Cicero - Anthony Everitt [160]
It is possible that in their memory of this extraordinary day people mixed up the contents of Antony’s opening presentation and the dirges. It was not obviously to the Consul’s advantage to foment general disorder and Suetonius’s account may be the right one. Whatever the truth of the matter, the ceremony made a tremendous impact on the crowd. The climax came when a wax effigy of Caesar (the corpse itself was lying out of sight on the bier) was lifted up. It was turned around in all directions by a mechanical device and twenty-three wounds could be seen, on every part of the body and on the face.
This was too much for many to bear. In a repetition of the outpouring of grief and rage at the death of Clodius, the mob went berserk. They burned down the Senate House, not long rebuilt after its previous incineration. Furniture and wood were pulled out of shops to create an impromptu pyre in the Forum not far from the Temple of the Castors. Musicians and performers who had been hired for the funeral threw their costumes onto it. It was reported that two young men with swords and javelins lit the pyre and subsequent mythmaking or ingenious stage management on the day suggested they were the divine brothers Castor and Pollux, who had a legendary record of guarding over Rome and making an appearance at moments of crisis. Caesar was cremated then and there.
It is hard to believe that whoever designed the funeral ceremony was unaware of the effect it was likely to have. If Antony was not responsible, it must have been Caesar’s family, perhaps advised by his clever aides, Balbus and Oppius. After all, it was in their interest to subvert the attempts by Republicans and moderate Caesarians to create a peaceful transition to a new political order.
The conspirators realized it was impossible for them to remain in Rome and withdrew to their country estates. This left Antony master of the situation. He acted with restraint, discouraged an unofficial cult of Caesar and was deferential to leading Senators. A well-received law was passed abolishing the office of Dictator. Antony was scrupulously polite to Cicero, who in early April decided that he was “more concerned about the composition of his menus than about planning any mischief.”
This was a misjudgment of the situation, for the Consul was still intent on securing his power base. To this end he used Caesar’s papers for his own purposes, forging documents to reward his supporters and enrich himself. His main aim was to ensure that the compromise settlement of March 17 stuck. The main threat to him lay in the future behavior of the conspirators when they went abroad to take over their allotted provinces and armies. Decimus Brutus, soon to set off for Italian Gaul, already looked threatening and in the summer two other conspirators left for commands in Asia Minor.
In some ways Cicero found himself in the same uncomfortable position that he had been in at the beginning of the civil war. This time, though, he had absolutely no doubt whose side he was on and had no intention of putting himself forward as mediator again. However, there was a problem of competence. He admired the conspirators for their heroism on the Ides of March but felt that everything they had done afterwards had been ill-conceived and poorly planned. He believed that Antony’s venality and willingness to act arbitrarily was the prelude to a new autocracy. Realizing that he was not being taken seriously, he became cross with everybody and left the city. He confessed wryly to Atticus that he ought to reread his own essay On Growing Old. “Advancing years are making me cantankerous,” he remarked in May. “Everything annoys me. But I have had my time. Let the young ones worry.”
Cicero kept restlessly on the move from one villa to another, often sleeping in