Cicero - Anthony Everitt [179]
If the Consuls had survived and his strategy had succeeded, as it very nearly did, Cicero’s attitude towards Octavian would surely have been very different, for his usefulness to the Senate as its protector against Antony would have been at an end. In this connection it was most unfortunate that Octavian learned his “father’s” true intentions. Never one to avoid careless talk if a witty remark or a pun occurred to him, Cicero had observed that “the young man must get praises, honors—and the push.” The Latin is laudandum, ornandum, tollendum; the last word had a double meaning: to “exalt” and to “get rid of.” Towards the end of May, Decimus Brutus warned Cicero that someone had reported this joke to the young man, who had been unamused, commenting tersely that he had no intention of letting that happen.
Cicero watched, exhausted, as the edifice he had laboriously constructed during the previous six months was gradually demolished. In early June he wrote to Decimus Brutus: “What is the use? Believe me, Brutus, as one not given to self-deprecation, I am a spent force. The Senate was my weapon and it has fallen to pieces.” He realized that for all his struggles the constitution was dead and power lay in the hands of soldiers and their leaders.
Lepidus, claiming he had been forced into it by his men, switched allegiance to Antony and was followed by Plancus and then Pollio. The supposedly loyal army in Africa was recalled to Rome (a desperate measure, for its commander, Titus Sextius, was a Caesarian) and a legion of new recruits was formed. Frantic appeals were sent to Brutus in Macedonia to come home, but he knew better than to accede to them. He still hoped to avoid civil war; this was why he was keeping Caius Antonius alive as a hostage, despite Cicero’s obdurate appeals for his execution. He knew that safety lay in joining forces with Cassius and marched off eastwards to meet him. An invasion of Italy would be practicable only with their combined forces. For the time being, the Senate was on its own.
Throughout July, Cicero bombarded Brutus fruitlessly with letters begging him to intervene. He continued bravely, or obstinately, to defend his policy. “Our only protection was this lad,” he insisted. But in the end he was compelled to admit that he had failed. “Caesar’s army, which used to be excellent [i.e., loyal], is not only no help but forces us to ask urgently for your army.”
Octavian’s likely defection from the Republican cause was clear enough for any intelligent observer to predict, hence the appeals for help. However, Cicero must have felt he had no choice but to assume his trustworthiness until he had definite evidence otherwise. The two men stayed in touch.
Brutus was unimpressed by Cicero’s explanations and when he saw an excerpt from a letter he had written to Caesar, passed on to him by Atticus, he delivered a magisterial rebuke.
You thank him on public grounds in such a fashion, so imploringly and humbly—I hardly know what to write. I am ashamed of the situation, of what fortune has done to us, but write I must. You commend our welfare to him. Better any death than such welfare! It is a downright declaration that there has been no abolition of despotism, only a change of despot. Read over your words again and then dare to deny that these are the pleadings of a subject to his king.
On July 25 Servilia, Brutus’s mother, invited Cicero to an informal council of war and asked him for his advice as to whether they should try to persuade Brutus to return to Rome. Cicero said in the firmest terms that Brutus should “lend support to our tottering and almost collapsing commonwealth at the earliest