Cicero

10

“A STRANGE MADNESS”

The Battle for the Republic: 50–48 BC

In the great impending crisis Cicero cast himself in the role of a disinterested mediator and bent all his efforts towards reconciling the parties. Looking back a few weeks later, he told Tiro: “From the day I arrived in Rome all my views, words and actions were unceasingly directed towards peace. But a strange madness was abroad.”

Caelius reported in June that “Pompey the Great’s digestion is now in such a poor way that he has trouble finding anything to suit him.” This may have been the preliminary symptom of a serious illness that struck him down in the summer. For a time his life was thought to be in danger. Prayers were offered for him across Italy and when he recovered, festivals were staged in towns and cities in his honor. This led Pompey to believe that he would have overwhelming public support against Caesar in the event of a conflict. “I have only to stamp my foot on the ground anywhere in Italy and armies of infantry and armies of cavalry will rise up,” Plutarch reports him as saying. But his popularity was wide rather than deep, for most people preferred peace to war. When Pompey reemerged into public life he seemed to have lost some of his old energy. Cicero noticed his lack of spirit and wondered about his future health.

Writing to Cicero in August 50, Caelius foresaw “great quarrels ahead in which strength and steel will be arbiters.” He claimed to be uncertain which way to jump; he had obligations to Caesar and his circle and, as for the optimates, he “loved the cause but hated the men.” Caelius was preparing to change sides and follow Curio onto Caesar’s payroll, but his relationship with Cicero does not seem to have suffered.

The Senate ordered both Pompey and Caesar to contribute a legion each for an expeditionary force against the Parthians to avenge Crassus. Pompey ungenerously decided that his legion would be the one he had loaned to Caesar sometime before for his Gallic campaigns, which meant that Caesar would have to give up two. The officers sent to fetch these legions reported, so inaccurately that one has to wonder if they acted with conscious warmongering deceit, much disaffection and low morale among Caesar’s troops.

Cicero was deeply depressed by the direction of events, which he tended to see in personal terms. In a letter to Atticus written from Athens, the first of many such, he agonized as to how he should react.

There looms ahead a tremendous contest between them. Each counts me as his man, unless by any chance one of them is pretending—for Pompey has no doubts, judging correctly that I strongly approve of his present politics [that is, his rapprochement with the Senate]. What is more, I received letters from both of them at the same time as yours, conveying the impression that neither has a friend in the world he values more than myself. But what am I to do? I don’t mean in the last resort, for if war is to decide the issue, I am clear that defeat with one is better than victory with the other. What I mean are the practical steps that will be taken when I get back to prevent [Caesar’s] candidacy in absentia [for the Consulship] and to make him give up his army.… There is no room for fence-sitting.

When he asserted his preference for Pompey, Cicero was being truthful. For all his ditherings in the months and years ahead, his first priority was and remained the salvation of the Republic and, it followed, opposition to Caesar. In this he remained unalterable. However, fence-sit he did. He did not have the temperament for war and was not physically courageous—a failing to which he half-admitted: “While I am not cowardly in facing dangers, I am in guarding against them.”

His personal relations with the optimates continued to be unsatisfactory. Cato objected to Cicero’s request for a Triumph. It is hard to understand why he took this line, at a time when it was self-evidently in the optimates’ interest to ensure that Cicero was on their side. Perhaps Cato simply assumed this was the case, but, aware of Cicero’s instinct for compromise and reconciliation, preferred to keep him at arm’s length from the Senatorial leadership. Caesar immediately noticed the error of judgment and wrote to Cicero, sympathizing and offering his support.

Cicero was highly critical in private of Pompey and the Senate’s handling of affairs. It was an old complaint. Caesar had not been stopped during his Consulship. He, Cicero, had been betrayed into exile. Resistance to the First Triumvirate had been feeble. The shortsighted extremism of Cato and his friends was inappropriate when dealing with “a man who fears nothing and is ready for everything.” Cicero was even beginning to wonder how the optimates would behave in the future if they were victorious. On Atticus’s advice, he stayed away from Rome, using as convenient cover the need to maintain his imperium in case he won his Triumph.

In Cicero’s opinion, peace was the only rational policy and to obtain it would mean compromise. In this he was in tune with public opinion and with the majority of Senators. On December 1, in his last coup as Tribune, Curio persuaded the Senate to vote on his proposal that both Caesar and Pompey should resign their commands and disband their armies. This ingenious motion was designed to expose the true state of feeling in the chamber. It was carried by 370 votes to 22. Curio went straight to a meeting of the General Assembly, where he was cheered and garlanded. The crowd pelted him with flowers. He had won the day: there would be no war.

