Cicero

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 ever had, the image of my face and speech and mind.” She was living with her husband, Calpurnius Piso, a model son-in-law, who was a Quaestor in 58 but gave up his foreign posting to work for Cicero’s return.

The exile indulged himself by translating his grief and shock into high rhetoric. “Has any man ever fallen from so fine a position, with so good a cause, so strong in resources of talent, prudence and influence, and in the support of all honest men? Can I forget what I was, or fail to feel what I am and what I have lost—rank, fame, children, fortune, brother?” One senses here less a broken man than an orator looking for an admiring audience.

When it came to the allocation of blame for what had been done to him, Cicero’s resentment overmastered him. His paranoia enriched with plausibility, he blamed the aristocrats in the Senate who had never accepted him as one of them and, he felt, had taken pleasure in abandoning him. He was particularly angry with his old rival Hortensius, who (he believed) had never forgiven him for outdoing him in the law courts. It was about such people that he complained to Atticus: “I will only say this, and I believe you know I am right: it was not enemies but jealous friends who ruined me.”

It was, of course, the First Triumvirate that was really to blame: the three had knowingly let Clodius engineer Cicero’s ruin. Curiously, though, Cicero said little against them and never directly criticized Pompey. Did he not see the link between his refusal to join the alliance and his subsequent political destruction? With the benefit of hindsight, the connection seems inescapable.

AS soon as he had settled down in Thessalonica, he sent off letters to various public figures, including one to Pompey. Although he was familiar with Pompey’s faults, he may have become too fond of him to credit his duplicity. More probably, he knew he would need his support in the future. Cicero was sure that at heart Pompey was no radical; sooner or later he would make common cause with the Senate. And in the short run, Cicero needed Pompey for a more practical reason. Without his active backing it was clear that he would never be allowed to return to Rome.

Atticus came in for his share of criticism. If only he had loved Cicero enough he would have given him better advice; instead he had “looked on and done nothing.” Atticus very sensibly paid no attention to this unfair jibe and went on doing all he could to help, even offering to place his personal fortune, now much augmented by the death of an “extremely difficult” but extremely wealthy uncle, at Cicero’s disposal. This was a gesture of some significance for, with the confiscation of his property, Cicero’s financial affairs were in a very poor state. Cicero’s letters to Atticus are full of practical advice, complaints and queries.

In June 58 the Senate attempted to pass a motion reprieving him, but a Tribune friendly to Clodius blocked it. In October eight Tribunes drafted a law to revoke the second of Clodius’s two laws (the one naming Cicero). It failed too, but Cicero was not too disappointed, for he thought it “carelessly drafted.” AS the year drew to a close he expressed growing worries about the Tribunes-Elect and the likely attitudes of the incoming Consuls. One of these was his old enemy Metellus Nepos, who had opened the sniping against him on the last day of his Consulship five years before.

However, Metellus agreed (more or less) to a reconciliation and the senior Consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, turned out to be a strong supporter. The Tribunes were sympathetic too. Atticus was successful in his informal role as campaign manager for Cicero’s recall. With his aptitude for networking and the freedom with which he could cross enemy lines, he gradually and discreetly pushed matters forward.

Even more helpful than Atticus was the deteriorating situation in Rome. Only a few weeks after Cicero’s melancholy departure for Greece, Clodius turned his attentions to Pompey and a supporter of his, the Consul Aulus Gabinius (a onetime friend of Catilina’s or, in Cicero’s dismissive phrase, his “pet dancer”). With his gangs of supporters he made life so dangerous for Pompey that the former general shut himself up for much of the time in his villa outside the city.

It is possible that Clodius was being egged on by Caesar or Crassus, the idea being to keep Pompey’s hands full and so reduce the chances of his coming to terms with the optimates. More probably, Clodius was simply asserting his independence from his patrons and putting himself beyond their reach. He was aware that the pressure for Cicero’s recall would grow and may have guessed that the beleaguered Pompey, skulking helplessly at home, might be tempted to change his mind. There were repeated riots and disorder throughout the city, and it was becoming difficult to conduct public business. On January 1, 57, after the close of Clodius’s term as Tribune, Consul Lentulus proposed a motion in the Senate allowing Cicero’s return. It was passed with a good majority. Clodius deployed a troop of gladiators, already assembled for the funeral of a relative, to prevent the bill from being put to the People. Some Tribunes were wounded in the Forum—a scandalous development—and Cicero’s brother, Quintus, only just escaped with his life. He was left lying unnoticed among the corpses in the square and for a time was presumed dead.

The only way to deal with Clodius was to fight fire with fire. Two Tribunes, Titus Annius Milo, a rich conservative who was popular with the urban masses because he had paid for sumptuous theatrical performances and gladiatorial shows, and Publius Sestius, a long-standing supporter of Cicero, recruited their own armed groups. Many weeks of street fighting ensued. In his defense of Sestius against charges of violence in 56, Cicero described in graphic terms the effects of this gang warfare: “The Tiber was full of citizens’ corpses, the public sewers were choked with them and the blood that streamed from the Forum had to be mopped up with sponges.” To begin with, the cure was worse than the disease and public business once more came to a standstill. However, by the summer Clodius, while by no means defeated, was at least being contained.

Pompey was now persuaded to back Cicero’s recall, but Caesar’s approval was more difficult to win. Although he was preoccupied with the conquest of Long-haired Gaul, he managed to devote much attention to monitoring and, so far as he could from a distance, managing the political situation in Rome. Cicero was no longer a major force either with his traditional constituency, the equites, or with the optimates in the Senate, but he was one of the few politicians of the day who could have an impact on events as an individual. AS Rome’s best-known advocate and with his mastery of the art of rhetoric, his opinions carried a certain weight. To some extent, his political isolation worked in his favor, for it contributed to a reputation for independence of mind. He was growing into an elder statesman.

Caesar finally gave his reluctant consent to Cicero’s return, presumably realizing that it was pointless to resist what he could not prevent. But he insisted that, in return, Cicero promise not to attack the First Triumvirate openly. Quintus offered Pompey a guarantee, on his brother’s behalf, of future good behavior.

Enthusiasm for Cicero’s cause grew. He became, briefly, the focus for a coming together of almost every shade of political opinion. He had suffered at the hands of Clodius and his rehabilitation was an economical and elegant way of publicly rejecting mob rule. How this was to be achieved, though, required a degree of care. It was possible to mount a plausible case against the legality of all Clodius’s acts as Tribune—on the grounds that his renunciation of patrician status had been handled improperly and, accordingly, his election was invalid. However, his reforms had attracted enthusiastic popular support and it would be unwise to disturb them. Even Cato took a lenient line on this topic, because he did not want to see his annexation of Cyprus nullified. It is disconcerting that the uncompromising constitutionalist was willing to bend his principles when his interests were at stake. Cicero was much put out by this, and for a while relations between the two men were icy.

