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) – right 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 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 th
at?’
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 arrived. 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.’
It was all horribly effective, and when the door was unlocked and we were released into the light, I dreaded having to return to Cicero and read it back to him. However, he insisted on hearing it word for word. Whenever I tried to miss out a passage or a phrase, he spotted it at once and made me go back and put it in. At the end he looked quite crumpled. ‘Well, that’s politics,’ he said, and tried to shrug it off. But I could tell he was shaken. He knew he would have to retaliate in kind or retire humiliated. Trying to do so in person in the Senate, controlled as it was by Antony and Dolabella, would be too dangerous. Therefore his counter-charge would have to be made in writing, and once it was published there could be no going back. Against such a wild man as Antony, it was a duel to the death.
Early in October, Antony left Rome for Brundisium, in order to secure the loyalty of the legions he had brought over from Macedonia, and which were now bivouacked just outside the town. With Antony gone, Cicero also decided to retire from Rome for a few weeks and devote himself to composing his riposte, which he was already calling his Second Philippic. He headed off to the Bay of Naples and left me behind to look after his interests.
It was a melancholy season. As always in late autumn, the skies above Rome were darkened by countless thousands of starlings arriving from the north, and their chattering shrieks seemed to warn of some imminent calamity. They would nestle in the trees beside the Tiber only to rise in huge black flags that would unfurl overhead and sweep back and forth as if in panic. The days became chilly; the nights longer; winter approached and with it the certainty of war. Octavian was in Campania, very close to where Cicero was staying, recruiting troops in Casilinum and Calatia from among Caesar’s veterans. Antony was trying to bribe the soldiers in Brundisium. Decimus had raised a new legion in Nearer Gaul. Lepidus and Plancus were waiting with their forces beyond the Alps. Brutus and Cassius had hoisted their standards in Macedonia and in Syria. That made a total of seven armies, formed or forming. It was merely a question of who would strike first.
In the event, that honour, if honour is the word, fell to Octavian. He had mustered the best part of a legion by promising the veterans a staggering bounty of two thousand sesterces a head – Balbus had guaranteed the money – and now he wrote to Cicero begging his advice. Cicero sent the sensational news to me to pass on to Atticus.
His object is plain: war with Antony and himself as commander-in-chief. So it looks to me as though in a few days’ time we shall be in arms. But who are we to follow? Consider his name; consider his age. He wanted my advice as to whether he should proceed to Rome with three thousand veterans or hold Capua and block Antony’s route or go to join the three Macedonian legions now marching along the Adriatic coast, which he hopes to have on his side. They refused to take a bounty from Antony, so he says, booed him savagely, and left him standing as he tried to harangue them. In short, he proffers himself as our leader and expects me to back him up. For my part I have recommended him to go to Rome. I imagine he will have the city rabble behind him, and the honest men too if he convinces them of his sincerity.
Octavian followed Cicero’s recommendation and entered Rome on the tenth day of November. His soldiers occupied the Forum. I watched as they deployed across the centre of the city, securing the temples and the public buildings. They remained in position throughout that night and the whole of the following day while Octavian set up his headquarters in Balbus’s house and tried to arrange a meeting of the Senate. But the senior magistrates were all gone: Antony was trying to win over the Macedonian legions; Dolabella had left for Syria; half the praetors, including Brutus and Cas
sius, had fled Italy – the city was leaderless. I could see why Octavian was pleading with Cicero to join him on his adventure, writing to him once and sometimes twice a day: Cicero alone might have had the moral authority to rally the Senate. But he had no intention of putting himself under the command of a mere boy leading an armed insurrection with precarious chances of success; prudently he stayed away.
In my role as Cicero’s eyes and ears in Rome, I went down to the Forum on the twelfth to hear Octavian speak. By this time he had abandoned his attempts to summon the Senate and instead had persuaded a sympathetic tribune, Ti. Cannutius, to convene a public assembly. He stood on the rostra under a grey sky waiting to be called – slender as a reed, blond, pale, nervous; it was, as I wrote to Cicero, ‘a scene both ridiculous and yet oddly compelling, like an episode from a legend’. He was not a bad speaker, either, once he got started, and Cicero was delighted by his denunciation of Antony (‘this forger of decrees, this subverter of laws, this thief of rightful inheritances, this traitor who is even now seeking to make war upon the entire state …’). But he was less pleased when I reported how Octavian had pointed to the statue of Caesar that had been set up on the rostra and praised him as ‘the greatest Roman of all time, whose murder I shall avenge and whose hopes in me I swear to you by all the gods I shall fulfil’. With that he came down from the platform to loud applause and soon afterwards left the city, taking his soldiers with him, alarmed at reports that Antony was approaching with a much larger force.
Events now moved with great rapidity. Antony halted his army – which included Caesar’s famous Fifth Legion, ‘the Larks’ – a mere twelve miles from Rome at Tibur and entered the city with a bodyguard of a thousand men. He summoned the Senate for the twenty-fourth and let it be known that he expected them to declare Octavian a public enemy. Failure to attend would be regarded as condoning Octavian’s treason and punishable by death. Antony’s army was ready to move into the city if his will was thwarted. Rome was gripped by the certainty of a massacre.
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