The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March

by Thornton Wilder

  My further reasons for refusing this office are private to myself. With each succeeding year I feel myself more and more drawn to the study of philosophy. When I have served you and the State for a time as Praetor of the City I shall call upon you to release me in order that I may devote myself exclusively to such studies. In them I hope to leave behind me a monument not unworthy of our Roman spirit and of your good opinion.

  LIX

  Caesar to Porcia, wife of M. Junius Brutus, in Rome.

  [August 18.]

  I cannot deny myself the pleasure of telling you that some days ago I recalled your husband to this City. It was not without regret, Madam, that I recalled him, for those who love Rome could well wish him to remain forever in Hither Gaul, continuing the notable services that he is there rendering Her. Permit me to repeat to you the words which I have recently written to him:

  ‘By the immortal Gods, I would that from all the provinces I heard news of such justice, such tireless concern for all her subjects, and such energy in the execution of her laws.’

  Allow me to say that there is nothing which touches your house which does not affect me also. No differences of opinion have shaken the profound respect which I bear to those most closely associated with you. [Porcia was the daughter of the Younger Cato.] The word has reached me that you are awaiting the birth of a child. Not you alone, Madam, but all Rome awaits the child of so noble a heritage. I rejoice to think that the child’s father will be present in that auspicious hour.

  LIX-A

  Porcia to Caesar.

  [August 19.]

  Porcia, wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, sends many thanks to Caius Julius Caesar, Dictator, for the kindness of his letter and for his part in the most welcome news which it contains.

  LIX-B

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

  [About August 21.]

  947. No man is free of envy. I harbour three envious impulses, if that name can be given to three subjects of admiring meditation. I envy you your soul, Catullus his song, and Brutus his new wife. Of the first two I have spoken to you at some length, though not for the last time.

  The third is not a new arrival to my thoughts. Even while she was the wife of my vainglorious and incompetent friend [M . Calpurnius] Bibulus I had remarked her. How extraordinarily silence becomes a woman, not a silence which is an absence and vacancy – though that is uncommon enough – but a silence which is all attention. Such graced my Cornelia whom I called ‘my speaking silence’; and such my Julia, long silent and silent even in my dreams; such Cato’s Porcia.

  And yet when they were moved to speak, what eloquence or wit could rival it? They could speak of the smallest things in the ordering of the household and Cicero in full Senate could not so enthrall the ears. My envious meditations have instructed me why. The trivial is only unendurable from the lips of those who put an importance upon it. Yet our lives are immersed in the trivial; the significant comes to us enwrapped in multitudinous details of the trivial; the trivial has this dignity that it exists and is omnipresent. By their very nature women are the custodians of an immense amount of such consequential insignificance. To a man the rearing of children appears to be a servitude more harassing than the rearing of animals and more exasperating than bivouacking among the gnats of the Egyptian desert. A silent woman is one who has distinguished in her mind the detail which must fly to oblivion and the detail which merits a second attention.

  Envy of another man’s wife is not generally thought to have this pacific character; but such has been mine. While Bibulus was alive, I was often in the house and saw and envied him his return in the evening to that judicious tranquility. When Bibulus died I took to long thoughts, but a move seemed out of the question. Long thoughts had Brutus also, no doubt; he was much censured for divorcing Claudia [daughter of Appius Claudius, a distant cousin of Clodia] after so long a married life; but I could understand it and all Rome is aware of a happiness that even the grimmest stoic must envy, and even the watchful dictator condone. [The marriage reinforced the only party of opposition among the aristocrats which could be said to have the wide support of popular opinion. Brutus married his cousin, his mother Servilia being the sister of Porcia’s father, the younger Cato; Cassius and Lepidus were married to half-sisters of Brutus, daughters of Servilia by her earlier marriage to the Consul Silenus; both were women of extremely bad reputation.] Is she on a par with your mother and mine and with my aunt? – I do not know. It may be that her virtues have that inflexibility that mars those of her husband and her father, joyless men. One cannot but deplore an austerity which came into being through revulsion against a flagrant environment; it is not slow to adopt censoriousness and complacency. I take some pleasure in remembering that my young friend Brutus was not always so marble a philosopher. He languished for a time beside the Incomparable [Cytheris the actress] and he made his fortune by grinding the faces of the Cappadocians and the Cyprians; I, being Consul that year, barely saved him from a clamorous trial for extortion.

  Yes, these moralists are virtuous by revulsion, hence their rigidity. May this ‘speaking silence’ have a beneficent effect on the noble and handsome Brutus. [This is a play on words, for brutus means both brutish and ugly.]

  LX

  The Broadsides of Conspiracy.