Lentulus decided to proceed by stages. In May 57 the Senate endorsed his proposal that the various Roman officials and citizens who had helped Cicero during his banishment be formally thanked. It also agreed to convene a meeting of the Military Assembly later in the summer to consider his recall. This was a little odd because for many years this Assembly’s main function had been the election of senior magistrates; its use on this occasion was probably due to the fact that its voting system was more manageable than that of the General Assembly. The meeting was extensively publicized throughout Italy, and citizens were encouraged to come to Rome and vote. The political establishment was taking no chances with the Roman mob, which was still largely under Clodius’s thumb.

Then, in July, an unusually well-attended meeting of the Senate called on the Consuls and magistrates to prepare legislation for Cicero’s recall. No Tribune vetoed the proposal and Clodius was the only one to speak against it. Except for Clodius’s brother Appius and two Tribunes (“bought at auction,” as the word went), the entire magistracy came together behind a motion to repeal the law that had banished Cicero. No reference was made to the general measure condemning the execution of Roman citizens without trial, which had in fact precipitated Cicero’s hurried departure from Rome. The assumption now was that it simply did not apply to him.

The campaign accelerated. Thanks largely to lobbying by Pompey, all kinds of institutions—town councils, associations of tax farmers, craft guilds—passed resolutions in favor of recall. Pompey instructed his veterans to attend the Military Assembly, which was held in Rome on the Field of Mars in August. The most important men in the State, led by Pompey, addressed the meeting, which was guarded by Milo’s gangs and teams of gladiators. Senior Senators superintended the voting. The bill was passed triumphantly.

Apart from his appearance at the Senate, there is no record of where Clodius spent his time during these weeks. His career shows that he was no coward and he is likely to have made his presence felt in some way, if not directly on the Field of Mars. He had suffered a serious setback, but he soon demonstrated that he was by no means routed.

In Greece Cicero’s moods had been seesawing between pessimism and elation. Some months earlier he had written to Atticus: “From your letter and from the facts themselves I see that I am utterly finished.” Now he had every justification for euphoria. AS the news improved, he decided it was safe to leave boring Thessalonica and stay somewhere closer to Italy. He moved to Dyrrachium, a port on the Adriatic Sea, which was only a few days’ sail to Brundisium; he was “patron” of the town and had “warm friends” among the townsfolk. Confident enough to anticipate the outcome of events in Rome, he set sail before the vote was taken and arrived on Italian soil on the Nones of August. It was an auspicious day, for it happened to be the anniversary of Brundisium’s foundation. The town was en fête and Cicero’s arrival added an excitingly topical dimension to the civic celebrations. Even more joyfully, it was Tullia’s birthday and she was there to greet him. In her early twenties and as always the apple of his eye, she was now a widow. Her first husband, Calpurnius Piso, had recently died—from what cause is unknown. Although it had been an arranged marriage, the union had been a happy one.

Cicero’s journey up Italy and his reception in Rome were as close to a Triumph as a nonmilitary man could aspire to. There were massive demonstrations in his favor and he said later that Italy had taken him on its shoulders and carried him back to Rome. He described it all in a long, excited letter to Atticus. Official delegations came out to meet him from every township and gave him “the most flattering marks of regard.” AS usual he overreacted: speaking a few days later, he said that their decrees and votes of congratulation and confidence were like a ladder “by which I did not simply return home but climbed up to heaven.” When he reached the outskirts of Rome on September 4, almost everybody on his list of VIPS turned out to welcome him. Only his enemies stayed away. At the Capena Gate the steps of the temples were packed with ordinary citizens who greeted Cicero with loud applause. The Forum and Capitol were filled with “spectacular” crowds.

It was a great moment, but Cicero already detected difficulties ahead. He suspected disaffection among the aristocrats, whom he still blamed for his misfortunes. “It is a sort of second life I am beginning. Already, now that I am here, secret resentment and open jealousy are setting in among those who championed me when I was away.”

The day after his arrival Cicero gave a speech in the Senate before later offering his thanks briefly to the People. It was not one of his most brilliant performances. The speech was little more than a list, larded with invective, of those whom he believed to have betrayed him, contrasted with praise for those who had helped secure his return. He described Gabinius, one of the two Consuls of 58 who had refused to lift a finger on his behalf, as “heavy with wine, somnolence and debauchery, with hair well-oiled and neatly braided, with drooping eyes and slobbering mouth.” AS for his colleague Calpurnius Piso, “talking with him is much the same as holding a discussion with a wooden post in the Forum … a dull and brutish clod … profligate, filthy and intemperate.” On the credit side of the account, pride of place went to Pompey, “whose courage, fame and achievements are unparalleled in the records of any nation or any age.” It was the first indication that, far from being an independent political operator as he had tried to be in the past, Cicero was now, in effect, a creature of the First Triumvirate.

Meanwhile, Clodius had been busy. He was not finished with Cicero. For some time there had been a growing food shortage, exacerbated by Clodius’s extension of the free corn dole to the urban poor. He now spread it about that a sudden scarcity during the past few weeks was all Cicero’s fault. There was a riot and stones were thrown at Consul Metellus Nepos. Cicero reacted firmly and immediately. In the Senate he proposed Pompey for a special commission to take charge of grain supplies. A decree authorizing the preparation of appropriate legislation was passed. Cicero was delighted at having outmaneuvered Clodius so quickly and comprehensively. “The decree was read out immediately,” he told Atticus, “and the People applauded in the silly new fashion by chanting my name.”

The following day the Consuls drafted a law giving Pompey control over grain supplies for five years. He asked for fifteen Lieutenant-Commissioners, one of whom was to be Cicero (who accepted, typically, on condition that he would not have to leave Rome). The special command was agreed and Pompey left Rome at once to relieve the shortage, which he did with his customary efficiency.

The Senate’s position was becoming increasingly weak. This was almost entirely its own fault, even if its blunders were not exclusively the products of stupidity. In the eyes of the Senate, the integrity of the constitution was at stake, and in particular the fundamental principle that no single member of the ruling class should be allowed to predominate. This was the cause for which the optimates had driven Pompey into the arms of Caesar and Crassus. Although Cicero was not such a powerful figure, they were ill-advised to alienate him, for his intelligent and flexible conservatism could have helped them to resist radical outsiders like Caesar and to attract Pompey into their camp by judicious concessions. The Senate acted in ways that made its worst fears likely to come to pass. It lost control of the domestic security situation and now found itself compelled to do what it most wanted to avoid: give yet another special command to Pompey.

Having plunged more or less successfully into the political melee, Cicero had some domestic worries to exercise him. His property was to be returned to him, but the question arose of compensation for the demolition of his house on the Palatine and of his country villas. He had been unable to work at the bar for a year and a half and was in urgent need of funds. Also there was the problem of the temple that Clodius had erected on the site of his home; unless the consecration could be annulled, rebuilding would be out of the question. The matter was put before the relevant religious authority, the College of Pontiffs.

