Cicero - Anthony Everitt [82]
Cicero told Atticus that “Sampsiceramus,” his nickname for Pompey (after an oriental potentate), “is out for trouble. We can expect anything. He is confessedly working for absolute power.… They would never have come so far if they were not paving their way to other and disastrous objectives.” He noticed that the uninhibited freedom of speech which marked political life in the Republic was giving way to caution at social gatherings and across dinner tables. Despite the fact that there was no official censorship, he agreed on a simple code with Atticus for sensitive parts of their correspondence.
Popular opinion began to move against the First Triumvirate and they were booed at a gladiatorial show in July. A contemporary commentator called them “the Beast with Three Heads.” When an actor in a play spoke the line, “To our misfortune art thou Great,” the audience took it as a reference to Pompey and called for a dozen encores.
Cicero began to detect a weakness in the alliance. He suspected that Pompey profoundly disliked the position he found himself in. He was right, up to a point. But although he knew better than to trust Pompey, with whose double-dealing he was familiar, he needed so much to believe that the former general could be detached from the “rascals” that he over-interpreted the evidence of his unease. There is no doubt that Pompey did feel uncomfortable, but at the same time there is every reason to suppose that his alliance with Caesar and Crassus remained as firm as ever. In fact, it was Cicero, the recipient of many melancholy private confidences, who would be discarded.
Cicero pretended to take Clodius’s election as Tribune lightly, but he could not stop mentioning it. “Dear Publius is threatening me, most hostile.… I think I have very firm backing in my old Consular army of all honest men, including the moderately honest. Pompeius signifies goodwill to me out of the ordinary. He also assures me that Clodius will not say a word about me; in this he does not deceive me but is himself deceived.”
Caesar’s final task was to decide on the future once his Consulship came to an end. So far he had achieved all they could have hoped: Pompey had had his eastern settlement approved and his soldiers had been given land, and Crassus had had the tax farmers’ contract renegotiated. The Consular elections, delayed from the summer by a decree of Bibulus, were eventually held on October 17. Two supporters of the Triumvirate, Aulus Gabinius and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, whose daughter Caesar had recently married, won the day. Caesar was allocated the governorships of Italian Gaul, Transalpine Gaul and Illyricum (today Dalmatia) for five years. His friend Sallust wrote: “For himself he wanted a high command, an army and a war in some field where his gifts could shine in all their brightness.” This is what he had now obtained and over the coming years he methodically set about conquering what is now France and Belgium. Rome called these territories Long-haired Gaul (Gallia Comata).
On December 10, Clodius at last took office as Tribune. Unfortunately, as his great crisis approached, Cicero was joined in Rome by Atticus and their correspondence stops. He was still guardedly optimistic about his prospects and thought that the worst that could happen would be a trial before the Military Assembly, as had been the case with Rabirius.