This put the optimates in an awkward position. If they did not act quickly it would be too late. After a night’s reflection, the presiding Consul, Caius Claudius Marcellus, supported by the Consuls-Elect, but with no Senate authorization (nor that of the other Consul, Lucius Aemilius Paulus, whom Caesar had bought with a bribe of 9 million denarii) went to Pompey, handed him a sword and asked him to take command of the Italian legions. His task was to save the Republic. Pompey accepted the invitation.

Curio’s Tribuneship ended on December 12 and his place was taken by his longtime friend Mark Antony. The movement for peace was still flowing strongly and Caesar, partly for reasons of public relations but also because he may have preferred a negotiated solution, put forward some compromise proposals, well calculated to appeal to the Senatorial majority.

Events now accelerated beyond anyone’s power to control them. Pompey went to Campania to raise troops and met Cicero by chance on a country road. They went together to Formiae and talked from two in the afternoon until evening. Pompey almost persuaded Cicero that a firm approach was the right one; if challenged, Caesar would probably step back and, if not, the forces of the Republic under his leadership would easily defeat him. A couple days later a gloomy Cicero sent Atticus a well-reasoned statement of possible outcomes. His prognosis included the one that actually occurred—a surprise attack by Caesar before the Senate and Pompey were ready to fight him. Cicero even wondered whether it would be possible to hold Rome.

The Faction shared Pompey’s optimism. At the time and later they have been represented as hell-bent on war. This was probably not the case, for it would have meant handing over control of events to their general, and they did not trust him enough to want to see that happen. They calculated that an ultimatum backed by force would deter Caesar from seeking the Consulship that summer. This would have been a rational policy if the balance of military power had been clearly in the Senate’s favor. It was not. AS early as August, Caelius had seen that, although Pompey had access in the medium term to far greater resources both by sea and land, Caesar’s “army is incomparably superior.” It is telling that once hostilities actually started, Cato altered his tune and told the Senate that even slavery was preferable to war. Clearly he too could see where the real balance of power lay.

Cicero stayed for a time at Formiae and then made his way to Rome for consultations. The Senate appeared to be willing to give him his Triumph after all and so he lodged at Pompey’s villa outside the city. The Senate’s mood (or at any rate that of those who attended its meetings) had hardened so far as the political situation was concerned. On January 1, 49, the incoming Consuls won a large majority for an ultimatum instructing Caesar to disband his legions on pain of outlawry.

Cicero had not given up hope of a compromise and was determined to exploit the widespread antiwar sentiment. Three days later he attended an informal meeting at Pompey’s villa and once again argued for a peaceful solution. According to Plutarch, he supported an offer by Caesar to give up Gaul and most of his army in exchange for retaining Illyricum and two legions while waiting for his second Consulship. When Caesar’s supporters suggested he would even be satisfied with one legion, Pompey wavered. But Cato shouted that he was making a fool of himself again and letting himself be taken in. The proposal was dropped. On January 7 the Senate passed the Final Act. Mark Antony and a fellow Tribune, who had been tirelessly wielding their veto on Caesar’s behalf and making themselves highly unpopular in the process, were warned to leave town. They fled from Rome, together with Curio and Caelius, and arrived three days later at Caesar’s camp in Italian Gaul.

Although he continued to make peace offers, Caesar knew that it was time for action. He moved with all his famous “celerity.” Most of his army was on the other side of the Alps and he had only a single legion with him in Italian Gaul, where he was waiting near the frontier for news. Suetonius gives a vivid account of Caesar’s next move.

He at once sent a few troops ahead with all secrecy, and disarmed suspicion by himself attending a theatrical performance, inspecting the plans of a school for gladiators which he proposed to build and dining as usual among a crowd of guests. But at dusk he borrowed a pair of mules from a bakery near headquarters, harnessed them to a gig and set off quietly with a few of his staff. His lights went out, he lost his way and the party wandered about aimlessly for some hours; but at dawn found a guide who led them on foot along narrow lanes, until they came to the right road. Caesar overtook his advanced guard at the river Rubicon, which formed the frontier between Italian Gaul and Italy. Well aware how critical decision confronted him, he turned to his staff, remarking: “We may still draw back but, across that little bridge, we will have to fight it out.”

When Caesar crossed the river, he quoted a phrase from the Greek comic playwright Menander, “Let the dice fly high,” and rushed south towards Rome. He had long been known for his luck and he would need it now.

It is to Caesar’s credit as a leader that his soldiers and their officers loyally followed him. Only one senior commander defected, Titus Labienus, who had helped him with the Rabirius trial in 63 and been the most able of his deputies in Gaul. They went back a long way together and it must have been a personal blow.

