Dictator:

by Robert Harris

  ‘Honourable members,’ he said, ‘will recall that it was on my proposal that Pompey was given this grain commission in the first place, so I am hardly going to oppose it now. We cannot order a man to do a job one day, and then deny him the means with which to accomplish it the next.’ Pompey’s supporters murmured loud assent. Cicero held up his hand. ‘However, as has been eloquently pointed out, our resources are finite. The treasury cannot pay for everything. We cannot be expected to buy grain all over the world to feed our citizens for nothing and at the same time give free farms to soldiers and plebs. When Caesar passed his law, even he, with all his great powers of foresight, can hardly have imagined that a day was coming – and coming very soon – when veterans and the urban poor would have no need of farms to grow grain, because the grain would simply be given to them for nothing.’

  ‘Oh!’ shouted the benches of the aristocrats in delight. ‘Oh! Oh!’ And they pointed at Crassus, who, along with Pompey and Caesar, was one of the architects of the land laws. Crassus was staring hard at Cicero, although his face was impassive and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  ‘Would it not be prudent,’ continued Cicero, ‘in the light of changing circumstances, for this noble house to look again at the legislation passed during the consulship of Caesar? Now is obviously not the right occasion to discuss it fully, complex as the question is, and conscious as I am that the house is eager to rise for the recess. I would therefore propose that the issue be placed on the order paper at the first available opportunity when we reconvene.’

  ‘I second that!’ shouted Domitius Ahenobarbus, a patrician who was married to Cato’s sister, and who hated Caesar so much he had recently called for him to be stripped of his command in Gaul.

  Several dozen other aristocrats also jumped up clamouring to add their support. Pompey’s men seemed too confused to react: after all, the main thrust of Cicero’s speech had seemed to be in support of their chief. It was indeed a tidy piece of mischief that Cicero had wrought, and when he sat down and glanced along the aisle in my direction, I almost fancy he winked at me. The consul held a whispered conference with his scribes and then announced that in view of the obvious support for Cicero’s motion, the issue would be debated on the Ides of May. With that the house was adjourned and the senators started moving towards the exit – none quicker than Crassus, who almost knocked me flying in his eagerness to get away.

  Cicero, too, was determined to have a holiday, feeling he deserved one after seven months of non-stop strain and labour, and he had in mind the ideal destination. A wealthy tax farmer for whom he had done much legal work had lately died, leaving Cicero some property in his will – a small villa on the Bay of Naples, at Cumae, between the sea and the Lucrine Lake. (In those days, I should add, it was illegal to accept direct payment for one’s services as an advocate, but permissible to receive legacies; the rule was not always strictly observed.) Cicero had never seen the place but had heard that it enjoyed one of the loveliest aspects in the region. He proposed to Terentia that they should travel to inspect it together, and she agreed, although when she discovered I was to be included in the party, she plunged into another of her sulks.

  ‘I know how it will be,’ I overheard her complaining to Cicero. ‘I shall be left alone all day while you are closeted with your official wife!’

  He made some soothing reply to the effect that no such thing would happen, and I was careful to keep out of her way.

  On the eve of our departure, Cicero gave a dinner for his future son-in-law, Crassipes, who happened to mention that Crassus, to whom he was very close, had left Rome in a hurry the previous day, telling no one where he was going. Cicero said, ‘No doubt he’s heard of some elderly widow in a remote spot who is at death’s door and who might be persuaded to part with her property cheaply.’

  Everyone laughed apart from Crassipes, who looked very prim. ‘I am sure he is simply taking a vacation, like everyone else.’

  ‘Crassus doesn’t take holidays – there’s no profit in them.’ Then Cicero raised his cup and proposed a toast to Crassipes and Tullia. ‘May their union be long and happy and blessed with many children – for preference I should like three at least.’

  ‘Father!’ exclaimed Tullia. She laughed and blushed and looked away.

  ‘What?’ asked Cicero, with an air of innocence. ‘I have the grey hairs and now I need the grandchildren to go with them.’