Like the Senate, the College of Pontiffs wanted to avoid a full-scale confrontation with Clodius. It came up with a clever formulation which invalidated the consecration without discrediting its originator. At a meeting of the Senate on October 1, the College’s findings were discussed. Given the absence in Long-haired Gaul of the Chief Pontiff (who might well have taken a view less friendly to Cicero), a spokesman for the College emphasized that it saw its role as judge of the religious issue and that the Senate was judge of the law. Those Pontiffs who were also Senators then asked to speak in their latter capacity and did so on Cicero’s behalf. Clodius was present; after some futile filibustering, he saw that further opposition in the Senate would be pointless. On the following day a decree was passed and the Consuls, with the help of surveyors, proceeded to agree to a financial valuation of the house and villas. To Cicero’s annoyance, the house on the Palatine was estimated at 2 million sesterces (much less than the original purchase price of 3.5 million sesterces), the villa at Tusculum at 500,000 sesterces and the one at Formiae at 250,000 sesterces.

The affair confirmed Cicero’s continuing resentment against fair-weather friends in the Senate, who he believed would never let slip an opportunity to harm his interests. He told Atticus: “Those same gentlemen (you don’t need me to tell you their names) who formerly clipped my wings don’t want to see them grow back to their old size. However, I hope they are growing already.”

It turned out that Clodius had only appeared to accept defeat in the gang wars: he was running for Aedile in 56—an important venture, for, if successful, he would once again have a constitutional position. When the elections were postponed Clodius stepped up the pressure on the streets. He let it be known that if elections were not held soon, he would carry out reprisals against the city. In November he staged a series of riots. On November 3 an armed gang drove away the workmen who were rebuilding Cicero’s house on the Palatine. From this vantage point they threw stones at Quintus’s house nearby and set it on fire. A few days later Clodius mounted an attack on Cicero in person. Cicero wrote excitedly to Atticus:

On November 11 as I was coming down the Holy Way, he came after me with his men. Uproar! Stones flying, cudgels and swords in evidence. And like a bolt from the blue! I retired into Tettius Damio’s forecourt, and my companions had no difficulty keeping out the rowdies. Clodius himself could have been killed, but I am becoming a dietitian, I’m sick of surgery.

The next morning, in broad daylight, Clodius led a force armed with swords and shields to storm and burn the house of Milo, his competitor for mastery of the streets. A counterattack beat them off and a number of leading Clodians were killed. For the time being, this was a decisive encounter, and Clodius temporarily lost control of the situation.

In general, Cicero was in a remarkably good mood, considering the political disarray, his continuing money worries and the threats to his physical safety. “My heart is high,” he wrote to Atticus, “higher even than in my palmy days, but my purse is low.” We do not know the reason for his elation, because the surviving correspondence with Atticus is sparse for a number of months, but he may have been buoyed by signs of strain among the First Triumvirate. In December, apparently with Pompey’s tacit support, a long-standing Senatorial grievance received a new airing: a Tribune criticized Caesar’s second Land Reform Act, which had removed from state ownership the profitable Capuan Marches and had been a sore point with the optimates ever since. The Senate had been forced to authorize 40 million sesterces to pay for the corn supply and this new expenditure went to highlight the loss of state revenues that the law had brought about.

In the new year a problem with the Egyptian Pharaoh led to a falling out between Pompey and Crassus. Although nominally a freestanding kingdom, Egypt was effectively a Roman dependency. Its importance was not merely its legendary wealth but its grain production, which served as an increasingly valuable complement to Sicilian supplies. King Ptolemy had been expelled from his country by his subjects and the question arose of who should reinstall him. A stable Egypt was in Rome’s interest and, what was more, the king could be counted on to pay a generous reward to his lucky savior. The Senate thought that the former Consul Lentulus, now governor of Cilicia, should be given the commission. However, as it promised to be an extremely lucrative operation, Pompey was understood not to be averse to accepting it himself.

This was most embarrassing to Cicero, who was indebted to both men for their help in ending his exile. He was seeing a good deal of Pompey at this time, who as usual failed to make his wishes explicit. For once, Cicero found this vagueness helpful, for it allowed him to press Lentulus’s qualifications for the job without causing offense. He describes these attempts in laborious detail in a sequence of long letters to Lentulus. Reading between the lines, one senses that he knew he was fighting for a lost cause. The optimates were determined to prevent Pompey from winning the commission under any circumstances and, with breathtaking shortsightedness, allied themselves with Clodius to present a common front. Pompey strongly suspected that Crassus was behind this curious turn of events.

About this time an old prophecy was discovered in the Sibylline Books, stored in a vault in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol Hill and consulted in times of emergency. Cicero had little faith in them, though he admired the ingenuity by which they avoided specific references to persons and place and so appeared to predict everything that happened. On this occasion, they conveniently but unconvincingly pronounced that the Egyptian king should not be restored “with a host.” The point was that the Senate did not want to see the great commander in charge of another army. To their disappointment Pompey let it be known that he would be willing to restore Ptolemy without military assistance.

With typical impudence Clodius, who had by now won election as Aedile and was back in office, brought Milo to court in February 56 for the illegal use of force. Milo appeared with Pompey as his supporting counselor. The Forum was packed with supporters of both sides. Clodius’s people tried to shout Pompey down when he got up to speak, but he plowed doggedly on. He concluded with some highly scabrous verses about Clodius and Clodia. Cicero described the scene in a letter to his brother, Quintus:

Pale with fury, [Clodius] started a game of question and answer in the middle of the shouting:

“Who’s starving the people to death?”

“Pompey,” answered his gang.

“Who wants to go to Alexandria?”

“Pompey.”

“Who do you want to go?”

“Crassus …”

About quarter past two the Clodians started spitting at us, as though on a signal. Sharp rise in temperature! They made a push to dislodge us, our side countercharged. Flight of gang. Clodius was hurled from the Speakers’ Platform, at which point I too made off for fear of what might happen in the free-for-all.

Pompey found it hard to handle this kind of abuse and, nervous, stayed away from the Forum. He eventually abandoned the idea of the Egyptian command (as did Lentulus, who had no intention of proceeding without an army behind him) and came to believe that there was a plot against his life. Soon after he decided to bring men to the city from his country estates in northern Italy to protect him.

Cicero continued to speak in the courts as and when the opportunity arose. Sometime in the spring of 56 he gave his entertaining (and successful) defense of young Marcus Caelius Rufus, his former pupil, against Clodia’s charge of attempted murder. This allowed him plenty of opportunity to amuse himself and his listeners with jabs at her brother. AS ever, he could not resist a joke. “My refutation would be framed in considerably more forcible terms,” he said, “if I did not feel inhibited by the fact that the woman’s husband—sorry, I mean brother, I always make that slip—is my personal enemy.”

In February accusations of bribery and breach of the peace were laid against Sestius, the Tribune who had pressed for Cicero’s recall. Cicero agreed at once to represent him. In the meantime, he was involved in a separate trial defending a former Aedile on a bribery charge. By a happy chance the man had saved Sestius’s life in a riot in the Forum and Cicero was able to use the speech to lay down the outline of his defense of Sestius. This had the helpful effect of preparing public opinion.

