Cicero - Anthony Everitt [79]
Then some lines from the poem on his Consulship came to Cicero’s mind, in which the muse of epic poetry, Calliope, appears to him and gives him some advice:
Meantime the paths which you from earliest days did seek,
Yes, and when Consul too, as mood and virtue called,
These hold, and foster still your fame and good men’s praise.
Nobody else had taken the book very seriously, but, as he pointed out to Atticus, for Cicero the passage reminded him of his duty. AS he thought about what he had written, it struck him how it was essentially a celebration of traditional, aristocratic values. They were where his deepest feelings lay, even if the Patricians of his day cold-shouldered him. His decision not to join the Caesarian alliance was at bottom an emotional one. It was beyond his imagination that the established order could not be saved.
Caesar, Pompey and Crassus went ahead without Cicero and sealed their secret agreement. With their money, their influence, their access to military force and their ruthlessness, they were in a position to act more or less as they wished. They could control the results of elections and arrange special commands or postings almost at will. A cabal was now in command of affairs, which was willing and able to bypass the Senate. When a later contemporary, Caius Asinius Pollio, wrote one of the first histories of the period, it was no accident that he opened his narrative with this alliance, which signaled the bankruptcy of the old order.
Caesar’s success as a politician sprang not only from his capacity for rigorous analysis of a given situation and for decisive action but also from his charm and attention to detail. So, when softening up Pompey, he had appealed to the great man’s vanity by getting the Senate to let him wear his triumphal insignia, including the special embroidered purple gown, at public shows. Few people saw the steel behind his agreeable, good-humored manners. He knew how to make himself liked by all and sundry. He was scrupulously polite: once when he was served asparagus dressed with myrrh instead of olive oil, he ate it without objecting and told off his friends when they objected to the dish (because it tasted bitter and was vulgarly expensive). “If you didn’t like it, you didn’t need to eat it. But if one reflects on one’s host’s lack of breeding it merely shows one is ill-bred oneself.” His attitude towards money was strategic: it was not so much that he wanted it for himself, he sought it as a fund into which his friends and soldiers could dip, often providing them with cheap or interest-free loans. He was always giving people presents, whether or not they asked for them.
From his youth Caesar took a dandyish care of his appearance, once adding wrist-length sleeves to his purple-striped Senatorial tunic and wearing his belt fashionably loose. His dinner parties and entertainments were legendary; in Plutarch’s phrase, he was known and admired for a “certain splendour in his life-style.” Cicero observed: “When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.”
In January 59, the new Consul moved with speed, introducing his land-reform bill designed to resettle Pompey’s soldiers. He was determined to proceed legally if at all possible. The legislation had been very carefully framed to avoid giving needless offense, and Senators could find little to say against it. After he had read the text aloud, Caesar said he was ready to make any improvements that might be suggested. But Cato was having none of it: he tried to talk the proposal out by filibustering until sunset, when Senate meetings automatically closed.
The strategy of the optimates was simple; to oppose Caesar’s reforms lock, stock and barrel and to get his fellow Consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, to veto them. This would have the effect either of neutralizing Caesar or of pushing him