Dictator

by Robert Harris

  As was often the case, he had not decided which course to take even when we set off to attend the Senate. He always liked to take the temperature of the chamber before he spoke—to listen to its heartbeat like a doctor with a patient. Birria, the scarred gladiator who had accompanied Milo when he visited us in Macedonia, acted as a bodyguard, along with three of his comrades. In addition, I suppose there must have been twenty or thirty of Cicero’s clients, who served as a human shield; we felt quite safe. As we walked, Birria boasted to me of their strength: he said that Milo and Pompey had a hundred pairs of gladiators on standby in a barracks on the Field of Mars, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice if Clodius tried any of his tricks.

  When we reached the Senate building, I handed Cicero the text of his speech. On entering he touched the ancient doorpost and looked around him at what he called “the greatest room in the world” in thankful amazement that he should have lived to see it again. As he approached his customary position on the front bench nearest to the consuls’ dais, the neighbouring senators rose to shake his hand. It was an ill-attended house—not just Pompey was absent, I noticed, but also Clodius, and Marcus Crassus, whose pact with Pompey and Caesar was still the most powerful force in the republic. I wondered why they had stayed away.

  The presiding consul that day was Metellus Nepos, the long-standing enemy of Cicero who was nevertheless now publicly reconciled with him—albeit only grudgingly and under pressure from the majority of the Senate. He made no acknowledgement of Cicero’s presence but instead rose to announce that a new dispatch had just arrived from Caesar in Further Gaul. The chamber fell silent and the senators listened intently as he read out Caesar’s account of yet more brutal encounters with savage and exotically named tribes—the Viromandui, the Atrebates and the Nervii—fought out amid those gloomy echoing forests and swollen impassable rivers. It was clear that Caesar had pushed much further north than any Roman commander before him, almost to the cold north sea, and again his victory was little short of an annihilation: of the sixty thousand men who had made up the army of the Nervii, he claimed to have left alive only five hundred. When Nepos had finished, the house seemed to let out its breath; only then did the consul call on Cicero to speak.

  It was a difficult moment to make a speech, and in the event Cicero mostly restricted himself to a list of thanks. He thanked the consuls. He thanked the Senate. He thanked the people. He thanked the gods. He thanked his brother. He thanked just about everybody except Caesar, whom he did not mention. He thanked especially Pompey (“whose courage, fame and achievements are unapproached in the records of any nation or any age”) and Milo (“his whole tribunate was nothing but a firm, unceasing, brave and undaunted championship of my well-being”). But he did not raise either the grain shortage or the proposal to give Pompey extra powers, and as soon as he sat down, Afranius and Milo promptly got up from their places and left the building.

  Afterwards, as we walked back to Quintus’s house, I noticed that Birria and his gladiators were no longer with us, which I thought was odd, for the danger had hardly gone away. There were a great many beggars among the streams of spectators milling around, and perhaps I was mistaken, but it seemed to me that the number of hostile looks and gestures Cicero attracted was substantially greater than before.

  Once we were safely indoors, Cicero said, “I couldn’t do it. How could I take the lead in a controversy I know nothing about? Besides, it wasn’t the proper occasion to make a proposal of that sort. All anyone could talk about was Caesar, Caesar, Caesar. Perhaps now they’ll leave me alone for a while.”

  The day was long and sunny, and Cicero spent much of it in the garden reading or throwing a ball for the family dog, a terrier named Myia, whose antics greatly delighted young Marcus and his nine-year-old cousin, Quintus Junior, the only child of Quintus and Pomponia. Marcus was a sweet, straightforward lad whereas Quintus, spoilt by his mother, had a streak of something nasty in him. But they played together happily enough. Occasionally the roar of the crowd in the Circus Maximus carried up from the valley on the other side of the hill—a hundred thousand voices crying out or groaning in unison: a sound at once exhilarating and frightening, like the growl of a tiger; it made the hairs tingle on my neck and arms. In the middle of the afternoon Quintus suggested that perhaps Cicero should go down to the Circus and show himself to the audience and watch at least one of the races. But Cicero preferred to stay where he was: “I am tired of exhibiting myself to strangers.”