  [The following broadside or chain letter was circulated throughout the Peninsula by the thousands during the first weeks of September 45. This first one appeared in Rome September 1.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors: Prepare to shake off the Tyranny under which our Republic groans. Our fathers died to acquire those liberties of which One Man now is robbing us. A Council of Twenty has been formed; it has taken oaths before the altars; it has received assurance from the Gods that its course is just and will succeed. Every Roman who receives this bulletin is enjoined to make five copies of it. With all secrecy, see that these copies reach the hands of five men, Romans likely to be of this opinion or to be so persuaded; they in turn are enjoined to make further copies.

  Other bulletins will follow. By degrees their measures will become more definite.

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

  The Council of Twenty

  LX-A

  Asinius Pollio to Caesar.

  [This is the conclusion of Pollio’s report to Caesar from Naples on September 18, given as our Document XIV.]

  I forward to my General the thirteen copies of the broadside which were sent to me during the last six days – three at my lodgings in Posilipo, ten here. My General will notice that five of them appear to have been written by the same hand which has, however, attempted to disguise itself. Quintus Cotta received 16; Lucius Mela, 10.

  A corresponding movement has been set in motion in these parts for the common people, that is for those who cannot read and write. Pebbles and shells are being circulated on which are written: XX/C/M/ [for Death.] My orderly has collected a number of these. He assures me that they cause more indignation than enthusiasm and provoked the circulation of other stones marked XX/M. Both inscriptions can be found scrawled on the pavements, walls, etc.

  I do not venture to submit suggestions to my General as to measures calculated to counteract this activity. I give, however, the results of a discussion on the matter held in our offices by Cotta, Mela, Annius Turbatius and myself.

  1. The movement started in Rome. Its first appearance here was fifteen days later.

  2. Three slaves were apprehended while delivering these letters. They were subjected to torture. Two declared that they had found the broadsides, addressed to us, in public places (an old woman found one on the tray of figs she was selling) and then delivered them in the hope of attaining a reward. The whole circulation depends on the custom of giving fees to the bringers of messages. The third slave said that the letter, addressed to me, had been given him for delivery with a fee by a veiled woman on the waterfront.

  3
. The initiators of this activity do not appear to be the Clodius Pulcher group, as lacking the astuteness and patience, nor the Cassius-Casca malcontents, who would think only in terms of a small group. The desire to enlist wide adherence, the relative absence of incitation to violence, together with the claims to religious approval suggest a studious and perhaps elderly group. We do not exclude the possibility of a Cicero or Cato arriving at this type of measure.

  4. It is difficult to see how a chain letter movement could transfer itself from negative to positive action. We are agreed, however, that the movement could achieve results detrimental to good government and await whatever instructions may be issued to counteract it.

  LX-B

  Second Broadside.

  [This broadside achieved even wider circulation throughout the entire Peninsula. Copies first appeared in Rome on September 17.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors: second bulletin. Every Roman who receives this bulletin is enjoined to make five copies of it and with all secrecy to see that they reach the hands of the five men to whom they forwarded the preceding one.

  Herewith is our directive:

  Beginning on the sixteenth of this month September, every Roman as far as possible will see that himself and his household will make their purchases in the city, present themselves before the Courts, and engage in all activities of public life on the even days of the month only.

  In addition, those in Rome will render themselves ostentatiously assiduous in acclaiming the appearances of the Dictator and in accompanying his train at all public appearances. In conversation they will declare themselves enthusiastically in favour of all projects which he entertains, particularly the transference of the capital to the East, a military campaign to India, and a restoration of the Kingdom.

  Our next bulletin will contain still more definite measures.

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

  The Council of Twenty

  LX-C

  The Commonplace Book of Cornelius Nepos.

  [This entry was written a f t e r Caesar’s Death.]

  Throughout the Fall of 45, the principal subjects of conversation were so-called chain letters and the visit of Cleopatra. In fact, the initiation of the chain letters was ascribed by many to the Queen of Egypt, as they were thought to have a devious oriental cast, such as would not have occurred to a Roman. The injunction to perform one’s public business on the even days of the month was watched by the public with breathless interest. At first it was noticed that a preponderance of activity was taking place on the uneven days. This gradually relaxed and the reverse became apparent.

  LXI

  Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus.

  [Enclosing a copy of the first broadsides of the conspiracy.]

  [September 8 – 20.]

  979. Someone has thought up a new way to prepare the people for an overturn of the State and for my death by assassination.

  I enclose a copy of one of these public notices. They are circulating throughout Italy by the thousands.

  Scarcely a day has passed during the last year when I have not received new detailed evidence of one or other of these conspiratorial movements. I am brought lists of names and accounts of their reunions. I intercept letters. The majority of such groups are unbelievably maladept. Their membership generally includes one who is eager to sell his information for money or favour.

  Each new conspiracy awakens in me a great interest – I was going to say ‘a happy interest,’ soon disappointed.

  In the first place, I have little doubt that, soon or late, I shall die by the hand of a tyrannicide. I have not chosen to encumber my life with the constant protection of armed guards nor my mind with the practice of vigilant anxiety. I could wish that it were the dagger of a patriot that strikes me down, but I am equally exposed to those of the madman and the envious. In the meantime, by incarceration, exile, admonition, and exposure, I have arrested such plots as have come to my notice.