By the time the case against Sestius came to court in early March, political observers in Rome were convinced that the First Triumvirate was in serious trouble. There were rumors that it was teetering and might even collapse. Now that Pompey had broken with Clodius and Crassus, perhaps he could be persuaded to distance himself from Caesar, preoccupied in Gaul. Cicero judged the moment right to set out a viable political alternative. In his defense of Sestius he restated his political philosophy. Although he showed little sign of understanding the true balance of forces, he offered a rational and civilized alternative to the policies of the reactionaries in the Senate. Rome no longer faced any foreign dangers, Cicero claimed; the threat now came from within. Radicals like Clodius were not true friends of the People and, by the same token, the term optimates should not be restricted to a small backwards-looking circle of aristocrats. All men of goodwill were optimates now.

To summarize his message he invented a famous but almost untranslatable slogan: otium cum dignitate. By otium he meant “peace” as distinct not only from war but also from engagement in public affairs. This is what Cicero promised the People, security at the price of minimum involvement in the political process. Peace could be achieved only if respect was given to the traditional political establishment. In other words, social harmony could be achieved only if the balance of power was shifted from the People back to the Senate. Cicero was presenting himself as a Sulla without blood and tears—but also, unfortunately, a Sulla without a method, for he had little idea how reconciliation and reform might be attained in practice.

One of the witnesses for the prosecution of Sestius was Publius Vatinius, who as Tribune in 59 had helped Caesar with his legislation and had proposed the law giving him his special five-year command. In cross-examination Cicero “cut him up to the applause of gods and men” with extraordinary, but probably calculated, fury. There was growing talk that the Gallic command was unconstitutional and an attack on Vatinius was a good way to soften up the terrain for a later assault.

This was playing a dangerous game. Quintus was worried and told his brother that he might be going too far for Caesar’s comfort. Cicero did his best to reassure him. In April, flush with his victory in the case against Sestius, who was acquitted unanimously, he felt bold enough to place the question of Caesar’s second Land Reform Act on the agenda of a Senate meeting in May. Its repeal would be an open attack on Caesar. Cicero’s move was received with unusual warmth. His confidence was at its height and he was sure that his political career was back on track. He had regained his lost prestige and was delighted to see that his house was as full of visitors and petitioners as it had been in his heyday.

One evening in early April Cicero called on Pompey, who informed him he was leaving shortly for Sardinia to buy grain. Pompey was being more than ordinarily economical with the truth. When he left the city he in fact made a detour before setting sail for Sardinia and first made his way to Luca, a town at the extreme limit of Italian Gaul, where Caesar had secretly summoned him for emergency talks. Taking time off from his operations in Gaul, Caesar had already met Crassus in Ravenna and was planning a counterstroke which would silence his opponents in Rome.

Caesar had spent the last two years in a series of brilliantly conducted military campaigns. When taking up his governorship, he hoped for an opportunity to build on the military reputation he had won three years previously during his governorship in Spain. He was in luck, for long-standing hostilities between two Germanic tribes led one of them to invade Gaul from what is now Switzerland. Caesar claimed to see a potential threat to Italy from barbarian hordes and reacted vigorously. He routed the enemy with ease and then turned his attention to the other tribe, led by a charismatic chieftain who had incautiously reminded him when they once met that Caesar’s death would not be unwelcome in certain circles in Rome. This accurately aimed insult was not left unavenged. A victory, this time hard won, ensued.

“The Germans’ left was routed,” Caesar wrote, “but their right began to press our troops hard by weight of numbers. Their perilous position attracted the attention of young Publius Crassus [son of Caesar’s political partner], better able to move about and see what was happening than those in the fighting line. He therefore sent up a third line to their relief. This move turned the battle once more in our favor, and the enemy’s whole army broke and fled without stopping until they came to the Rhine, some fifteen miles away. A very few of the strongest tried to swim the river and a few others saved themselves by finding boats … but all the rest were hunted down and killed by our cavalry.”

Risings in the northeast gave Caesar the pretext to proceed to the subjugation of the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Channel. He briefly visited that remote, almost mythical island, Britannia, an exploit that was militarily insignificant but was received as a huge propaganda coup back home.

Propaganda was a matter of some moment. His political opponents looked for any opportunity to criticize him and argued that the war itself was illegal on the grounds that he had not had sufficient excuse to intervene. To promote his cause, Caesar devoted great care to his dispatches to the Senate and in due course wrote them up as a history of the Gallic wars.

He was proving to be a field commander of the first rank. Pompey and Crassus were gradually coming to realize that their junior partner was growing into a serious competitor in both wealth and reputation. He was no longer the “young man” they had seen him to be in 59.

Caesar was always on the move, ready to react to the latest military threat as it arose. But wherever he was stationed, he assiduously nurtured his links with the capital. After the campaigning season he spent every winter in Italian Gaul, a vantage point from which he could keep a close eye on political developments. His newfound riches were at the disposal of anyone who would sign up (literally in many cases, with oaths and written guarantees) to protect his interests. Few applicants were turned away.

From Caesar’s perspective the news from Rome in the spring of 56 could not have been worse. Clodius was running amok, Pompey and Crassus were at loggerheads, and several allies who stood for public office lost their elections. Caesar spoke bitterly at Luca about Cicero’s Senate motion to nullify his second Land Reform Act. He could see that the situation was slipping out of his grasp.

Caesar’s partners had long since gained all that had been covenanted when the First Triumvirate set up business: Pompey’s eastern settlement had been approved, land had been found for his soldiers and, for Crassus, the tax farmers’ contracts had been rewritten. Neither had any particular interest in keeping the alliance going.

With typical decisiveness and sensitivity to changing circumstances, Caesar proposed an extension to their agreement which would bring new and clearly identifiable benefits for each of them. Crassus and Pompey would stand for the Consulship in 55 and Caesar would guarantee their election by sending soldiers from his army to Rome to vote for them. Once in office the new Consuls would see to it that they were awarded new five-year special commands in Spain and Syria respectively. Crassus aimed to refresh his military laurels by leading a major expedition against the Parthian Empire, which neighbored Rome’s eastern possessions. In order to ensure strict equality of treatment, Caesar’s Gallic command would also be extended for an additional five years, which would give him the time he needed to complete the annexation of Gaul. After that he too would stand for a second Consulship. It was an elegant plan, with something in it for all three partners—so much so that Crassus and Pompey readily agreed to paper over their quarrels.

The agreement at Luca—especially the five-year commands—was to be kept a deep secret, at least for the time being, but it soon became clear that the alliance had hardened and that Pompey was back in Caesar’s camp.

When Pompey eventually arrived in Sardinia, he looked up Quintus and warned him to rein in his brother’s behavior, especially his attack on Caesar’s land legislation. Quintus repeated the exchange that followed to Cicero: “Ah, just the man I want,” “Very lucky our bumping into each other. Unless you have a serious talk with Marcus, you’re going to have to pay up on that guarantee you gave me on his behalf.” Beneath the joviality there was a new and unexpected steeliness. Pompey also sent Cicero a direct message, telling him not to take any action on the Campanian land.

Understanding at once that everything had changed, Cicero obeyed without demur and stayed away from the Senate in May when Caesar’s legislation was scheduled to be discussed. AS he told his brother: “On this question I am muzzled.” It soon became clear that more would be asked of him than silence: the First Triumvirate was going to demand his active support. To the general amazement, Cicero showed almost instantly that he was willing to provide it.

