Dictator:

by Robert Harris

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Robert Harris

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Part Two

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Dramatis Personae

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  There was a time when Cicero held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero’s life is in ruins. Exiled, separated from his wife and children, his possessions confiscated, his life constantly in danger, Cicero is tormented by the knowledge that he has sacrificed power for the sake of his principles. His comeback requires wit, skill and courage – and for a brief and glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static and no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others. Riveting and tumultuous, Dictator encompasses some of the most epic events in human history yet is also an intimate portrait of a brilliant, flawed, frequently fearful yet ultimately brave man – a hero for his time and for ours. This is an unforgettable tour de force from a master storyteller.

  About the Author

  Robert Harris is the author of nine bestselling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost, Lustrum, The Fear Index and An Officer and A Spy which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Several of his books have been filmed, including The Ghost, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

  Also by Robert Harris

  FICTION

  Fatherland

  Enigma

  Archangel

  Pompeii

  Imperium

  The Ghost

  Lustrum

  The Fear Index

  An Officer and a Spy

  NON-FICTION

  Good and Faithful Servant: The Unauthorized Biography of Bernard Ingham

  Selling Hitler

  The Making of Neil Kinnock

  Gotcha: Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis

  A Higher Form of Killing (with Jeremy Paxman)

  To Holly

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dictator tells the story of the final fifteen years in the life of the Roman statesman Cicero, imagined in the form of a biography written by his secretary, Tiro.

  That there was such a man as Tiro and that he wrote such a book are well-attested historical facts. Born a slave on the family estate, he was three years younger than his master but long outlived him, surviving, according to Saint Jerome, until he reached his hundredth year.

  ‘Your services to me are beyond count,’ Cicero wrote to him in 50 BC, ‘in my home and out of it, in Rome and abroad, in private affairs and public, in my studies and literary work …’ Tiro was the first man to record a speech in the senate verbatim, and his shorthand system, known as Notae Tironianae, was still in use in the Church in the sixth century; indeed some traces of it (the symbol ‘&’, the abbreviations etc, NB, i.e., e.g.) survive to this day. He also wrote several treatises on the development of Latin. His multi-volume life of Cicero is referred to as a source by the first-century historian Asconius Pedianus; Plutarch cites it twice. But, like the rest of Tiro’s literary output, the book disappeared amid the collapse of the Roman Empire.

  What must it have been like, one wonders? Cicero’s life was extraordinary, even by the hectic standards of the age. From relatively lowly origins compared to his aristocratic rivals, and despite his lack of interest in military matters, deploying his skill as an orator and the brilliance of his intellect he rose at meteoric speed through the Roman political system, until, against all the odds, he finally was elected consul at the youngest-permitted age of forty-two.

  There followed a crisis-stricken year in office – 63 BC – during which he was obliged to deal with a conspiracy to overthrow the republic led by Sergius Catilina. To suppress the revolt, the Senate, under Cicero’s presidency, ordered the execution of five prominent citizens – an episode that haunted his career ever afterwards.

  When subsequently the three most powerful men in Rome – Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great and Marcus Crassus – joined forces in a so-called triumvirate to dominate the state, Cicero decided to oppose them. Caesar in retaliation, using his powers as chief priest, unleashed the ambitious aristocratic demagogue, Clodius – an old enemy of Cicero’s – to destroy him. By allowing Clodius to renounce his patrician status and become a plebeian, Caesar opened the way for his election as tribune. Tribunes had the power to haul citizens before the people, to harass and persecute them. Cicero swiftly decided he had no choice but to flee Rome. It is at this desperate point in his fortunes that Dictator begins.

  My aim has been to describe, as accurately as I can within the conventions of fiction, the end of the Roman Republic as it might have been experienced by Cicero and Tiro. Wherever possible, the letters and speeches and descriptions of events have been drawn from the original sources.

  As Dictator encompasses what was arguably – at least until the convulsions of 1933–45 – the most tumultuous era in human history, a glossary and a cast of characters have been provided at the back of the book to assist the reader in navigating Cicero’s sprawling and collapsing world.

  Robert Harris

  Kintbury, 8 June 2015

  ‘The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that “black hole” was infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions – nothing but the fixity of a pensive gaze. Just when the gods had ceased to be and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.’

  Gustave Flaubert, letter to Mme Roger des Genettes, 1861

  ‘Alive, Cicero enhanced life. So can his letters do, if only for a student here and there, taking time away from belittling despairs to live among Virgil’s Togaed People, desperate masters of a larger world.’

