Cicero - Anthony Everitt [85]
Wherever Cicero turned, support was lukewarm and he slowly came to realize that his position was untenable. He could hardly leave his house without being pelted with mud and stones by the Tribune’s gangs. Even friends were counseling retreat. At a meeting in his house, senior optimates, led by Hortensius, advised him to leave the city, promising him an early return—advice he took but never forgave. Most people were sympathetic in principle (or appeared to be), but nobody in practice would act against Clodius.
Despairing, Cicero carried a little statue of Minerva down through the Forum and up to the summit of the Capitol, where he dedicated it with the inscription: “To Minerva, Guardian of Rome.” He had once been Rome’s guardian and now he asked the goddess to protect the Republic during his enforced absence. Then, escorted by friends, he slipped out of the city, on foot in dead of night in order to avoid detection.
AS soon as Cicero’s departure was discovered, a furious Clodius placed a new, bolder measure before the People, this time condemning Cicero by name and confiscating his goods. He was to be refused fire and water and was forbidden to live closer than 400 miles from Rome. It is a sign of the affection in which Cicero was widely held, of his fundamental likeability, that most people paid little attention to the new law and happily put up the exile on his journey from Italy. There were exceptions, though: the Praetor of Sicily asked him to avoid the island, so he made his way instead through Macedonia and settled in Thessalonica, where the Roman Quaestor, Cnaeus Plancius, generously and not uncourageously took him into his official residence.
Cicero was always prone to excessive mood swings. He easily became overconfident when his affairs went well and a setback could drive him into an exaggerated depression. The present crisis was unlike anything he had faced before. Even the most sanguine mind would have been daunted. If we are to believe what he writes in his letters, he may have suffered something like a mental breakdown and seems to have attempted, or at least considered, suicide.
Before too long, though, the exile returned to something approaching his old form, scheming and arguing for his recall. He decided that Terentia, probably now in her early forties, should not join him because she would be more useful to his interests in Rome. Atticus bore the brunt of his newfound agitations, receiving a constant flow of suggestions, instructions and criticisms without apparent complaint.
But if Cicero was determined that one day he would return to Italy, his enemy had different ideas. Clodius did all he could to ensure that his victim’s disappearance was permanent. He had his house on the Palatine burned down, together with some if not all of his villas in the country and arranged for the site of the house to be consecrated and reserved for a Temple of Liberty.
7
EXILE
The Rise of Caesar: 58–52 BC
Cicero was shattered by his downfall; he reported to Atticus that he was losing weight and crying a lot. Expulsion from Rome, the world city, and its center, the Forum, seemed to annihilate all he was and stood for.
He longed for his family, which must have gone through a terrifying time when the house in Rome was demolished. Terentia, the “frailty” of whose health caused him anxiety, and the seven-year-old Marcus were now homeless. Perhaps Quintus and Pomponia put them up, but we do not know, for, in the surviving correspondence, Cicero, preoccupied with his own emotions, does not discuss the matter. Atticus was a tower of strength and Terentia repeatedly told her husband how grateful she was for his help as she tried to put some order into their domestic affairs.
Cicero’s thoughts often turned to Tullia, his favorite child. “I miss my daughter, the most loving, modest and clever daughter a man