How was this volte-face to be explained? The simplest answer was that, after his brief rebellion, Cicero realized once and for all the futility of trying to maintain a freestanding political role. It was humiliating, but in the absence of effective political support from any other quarter he could see no alternative to capitulation to the First Triumvirate. But it was also true that indebtedness for a favor was a serious matter in ancient Rome; Cicero was under a heavy obligation to Caesar and Pompey for approving his return from exile, and acceding to their wishes was a way of repaying it. Finally, he remained bitter about his fellow Senators. If they would not let him into their circle, he would have to look elsewhere to maintain his position. Their flirtation with Clodius added insult to injury and made it all the more imperative that he did not remain isolated. By the end of May Cicero was helping to push through Senate proposals from Caesar which as recently as March he had called monstrous things. These engaged the Treasury to pay for four legions which Caesar had recruited without permission and on his own initiative and gave him leave to recruit ten subordinate commanders.

At the beginning of June the Senate discussed, as it was legally obliged to do, the allocation of provinces for 54. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was a candidate for the Consulship of 55, and if he won the election he would be ready for a post-Consular foreign posting in January 54. He had a large client list in Transalpine Gaul, currently under Caesar’s control, and wanted to take over as its governor, for by then Caesar’s five-year term would have ended. This was a serious threat: if Ahenobarbus was not halted in his tracks, Caesar would be unable to have his Gallic command extended, as had been agreed at Luca.

So Cicero was enlisted to give a major address on this subject. He spoke in extravagant praise of Caesar, who (he argued) should be allowed to complete the good work he had started. He would probably need an extension of only two years and, as it was what he wanted, it should not be ruled out by allowing his provinces to be allocated at this stage. The conquest of Long-haired Gaul was vital to Italy’s security and, as Caesar was in winning form, there was no doubt that it would be accomplished expeditiously. When Atticus inquired why he had not as usual received an advance copy of the speech, Cicero wrote back contritely:

Come on! Do you really think there is anyone I would sooner have read and approve my compositions than you? So why did I send this one to anybody else first? Because the person [probably Pompey] to whom I did send it was pressing me for it and I did not have two copies. There was also the fact (I might as well stop nibbling at what has to be swallowed) that I was not exactly proud of my recantation hymn. But good night to principle, sincerity and honor!

Cicero’s frame of mind shifted uneasily from one mood to another, but at heart he was depressed. He could not help despising himself for doing Caesar’s bidding. Now fifty years old, he felt that his political career was over. He confided to his brother: “These years of my life which ought to be passing in the plenitude of Senatorial dignity are spent in the hurly-burly of forensic practice or rendered tolerable by my studies at home.”

Over the next few years Caesar’s gang of three made extensive use of Cicero’s legal services as a number of friends trooped through the law courts under his care. One of them was Balbus, the rich Spaniard who had become Caesar’s confidential agent and who was accused of having illegally acquired his Roman citizenship. Cicero’s defense rested on the plausible proposition that the case was really intended as an indirect attack on the First Triumvirate. This was a fruitless exercise, he argued cogently, and the prosecution would be well advised to think again and let the matter drop. Cicero won the case and Balbus was acquitted.

After defending one of Pompey’s supporters, Cicero complained to a friend that he was becoming disillusioned with the law. “I was weary of it even in the days when youth and ambition spurred me forward, and when moreover I was at liberty to refuse a case I did not care for. But now life is simply not worth living.” His correspondence reveals his continuing uncertainty, even feelings of guilt, about his conduct. “After all, what could be more humiliating than our lives today, and especially mine?” he confided to Atticus. “For you, though you are a political animal by nature, have not actually lost your freedom.… But so far as I am concerned, people think I have left my senses if I speak on politics as I ought, and a powerless prisoner if I say nothing. So how am I expected to feel?”

The judgment of history has been as harsh on Cicero as he was on himself. On the face of it, his decision to go along with the wishes of the First Triumvirate was weakly self-interested. It was certainly interpreted as being so. He was much criticized and all the old charges were exhumed—the laughable epic on his Consulship, the self-important letter to Pompey in 63 and the unmanly behavior during his exile.

But it is hard to see what else Cicero could have done if he was not to retire into silence and country living. This was not his most glorious hour, but he was taking the only action likely to keep him in the game. His own view that he was uniquely placed to mediate among the conflicting forces on the political scene was not entirely unreasonable. Although the First Triumvirate had reasserted its authority in no uncertain terms, he remained convinced that the alliance would not last forever. Caesar’s military successes made it increasingly clear that he and Pompey were competitors. In the long run one of them would have to give ground and yield first place. Circumstances had compelled Cicero to execute a strategic retreat and, although he has been accused through the centuries of inconsistency, his tactical maneuvers did reflect a firm underlying position.

Two years later he wrote a long, reflective letter to an aristocratic friend, designed as a public rebuttal to his critics, in which he set out a comprehensive justification of his actions. He pointed out that in politics the means can vary from time to time while the end remains the same. “I believe in moving with the times,” he noted.

Unchanging consistency of standpoint has never been considered a virtue in great statesmen. At sea it is good sailing to run before the gale, even if the ship cannot make harbor; but if she can make harbor by changing tack, only a fool would risk shipwreck by holding to the original course rather than change it and still reach his destination. Similarly, while all of us as statesmen should set before our eyes the goal of peace with honor to which I have so often pointed, it is our aim, not our language, which must always be the same.

Disappointment in public affairs drove Cicero to make the most of the comforts of private life and the consolations of literature and philosophy. With Quintus away in Sardinia, he spent time superintending the rebuilding of both his and his brother’s houses.

Now that the two boys, Marcus and Cicero’s nephew Quintus, were nearing their teens, their schooling had to be thought of. Cicero hired the services of a well-known Greek grammarian and literary scholar, Tyrannio of Amisus, to teach them at home. While his own nine-year-old son was an ordinary child with no exceptional talents, Quintus, who was now eleven, was impressively precocious and, according to his uncle, was “getting on famously with his lessons.” Cicero was amused by his description of some wrangle between Terentia and his brother’s wife, the endlessly difficult Pomponia. “Quintus (a very good boy),” he wrote to his brother in the spring of 56, “talked to me at length and in the nicest way about the disagreements between our two ladies. It was really most entertaining.”

Tyrannio also helped out with a reorganization of Cicero’s library, much of which must have been dispersed or destroyed by Clodius’s gangs during his exile. A couple of Atticus’s library clerks were borrowed to help with “gluing and other operations.” The results delighted him. “Those shelves of yours are the last word in elegance, now that the labels have brightened up the volumes.”

In 55 Pompey and Crassus held their prearranged Consulships and there was even less for Cicero to do. AS with politicians throughout the ages, when events compel them to spend more time with their families, he made the best of things. He wrote to Atticus:

But seriously, while all other amusements and pleasures have lost their charm because of my age and the state of the country, literature relieves and refreshes me. I would rather sit on that little seat you have beneath Aristotle’s bust than in our Consuls’ chairs of state, and I would rather take a stroll with you at your home than with the personage [i.e., Pompey] in whose company it appears that I am obliged to walk.