Caesar’s troops met no resistance and town after town fell to him. In Rome discussions were under way on recruitment and the distribution of provinces. The news of Caesar’s rapid advance brought them to an abrupt halt. Pompey declared, to widespread amazement and dismay, that the government should evacuate Rome. Plutarch’s account captures the fevered atmosphere:

Since nearly all Italy was in confusion it was hard to understand the course of events. Refugees from outside the city poured in from all directions, while its inhabitants were rushing out of it and abandoning the city. Conditions were so stormy and disordered that the better class of person could exert little control and insubordinate elements were strong and very difficult for the authorities to keep in check. It was impossible to check the panic. No one would allow Pompey to follow his own judgment and everyone bombarded him with their own experiences—whether of fear, distress or perplexity. AS a result contradictory decisions were made on one and the same day and it was impossible for Pompey to get accurate intelligence about the enemy since many people reported to him whatever they happened to hear and were upset when he did not believe them. In these circumstances Pompey issued a decree declaring a state of civil war. He ordered all Senators to follow him and announced that he would regard anybody who stayed behind as being on Caesar’s side. Late in the evening he left Rome.

On January 17 large numbers of Senators and magistrates accompanied him en route to Campania, abandoning the city so hurriedly that they forgot to take the contents of the Treasury with them. A few days later, Caesar entered Rome.

Cicero met Pompey just before his departure and recalled a couple of months later that he had found him “thoroughly cowed. Nothing he did after that was to my liking. He went on blundering now here now there.” Cicero was shocked as much by the incompetence and rashness of the optimates as by the catastrophe itself. On January 18 he wrote to Atticus from the outskirts of Rome: “I have decided on the spur of the moment to leave before daybreak so as to avoid looks or talk, especially with these laureled lictors. AS for what is to follow, I really don’t know what I am doing or going to do, I am so confounded by our crazy way of going on.” He retreated to his villa at Formiae, where he could watch developments in safety and consider his next move. A few days later he accepted Pompey’s request that he take responsibility for northern Campania and the sea-coast. He could not decently refuse, but he assumed his duties without enthusiasm.

Cicero was naturally worried about his family’s safety. His imagination ran riot as he thought of what the “barbarians” might do to Terentia and Tullia when they took Rome. Perhaps, he suggested to Atticus, the boys should be sent to Greece where they would be out of the way. His fears were in part allayed by Tullia’s new husband, Dolabella; he was a passionate Caesarian and would guarantee the safety of Terentia and the others. Cicero arranged for the house on the Palatine to be properly barricaded and guarded; but he soon decided that the family, including (it seems) Quintus and his son, should join him at Formiae. He was greatly put out when he learned that the boys’ tutor, Dionysius, refused to come with them. A few weeks later he remarked: “He scorns me in my present plight. It is disgusting. I hate the fellow and always shall. I wish I could punish him. But his own character will do that.” Typically, Cicero could not stay angry for long and there was a reconciliation in due course, if a grudging one.

AS for the nonpolitical Atticus, his friend had few anxieties. “It looks to me as though you yourself and Sextus [an intimate friend of Atticus] can properly stay on in Rome. You certainly have little cause to love our friend Pompey. Nobody has ever knocked so much off property values in town. I still have my joke, you see.”

Cicero condemned Pompey’s abandonment of Rome and was afraid that the Commander-in-Chief was thinking of evacuating Italy, for Greece or perhaps Spain, where there were loyal legions. There can be little doubt that Pompey had been knocked off balance. He had exaggerated his personal popularity and was depressed both by the easy progress Caesar was making and by his own difficulties of recruitment. The psychological impact of the evacuation of Rome had been tremendous. The damage to public opinion if Pompey now abandoned Italy would be even greater. Yet there was strategic sense in basing himself in Greece, where he would have all the resources of Asia Minor at his back. With the army of Spain in the west, commanded by Lucius Afranius, the reputed dancer, and Marcus Petreius, Caesar would then be gripped in a vise. Once he had mustered his full strength, Pompey would descend on Italy, as Sulla had done, and meet Caesar with overwhelming force. In addition he controlled a large fleet and had unchallenged mastery of the seas. Unfortunately this plan left out of account the fact that it handed the initiative to Caesar.

Cicero had still not given up all hopes of peace. His disgust at the conduct of the war made him reluctant to join Pompey as an active supporter. More important, he felt that his hand as an intermediary would be strengthened if he could present himself as (more or less) neutral. His motives were mixed, but he was right to believe that it was in his and the Republic’s interest to play a lone hand. His stance became increasingly untenable as it became clear that the war was going to continue. Unfriendly voices were already criticizing him for not joining the rest of the evacuees in Campania. His mood became volatile and edgy. It was not helped by a painful bout of ophthalmia, which lasted until May. He was finding it hard to sleep. He relied more and more on Atticus, whom he showered with letters, often daily, appealing for advice.

I am sure you find daily letters a bore, especially as I give you no news and indeed can no longer think of any new theme to write about. But while it would certainly be silly of me to send you special couriers with empty letters and for no reason, I can’t bring myself not to give a line for you to those who are going anyway, especially if they are fond of the family, and at the same time I do, believe me, find a modicum of relaxation in these miseries when I am as it were talking to you, much more still when I am reading your letters.

