Cicero - Anthony Everitt [131]
In any event, he finally left Egypt a few weeks before the birth of Cleopatra’s son, named Caesarion and almost certainly the product of their affair. His first task, which he accomplished with remarkable rapidity, was to deal with Pharnaces. In a lightning five-day campaign, he annihilated the king’s army at Zela in Cappadocia. “Came, saw, conquered,” he remarked. He added acidly that Pompey was lucky to have been considered a great general if this was the kind of opposition he had had to face.
Meanwhile Cicero remained isolated in Brundisium, unable to move until Caesar reappeared and ruled on his case. Quintus, badgered by Atticus, sent his brother a grudging letter of apology, which as far as Cicero was concerned only made matters worse. Young Quintus also wrote to him “most offensively.” In the summer Cicero learned that his nephew had been given an interview with Caesar and that he and his father had been forgiven. He was pleased, with the reservation that concessions of this sort, “from a master to slaves,” could be revoked at will. Except for the occasional explosion, his anger with both Quintuses gradually subsided.
Then, as if he didn’t have enough domestic problems, relations with Terentia came under increasing strain. The details are clouded, but she was “doing some wicked things” regarding her will. Cicero remained very worried about the financial prospects of Marcus and Tullia and he must have believed that his wife was in some way imperiling their interests. But he still depended on her for advice and trusted her judgment on how to handle relations with Dolabella. Tullia’s marriage was turning out to be an unhappy one. Dolabella was rumored to have had a number of sexual escapades and was conducting an affair with a respectable married woman from the Metellus clan. To add insult to injury, he was proposing to erect a statue of Clodius, of all people. Divorce was being considered, but the timing was important. Was Dolabella too powerful to offend just at the moment?
In June 47 Tullia took the long and uncomfortable journey south to visit her father. He was touched and delighted, even if her presence made him feel guilty. “Her own courage, thoughtfulness and affection,” he wrote to Atticus, “far from giving me the pleasure I ought to take in such a paragon of daughters, grieve me beyond measure when I consider the unhappy lot in which so admirable a nature is cast, not through any misconduct of hers but by grave fault on my part.” In the absence of cash, Cicero begged Atticus to gather up his movables—plate, furniture, fabrics—and hide them away somewhere; they could be sold later as minimal provision for his children.
By now Cicero was desperate to leave Brundisium. He wrote to Antony, to Balbus and to Oppius, and finally he appealed to Atticus: “I must ask you to get me out of here. Any punishment is better than staying on in this place.” At long last, in August he received a letter directly from Caesar, who had emerged from his Egyptian imbroglio. It was “quite a handsome one,” he conceded to Terentia. We may assume that it indicated a pardon for Cicero, or at least the prospect of one, and Caesar seems to have proposed a meeting on his return to Italy. Athough welcome, this created yet another dilemma. Should he go to meet the returning victor halfway or wait where he was? He took the latter option, perhaps because it seemed less like a decision.
Caesar was in a hurry, for his first, urgent priority on regaining Italy was to meet his soldiers and quash the still simmering mutiny. In early October 47 he landed at Tarentum and made a detour to Brundisium, where Cicero was nervously waiting on the road outside the town, ashamed to be testing his personal status in front of so many witnesses. He stood