Clodius was still being troublesome. A strange “rumbling and a noise,” perhaps an earth tremor, had been heard in a suburb of Rome. The Senate had referred the matter to the soothsayers, who pronounced that expiation should be offered to the gods for various offenses, including the profanation of hallowed sites and impiety in the conduct of an ancient sacrifice. Clodius ingeniously argued that the site in question was Cicero’s house on the Palatine, which the College of Pontiffs had wrongly ruled never to have been consecrated at all. In a long harangue to the Senate, Cicero retorted that the mysterious sound had nothing to do with him but must be put down to Clodius’s bad behavior. The house in question was not his at all but a completely different one, which Clodius had acquired after murdering its owner, and the sacrifice in question was, of course, that of the Good Goddess whose ceremonies Clodius had polluted.

Aware that his public image needed burnishing but sensing the public would not welcome any more self-praise from his own pen, Cicero tried to interest a respected historian, Lucius Lucceius, in writing a history of his Consulship, exile and return, the main purpose of which would be to expose the “perfidy, artifice and betrayal of which many were guilty towards me.” He was candid about his expectations and asked Lucceius to write more enthusiastically than perhaps he felt. “Waive the laws of history for once. Do not scorn personal bias, if it urge you strongly in favor.” Lucceius agreed, although for some reason the book seems never to have appeared.

A high point of the year 55 was the grand opening of Pompey’s splendid new theater on the Field of Mars. Construction had started in 59 and the project was designed to show off its founder’s wealth and power. It was a statement in stone and mortar that he was Rome’s leading citizen.

The program included spectacular plays and shows. Cicero was unamused, writing to a friend: “What pleasure is there in having a Clytemnestra with six hundred mules or a Trojan Horse with three thousand mixing bowls?”

There were also lavish gladiatorial displays. These contests in which criminals were thrown to wild animals were among the most notorious features of Roman culture. By Cicero’s day they were becoming an exotic and sadistic entertainment, but as so often with Roman customs they originated in a profound sense of tradition. For centuries, contests of hired fighters were held in honor of the glorious dead; blood flowed to slake the thirst of ancestors. It was no accident that they were usually staged in that sacred space, the Forum, with its magical fissures and chasms opening into the underworld. It was symbolically apt that gladiators waited in the subterranean tunnels beneath the pavement before coming up to fight. An ancient historian claimed that “the first gladiatorial show was given in Rome in the cattle market in the Consulship of Appius Claudius and Marcus Fulvius. It was given by Marcus and Decimus Brutus to honor their father’s ashes at the funeral ceremony.” For their descendants, today’s Appius Claudius and Marcus Brutus, the violent deaths of armed men in the city’s heart, its central square, in some vestigial but still resonant way, opened a lane to the land of the dead.

Some gladiators were slaves hired for the purpose (like the troupe trained by Atticus), others were condemned criminals. Many men enrolled as gladiators to buy themselves out of poverty. They were lodged in special barracks (one has been excavated in Pompeii). Life was tough, with whips, red-hot branding irons and iron fetters used to keep discipline.

However, successful gladiators were celebrities, like today’s boxers and football stars. The gladiatorial ethos was so ingrained in the culture that in the following decade two allies, a Roman general and an African king, entered into a gladiatorial suicide pact after a lost battle. They fought a duel and when the Roman had killed his opponent he arranged for a slave to cut him down. We are told that children played gladiator games and young people discussed the form of leading fighters. Some were popular sex symbols: graffiti from the first century AD have been found on walls in Pompeii—one Thracian gladiator was “the maiden’s prayer and delight” and “the doctor to cure girls.” Their images appeared on pots and dishes.

Public displays attracted large crowds. A temporary stadium would be erected in the Forum. The gladiators fought with a variety of weapons and armor (some cruelly bizarre, such as the andabatae, whose helmets were blindfolds) and were never matched in their duels. So a naked retiarius was given a helmet, a net and trident and chased after a mirmillo, decked out in a coat of mail. Sometimes condemned criminals fought each other without armor until they were all killed. If they held back they were lashed into combat.

For his part, Cicero took little pleasure in these blood sports, at least those in which there was not a fair fight. His account of the displays with animals at Pompey’s games has a flavor of modern distaste.

What pleasure can a cultivated man get out of seeing a weak human being torn to pieces by a powerful animal or a splendid animal transfixed by a hunting spear? Anyhow, if these sights are worth seeing, you have seen them often; and we spectators saw nothing new. The last day was that for the elephants. The ordinary public showed considerable astonishment at them, but no enjoyment. There was even an impulse of compassion, a feeling that the monsters had something human about them.

However, the modern reader should not be misled that Cicero was anything other than a man of his age. Just as Dr. Johnson felt that “prize fighting made people accustomed not to be alarmed at seeing their own blood,” so Cicero believed that gladiatorial contests, if well managed, were object lessons in endurance for spectators. He approved of public violence if it was a legal punishment with death as the inevitable outcome and he regretted that by his day gladiators had become professional performers whose fights, even if bloody, were exercises in virtuosity rather than courage in the face of adversity.

Pompey’s theater made a great impression. During these years when competition among politicians was fierce and the profits of empire had never been so high, the city and its environs became a vast building site with leading Romans investing heavily in prestige construction projects. Caesar had ambitious plans of his own, which would more than match Pompey’s and he recruited Cicero to help with the necessary land purchases. In 54 Cicero wrote to Atticus:

Caesar’s friends (I mean Oppius and myself, choke at that if you must) have thought nothing of spending 60 million sesterces on the work you used to be so enthusiastic about, to widen the Forum.… We couldn’t settle with the owners for a smaller sum. We shall achieve something really glorious. AS for the Field of Mars, we are going to build covered marble booths for the General Assembly and surround them with a high colonnade, a mile of it in all. At the same time the Public Residence [Villa Publica, on the Field of Mars, used mainly to house foreign envoys] will be attached to our building.

During the year that Pompey and Crassus were Consuls, Gabinius, who had failed to help Cicero during his exile and was now governor of Syria, stepped into the fray and restored King Ptolemy to power in Egypt for a huge price with the help of a Roman army. In light of the prohibition in the Sibylline Books, this was a serious flouting of the law.

At about this time unusually bad weather broke the banks of the Tiber, flooding the lower levels of the city. Some people were drowned as were many animals, and houses were damaged. In the public mind the disaster was a punishment for Gabinius’s invasion.

Cicero launched a blistering attack on Gabinius in the Senate. Pompey and Crassus responded in his defense. Crassus seems to have hurled the epithet “exile” at him, an insult that Cicero, who had never liked him, refused to forgive. Pompey, backed by a letter from Caesar, used his personal authority to impose an entente. The widowed Tullia, probably now about twenty years old, had recently married her second husband, Furius Crassipes, a member of an old but faded patrician family. Cicero’s new son-in-law held a dinner party in the garden of his house to celebrate the apparent reconciliation with Crassus. Towards the end of the year, Crassus, paying no attention to bad omens, set off on his great expedition against the Parthians. “What a rascal he is!” Cicero observed, unrepentantly.