The military situation did not improve. Towards the middle of February Cicero visited Pompey at his headquarters in Capua before he moved his forces farther south to avoid being cornered by the enemy. What he found deepened his pessimism. The recruiting officers were afraid to do their work; the Consuls were hopeless and, as for Pompey, “How utterly down he is! No courage, no plan, no forces, no energy.” Cicero resigned his Campanian commission, saying he could do nothing without troops and money. Letters came from Caesar full of kind words and peace proposals and so did curt missives from Pompey asking Cicero to join him. Balbus and Oppius, Caesar’s confidential agents, were in constant touch. To these correspondents Cicero responded with fair words and no commitments.

Caesar was briefly delayed at the town of Corfinium where a reckless aristocrat, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus made a vain stand. He was acting against the instructions of Pompey, who refused to come to his aid. When the town fell Caesar found about fifty Senators and equites in it, all of whom he immediately released on condition that they not take arms against him again—an assurance many of them swiftly broke. This act of clemency had a huge impact on public opinion, which began to swing in his direction, and a number of optimates returned to Rome. Caesar maintained this policy of leniency for the rest of his life. He intended it as vivid proof that he was no Sulla, set on the armed overthrow of the state.

Meanwhile Pompey continued to rebuff Caesar’s offers of peace and decided to extricate himself and his legions from Italy. He marched to Brundisium, where he intended to leave for Greece. Caesar followed him at top speed. On February 20 Pompey dispatched an abrupt note to “M. Cicero Imperator,” telling him to meet him at Brundisium. Cicero wrote a long, detailed reply in which he explained why it was unsafe and impractical for him to do so. He also set out a justification of his role as peacemaker, adding oblique criticisms of Pompey’s performance and failure to inform him of his plans. The truth was, as Cicero admitted to Atticus, he had not yet made up his mind what to do. He was coming to believe that there was less to choose between the opposing sides than he had originally thought. The constitution would probably be destroyed whoever won the impending struggle.

Our Cnaeus is marvelously covetous of despotism on Sullan lines. Experto crede; he has been as open about it as he ever was about anything.… The plan is first to strangle Rome and Italy with hunger, then to carry fire and sword through the countryside and dip into the pockets of the rich. But since I fear the same from this [i.e., Caesar’s] quarter, if I did not have an obligation to repay in the other I should think it better to take whatever may come at home.

On March 9 Caesar arrived outside Brundisium, but it was too late. The Consuls had already left with part of the army to set up headquarters in Greece. Pompey was still in town, but towards nightfall on March 17 he followed after them, evading Caesar’s attempt at a blockade with few losses and escaping with the remainder of his troops. Caesar was left fuming outside the walls, from which vantage point he could see the fleet’s sails grow smaller in the darkening light.

“I was made anxious before … by my inability to think of any solution,” Cicero told Atticus, who was comfortably settled in Rome. “But now that Pompey and the Consuls have left Italy, I am not merely distressed, I am consumed with grief.” He wrote in the language of a disconsolate lover: “Nothing in [Pompey’s] conduct seemed to deserve that I should join him as his companion in flight. But now my affection comes to the surface, the sense of loss is unbearable, books, writing, philosophy are all to no purpose.” The presence of his brother doubled his anxiety: Quintus, having spent some years fighting under Caesar in Gaul, owed much more to his old commander than Cicero did and could expect to suffer the severest consequences if he defected. Nevertheless, he told Cicero that he would follow his lead.

Now that a long war was more or less certain, Caesar’s interest in Cicero shifted from his potentially useful role as mediator to his value as a propaganda asset. He wanted to attract as many senior figures to his side as possible, in order to legitimize his authority, and Cicero would be a great prize. Stressing his policy of clemency and their ties of amicitia (it is not known whether Cicero had yet been able to pay back Caesar’s loan), he tried to persuade the reluctant statesman to come to Rome. Caesar’s plan was to visit the city briefly to meet the remnants of the Senate, after which he would go to Spain and deal with Pompey’s legions there. On March 28, on his journey back from Brundisium, Caesar stopped off at Formiae for an encounter which Cicero had been dreading for some time.

Caesar was not in an accommodating mood. He complained that Cicero was passing judgment against him and that “the others would be slower to come over” to his side if he refused to do so. Cicero replied that they were in a different position. A long discussion followed, which Cicero recorded for Atticus. It went badly.

“Come along then [to a Senate meeting called for April 1] and work for peace,” Caesar said.

“At my own discretion?”

“Naturally, who am I to lay down the rules for you?”

“Well, I shall take the line that the Senate does not approve of an expedition to Spain or of the transport of armies into Greece, and I shall have much to say in commiseration of Pompey.”

“This is not the kind of thing I want said.”