  He rose from the table early. Before he left for the south he wanted to see Pompey. In particular he wanted to plead the case for Quintus to be allowed to relinquish his legateship and return home from Sardinia. He travelled to Pompey’s in a litter but ordered the porters to go slowly so that I could walk alongside and we could have some conversation. It was getting dark. We had to travel a mile or so, beyond the city walls, to the Pincian hill, where Pompey had his new suburban villa – or palace would be a better word for it – looking down on his vast complex of temples and theatres then nearing completion on the Field of Mars.

  The great man was dining alone with his wife, and we had to wait for them to finish. In the vestibule a team of slaves was busy transferring piles of luggage to half a dozen wagons drawn up in the courtyard – so many trunks of clothes and boxes of tableware and carpets and furniture and even statues that it looked as if Pompey were planning to set up a new home somewhere. Eventually the couple appeared and Pompey presented Julia to Cicero, who in turn presented me to her.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said to me, although I’m sure she didn’t. She was only seventeen but very gracious. She possessed her father’s exquisite manners, and also something of his piercing way of looking at one, so that I had a sudden, disconcerting memory of Caesar’s naked hairless torso reclining on the massage table at his headquarters in Mutina: I had to shut my eyes to banish it.

  She left almost at once, pleading the need to get a good night’s sleep before her travels the next day. Pompey kissed her hand – he was famously devoted to her – and took us through into his study. This was a vast room the size of a house, crammed with trophies from his many campaigns, including what he insisted was the cloak of Alexander the Great. He sat on a couch made out of a stuffed crocodile, which he said Ptolemy had given him, and invited Cicero to take the seat opposite.

  Cicero said, ‘You look as though you are embarking on a military expedition.’

  ‘That’s what comes of travelling with one’s wife.’

  ‘Might I ask where you’re going?’

  ‘Sardinia.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cicero, ‘that’s a coincidence. I wanted to ask you about Sardinia.’ And he proceeded to make an eloquent case for his brother to be allowed home, citing three reasons in particular – the length of time he had been away, his need to spend time with his son (who was turning into a troubled boy) and his preference for military rather than civil command.

  Pompey heard him out, stroking his chin, reclining on his Egyptian crocodile. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said. ‘Yes, he can come back. You’re right anyway – he isn’t much good at administration.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m obliged to you, as always.’

  Pompey regarded Cicero with crafty eyes. ‘So I hear you caused a stir in the Senate the other day.’

  ‘Only on your behalf – I was simply trying to secure the funds for your commission.’

  ‘Yes, but by challenging Caesar’s laws.’ He wagged his finger in reproach. ‘That’s naughty of you.’

  ‘Caesar is not a god, infallible; his laws have not come down to us from Mount Olympus. Besides, if you’d been there and seen the pleasure Crassus was taking in all the attacks on you, I believe you would have wanted me to find some way to wipe the smile from his face. And by criticising Caesar, I certainly did that.’

  Pompey brightened at once. ‘Oh well, I’m with you there!’

  ‘Believe me, Crassus’s ambition and disloyalty to you have been far more destabilising to the commonwealth than anything I have done.’


  ‘I agree entirely.’

  ‘In fact I’d suggest that if your alliance with Caesar is threatened by anyone, it’s him.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand how Caesar can stand back and allow him to plot against you in this way, especially letting him employ Clodius. Surely as your father-in-law he owes his first duty to you? If Crassus carries on like this, he will sow much discord, I predict it now.’

  ‘He will.’ Pompey nodded. He looked crafty again. ‘You’re right, of course.’ He stood, and Cicero followed suit. He took Cicero’s hand in both his immense paws. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, my old friend. You have given me much food for thought during my voyage to Sardinia. We must write to one another often. Where exactly will you be?’

  ‘Cumae.’

  ‘Ah! I envy you. Cumae – the most beautiful spot in Italy.’

  Cicero was well pleased with his night’s work. On the way home he said to me, ‘This triple alliance of theirs can’t last. It defies nature. All I have to do is keep chipping away at it, and sooner or later the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down.’