The three members of the First Triumvirate, or now, rather, the two, persuaded Cicero, against his better judgment, fearful that they might switch their support back to Clodius again, to give evidence on Gabinius’s behalf when he faced a treason charge. The task was all the more difficult in that Cicero remained on extremely bad terms with Gabinius. He told Atticus: “Pompey is putting a lot of pressure on me for a reconciliation, but so far he has got nowhere, nor ever will if I keep a scrap of personal independence.” He had even asked Cicero to undertake the defense, but that was a line Cicero absolutely refused to cross.

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 at Arpinum.” Cicero went on to tell his brother how impressed he was by one of the new properties. He seems to have had conventional tastes in interior decor and fine art, admiring the work of Greek painters and sculptors from their heyday in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. “I was very pleased with the house, because the colonnade is a most imposing feature; it struck me only on this visit, now that its whole range is open to view and the columns have been cleared. All depends on the elegance of the stucco, and that I shall attend to. The paving seemed to be going nicely. I did not care for some of the ceilings and gave orders to alter them.”

Family life was on an even keel. On October 21 he assured his brother: “Our affairs stand as follows: domestically they are as we wish. The boys are well, keen on their lessons and conscientiously taught. They love us and each other.” Young Quintus seems not to have enjoyed his uncle’s attempts to teach him. He preferred working with his tutor, and Cicero, not wanting his development to be held up, did not press the point and withdrew.

Civic disorder and widespread corruption continued unabated and the streets of Rome were still unsafe. The only convincing center of power, however unconstitutional, was the First Triumvirate, but fate soon played a hand in subverting Caesar’s brilliant rescue operation at Luca. In June 53 Crassus and his seven legions (up to 42,000 men) invaded the Parthian Empire but came spectacularly to grief, tricked into defeat and death.

Misled by the enemy he marched his forces through barren terrain and was harried mercilessly by Parthian archers. Depressed by the death in battle of his son Publius and pressed by desperate, near-mutinous soldiers, he agreed, against his better judgment, to parley with the Parthian general, Surena. Once in his hands, Crassus was killed and his head and right hand cut off. His head was used as a grisly prop during a performance of Euripides’ Bacchae at the Parthian court. The legionary standards were lost, a terrible blow to Roman prestige, and thousands of soldiers were killed or captured. Only 10,000 survivors made their way back to safety. Luckily the Parthians were content with their victory and did not follow it up. Pompey’s conquests in the region were left intact.

A canny businessman and an able fixer, Crassus had bulked large in the affairs of the Republic. He was a man of few obvious convictions. If his career had a keynote, it lay in his rivalry with Pompey, the immovable obstacle to his own advancement. No friend of the optimates, Crassus supported radicals like Catilina and Caesar, but cautiously from the wings. His death was perhaps the most influential act of his career, for it threw the spotlight on the relationship between Pompey and Caesar.

Catastrophe for Crassus brought some good to Cicero. For years he had yearned for an appointment to the College of Augurs, a board of senior Romans responsible for ascertaining the gods’ opinion of intended public actions; they did this by examining the flight of birds, thunder and lightning and other signs. Cicero did not believe in augury and could see a certain illogicality in his ambition: “What an irresponsible fellow I am,” he confessed to Atticus. However, when Pompey and Hortensius recommended him for the vacancy left by Crassus’s dead son, Cicero was delighted. It was just the kind of honor that enhanced the standing of a distinguished elder statesman.

In August, Caesar’s daughter and Pompey’s wife, Julia, died in childbirth. (The infant, a boy, died a few days later.) She seems to have inherited all her father’s charm and both men in their different ways were devoted to her. This personal tragedy was also a political event of great importance, for it shut down a private channel of communication which (and it is one of the great ifs of history) might have preserved their alliance.

Many people realized this at the time. Pompey intended to have Julia interred at his country estate near Alba, but during her funeral procession the crowd hijacked the corpse and buried it in the Field of Mars. This show of emotion demonstrated the impact of her death on public opinion, which respected both Caesar and Pompey and regarded Julia as the living symbol of their friendship. Caesar, absent in Gaul, was moved by the news of her funeral rites and announced the holding of gladiatorial games followed by a public banquet in her name. This was an unprecedented honor for a woman.

The year 52 got off to a gloomy start. No officeholders had been elected in the confusion of the previous year. New Year’s Day fell on a market day, an unfavorable sign, and portents were reported. Wolves were seen in Rome and dogs were heard howling by night. A statue of Mars sweated. A storm with thunderbolts raged over the city, knocking down images of the gods and taking some lives. Then, on January 20, an event took place which lifted such a load of fear and loathing from Cicero’s mind and gave him such pleasure that in future years he regularly celebrated the anniversary of what he called the “Battle of Bovillae.”

Sometime in the early afternoon, Milo left Rome by the Appian Way. He was on his way to his hometown, where he was mayor and was due to preside at the installation of a priest on the following day. At about three o’clock he reached the small village of Bovillae a few miles outside the city when he saw Clodius coming from the opposite direction, returning to the capital from Aricia, a town a few miles farther south, where he had been addressing municipal officials. Clodius was traveling on horseback with three friends and was accompanied by about 30 slaves armed with swords.

Milo was in a carriage with his wife, Sulla’s daughter, and a relative. Behind them walked a long column of slaves and some gladiators, including two stars of the arena, Eudamas and Birria, who brought up the rear. The lines passed each other without incident, but as the two ends met the gladiators started a brawl with some of Clodius’s men. Clodius heard the noise and looked back menacingly. This was enough to provoke Birria, who hurled a lance at him, wounding him in the shoulder or back. More of Milo’s entourage turned back and ran up to join the melee. Clodius, streaming with blood, was taken to a roadside inn, and before long most of his entourage was dead or badly injured.

When Milo heard that Clodius had been wounded, he decided it would be more dangerous to leave him alive than to finish him off in the inn. When the deed was done, Clodius’s body was hauled out into the road and abandoned. By a curious coincidence, a shrine of the Great Goddess stood nearby, into whose mysteries Clodius had intruded in search of dalliance.

Milo and his wife resumed their journey, as if nothing had taken place. Sometime later in the afternoon, a passing Senator, traveling back to Rome from the country, found Clodius’s corpse and had it sent on in his litter. He himself returned the way he had come, presumably wishing to avoid becoming involved in what was certain to be a major scandal.

The body arrived at Clodius’s new house, centrally located off the Holy Way, a couple of minutes from the Forum. It was placed in the hallway and surrounded by distraught followers and slaves. Clodius’s wife, Fulvia (not the same woman as Cicero’s informant against Catilina), did not hold back her grief and showed his wounds to visitors. The following morning a crowd gathered outside the front door. Some well-connected friends, including two Tribunes, called. At their suggestion, the body was taken, naked and battered, down to the Forum, and placed on the Speakers’ Platform. The Tribunes then called an informal public meeting. They persuaded the crowd to take the body to the Senate House and cremate it there, in one final act of defiance against the powers-that-be. Benches, tables and other furniture, together with the clerks’ notebooks, were piled up inside the building, which was then set alight. The fire spread to the Basilica Porcia next door.

