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planning, the creation of Rome’s first public library. The two men had not previously been close, and while Cicero admired his work, he did not think much of Varro’s prose style. They came together because of their mutual isolation: the surviving optimates despised them for coming to terms with the enemy and the victors classed them among the defeated. “As for our present times,” Cicero judged, “if our friends had won the day they would have acted very immoderately. They were infuriated with us.” The two agreed that the way out, or at least the way forward, was to concentrate on their writing. In April 46 Cicero advised Varro: “Like the learned men of old, we must serve the state in our libraries, if we cannot in the Senate House and Forum, and pursue our researches into custom and law.”

Cicero enjoyed the necessary solitude of a writer’s life and spent a good deal of time in his country villas, mainly at Tusculum, from where he made frequent forays to Rome, and later at Astura, which he loved for its remoteness. However, he was psychologically unable to devote himself entirely to decorous retirement. So although there was little legal work for him in Rome, he started giving private classes in public speaking to senior personalities in the government. “I have set up as schoolmaster, as it were, now that the courts are abolished and my forensic kingdom lost.” Cicero was exaggerating somewhat: although it may well be that the legal system was suspended from time to time during the civil war, it still functioned and indeed was reformed by Caesar. (The civil code was revised and simplified and jury membership altered.) In any event Cicero felt that teaching public speaking was good for his health since he had given up his rhetorical exercises; also, his oratorical talent would wither without practice.

In addition, there were plenty of invitations to dinner. He began to accept them, fairly indiscriminately. He was happy to dine with the enemy. Leading figures in the government were on cordial terms and Balbus and Oppius were unvaryingly attentive and thoughtful. He confessed to his friend Lucius Papirius Paetus: “Hirtius [a close colleague of Caesar’s who wrote the last chapter of The Conquest of Gaul, which its preoccupied author had left unfinished] and Dolabella are my pupils in oratory but my masters in gastronomy. I expect you have heard, if all news travels to Naples, that they practice making speeches in my house, and I practice dining at theirs.”

Cicero kept company he would once have thought unacceptable. At one meal he was surprised to see that the guests included Antony’s mistress Cytheris, who, against the rules of etiquette, was given a couch rather than a chair. Writing on the spot while waiting for the food, he noted to a friend: “I assure you I had no idea she would be there.” He held some dinner parties of his own. “I even had the audacity to give a dinner to Hirtius (think of it!)—no peacock though. At that meal nothing proved beyond my cook’s powers of imitation except the hot sauce.”

The government was alarmed at the growth of conspicuous expenditure in Rome and passed sumptuary laws to control it. The most expensive foods were banned and, as a result, chefs began to experiment with innovative vegetarian recipes. This put a strain on Cicero’s digestion, as he confessed ruefully to a friend in winter 46:

Our bons vivants, in their efforts to bring into fashion products of the soil exempted under the statute, make the most appetizing dishes out of fungi, potherbs and grasses of all sorts. Happening on some of these at an inaugural dinner at Lentulus’s house, I was seized with a violent diarrhea, which has only today begun (I think) to check its flow. So: oysters and eels I used to resist well enough, but here I lie caught in the nets of mesdames Turnip and Mallow! Well, I shall be more careful in future.

Caesar returned from Africa towards the end of July 46. His first weeks were spent organizing four Triumphs, which took place in late September and lasted an unheard-of eleven days. They marked his victories