistling. She heard him whistling down the corridor, then silence, then one of her girls giggling. Decidedly he was a nuisance, a bumptious pest.
*
It was a dreadful thing to hold the fate of Caesar in one’s palm.
So thought Servilia as she sat in her house at Rome, quietly looking at the roll in her lap. A widow now for the second time, she was still as eagerly involved in politics, and had been inclined to throw her lot in with the Caesarians. It had been a great relief when her son Marcus Brutus had made his peace with Caesar after the defeat of the conservatives at Pharsalia; and though she had been afraid when he had divorced his unoffending wife and married Porcia, his cousin and daughter of the arch-conservative Cato, she had been able to smooth matters out.
Everything had been going comfortably till Cassius, her wild-eyed son-in-law, had returned a few months ago. Experienced in political embroilments, she had been able to guess quickly that something was in the air; and three weeks back, at her insistent questioning, Brutus had confessed that they were conspiring against Caesar. After she had faced the situation, she had found less to urge against his plans. After all, Caesar stood alone. He was dictator; and though the fact that his office had now been confirmed for life made it subversive of all Republican theory, the dictatorship itself was not alarming. If Caesar was slain, the constitution would automatically revert to its old conditions — as in the past days when a dictator had been chosen to deal with some definite crisis. It wasn’t as if a new constitution would have to be invented. Remove Caesar, and everything would be as before. Certainly that was very simple.
Servilia was a clever woman, and, as she surveyed the world, she saw that except for the populace (whose political views she contemned as merely irrational) Caesar had no real following, no friends, no organisation outside the scheme of the Republican State. However much people acquiesced in his rule, none of the classes that Servilia respected had anything but a devout loathing for his methods. He stood alone — and as she realised that, she felt a momentary burst of tenderness for him, a sympathetic admiration for his tremendous energy. One man, lonely amid the instruments of his will. She remembered how she had once strained beneath his kisses. How could she join in a plot to murder him?
But the emotion passed. She had learned stoicism from her son. Freedom was all in all; and in the freedom that she forecast, she saw Marcus Brutus, the sublime Liberator, as the new Caesar not a despot, of course, but the first man of the State by virtue of his selfless devotion, his service of wisdom. What had to be, had to be. Caesar had brought it all on himself; he had gone wrong ever since he left her salon in the old days; and when she thought of the haughty Egyptian queen that he had flaunted in the face of Roman society, she felt that he deserved the worst.
Cassius had stormed when he heard that Brutus had told his mother everything; but there was nothing to do save to protest and to insist no one else should know that there were women in the plot. For Porcia too had been told; but Cassius objected less to this. Porcia, as Cato’s daughter, was in a different category from all other women, and he knew she could be relied on to rouse her husband if he desponded.
Now Servilia sat trying to read the book that Cicero had written in praise of Cato, the stalwart, who had stabbed himself in the belly at Utica before the army that ended the exploitation of the Empire by a degenerate nobility and a group of parasitic financiers. Not that Cato saw his end in those terms; he saw only that the last hope of recreating a staunch incorruptible governing aristocracy was gone, and he died, determined not to add the renown of sparing Cato to the clemency of Caesar. Now there was a temple at Rome to Caesar’s Clemency.
Servilia shuddered. Cato was dead; Cato her brother. Had the Republic really died with him — all that mattered of it, the strenuous self-dedication of the free Roman? Had that kind of freedom died, producing a new freedom, a different choice? Was the choice now between the capitalist exploiter and Caesar the champion of strong-government?
But she drove such thoughts out of her mind. They were treason to her Marcus, the son of her body, who would restore the old virtues. Yet it was terrifying that Marcus had come from this body of hers, the body that Caesar had possessed. From the womb of Caesar’s possession had come the seed of his destruction. She felt that the conflict was going on within her flesh, like the fangs of a cancer, a seething venom in her blood. Shuddering, she clasped her knees, crumpling the roll of Cato’s praise. It was dreadful to know what she knew.
Why didn’t they do it quickly? Tomorrow Caesar was to die. How could one live until tomorrow?
*
Marcus Brutus looked very ill as he entered the room, and Servilia moved towards him solicitously. But he waved her away. His square, wooden face seemed dull and patchy, and his eyes were bloodshot; but he held himself with his usual rigorous courtesy. A little behind him came Porcia, tall, coldly beautiful, her eyes gleaming with an intense happiness under her broad, open brow. Servilia thought jealously, “Never have I seen her so full of life or him so sickly; she is drawing the strength out of him.” But she controlled herself and smiled on them both, and neither of them noticed her smile.
“Gaius is not here yet?” said Brutus, referring to Cassius.
“No,” said Servilia. “I had a message. Tertulla isn’t well.”
“What have women or family affairs to do with such a moment as this?” said Brutus, morosely, with a touch of satisfaction. “I’m surprised at him.”
“Your own sister!” said Servilia, “and you know she’s coming near her time.”