  Because the boys were reluctant to go to bed and Cicero, having been away so long, wished to indulge them, dinner was not served until late. This time, to Pomponia’s obvious irritation, he invited me to join them. She did not approve of slaves eating with their masters, and doubtless felt it was her prerogative, not her brother-in-law’s, to decide who should be present at her own table. In the event we were six: Cicero and Terentia on one couch, Quintus and Pomponia on another, Tullia and I on the third. Normally Pomponia’s brother, Atticus, would have joined us. He was Cicero’s closest friend. But a week before Cicero’s return he had abruptly left Rome for his estates in Epirus. He pleaded urgent business but I suspect he foresaw the looming family arguments. He always preferred a quiet life.

  It was dusk and the slaves were just bringing in tapers to light the lamps and candles when from somewhere in the distance arose a cacophony of whistles, drums, horn blasts and chanting. At first we dismissed it as a passing procession connected with the games. But the noise seemed to come from directly outside the house, where it remained.

  Finally Terentia said, “What on earth is that, do you suppose?”

  “You know,” replied Cicero, in a tone of scholarly interest, “I wonder if it might not be a flagitatio. Now there’s a quaint custom! Tiro, would you take a look?”

  I don’t suppose such a thing exists any more, but back in the days of the republic, when people were free to express themselves, a flagitatio was the right of citizens who had a grievance, but were too poor to use the courts, to demonstrate outside the house of the person they held responsible. Tonight the target was Cicero. I could hear his name mingled among their chants, and when I opened the door I got the message clear enough:

  Whoreson Cicero where’s our bread?

  Whoreson Cicero stole our bread!

  A hundred people packed the narrow street, repeating the same phrases over and over, with occasional and saltier variations on the word “whoreson.” When they noticed me looking at them, a terrific jeer went up. I closed the door, bolted it and went back to the dining room to report.

  Pomponia sat up in alarm. “But what shall we do?”

  “Nothing,” said Cicero calmly. “They’re entitled to make their noise. Let them get it off their chests, and when they tire of it they’ll go away.”

  Terentia asked, “But why are they accusing you of stealing their bread?”

  Quintus said, “Clodius blames the lack of bread on the size of the crowds coming into Rome to support your husband.”

  “But the crowds aren’t here to support my husband—they’ve come to watch the games.”

  “Brutally honest, as always,” agreed Cicero, “and even if they were here for me, the city has never to my knowledge run short of food on a festival day.”

  “So why has it happened now?”

  “I imagine someone has sabotaged the supply.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “Clodius, to blacken my name; or perhaps even Pompey, to give himself a pretext to take over distribution. In any case, there’s nothing we can do about it. So I suggest we eat our meal and ignore them.”

  But although we tried to carry on as if nothing was happening, and even made jokes and laughed about it, our conversation was strained, and every time there was a lull, it was filled by the angry voices outside:

  Cocksucker Cicero stole our bread!

  Cocksucker Cicero ate our bread!

  Eventually Pomponia said, “Will they go on like that all night?”

&
nbsp; Cicero said, “Possibly.”

  “But this has always been a quiet and respectable street. Surely you can do something to stop them?”

  “Not really. It’s their right.”

  “Their right!”

  “I believe in the people’s rights, if you remember.”

  “Good for you. But how am I to sleep?”

  Cicero’s patience finally gave in. “Why not put some wax in your ears, madam?” he suggested, then added under his breath, “I’m sure I’d put some in mine if I were married to you.”

  Quintus, who had drunk plenty, tried to stifle his laughter. Pomponia turned on him at once. “You’ll allow him to speak to me in that way?”

  “It was only a joke, my dear.”

  Pomponia put down her napkin, rose with dignity from her couch and announced that she would go and check on the boys. Terentia, after a sharp look at Cicero, said that she would join her. She beckoned to Tullia to follow.