  D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero, 1971

  PART ONE

  EXILE

  58 BC–47 BC

  Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur?

  To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

  Cicero, Orator, 46 BC

  I

  I REMEMBER THE cries of Caesar’s war-horns chasing us over the darkened fields of Latium – their yearning, keening howls, like animals on heat – and how when they stopped there was only the slither of our shoes on the icy road and the urgent panting of our breath.

  It was not enough for the immortal gods that Cicero
should be spat at and reviled by his fellow citizens; not enough that in the middle of the night he be driven from the hearths and altars of his family and ancestors; not enough even that as we fled from Rome on foot he should look back and see his house in flames. To all these torments they deemed it necessary to add one further refinement: that he should be forced to hear his enemy’s army striking camp on the Field of Mars.

  Even though he was the oldest of our party Cicero kept up the same fast pace as the rest of us. Not long ago he had held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand. He could have crushed it as easily as an egg. Now their fortunes led them in entirely opposite directions. While Cicero hurried south to escape his enemies, the architect of his destruction marched north to take command of both provinces of Gaul.

  He walked with his head down, not uttering a word and I imagined it was because he was too full of despair to speak. Only at dawn, when we rendezvoused with our horses at Bovillae and were about to embark on the second stage of our escape, did he pause with his foot in the doorway of his carriage and say suddenly, ‘Do you think we should turn back?’

  The question caught me by surprise. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t considered it.’

  ‘Well, consider it now. Tell me: why are we fleeing Rome?’

  ‘Because of Clodius and his mob.’

  ‘And why is Clodius so powerful?’

  ‘Because he’s a tribune and can pass laws against you.’

  ‘And who made it possible for him to become a tribune?’

  I hesitated. ‘Caesar.’

  ‘Exactly. Caesar. Do you imagine that man’s departure for Gaul at that precise hour was a coincidence? Of course not! He waited till his spies had reported I’d left the city before ordering his army to move. Why? I’d always assumed his advancement of Clodius was to punish me for speaking out against him. But what if his real aim all along was to drive me out of Rome? What scheme requires him to be certain I’ve gone before he can leave too?’

  I should have grasped the logic of what he was saying. I should have urged him to turn back. But I was too exhausted to reason clearly. And if I am honest there was more to it than that. I was too afraid of what Clodius’s thugs might do to us if they caught us re-entering the city.

  So instead I said, ‘It’s a good question, and I can’t pretend I have the answer. But wouldn’t it look indecisive, after bidding goodbye to everyone, suddenly to reappear? In any case, Clodius has burned your house down now – where would we return to? Who would take us in? I think you’d be wiser to stick to your original plan and get as far away from Rome as you can.’

  He rested his head against the side of the carriage and closed his eyes. In the pale grey light I was shocked by how haggard he appeared after his night on the road. His hair and beard had not been cut for weeks. He was wearing a toga dyed black. Although he was only in his forty-ninth year, these public signs of mourning made him look much older – like some ancient, mendicant holy man. After a while he sighed. ‘I don’t know, Tiro. Perhaps you’re right. It’s so long since I slept I’m too tired to think any more.’

  And so the fatal error was made – more through indecision than decision – and we continued to press on southwards for the remainder of that day and for the twelve days that followed, putting what we thought was a safe distance between ourselves and danger.

  We travelled with a minimal entourage to avoid attracting attention – just the carriage driver and three armed slaves on horseback, one in front and two behind. A small chest of gold and silver coins that Atticus, Cicero’s oldest and closest friend, had provided to pay for our journey was hidden under our seat. We stayed only in the houses of men we trusted, no more than a night in each, and steered clear of those places where Cicero might have been expected to stop – for example at his seaside villa at Formiae, the first place any pursuers would look for him, and along the Bay of Naples, already filling with the annual exodus from Rome in search of winter sun and warm springs. Instead we headed as fast as we could towards the toe of Italy.

  Cicero’s plan, conceived on the move, was to make for Sicily and stay there until the political agitation against him in Rome subsided. ‘The mob will turn on Clodius eventually,’ he predicted. ‘Such is the unalterable nature of the mob. He will always be my mortal enemy but he won’t always be tribune – we must never forget that. In nine months his term of office will expire and then we can go back.’

  He was confident of a friendly reception from the Sicilians, if only because of his successful prosecution of the island’s tyrannical governor, Verres – even though that brilliant victory, which launched his political career, was now twelve years in the past and Clodius had more recently been a magistrate in the province. I sent letters ahead giving notice of his intention to seek sanctuary, and when we reached the harbour at Regium we hired a little six-oared boat to row us across the straits to Messina.