Brutus made a confused gesture of irritation, and Servilia waited for Porcia to speak. But Porcia, complete in her world of burning thoughts, had not listened. Servilia was forced to continue. “He’ll be here later.” She felt stronger as she looked at her disordered son. How she pi
tied him for the struggle that she saw written in his face. How noble he was — and Porcia seemed to think he was doing it all for her sake!
Brutus rose and strode about the room with hands to his temples.
“Marcus,” said Porcia in a tender, inexpressive voice, almost a whisper; and Servilia started. It was as if a statue had spoken — or was the suspense destroying her nerves as well as her son’s?
Brutus stopped. Obedient to Porcia’s glance, he crossed the room and sat beside her on the couch. She laid her hand across his brow, and Servilia was once more sharply jealous. That was wrong, she told herself; but it was Porcia’s look of exalted aloofness she disliked, not the gesture; she was glad to see Marcus relieved. Relieved he was. He lay back on some cushions that Porcia unostentatiously gathered; and the drawn suffering gradually went from his face. Porcia signed with gentle authority to Servilia not to talk, and Brutus lay back, breathing equably.
An eye for an eye. That was the law. Caesar had enslaved. Caesar had fought the State. Caesar must die. It was all very simple. Why did the mind make it so difficult then, inventing scruple and doubt? It had been easy for the men of old to be great in action and renunciation; for their goal was simple. How could he, Brutus, be wrong when he was not considering his own life in the slightest? Had not Cato died without a qualm? Cato had acted greatly, for he had been simple. He had given his life greatly, for it had been a simple thing for him to give his life. Brutus had surrendered to Caesar, not because he clung to life more than Cato, but because life and death were not simple for him.
He looked up and found Servilia watching him. That angered him, though he loved his mother. He wasn’t sick. He was tired, tired of waiting. Without knowing how the subject had entered his head, he began talking about some money that he had loaned to the town of Salamis in Cyprus.
“Scaptius writes to say that he still can’t make them pay. They keep on saying the rate is illegal. How can that be when I got a special dispensation for the 48 per cent from the Senate — two dispensations to cover the two points of legality? They put their hand to the bond. Forty-eight per cent was 48 per cent when they signed, exactly as it’s 48 per cent now when they have to pay. There’s no law greater than the law that a man must keep to his bond. It’s the essence of the social pact. If I sold myself for a loan at 48 per cent and then found that the rate was heavy, I wouldn’t complain. I might be enraged at myself, but I’d look at my signature and take the consequences without complaint. I hate weak people. I hate all those who fail their bond. It’s the weak that destroy the earth.”
Servilia did not know what to make of this speech. Marcus seemed to be defending himself, he spoke so aggressively. But who could criticise him, such a just man, a patriot immoveable from his course? It must be his frayed nerves. “Such a short while now we have to wait,” she said. But Brutus would not change the subject.
“Is it my fault that Salamis has suffered because of the obstinacy of the council? I believe that two of the councillors starved themselves to death — years ago — when Scaptius had shut them up in the Senate, to help them decide. Mere obstinacy. I hate obstinacy. It’s the mark of a weak intelligence. Did they mean to pay me the 48 per cent when they signed the bond, or did they not? What’s their plea-in-law? If they meant to pay it, they can’t refuse afterwards. If they didn’t mean it, they were common cheats. But they’ve kept on making a grievance about the two dead senators. Cicero, the old fool, encouraged them when he was in the province; he wanted to gain a bit of popularity at my expense. And things have been in such a disordered condition ever since, that I haven’t been able to take measures. I hear that they’re petitioning Caesar.”
“But you know he never goes against you, dear,” said Servilia, forgetting all about the conspiracy in her distressed desire to calm him. “He’ll make them pay you.”
There was a terrible pause. Servilia realised what she said. Caesar was to die on the morrow. Again the nausea of pity for the world, for Caesar, and for herself, blotted out all else. Why should he die? He was keen to honour Brutus; and he had been so charming once — how many years ago? Ten, was it, fifteen, no, twenty. How time flew. They would strike him down, the man that she had held between her breasts; and she was abetting them. For a mad moment she felt that she must warn him; then the rebellion passed, and she saw only her son and the fate that linked them all in this dreadful act of justice.
Brutus felt his heart beat so strongly that it sounded like a gong of danger in his head. But it wasn’t the man Caesar that he meant to kill; it was the spirit of lawlessness and unrest, the crime of personal ambition. It had to be done, but why was he chosen to strike? Why was he of Iunian line, fated to be the destroyer of tyrants? How hard he had fought against the arguments of Cassius, and yet he had known from the first moment, instantly, after hearing that cool voice declare for death, that the deed must be done. It was the only hope for the world — his world. He hated it, but it was fate: not the vulgar fate locked up in infrangible mathematics of the stars, but the fate of human will and corruption, of wrong and right, fiery in the blood. Caesar must die.