“So I supposed, but that is just why I don’t want to be present. Either I must speak in that strain or stay away—and much else besides which I could not possibly suppress if I was there.”

Caesar closed the conversation by asking Cicero to think matters over. He added menacingly as he left: “If I cannot make use of your advice, I will take it where I can find it. I will stop at nothing.” He meant that if moderates like Cicero would not work with him, his only alternative would be to seek help from revolutionaries.

The encounter was decisive, for both parties. Caesar must have realized that he could not push an obviously unhappy man any further. He now proceeded to Rome, where he spent a few uncomfortable days in discussion with a reluctant and much-thinned Senate. He broke into the Treasury at the Temple of Saturn and removed its contents: 15,000 bars of gold, 30,000 of silver and 30 million sesterces—a move for which he paid with the total collapse of his popularity. Then he hurried away to fight in Spain, leaving the Tribune Mark Antony in charge of Italy and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in charge of Rome.

AS for Cicero, the conversation and the behavior of Caesar’s raffish entourage—he nicknamed them the “underworld”—persuaded him that, for all his reservations, he had to side with those who were (if only ostensibly) fighting for the Republic. He could do this only by leaving Italy. But when should he set off and how? And where should he go? He thought of Athens or, somewhere completely off the beaten track, Malta. Soon he realized he was being watched by Caesar’s spies.

The time had come for Marcus’s coming-of-age ceremony and the family moved to the ancestral home of Arpinum for the purpose. It was a melancholy trip: everyone they met was in low spirits and, as a result of Caesar’s levies, men were being led off to winter quarters. On his return to Formiae, Cicero made a most unpalatable discovery. Quintus, now seventeen, had made off to Rome, claiming that he wanted to see his mother. He had written to Caesar and perhaps even obtained an interview with him (or one of his lieutenants), in which he revealed that his uncle was disaffected and intended to leave the country. The elder Quintus was beside himself with misery. In a hierarchical society where a paterfamilias had theoretically unlimited power over his children, it was an almost unbelievable betrayal. Although Cicero was upset, he seems to have taken the affair in stride. After a few days he calmed down, deciding that the boy had acted out of greed rather than hatred. The runaway was brought back, and his uncle decided that “severity” was the best policy.

Curio called. Caesar had given him a commission to secure the corn supply in Sicily (where he was to face, and face down, Cato) before going on to the province of Africa. He hurried off on political business before returning, on the following day, for a longer conversation.

In the following weeks, Cicero referred from time to time to a mysterious, top-secret plan which he code-named “Caelius.” It is not known what he had in mind, but there has been speculation that it might have been a scheme to take over Africa and use it as a base from which to launch a new peace initiative. Caelius can hardly have been involved himself since he was with Caesar in Spain and perhaps the name was employed jokily for what was fundamentally a madcap project. One wonders if it originated in the lengthy discussions with Curio. If Curio was complicit, it would suggest either that he was willing to detach himself from Caesar or, more deviously, that the “Caelian business” could have been a device to lure Cicero away from Greece and Pompey into a safely Caesarian zone of influence. In that case, Cicero was lucky that he did not proceed with the matter, for the militarily inexperienced Curio quickly fell afoul of King Juba of Numidia, an ally of Pompey, was routed in battle and killed with the loss of all his forces. The project, whatever it was, soon vanishes from the correspondence.

It did not call for great acumen on anyone’s part to sense Cicero’s misery and to guess at his intention to escape from Italy. During April and early May pressure was brought to bear on him from all sides, advising him not to leave the country but to stay where he was. Caesar wrote to him from Massilia making the point. It would appear, he observed, that “you have disapproved some action of mine, which is the worst blow you could deal me. I appeal to you in the name of our friendship not to do this.” On May 1 Mark Antony sent him a warning letter whose surface cordiality concealed menace. “I cannot believe that you mean to go abroad, considering how fond you are of Dolabella and that most admirable young lady your daughter and how fond we all are of you.… I have specially sent Calpurnius, my intimate friend, so that you may know how deeply I care for your personal safety and position.” Caelius also argued strongly that he should not stir, writing that Caesar’s clemency would not last. If he abandoned Italy, Caelius said, Cicero would be risking ruin for himself and his family, not to mention blighting the careers of friends such as himself and Dolabella.

Members of his family also disapproved of his apparent determination to leave the country. Young Marcus and Quintus were in tears, if we can believe Cicero, when they read Caelius’s letter. The heavily pregnant Tullia (she gave birth prematurely a few weeks later to a sickly child who did not survive) begged him to await the result of the Spanish campaign before making up his mind.

Cicero appealed to Mark Antony to give him formal permission to leave the country and received a cool, brief response, in which he was advised to ask Caesar directly. He wrote to Atticus in May:

Do you think that if Spain is lost, Pompey will drop his weapons? No, his entire plan is Themistoclean [Themistocles was the Athenian statesman who had defeated the invading Persians by abandoning Athens and fighting at sea]. He reckons that whoever holds the sea is sure to be master. For that reason he was never interested in holding the Spanish provinces for their own sake; his main concern was always to outfit a navy. So when the time comes, he will put to sea with huge fleets and land in Italy.