  When the women had gone, Cicero said to Quintus, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken in that way. I’ll go and find her and apologise. Besides, she’s right: I’ve brought trouble on your house. We’ll move out in the morning.”

  “No you won’t. I’m master here, and my roof will be your roof for as long as I’m alive. Insults from that rabble are of no concern to me.”

  We listened again.

  Bumfucker Cicero where’s our bread?

  Bumfucker Cicero sold our bread!

  Cicero said, “It’s a marvellously flexible metre, I’ll give them that. I wonder how many more versions they can come up with.”

  “You know we could always send word to Milo. Pompey’s gladiators would clear the street in no time.”

  “And put myself even further in their debt? I don’t think so.”

  We went our separate ways to bed, although I doubt any of us slept much. The demonstration did not cease as Cicero had predicted; if anything, by the following morning it had increased in volume, and certainly in violence, for the mob had started digging up the cobblestones and were hurling them against the walls, or lobbing them over the parapet so that they landed with a crash in the atrium or the garden. It was clear our situation was becoming parlous, and while the women and children sheltered indoors, I climbed up on to the roof with Cicero and Quintus to estimate the danger. Peering cautiously over the ridge tiles, it was possible to see down into the Forum. Clodius’s mob was occupying it in force. The senators trying to get to the chamber for the day’s session had to run a gauntlet of abuse and chanting. The words drifted up to us, accompanied by the banging of cooking utensils:

  Where’s our bread?

  Where’s our bread?

  Where’s our bread?

  Suddenly there was a scream from the floor beneath us. We scrabbled down from the roof and descended to the atrium in time to see a slave fishing out a black-and-white object, like a pouch or a small bag, that had just dropped through the aperture in the roof and fallen into the impluvium. It was the mangled body of Myia, the family dog. The two boys crouched in the corner of the atrium, hands over their ears, crying. Heavy stones battered against the wooden door. And now Terentia turned on Cicero with a bitterness I had never before witnessed: “Stubborn man! Stubborn, foolish man! Will you do something at last to protect your family? Or must I crawl out yet again on my hands and knees and plead with this scum not to hurt us?”

  Cicero swayed backwards in the face of her fury. Just then there was a fresh bout of childish sobbing and he looked across to where Tullia was comforting her brother and cousin. That seemed to settle the issue. He said to Quintus, “Do you think you can smuggle a slave out through a window at the back?”

  “I’m sure we can.”

  “In fact best send two, in case one doesn’t get through. They should go to Milo’s barracks on the Field of Mars and tell the gladiators we need help immediately.”

  The messengers were dispatched, and in the meantime Cicero went over to the boys and distracted them by putting his hands around their shoulders and telling them stories of the bravery of the heroes of the republic. After what seemed a long interval, during which the assault on the door increased in fury, we heard a fresh wave of roars from the street, followed by screaming. The gladiators controlled by Milo and Pompey had arrived, and in this way Cicero saved himself and his family, for I do believe that Clodius’s men, finding they were unopposed, were fully intending to break into the house and massacre us all. As it was, after only a short battle in the street, the besiegers, who were not nearly so well armed or trained, fled for their lives.

  Once we were sure the street was clear, Cicero, Quintus and I went up on to the roof again and watched as the fighting spilled down into the Forum. Columns of gladiators ran in from either side and started laying about them with the flats of their swords. The mob scattered but did not break entirely. A barricade built of trestle tables, benches and shutters from the nearby stores was thrown up between the Temple of Castor and the Grove of Vesta. This line held, and at one point I saw the blond-headed figure of Clodius himself directing the fighting, wearing a cuirass over his toga and brandishing a long iron spike. I know it was him because he had his wife, Fulvia, beside him—a woman as fierce and cruel and fond of violence as any man. Here and there fires were lit, and the smoke drifting in the summer heat added to the confusion of the melee. I counted seven bodies, although whether they were dead or merely injured I could not tell.