  We left Rome at first light – Terentia, Tullia and Marcus all in the same carriage, along with Cicero, who was in great good humour – and made quick progress, stopping first for a night at Tusculum, which Cicero was glad to find habitable again, and then at the family estate in Arpinum, where we remained for a week. Finally from those cold high peaks of the Apennines we descended south to Campania.

  With every mile the clouds of winter seemed to lift, the sky became bluer, the temperature warmer, the air more fragrant with the scent of pines and herbs, and when we joined the coastal road, the breeze off the sea was balmy. Cumae was then a much smaller and quieter town than it is today. At the Acropolis I gave a description of our destination and was directed by a priest to the eastern side of the Lucrine Lake, to a spot low in the hills, looking out across the lagoon and the narrow spit of land to the variegated blueness of the Mediterranean. The villa itself was small and dilapidated, with half a dozen elderly slaves to look after it. The wind blew through open walls; a section of the roof was missing. But it was worth every discomfort simply for the panorama. Down on the lake, little rowing boats moved among the oyster beds, while from the garden at the back there rose a majestic view of the lush green pyramid of Vesuvius. Cicero was enchanted, and set to work at once with the local builders, commissioning a great programme of renovation and redecoration. Marcus played on the beach with his tutor. Terentia sat on the terrace and sewed. Tullia read her Greek. It was a family holiday of a sort they had not taken for many years.

  There was one puzzle, however. That whole stretch of coast from Cumae to Puteoli, then as now, was dotted with villas belonging to members of the Senate. Naturally Cicero assumed that once word spread he was in residence, he would begin to receive callers. But nobody came. At night he stood on the terrace and looked up and down the seashore and peered up into the hills and complained he could see hardly any lights. Where were the parties, the dinners? He patrolled the beach, a mile in either direction, and not once did he spot a senatorial toga.

  ‘Something must be happening,’ he said to Terentia. ‘Where are they all?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘but speaking for myself, I am happy there is no one with whom you can discuss politics.’

  The answer came on our fifth morning.

  I was on the terrace answering Cicero’s correspondence when I noticed that a small group of horsemen had turned off the coastal road and were coming up the track towards the house. My immediate thought was Clodius! I stood to get a better view and saw to my dismay that the sun was glinting on helmets and breastplates. Five riders: soldiers.

  Terentia and the children had gone off for the day to visit the sibyl who was said to live in a jar in a cave at Cumae. I ran inside to alert Cicero, and by the time I found him – he was choosing the colour scheme for the dining room – the horsemen were already clattering into the courtyard. Their leader dismounted and took off his helmet. He was a fearsome apparition: dust-rimed, like some harbinger of death. The whiteness of his nose and forehead was in contrast to the grime of the rest of his face. He looked as if he wore a mask. But I knew him. He was a senator, albeit not a very distinguished one – a member of that tame, dependable class of pedarii who never spoke but merely voted with their feet. Lucius Vibullius Rufus was his name. He was one of Pompey’s officers from Pompey’s home region of Picenum naturally.

  ‘Could I have a word?’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Of course,’ said Cicero ‘Come inside, all of you. Come and have something to eat and drink, I insist.’

  Vibullius said, ‘I’ll come in. They’ll wait out here and make sure we’re not disturbed.’ He moved very stiffly, a clay effigy come to life.

  Cicero said, ‘You look all in. How far have you ridden?’

  ‘From Luca.’

  ‘Luca?’ repeated Cicero. ‘That must be three hundred miles!’

  ‘More like three hundred and fifty. We’ve been on the road a week.’ As he lowered himself to a seat, he gave off a shower of dust. ‘There’s been a meeting concerning you, and I’ve been sent to inform you of its conclusions.’ He glanced at me. ‘I need to speak in confidence.’

  Cicero, baffled and plainly wondering if he was dealing with a madman, said, ‘He’s my secretary. You can say all you have to say in front of him. What meeting?’

  ‘As you wish.’ Vibullius tugged off his gloves, unbuckled the side of his breastplate, reached under the metal and pulled out a document, which he carefully unwrapped. ‘The reason I’ve come from Luca is because that’s where Pompey, Caesar and Crassus have been meeting.’