What was somewhat less obvious was the nature of Cicero’s likely contribution to the Republican cause once in Greece. His military advice would not be wanted. All that he could offer would be the publicity of his name. Moderate public opinion, however, would be impressed by his choice of sides.

To discourage speculation about his imminent departure, Cicero decided to spend a few days at his elegant town house in Pompeii. AS soon as he arrived, though, he received an embarrassing surprise. Centurions from the three cohorts stationed there invited him to take charge of the soldiers and occupy the town. What use were three cohorts? he asked himself. Anyway, it could be a trap. Unnerved, he left the town secretly before dawn and returned home.

Quietly, the necessary travel arrangements were made and a reliable ship was found. “I hope my plan won’t involve any risk,” Cicero remarked, as ever nervous of physical danger and travel by sea. Bad weather caused a delay but on June 7 he was on board and writing a farewell letter to Terentia. At long last, he set sail for Greece with Marcus, his dissident nephew and the inevitable lictors. At this point the correspondence with Atticus ends and is not resumed for a year, either because communications were impossible or because it was too risky to write frankly. For a time Cicero recedes into the background—a powerless, disconsolate figure almost lost among tremendous events.

Cicero arrived at Pompey’s camp at the port of Dyrrachium in Greece to find that the Commander-in-Chief had retained all his organizational skills and had spent the interval while Caesar was in Spain gathering his forces. Nine legions were assembled, five of which had been brought across from Italy and the others from various parts of the Empire. (Cicero’s two understrength Cilician legions were among them, now merged into a single unit.) He had also recruited archers and a 7,000-strong force of cavalry. Through his large fleet, he maintained command of the seas, although the lack of senior military talent at his disposal is illustrated by the fact that he appointed Bibulus his admiral.

To his relief, Cicero, who made a large loan to Pompey to boost his war chest, was greeted warmly on his arrival and an effort was made to put him at ease. At the outset, although wracked with worry and in poor health, he was hopeful of the future. He wrote to Atticus: “You ask me about the war news. You will be able to learn it from Isidorus [the letter carrier]. It looks as if what remains won’t be too difficult. Do please see to what you know I have most at heart [Terentia was in financial difficulty], as you say you will do and are doing. I am eaten up with anxiety, which has made me seriously ill. When I am better, I shall join the man in charge who is full of optimism.” However, with typical contrariness, Cato took Cicero aside and said that his coming to Greece was a bad mistake. He would be much more use to his country and his friends if he stayed at home and reacted to events as they occurred. AS he had agonized over his decision, this was the last thing Cicero wanted to hear and he was distinctly put out. He had expected the standard-bearer of constitutionalism to praise him. Not only had Cato not done so, but he gave the impression of having little confidence in Pompey’s prospects.

After being nearly trapped by floods, Caesar brilliantly outmaneuvered his opponents in Spain and in August 49 enforced a surrender without bloodshed in a campaign that lasted only forty days. In his absence he arranged for a Praetor to have him appointed Dictator, which would empower him to hold elections. He hurried back to Italy where he confronted a mutiny among his troops, which he settled with bold inflexibility.

During this second flying visit to Rome he was elected to the second Consulship for which he had spent so many years struggling and intriguing. The onset of civil war had brought financial activity in Italy to an almost complete standstill and a debt crisis was creating serious social unease. Throughout the century revolutionaries such as Catilina had promoted a policy of total cancellation of debts and many expected that this was what Caesar would do. But he was too intelligent and responsible a politician not to realize that this cure would be far worse than the disease. He issued a well-considered decree which obliged creditors to accept land at prewar values as repayment and allowed up to a quarter of the value of a debt to be set off against previous interest payments.

It was on this issue that Caelius surprisingly broke with his new master in the following year. Praetor for 48, he tried to bounce an uncertain and edgy government into more radical measures after Caesar left Rome again for Greece in pursuit of Pompey. In January 48 he was in a cocky frame of mind when he wrote his final surviving letter to Cicero. Critical of Pompey’s strategy of masterly inactivity in Greece, he promised that his own dash and drive would rescue the Republican cause. “I’ll make you win in spite of yourselves. Cato and company will be smiling on me yet. You lot are fast asleep.” However, he was quickly dismissed from office and driven to taking up arms. He called Cicero’s old friend Milo back to Italy because he owned some gladiators he could make use of. Also, unforgivably in Roman eyes, he armed some slaves. But the revolt was easily quashed by Caesar’s troops and both Caelius and Milo were killed.

