Cicero - Anthony Everitt [122]
“I was made anxious before … by my inability to think of any solution,” Cicero told Atticus, who was comfortably settled in Rome. “But now that Pompey and the Consuls have left Italy, I am not merely distressed, I am consumed with grief.” He wrote in the language of a disconsolate lover: “Nothing in [Pompey’s] conduct seemed to deserve that I should join him as his companion in flight. But now my affection comes to the surface, the sense of loss is unbearable, books, writing, philosophy are all to no purpose.” The presence of his brother doubled his anxiety: Quintus, having spent some years fighting under Caesar in Gaul, owed much more to his old commander than Cicero did and could expect to suffer the severest consequences if he defected. Nevertheless, he told Cicero that he would follow his lead.
Now that a long war was more or less certain, Caesar’s interest in Cicero shifted from his potentially useful role as mediator to his value as a propaganda asset. He wanted to attract as many senior figures to his side as possible, in order to legitimize his authority, and Cicero would be a great prize. Stressing his policy of clemency and their ties of amicitia (it is not known whether Cicero had yet been able to pay back Caesar’s loan), he tried to persuade the reluctant statesman to come to Rome. Caesar’s plan was to visit the city briefly to meet the remnants of the Senate, after which he would go to Spain and deal with Pompey’s legions there. On March 28, on his journey back from Brundisium, Caesar stopped off at Formiae for an encounter which Cicero had been dreading for some time.
Caesar was not in an accommodating mood. He complained that Cicero was passing judgment against him and that “the others would be slower to come over” to his side if he refused to do so. Cicero replied that they were in a different position. A long discussion followed, which Cicero recorded for Atticus. It went badly.
“Come along then [to a Senate meeting called for April 1] and work for peace,” Caesar said.
“At my own discretion?”
“Naturally, who am I to lay down the rules for you?”
“Well, I shall take the line that the Senate does not approve of an expedition to Spain or of the transport of armies into Greece, and I shall have much to say in commiseration of Pompey.”
“This is not the kind of thing I want said.”
“So I supposed, but that is just why I don’t want to be present. Either I must speak in that strain or stay away—and much else besides which I could not possibly suppress if I was there.”
Caesar closed the conversation by asking Cicero to think matters over. He added menacingly as he left: “If I cannot make use of your advice, I will take it where I can find it. I will stop at nothing.” He meant that if moderates like Cicero would not work with him, his only alternative would be to seek help from revolutionaries.
The encounter was decisive, for both parties. Caesar must have realized that he could not push an obviously unhappy man any further. He now proceeded to Rome, where he spent a few uncomfortable days in discussion with a reluctant and much-thinned Senate. He broke into the Treasury at the Temple of Saturn and removed its contents: 15,000 bars of gold, 30,000 of silver and 30 million sesterces—a move for which he paid with the total collapse of his popularity. Then he hurried away to fight in Spain, leaving the Tribune Mark Antony in charge of Italy and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in charge of Rome.
AS for Cicero, the conversation and the behavior of Caesar’s raffish entourage—he nicknamed them the “underworld”—persuaded him that, for all his reservations, he had to side with those who were (if only ostensibly) fighting for the Republic. He could do this only by leaving Italy. But when should he set off and how? And where should he go? He thought of Athens or, somewhere completely off the beaten track, Malta. Soon he realized he was being watched by Caesar’s spies.
The time had come for Marcus’s coming-of-age ceremony and the family moved to the ancestral