Cicero - Anthony Everitt [150]
This body of work kept Cicero’s name in the public eye for the brief remainder of his lifetime as a man of principle and thoughtful reflection. For posterity it became a primary vehicle by which the achievements of Greco-Roman philosophy were communicated to the early Christian Church, which regarded him as a virtuous pagan, and offered essential models to the thinkers and poets of the Renaissance and those who in the following centuries were concerned with the revival of Republican ideas of governance and the reassertion of humanistic principles.
Caesar may well have laughed with everyone else when all those years ago the boastful ex-Consul had written the much-ridiculed sentence “Cedant arma togae,” “Let the soldier yield precedence to the civilian.” But now, with his customary clarity and generosity of mind, he well understood the nature of the “glory” Cicero had won for himself. Sometime towards the end of his life, Caesar remarked that Cicero had won greater laurels than those worn by a general in his Triumph, for it meant more to have extended the frontiers of Roman genius than of its empire.
13
“WHY, THIS IS VIOLENCE!”
Plots and Conspiracies: January–March 44 BC
From the moment the civil war finally ended in 45, respectable opinion agreed that Caesar’s duty was to restore the constitution. From his policy of pardoning his enemies whenever they fell into his hands and recruiting former Pompeians to his government it looked, in the early days of victory, as if this was what he would do. His clemency had few precedents, for previous generals who had used military force to take over the state had massacred their opponents. Most people thought it meant that Caesar had a clear vision of a reconciled society after his victory.
He probably did. But he was also convinced that a strong executive authority should replace the incompetent competitive cockpit of Senatorial government. He had the means with which to impose his will. However, minimum cooperation from the political class was necessary if any solution he devised was to last. To begin with, he thought that he had gained it. But former enemies—such as Marcus Junius Brutus, the dead Cato’s son-in-law and half-nephew, and Caius Cassius Longinus, Praetor for 44 and hungry for a senior military command that Caesar never gave him—were willing to work with him only as long as they believed that he would bring back the Republic. AS it became clear he had no intention of doing so, they lost confidence in him and withdrew their support. The more powerful he became, the more isolated he felt.
Despite the smiles and adulation, the Dictator knew he was unpopular in leading circles. Once, when Cicero called to see him but was not shown in at once, he remarked: “I should be an idiot to suppose that even so easygoing an individual as Cicero is my friend when he has to sit waiting for my convenience all this time.”
The first signs of the conspiracy against Caesar can be detected almost exactly one year before the Ides of March 44—after the last battle of the civil war at Munda. AS soon as news reached Rome of the outcome of the battle, all kinds of people—entrepreneurs, politicians and young men on the make—left Rome to meet the returning army en route and catch the eye of the Republic’s undisputed master. At Narbo in Transalpine Gaul, Mark Antony, one of Caesar’s principal lieutenants, fell in with another of his supporters, who had recently been a governor in Spain, Caius Trebonius.
Trebonius had a very curious