Rumors had leapt from house to house throughout the city and by then there were few doubts as to who was responsible for Clodius’s murder. The crowd swept to Milo’s house, but it was driven back by a hail of arrows. Crowd members grabbed the Consular fasces from their place of safekeeping in the grove of Libitina, goddess of the dead, and presented themselves at Pompey’s garden villa, “calling on him variously as Consul and Dictator.” They offered him the fasces as a sign of political authority. The political movement Clodius had led collapsed with his death. His power had been purely personal. After an orgy of destruction his supporters and street gangs could think of nothing better to do than ask Pompey, whom Clodius had bullied and undermined on and off for years, for justice.

That afternoon the Senate met in an emergency session and passed the Final Act. They called on the only officeholders then in place, a Regent (interrex, an official appointed every five days in the absence of elected Consuls), on the Tribunes and on Pompey, with his Proconsular authority, to take steps to restore order. They authorized Pompey to raise troops.

Pompey was in no hurry to accept the Senate’s commission. He wanted full powers without conditions and was eager to consult Caesar in Gaul, anxious to avoid any step that might unbalance the equal partnership agreed on at Luca. The delaying tactic worked, for the Senate, having lost whatever last vestige of control it could lay claim to, in desperation offered him what he wanted, full and complete authority. Even Cato approved, saying that any government was better than no government at all. The optimates cleverly arranged for Pompey to be appointed sole Consul rather than Dictator, the post he would have preferred. This was to close off any risk that he might repeat the precedent set by Sulla, who had extended his Dictatorship beyond the legal six-month limit. To make sure of Caesar’s consent to the deal a sweetener was offered; all ten Tribunes put forward a bill allowing him to stand for a second-term Consulship in absentia. Once he was in charge, Pompey moved firmly. Troops were levied and the city was brought under control.

With characteristic managerial firmness, the sole Consul acted to restore law and order through the courts. A series of trials was undertaken of Clodius’s men and Milo, for his part, was brought to justice for Clodius’s murder. Cicero, the obvious choice, was asked to undertake the defense. When the case came up, troops lined the Forum. Milo knew of Cicero’s tendency to be nervous at the beginning of a speech and was afraid that the presence of soldiers might alarm him. He persuaded him to come down from his home on the Palatine to the Forum in a closed litter and to wait quietly inside the litter until the jury had assembled and the court was ready. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work. AS soon as Cicero emerged from the litter he saw Pompey standing on high ground as if commanding a military operation and weapons flashing in the sunlight from all sides. His body shook, his voice faltered and he could hardly start his speech. This was a potential catastrophe, for, unusually, he was Milo’s only advocate.

The line of defense Cicero chose was controversial. Some advised that the best thing would be to admit to the killing but to claim bluntly that it had been in the public interest. Cicero chose instead to trump the prosecution, which claimed that Milo had ambushed Clodius, with the counterargument that it was Clodius who had ambushed Milo. Of course, both accounts were wrong, for the encounter had come about by chance.

When Cicero began to speak, followers of Clodius in the square, undaunted by the presence of troops, created an uproar. He did not completely break down, but his performance fell a long way short of his usual standards. He spoke briefly and soon withdrew. It was the most embarrassing moment in his professional life.

Milo was convicted and exiled from Rome. He retired to Massilia. Cicero sent him a copy of the fully worked-up address, which he had prepared for publication. It was an accomplished piece of work. Milo sent a letter back saying that it was lucky for him that this had not been what had been said in court, for he would not now be eating such wonderful Massilian mullets.

During these years when his own career had stalled, Cicero developed an interest in nurturing the prospects of promising young men. There was Caius Trebatius Testa, a lawyer in his late twenties or early thirties, for whom he arranged a job with Caesar in Gaul. And in 53 the reprobate Curio made a reappearance, now an ardent conservative and ready for public life. Cicero recalled the good advice he had given him “in the days of your boyhood.”

But perhaps the most important of Cicero’s youthful correspondents in those years was his personal slave and secretary, Tiro. It is not certain when Tiro was born, but he was probably a young man at this time. His name is a Latin word (meaning “newcomer,” “recruit” or “beginner”) and this suggests that he may have been born in the Cicero household rather than bought at a sale. Cicero was deeply attached to him and the references in his letters present him almost as a member of the family (“a friend to us rather than a slave,” Cicero wrote to Quintus). Tiro was given his freedom in 53 but, like most former slaves in Roman society, continued to work for his onetime owner.

Tiro was the man who looked after confidential financial matters. Every month he chased up debtors and pacified creditors. He checked the management accounts of the steward Eros, which were sometimes incorrect. He negotiated with moneylenders on the not infrequent occasions when Cicero found himself embarrassed for ready cash. Once he was even commissioned with the sensitive task of pursuing an aristocratic debtor for a repayment. He was also involved in superintending building works, watching over the upkeep of gardens and generally harassing workmen. He looked after Cicero’s social life and organized the guest lists for dinner parties, often a delicate matter. “See about the dining room,” Cicero once instructed him. “Tertia will be there—provided that Publilius is not invited.”

But Tiro’s main duties were secretarial and even editorial. He devised a shorthand which allowed him to write as fast as Cicero dictated. It is reported that he even helped Cicero with his writing and this is confirmed by a letter his master sent him in 53 when he was unwell. “My (or our) literary brainchildren have been drooping their heads missing you.… Pompey is staying with me as I write, enjoying himself in cheerful mood. He wants to hear my compositions, but I told him that in your absence my tongue of authorship is tied completely.”

Tiro’s health was poor and Cicero often had reason to be seriously worried. “Aegypta arrived today,” Cicero once wrote to him solicitously. “He told me you were quite free of fever and in pretty good shape but said that you had not been able to write to me.… You cannot imagine how anxious I feel about your health.” Cicero told Atticus that Tiro “is extraordinarily useful to me when well in all sorts of ways, both in business and in my literary work, but I hope for his recovery more because he is such a nice, modest fellow than for my own convenience.” Although he was always complaining about Quintus’s overdependence on his freedman, Statius, his relationship with Tiro was just as close and trusting.

Tiro seems to have been popular with other members of the family too. In the following decade, when he had saved up enough money to buy a small farm, young Marcus congratulated him in a letter that is full of affection and good humor. “Well, you are a man of landed property! You must shed your town-bred ways—you are now a Roman squire! How amusing to picture the delightful sight of you now. I imagine you buying farm tackle, talking to the bailiff, hoarding pips at dessert in your jacket pockets!”

The past few years had been deeply unsatisfactory for Cicero, who felt he had been unfairly sidelined by the rise of the First Triumvirate. He did not anticipate the future with any greater confidence. Diehards in the Senate were determined to take revenge on Caesar for the illegalities of his Consulship. Political stability hung on the permanence of his partnership with Pompey and there were signs that this was coming under strain. In one sense, a breakdown in relations between the two men would be welcome to Cicero, for it would lift what he saw as a serious threat to the rule of law; but, from another perspective, it might transform civil discord into civil war.