He looked up, and for an unaccountable reason found himself thinking resentfully that his mother should never have married a second time. She should have remained faithful to the memory of her first husband, the father of Marcus. Life would have been clearer somehow, if she had. Turning, he looked at Porcia, and all his doubts fled. Always in his wife he saw only the daughter of Cato; her proud calm face hung like a carven moon on the night of his despair. How dare people say he had married her for her money — the estate that Cato had gained by re-marrying the woman whom he had divorced for the benefit of the rich old Hortensius.
Porcia gazed at the pair before her and saw nothing of their ailing hearts. She was ecstasiated by the part she was playing. She knew only that she was the blood of Cato, and had not realised at all what was happening.
The conspiracy to her was a dramatic echo of the lives of the dead heroes that she had been taught to revere. It had not merely lighted the present with a torch from the heroic past; it had dazzled out the present altogether, and she saw only the brighter lineaments, the glorious shapes, of life transfigured into deity. She had stabbed herself in the thigh to show Brutus how easy fortitude was, and she had felt no pain. She had called him into the room and lifted the sheet to show him her naked body with the blood spurting from her thigh as she drew out the knife. He had almost swooned, and she had been so sorry for him. Things like that did not hurt. She had fallen into a fever, and her head was still burning; but that she did not know. She knew only the transfiguration. She heard the voices and watched the people moving, and she gazed adoringly on Brutus who was the cause of the sights and the sounds. It was his hand that held the knife.
As Brutus looked at her, he felt strength flowing back. His chest expended and he took a deep breath. He sat up straight and marvelled at the peace that he felt in his hands. He would strike hard and clean. He would cut the gangrene from the flesh of the world. Caesar’s end would be a warning for all time. The man had great talents; all the more reason why he should be punished for prostituting them. Brutus placed his hand on Porcia’s lap and felt beneath the stola the bandages round her thigh. “Ah, noble one.” She flushed, and put her hand over his.
Steps were heard, and Cassius entered unannounced. “Tertulla’s in the next room,” he said, unable to curb altogether his annoyance at seeing Brutus with his two female confidantes. It still puzzled him whether Brutus had heard of Servilia’s old affair with Caesar; everyone had surmised it; and yet how could Brutus have confessed the conspiracy if he guessed? That was the point that had astounded Cassius, and still disturbed him. He scrutinised the faces as he went on, addressing Servilia, “I’d be most obliged if you and Porcia would join Tertulla. She’s not at all well, but I brought her along in the litter. It made everything look so much more like a family-gathering. And, don’t forget, Decimus will be here later. That had to be risked, but he mustn’
t find out that you both know about things.”
“Of course we’ll go and comfort poor Tertulla,” said Servilia, rising and taking Porcia’s hand. Porcia did not want to go, but had no choice.
“Don’t forget to say nothing about it all to her,” said Cassius. “She has no idea — naturally,” he added, unable to omit the touch of malice.
“Of course. When she’s so sick you wouldn’t worry her,” replied Servilia, challengingly, determined to shield Brutus and misunderstand what Cassius had said.
But Cassius had no wish to indulge in a verbal exchange with his mother-in-law. He inclined his lean, dark, eager face, and stood aside, waiting till the women were outside. Then his manner changed. He dropped his air of disdainful tension, tossed his dark hair, and with brightened eyes walked up and down the room almost gaily.
“Nothing can go wrong now,” he said in his quick, decisive voice, which habitually carried a note of mockery for a slower-witted world. “We’ve passed the danger-point.”
“I’ll say that,” answered Brutus, “when the man lies dead. Come away from that door. There might be a slave listening.”
“I’ve been the cautious one till now.” Cassius came up and rested on the couch beside Brutus. “But I feel that we can’t fail now. I feel that I could go out and shout in the streets and yet be safe.”
“Well, don’t put your feelings to the test,” snapped Brutus.
Cassius regarded his friend and wondered what had first driven him to broach the project. He loved Brutus and yet despised him. Had his act been a wish to surprise Brutus out of that bookish calm of his, to teach him that the world wasn’t a library, to put to the test those aphorisms that he uttered with such impeccable firmness? Something in Brutus had stirred a daredevil contempt in Cassius. Cassius could not resist forcing him through the trial, and yet he loved him all the while; and after he had brought out the project in jesting bitterness, he found that he had uttered his own deepest emotion and wish. Hate. A generous hate. How dare Caesar stand on the top of things and portion life out like a schoolmaster pointing to the world mapped on a wall? Cassius recalled his own hard career as a soldier, fighting back the Parthians, keeping clear the Roman frontiers of the east, without proper equipment or soldiers, without praise or recognition. Yet it had been under the Republic that that had happened, and he had turned his sense of frustration upon Caesar. Why not? The man represented supremely the swollen careerism that had destroyed all the good elements of the Republic. Prick him, and there was a chance to get back to the rule of law. Cassius wanted only to give the State his best; and he had given it during those hard years in Syria. Brutus had never known what real fighting was.