Cicero - Anthony Everitt [73]
If Cicero could only find a way of drawing Pompey towards the conservative cause and detaching him from the radicals, the ship of state might return to an even keel. This would mean gaining the general’s confidence. The going was more difficult than he expected. Cicero sent Pompey a long self-congratulatory letter about his Consulship during the general’s journey home but received only a perfunctory reply. Cicero’s boastfulness irritated Pompey and, more to the point, he knew that the orator had no real power base.
Cicero saw he was making little progress and began to lose heart. On January 25 he gave Atticus a telling description of Pompey’s character: “He professes the highest regard for me and makes a parade of warm affection, praising on the surface while below it, well, not so far below that it’s difficult to see, he’s jealous. Awkward, tortuous, politically paltry, shabby, timid, disingenuous—but I shall go into more detail on another occasion.”
In fact, Pompey was privately considering a rapprochement with the Senate. He hinted at his intentions by divorcing his wife, Mucia. Whatever personal reasons there were for this (Plutarch tells us that she was widely whispered to have been unfaithful), it was a political act; for the two Metelli, her half-brothers, were prominent populares. To make sure that everyone understood the message that he was thinking of shifting his ground in the direction of the optimates, Pompey opened negotiations for the hand of Cato’s niece. However, the Senate’s unyielding and self-appointed conscience dismissed the idea out of hand, calling the offer a kind of bribery. This left Pompey awkwardly placed, having abandoned one faction and been rebuffed by the other. His return to civilian life was off to a bad start.
“Life out of uniform can have the dangerous effect of weakening the reputation of famous generals,” Plutarch noted in his biography of Pompey. “They are poorly adapted to the equality of democratic politics. Such men claim the same precedence in civilian life that they enjoy on the battlefield.… So when people find a man with a brilliant military record playing an active part in public life they undermine and humiliate him. But if he renounces and withdraws from politics, they maintain his reputation and ability and no longer envy him.”
The trouble was that Pompey was a poor political tactician and an uninspiring public speaker. He found the grubby business of politicking in the Forum distasteful and embarrassing. He tended not to express his intentions clearly and was criticized for being misleading or even hypocritical. Proud of his achievements, he wanted to receive without having to ask and had no real idea how to handle the Senate. Crassus remained jealous of him and did little to be helpful. Only Caesar seemed happy to give him any assistance, but his Praetorship was now over and he would soon be leaving for a governorship in Spain. He was as ever hugely in debt and creditors delayed his departure. He remarked dryly: “I need 25 million sesterces just to own nothing.”
Soon after his arrival in Rome in early February 61, Pompey addressed a meeting of the Senate. He commented politely but noncommittally on the sacrilege scandal and said in general terms that he approved of the Senate’s decrees. He was given a poor reception. Cicero said the speech was a “frost.” AS for his own contribution to the debate, he was of the opinion that he had given a vintage performance, which, he confessed wryly to Atticus, contained more than a degree of self-parody.
I brought the house down. And why not, on such a theme—the dignity of our order, concord