  Cicero frowned. ‘No, that’s impossible. Pompey is going to Sardinia – he told me so himself.’

  ‘A man can do both, can he not?’ replied Vibullius affably. ‘He can go to Luca and then go to Sardinia. I can tell you in fact how it came about. After your little speech in the Senate, Crassus travelled up to see Caesar in Ravenna to tell him what you’d said. Then they both crossed Italy to intercept Pompey before he took ship at Pisa. The three of them spent several days together, discussing many matters – among them what’s to be done about you.’

  I felt suddenly queasy. Cicero was more robust: ‘There’s no need to be impertinent.’

  ‘And the gist of it is this: shut up, Marcus Tullius! Shut up in the Senate about Caesar’s laws. Shut up trying to cause trouble between the Three. Shut up about Crassus. Shut up generally, in fact.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ asked Cicero calmly. ‘Do I need to remind you – you are a guest in my house?’

  ‘Not quite finished, no.’ Vibullius paused and consulted his notes. ‘Also present for part of the conference was Sardinia’s governor, Appius Claudius. He was there to make certain undertakings on behalf of his brother, the upshot of which is that Pompey and Clodius are to be publicly reconciled.’

  ‘Reconciled?’ repeated Cicero. Now he sounded uncertain.

  ‘In future they will stand together in the best interests of the commonwealth. Pompey wishes me to tell you that he’s very unhappy with you, Marcus Tullius: very unhappy. I am quoting his exact words now. He believes he demonstrated great loyalty to you in campaigning for your recall from exile, in the course of which he made certain personal undertakings about your future conduct to Caesar – undertakings, he reminds you, which you repeated to Caesar in writing, and have now broken. He feels let down. He feels embarrassed. He insists, as a test of friendship, that you withdraw your motion on Caesar’s land laws from the Senate, and that you do not pronounce on the issue again until you have consulted him in person.’

  ‘I only spoke as I did in Pompey’s interest—’

  ‘He would like you to write him a letter confirming that you will do as he asks.’ Vibullius rolled up his document and tucked it away under his cuirass. ‘That’s the official part. What I am about to tell you next is strictly confid
ential. You understand what I’m saying?’

  Cicero made a weary gesture. He understood.

  ‘Pompey wishes you to appreciate the scale of the forces at work: that is why the others gave him permission to inform you. Later this year, both he and Crassus will put their names forward in the consular elections.’

  ‘They’ll lose.’

  ‘If the elections were to be held as usual in the summer, you might be right. But the elections will be postponed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of violence in Rome.’

  ‘What violence?’

  ‘Clodius will provide the violence. As a result, the elections won’t take place until the winter, by which time the campaigning season in Gaul will be over and Caesar will be able to send thousands of his veterans to Rome to vote for his colleagues. Then they will be elected. At the end of their terms as consul, Pompey and Crassus will both take up proconsular commands – Pompey in Spain, Crassus in Syria. Instead of the usual one year, these commands will last for five years. Naturally, in the interests of fairness, Caesar’s proconsular command in Gaul will also be extended for another five years.’

  ‘This is quite unbelievable—’

  ‘And at the end of his extended term, Caesar will come back to Rome and be elected consul in his turn – Pompey and Crassus making sure their veterans are on hand to vote for him. Those are the terms of the Luca Accord. It is designed to last for seven years. Pompey has promised Caesar you will abide by it.’

  ‘And if I do not?’

  ‘He will no longer guarantee your safety.’

  VI

  ‘SEVEN YEARS,’ SAID Cicero with great contempt after Vibullius and his men had gone. ‘Nothing in politics can be planned in advance for seven years. Is Pompey entirely lacking in sense? Does he not see how this devils’ pact works entirely in Caesar’s favour? In effect, he promises to protect Caesar’s back until such time as Caesar has finished pillaging Gaul, whereupon the conqueror will return to Rome and take control of the whole republic – Pompey included.’