Brilliant, amusing and attractive, Caelius was disabled by a refusal to take serious things seriously. He threw his life away pointlessly. By opposing Caesar this late in the game, he ignored the advice he had himself given Cicero. “To go against him now in the hour of his victory … is the acme of folly,” he had said. So it was.

Caesar joined his army at Brundisium at the end of the year. He was determined to retain the initiative and had no intention of waiting for Pompey to invade Italy. Despite the fact that it was now winter, when sailing was unsafe, he decided to cross over to Greece as soon as possible, whatever the risk. On January 4, 48, he sailed unobserved to the coast of Epirus with part of his army, evading Bibulus’s naval blockade. However, bad weather and Bibulus’s unwillingness to be caught napping a second time meant that it was not until early April that his remaining troops under Mark Antony were able to join him. For a while Caesar had had too few forces to match Pompey and had been in serious danger, but now he went on the offensive. At the same time, in a continuing effort to retain the moral high ground, he launched another abortive peace initiative, but his opponents, filled with optimism, were having none of it.

Caesar decided to surround Pompey’s camp near Dyrrachium with a fifteen-mile fortified line and besiege him. Pompey responded by building his own fortifications and then launched a major breakout. For a moment Caesar faced total defeat, but the advantage was not followed through. Caesar observed dismissively of his opponent: “He has no idea how to win a war.” Short of supplies, Caesar cut his losses and marched away south to the more fertile region of Thessaly, with the enemy in pursuit.

It was typical of his tirelessness and attention to detail that, in the press of business, he remembered Cicero. In May he asked Dolabella, who was on his staff, to write a friendly letter to his father-in-law, which he duly did. After itemizing the humiliations and reverses that Pompey had suffered, he advised: “Consult your own best interests and at long last be your own friend rather than anybody else’s.” If there was anything Caesar could do to protect and maintain Cicero’s dignitas, his honor or status, he had only to ask.

This was a well-aimed, and possibly well-informed, intervention. Cicero was not at all happy with his present circumstances. Could Cato have been right, after all? He made little secret of the fact that he now regretted having come to Greece. He could not resist making sarcastic comments and jokes about his colleagues and companions in arms and wandered about the camp looking so glum that he became something of a figure of fun. He criticized Pompey’s plans behind his back and ridiculed the faith he and his supporters placed in prophecies and oracles. Above all, he went on arguing for peace and believed he might have won Pompey over if his confidence had not been boosted by the success at Dyrrachium.

Looking back a couple of years afterwards he summed up his opinions:

I came to regret my action, not so much because of the risk to my personal safety as of the appalling situation which confronted me on arrival. To begin with, our forces were too small and had poor morale. Second, with the exception of the Commander-in-Chief and a handful of others (I am talking about the leading figures), everyone was greedy to profit from the war itself and their conversation was so bloodthirsty that I shuddered at the prospect of victory. What’s more, people of the highest rank were up to their ears in debt. In a word, nothing was right except the cause we were fighting for.

There was talk of a proscription and, shockingly, Atticus had been marked down, perhaps because of his wealth, as a candidate for liquidation.

The climax of the campaign took place on August 9 on a plain near the town of Pharsalus in central Greece. Against his better judgment, although his army was much the larger of the two (perhaps 50,000 strong as compared with Caesar’s force of about 30,000), Pompey at last offered battle. His plan was to outflank and roll up Caesar’s right wing with a strong troop of horses, but Caesar guessed his intentions and placed some cohorts out of sight behind his center. His wing retreated in good order, as it had been instructed to do, and Pompey’s onrushing cavalry was attacked from the side and routed. It was now Caesar’s turn to outflank the enemy center and the rest of the engagement was a massacre. Pompey’s soldiers stood their ground and died patiently, but the non-Roman allies put up no resistance and fled, shouting, “We’ve lost.” Caesar recorded 200 fatalities while some 15,000 of Pompey’s men were killed and 23,000 captured.

When Pompey saw how the battle was going, he withdrew to his camp where he sat speechless and stunned. Nothing in his long, cloudless career had prepared him for such a disaster. He changed out of his uniform and made his escape on horseback. His camp presented a remarkable spectacle. In his history of the war, Caesar described what he found: “[There] could be seen artificial arbors, a great weight of silver plate laid out, tents spread with fresh turf, those of Lucius Lentulus and several others covered with ivy, and many other indications of extravagant indulgence and confidence in victory.” Inspecting the corpses on the battlefield, he remarked bitterly of the optimates: “They insisted on it.”

Cicero was not present at Pharsalus, although it is possible that Quintus was, together with the seventeen-year-old Marcus, who had been given command of a troop of horses in Pompey’s army and was doubtless enjoying the break from his studies in Athens. Being in poor health (whether genuinely or expediently), Cicero stayed behind at Dyrrachium with Cato, who commanded the town’s garrison. Cicero was as annoyingly sarcastic as ever. When someone said optimistically that there was hope yet, for they had seven Eagles left (the legionary standards), he joked bitterly: “Excellent, if we were fighting jackdaws.”