  We left the harbour on a clear cold winter morning of searing blues – the sea and the sky; one light, one dark; the line dividing them as sharp as a blade; the distance to Messina a mere three miles. It took us less than an hour. We drew so close we could see Cicero’s supporters lined up on the rocks to welcome him. But stationed between us and the entrance to the port was a warship flying the red and green colours of the governor of Sicily, Gaius Vergilius, and as we approached the lighthouse it slipped its anchor and moved slowly forwards to intercept us. Vergilius stood at the rail surrounded by his lictors and, after visibly recoiling at Cicero’s dishevelled appearance, shouted down a greeting, to which Cicero replied in friendly terms. They had known one another in the Senate for many years.

  Vergilius asked him his intentions.

  Cicero called back that naturally he intended to come ashore.

  ‘That’s what I’d heard,’ replied Vergilius. ‘Unhappily I can’t allow it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of Clodius’s new law.’

  ‘And what new law would that be? There are so many, one loses count.’

  Vergilius beckoned to a member of his staff who produced a document and leaned down to pass it to me and I then gave it to Cicero. To this day I can remember how it fluttered in his hands in the slight breeze as if it were a living thing; it was the only sound in the silence. He took his time and when he had finished reading it he handed it to me without comment.

  Lex Clodia in Ciceronem

  Whereas M. T. Cicero has put Roman citizens to death unheard and uncondemned; and to that end forged the authority and decree of the Senate; it is hereby ordained that he be interdicted from fire and water to a distance of four hundred miles from Rome; that nobody should presume to harbour or receive him, on pain of death; that all his property and possessions be forfeit; that his house in Rome be demolished and a shrine to Liberty consecrated in its place; and that whoever shall move, speak, vote or take any step towards recalling him shall be treated as a public enemy, unless those whom Cicero unlawfully put to death should first spring back to life.

  It must have been the most terrible blow. But he found the composure to dismiss it with a flick of his hand. ‘When,’ he enquired, ‘was this nonsense published?’

  ‘I’m told it was posted in Rome eight days ago. It came into my hands yesterday.’

  ‘Then it’s not law yet, and can’t be law until it’s been read a third time. My secretary will confirm it. Tiro,’ he said, turning to me, ‘tell the governor the earliest date it can be passed.’

  I tried to calculate. Before a bill could be put to a vote it had to be read aloud in the Forum on three successive market days. But my reasoning was so shaken by what I had just read I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was now, let alone when the market days fell. ‘Twenty days from today,’ I hazarded, ‘perhaps twenty-five?’

  ‘You see?’ cried Cicero. ‘I have three weeks’ grace even if it passes, which I’m sure it won’t.’ He stood up in the prow of the boat, bracing his legs against the rocking of the hull, and spread his
arms wide in appeal. ‘Please, my dear Vergilius, for the sake of our past friendship, now that I have come so far, at least allow me to land and spend a night or two with my supporters.’

  ‘No, as I say, I’m sorry, but I cannot take the risk. I’ve consulted my experts. They say even if you travelled to the very western tip of the island, to Lilybaeum, you’d still be within three hundred and fifty miles of Rome, and then Clodius would come after me.’

  At that, Cicero ceased to be so friendly. He said coldly, ‘You have no right under the law to impede the journey of a Roman citizen.’

  ‘I have every right to safeguard the tranquillity of my province. And here, as you know, my word is the law…’

  He was apologetic. I dare say he was even embarrassed. But he was immovable, and after a few more angry exchanges there was nothing for it but to turn round and row back to Regium. Our departure provoked a great cry of dismay from the shoreline and I could see that Cicero for the first time was seriously worried. Vergilius was a friend of his. If this was how a friend reacted then soon the whole of Italy would be closed against him. Returning to Rome to oppose the law was much too risky. He had left it too late. Apart from the physical danger such a journey would entail, the bill would almost certainly pass, and then we would be stranded four hundred miles from the legal limit it prescribed. To comply safely with the terms of his exile he would have to flee abroad immediately. Obviously Gaul was out of the question because of Caesar. So it would have to be somewhere in the East – Greece perhaps, or Asia. But unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the peninsula to make our escape in the treacherous winter seas. We needed to get over to the opposite coast, to Brundisium on the Adriatic, and find a big ship capable of making a lengthy voyage. Our predicament was exquisitely vile – as no doubt Caesar, the original sponsor and creator of Clodius, had intended.