  As I say, I have followed them with interest. It is always possible that among those who plan my death I shall find the man who is right in the matters where I am wrong. There are many better men in the world than I am, but I have not yet seen the man who could be a better ruler of our State. If he exists I think he would now be planning my death. Rome as I have shaped it, as I have had to shape it, is not a comfortable place for a man whose genius is the genius for ruling at the top: if I were not Caesar now, I would be Caesar’s assassin. (That thought had not occurred to me until this moment, but I see it is true; it is one of the many discoveries that come to me from the practice of writing letters to you.)

  But there is an even profounder reason why I should wish to know something about the man who slays me, even though that knowledge is mine only during the last moment of my life. This brings me back to that inquiry which, as you know, occupies me increasingly: Is there a Mind in or above the universe which is watching us?

  I am often called ‘Destiny’s favourite.’ If the Gods exist they placed me where I am. They placed every man where he is, but the man who fills my seat is among the more conspicuous of Their appointments – as, in his way, the poet Catullus is; as you are; as Pompey was. The man who slays me would perhaps afford us some light upon Their nature – Their selected instrument. But even as I write this my pen falls from my hand. I shall probably die by the dagger of a madman. The Gods hide themselves even in their choice of instrument. We are all at the mercy of a falling tile. We are left with the picture of Jupiter going about dislodging tiles which fall upon a lemonade vendor or upon Caesar. The jury that condemned Socrates to death were not august instruments; nor were the eagle and the tortoise that slew Aeschylus. It is probable that my last moment of consciousness will be filled with the last of many confirmations that the affairs of the world proceed with that senselessness with which a stream carries leaves upon its tide.

  There is another element in the eagerness with which I inquire into each new conspiracy. Would it not be a wonderful discovery to find that I am hated to the death by a man whose hatred is disinterested? It is rare enough to find a disinterested love; so far among those that hate me I have uncovered nothing beyond the promptings of envy, of self-advancing ambition, or of self-consoling destructiveness. It may be that in that last moment I may be permitted to look into the face of a man whose only thought is Rome and whose only thought is that I am the enemy of Rome.

  980 – 982. [Already given in Document VIII.]

  983. [On the weather.]

  984. [On the increasing divergence between written and spoken Latin and the decay of case endings and the subjunctive in popular speech.]

  985. [Again, on primogeniture and the inheritance of property.]

  986. [Accompanying the second broadside.]

  I enclose the second public notice of the Committee of Twenty. I have not yet learned who are the initiators of this series. It smacks of some new kind of malcontent.

  Since childhood I have been attentive to the attitude which men bear to those who have been placed over them and who are in a position to restrict their movements. What deference and loyalty masking what contempt and hatred! The deference and loyalty proceeds from a man’s gratitude that his superior relieves him of responsibility and from the terrors of weighty decision; the contempt and hatred from his resentment against the man who limits his freedom. During a part of every day and night even the mildest man is, however obscurely, the murderer of those who can command his obedience. In my youth I was often filled with consternation to discover that, waking or sleeping, I was prone to dream the death of my father, my tutors, and my governors toward whom I often bore a real, if intermittent, love. It was, therefore, with a kind of pleasure that I used to listen to the songs which my soldiers sang about their campfires; for every four songs that elevated me to the Gods there was a fifth that diminished me to idiocy, senile vice, and decay. These last they sang loudest and the woods
rang with glee at my death. I found in myself no anger, but only a little laughter and a few accelerated steps toward old age when I discovered that even Marc Antony and Dolabella had for a time joined with a group which was plotting my death; for a time the master they loved had merged with all the masters they had hated. It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

  This combination of impulses is a part of the movement of the world and is not for us to approve or disapprove, for like all the fundamental impulses it produces both good and ill. And from it I draw confirmation of my conviction that the central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and that this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.

  LXII

  Notes by Catullus, found by Caesar’s Secret Police.

  [These reached the Dictator on September 27.] [These rough drafts were on the reverse of leaves containing fragments of poetry or on slates. In both cases they had been negligently erased.]

  . . . . A Committee of Ten has been formed. . . .

  . . . . This Committee of Twenty, having taken oaths before the altars of the Gods . . .

  . . . . beginning on the twelfth of next month, September . . .

  . . . on the uneven days of the month will refrain from all . . .

  . . . . assiduous attendance at the public appearance of the Dictator . . . acclamations of profuse flattery . . .

  LXII-A

  Caesar to Catullus.

  [September 27.]

  It has been brought to my attention that certain friends of yours have initiated a series of documents designed to overturn the government of this Republic.

  I regard these measures as childish and mistaken rather than criminal. Your friends will have observed the means I have already taken to render them harmless and ridiculous. Pressure is being brought upon me, however, to inflict public punishment on their perpetrators.