Caesar knew that if the war was to be brought to a rapid conclusion, it was of the utmost importance to capture his defeated rival; so he set off in pursuit of Pompey as he made his way eastwards, destination unknown. Meanwhile the leading survivors of Pharsalus gathered together and sailed the fleet to Corcyra, where they pondered their next move. Caesar’s victory was a devastating blow to the Republicans and it looked as if the war were over. However, this was not necessarily so: Pompey’s fleet still controlled the seas. The province of Africa had been in friendly hands since Curio’s defeat and death. If the defeated Commander-in-Chief managed to elude Caesar, he might well be able to raise another army in Asia Minor.

Cato had not fought at Pharsalus and was unwilling to accept its verdict. The first decision to be made was who should take over from Pompey as Commander-in-Chief. Surprisingly Cato suggested that the commission be offered to Cicero as the senior Roman official present. It is hard to believe that Cato made the invitation other than for form’s sake; even he would have seen something absurd in the distinctly unmilitary orator challenging the greatest general of his day.

Cicero rejected the idea out of hand and explained that he wanted to have nothing further to do with the war. His defeatist attitude enraged Pompey’s eldest son, Cnaeus, who had a short and cruel temper. Apparently Cnaeus and his friends drew their swords and would have cut Cicero down on the spot if Cato had not intervened and, with some difficulty, hustled the elderly statesman out of the camp—and, as it turned out, the war.

Most of the remaining optimates decided that their best course of action was to make their way to the province of Africa. There they gathered—Afranius and Petreius, defeated in Spain, Pompey’s two sons, other flotsam of Caesar’s earlier victories and Cato himself, the moral standard-bearer of resistance. Many of them had been pardoned once and could expect no mercy if they fell into Caesar’s hands a second time. Labienus, Caesar’s old comrade-in-arms who had defected from him after the crossing of the Rubicon, also went to Africa. Their plan was to muster their forces and prepare for an invasion of Italy, a short sail away.

Some fugitives from the catastrophe decided to end their resistance. Chief among them was Marcus Brutus, now about thirty years old. Despite the financial scandal in which he had been involved during Cicero’s governorship of Cilicia a couple of years before, he was in some respects a principled and serious-minded young man who thought long and hard about which side to fight for in the civil war. He had a strong family reason for going over to Caesar, as the youthful Pompey had had his father put to death during the wars of Sulla. However, in his considered opinion Pompey was more in the right than Caesar and Brutus decided that it was his duty to put the public good above his personal interests. Not for nothing was he Cato’s nephew.

After joining the Republican army in Greece, Brutus spent much of his time in camp reading books till late in the evening and writing a digest of the Greek historian Polybius. He took part in the battle at Pharsalus, but came to no harm. There was a reason for this. Caesar was very fond of him, perhaps due to his continuing affection for his former mistress and Brutus’s mother, Servilia, and gave instructions to his officers that he should not be killed. If Brutus gave himself up his life should be spared, and if he resisted he should be left alone. After the rout Brutus managed to escape through a marsh to safety. He traveled by night to the town of Larissa and immediately wrote to Caesar, who was delighted to learn that he was safe and asked Brutus to join him. According to Plutarch, he had no qualms about advising Caesar, correctly as it would turn out, that Pompey would likely flee to Egypt.

Brutus’s motives as a collaborator defy interpretation. Up to this point in his life his actions appear to have been governed by self-interest. It may be that his reputation for high-mindedness and probity derived from his somewhat un-Roman bookishness and his addiction to literature and philosophy rather than from his actual behavior. Possibly, he felt that he had done enough for his family enemy and was now within his rights to switch to Caesar. One way or another, Brutus quickly became a favorite and a few months later was put in charge of Italian Gaul. He was a popular and apparently incorruptible governor.

So far as Cicero was concerned, hostilities were now definitely at an end. He took himself off to Patrae, the Greek port from where he would be able to catch a boat for Brundisium. Here a final misfortune awaited him, as he confided to Atticus a week or so later. He and his brother had a serious disagreement. By following Cicero’s star, Quintus had lost everything. He had sacrificed his excellent relationship with Caesar, under whose command in Gaul he had for once been his own man. There may have been financial problems, too, nagging both men. For all their lives Quintus had willingly played second fiddle to his older and more famous brother. Perhaps resentment had so long been growing below the surface—all those years of patronizing advice, of interference in his domestic affairs—that it boiled over all the more violently when the break came.

The upshot was that Quintus and his son followed after Caesar, with whom they intended to make their peace. Meanwhile, Cicero had nowhere to go but back to Italy. Worn down by his adventures and broken by the collapse of both his public and domestic worlds, he set off once again, without pause for second thoughts, to Brundisium and home.