Cicero - Anthony Everitt [128]
So far as Cicero was concerned, hostilities were now definitely at an end. He took himself off to Patrae, the Greek port from where he would be able to catch a boat for Brundisium. Here a final misfortune awaited him, as he confided to Atticus a week or so later. He and his brother had a serious disagreement. By following Cicero’s star, Quintus had lost everything. He had sacrificed his excellent relationship with Caesar, under whose command in Gaul he had for once been his own man. There may have been financial problems, too, nagging both men. For all their lives Quintus had willingly played second fiddle to his older and more famous brother. Perhaps resentment had so long been growing below the surface—all those years of patronizing advice, of interference in his domestic affairs—that it boiled over all the more violently when the break came.
The upshot was that Quintus and his son followed after Caesar, with whom they intended to make their peace. Meanwhile, Cicero had nowhere to go but back to Italy. Worn down by his adventures and broken by the collapse of both his public and domestic worlds, he set off once again, without pause for second thoughts, to Brundisium and home.
11
PACIFYING CAESAR
The Last Gasps of Republican Rome: 48–45 BC
This time arrival in Brundisium was a melancholy affair. There was no Terentia or Tullia waiting when he sailed into port in mid-October 48. Tullia was ill, perhaps recovering from her miscarriage, and Cicero was at his wits’ end with worry. Ready money was in short supply, for while in Greece he had made over to Pompey all the funds he had brought with him. The payment of Tullia’s dowry to her new husband, Dolabella, was a touchy issue.
Cicero’s lictors were still with him, an expensive and embarrassing nuisance. He was nervous about his reception as he walked into the town and made them mingle discreetly with the crowd so that he would not be noticed. He could not disband them because, although his successor in Cilicia had been nominated, Caesar, now in charge of the government in Rome, refused to accept the appointment. (This meant, interestingly, that Cicero recognized, however reluctantly and implicitly, Caesar’s legitimacy.)
Cicero was not sure what to do next. Atticus advised him to go nearer to Rome, traveling by night, but he did not relish the thought. He didn’t have enough stopping places at his disposal, so what would he do in the daytime? Also, there was no pressing reason to move on, for his old enemy, Vatinius, was in charge of Brundisium and was now both hospitable and friendly. Cicero always found it hard to keep a feud going and was prone to be fond of anyone who showed him affection, whatever he really thought of them and their politics.
Balbus and Oppius, busy managing Caesar’s affairs behind the scenes, wrote to Cicero telling him not to worry. His position would be protected, if not enhanced. Dolabella let him know that Caesar had authorized him to invite his father-in-law to come back to Italy. This good news was soon contradicted by Mark Antony, once again responsible for governing Italy in Caesar’s absence, who sent Cicero a copy of a letter he had received from Caesar which stated that no Pompeians would be allowed back into the country until he had reviewed their cases individually. “He expressed himself pretty strongly on these points,” Cicero informed Atticus gloomily. He settled down miserably in Brundisium to await Caesar’s return.
At the end of November he learned of Pompey’s fate. After Pharsalus, the general had made his way eastwards, with Caesar in hot pursuit. His destination had been Egypt; he thought he could make a stand there and raise another army by recruiting in Asia Minor. For many years he had been the incarnation of Roman authority in the region and he expected that his writ would still hold.