Cicero - Anthony Everitt [99]
Cicero’s finances continued to cause him anxiety. Help came at this time from a surprising source. In 54, despite what he called his own “straitened circumstances” (without for one moment expecting to be believed), Caesar agreed to make him a loan of 800,000 sesterces and offered Quintus, also hard-pressed for cash, an appointment as one of his senior officers in Gaul.
The brothers accepted the money—evidence not only of the straits in which they found themselves but of their warm personal relations with Caesar despite political disagreements. Cicero knew how deeply he was indebted. He wrote to his brother later in the year, after Quintus had joined the legions in Gaul, that he had come to regard Caesar almost as a member of the family: “In all the world Caesar is the only man who cares for me as I could wish, or (as others would have it) who wants me to care for him.” No doubt he said this with half an eye on the likelihood that Quintus would show Caesar the letter, but there is little reason to doubt the sincerity of his gratitude. Caesar was a man of great charm and was fond of the sensitive, witty advocate; of course, he was also a hardheaded calculator and had every interest in using generosity to neutralize an opponent.
The relationship between the two was helped by their shared literary interests. Somehow Caesar found time during his campaign to compose a weighty tome on Latin grammar. Well aware of Cicero’s penchant for praise, he flatteringly dedicated it to Cicero, who responded by sending him another ill-advised epic he had written, this time on his exile and return. Caesar made some polite comments but evidently had reservations, and it seems the work was never published.
Quintus was a competent soldier and Caesar valued his services. At one point Quintus and his legion were besieged in their camp by a Gallic tribe, the Nervii, which had already ambushed and destroyed a Roman army. Attacks came in wave after wave. Quintus behaved coolly and bravely, as Caesar made clear in his account of the Gallic War: “Cicero himself, although in very poor health, would not rest even at night, until a crowd of soldiers actually went to him and by their remonstrances made him take care of himself.” The Nervii repeated a trick they had played on the previous army and tried unsuccessfully to lure Quintus out of his camp on the promise of safe conduct.
The siege continued and messenger after messenger dispatched to Caesar was caught, tortured and killed. The Nervii invested the camp with a rampart and managed to set much of it alight with incendiary darts and red-hot molded-clay bullets. Eventually news got through to Caesar of Quintus’s plight and he marched to relieve him. He sent one of his Gallic horsemen ahead to tell him to hold out. The man was afraid to go up to the camp and enter it so he flung a javelin with a message wrapped around it into the camp. Unfortunately, the javelin happened to stick in one of the camp towers and was not noticed for a couple of days. Eventually a soldier saw it, pulled it out and took it to Quintus. By this time the smoke of burning villages warned the Romans that help was near. The camp was relieved and, in due course, the Nervii were defeated. Although on one occasion he allowed some of his troops to be surprised by a German force, there is no question that Quintus had a good war.
In Italy, his brother was still looking after his domestic interests. Quintus had bought a couple of villas near Arpinum and Cicero spent time supervising their refurbishment. In September 54 he wrote to Quintus: “Escaped from the great heat wave (I don’t remember a greater), I have refreshed myself on the banks of our delightful river