  After a while, Cicero could not bear to watch any longer. Leaving the roof, he said quietly, “It is the end of the republic.”

  We stayed in the house all day as the skirmishing continued in the Forum, and what is most striking to me now is that throughout all this time, less than a mile away, the Roman Games continued uninterrupted, as if nothing unusual were happening. Violence had become a normal part of politics. By nightfall it was peaceful again, although Cicero prudently decided not to venture out of doors until the following morning, when he walked together with Quintus and an escort of Milo’s gladiators to the Senate house. The Forum now was full of citizens who were supporters of Pompey. They called out to Cicero to make sure they had bread again by sending for Pompey to solve the crisis. Cicero, who carried with him the draft of the bill to make Pompey commissioner of grain, made no response.

  It was another ill-attended house. Because of the unrest, more than half the senators had stayed away. The only former consuls on the front bench apart from Cicero were Afranius and M. Valerius Messalla. The presiding consul, Metellus Nepos, had been hit by a stone while crossing the Forum the previous day and was wearing a bandage. He brought up the grain riots as the first item on the order paper, and several of the magistrates actually suggested that Cicero himself should take control of the city’s supply, at which Cicero made a modest gesture and shook his head.

  Nepos said reluctantly, “Marcus Cicero, do you wish to speak?”

  Cicero nodded and rose. “We none of us needs to be reminded,” he began, “least of all the gallant Nepos, of the frightful violence that gripped the city yesterday—violence which has at its core a shortage of that most basic of human needs, bread. Some of us believe it was an ill day when our citizens were granted a free dole of corn in the first place, for it is human nature that what starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement. This is the pass we have reached. I do not say we should rescind Clodius’s law—it is too late for that: the public’s morals are already corrupted, as no doubt he intended. But we must at least ensure that the supply of bread is continuous if we are to have civil order. And there is only one man in our state with the authority and genius of organisation to ensure such a thing, and that is Pompey the Great. Therefore I wish to propose the following resolution…”

  And here he read out the draft bill I have already quoted, and that part of the chamber which was packed with Pompey’s lieutenants rose in acclamation. The rest sat solemn-faced, or muttered angrily, for they had always feared Pompey’s lust for power. The che
ering was heard outside and taken up by the crowds waiting in the Forum. When they learned that it was Cicero who had proposed the new law, they started clamouring for him to come and address them from the rostra, and all the tribunes—save for two supporters of Clodius—duly sent an invitation to him to speak. When the request was read out in the Senate, Cicero protested that he was not prepared for such an honour. (In fact I had with me a speech he had already written out, and which I was able to give him just before he mounted the steps to the platform.)

  He was met by a tremendous ovation, and it was some time before he could make himself heard. When the applause died away, he started to speak, and had just reached the passage in which he thanked the people for their support—Had I experienced nothing but an unruffled tranquillity, I should have missed the incredible and well-nigh superhuman transports of delight which your kindness now permits me to enjoy—when who should appear at the edge of the crowd but Pompey. He stood ostentatiously alone—not that he had any need of bodyguards when the Forum was full of his gladiators—and pretended that he had come merely as an ordinary citizen to listen to what Cicero had to say. But of course the people would not permit that, so he allowed himself to be thrust forward to the rostra, which he mounted, and where he embraced Cicero. I had forgotten what a massive physical presence he was: that majestic torso and manly bearing, the famous thick quiff of still-dark hair rising like the beak of a warship above his broad and handsome face.

  The occasion demanded flattery, and Cicero rose to it. “Here is a man,” he said, lifting Pompey’s arm, “who has had, has, and will have, no rival in virtue, sagacity and renown. He gave to me all that he had given to the republic, what no other has ever given to a private friend—safety, security, dignity. To him, fellow citizens, I owe a debt such as it is scarce lawful for one human being to owe to another.”

  The applause was prolonged, and Pompey’s beam of pleasure was as wide and warm as the sun.