Dictator

XIV

The portico was in chaos. The assassins had gone, escorted by Decimus’s gladiators. No one knew their destination. People were rushing to and fro trying to find out what had happened. The Dictator’s lictors had thrown away their symbols of authority and made a run for it. The remaining senators were also leaving as fast as they could; a few had even stripped off their togas to disguise their rank and were trying to infiltrate themselves into the crowd. Meanwhile, at the far end of the portico, some of the audience from the gladiator fights in the adjacent theatre had heard the commotion and were pouring in to see what was going on.

I sensed that Cicero was in mortal danger. Even though he’d known nothing in advance of the conspiracy, Brutus had called out his name; everyone had heard it. He was an obvious target for vengeance. Caesar’s loyalists might even assume he was the assassins’ leader. Blood would demand blood.

I said, ‘We have to get you away from here.’

To my relief, he nodded, still too stunned to argue. Our porters had fled, abandoning their litters. We had to hurry out of the portico on foot. Meanwhile the games continued oblivious. From Pompey’s theatre welled the roar of applause as the gladiators fought. One would never have guessed what had just occurred, and the more distance we put between ourselves and the portico, the more normal things seemed, so that by the time we reached the Carmenta Gate and entered the city it appeared to be a perfectly ordinary holiday and the assassination felt as if it had been a lurid dream.

Nevertheless, invisible to us, along the back streets and through the markets, conveyed on running feet and in panicky whispers, the news was travelling faster than we could – so that somehow, by the time we reached the house on the Palatine, it had overtaken us, and Cicero’s brother Quintus and Atticus were already arriving from separate directions with garbled versions of what had happened. They did not know much. There had been an attack in the Senate, was all they had heard: Caesar was hurt.

‘Caesar is dead,’ said Cicero, and described what we had just seen. It seemed even more fantastical in recollection than it had at the time. Both men were at first disbelieving and then overjoyed that the Dictator was slain. Atticus, normally so urbane, even performed a little skipping dance.

Quintus said, ‘And you truly had no idea this was coming?’

‘None,’ replied Cicero. ‘They must have kept it from me deliberately. I ought to be offended, but to be honest I’m relieved to have been spared the anxiety. It demanded far more nerve than I could ever have mustered. To have come to the Senate with a concealed blade, to have waited all that time, to have held one’s nerve, to have risked massacre by Caesar’s supporters, and finally to have looked the tyrant in the eye and plunged in the dagger – I don’t mind confessing I could never have done it.’

Quintus said, ‘I could!’

Cicero laughed. ‘Well, you’re more used to blood than I am.’

‘And yet do none of you feel any sorrow for Caesar, simply as a man?’ I asked. ‘After all,’ I said to Cicero, ‘it’s only three months since you were laughing with him over dinner.’

Cicero looked at me with incredulity. ‘I’m amazed that you should ask me that. I imagine I feel as you must have felt on the day you received your freedom. Whether Caesar was a kind master or a cruel one is neither here nor there – master he was, and slaves was what he made us. And now we have been liberated. So let’s have no talk of sorrow.’

He sent out a secretary to see if he could discover the whereabouts of Brutus and the other conspirators. The man came back soon afterwards and reported that they were said to be occupying the upper ground of the Capitol.

Cicero said, ‘I must go at once and offer my support.’

‘Is that wise?’ I asked. ‘As things stand, you bear no responsibility for the killing. But if you go and show your solidarity with them in public, Caesar’s supporters may not see much difference between you and Cassius and Brutus.’

‘Let them. I intend to thank the men who’ve given me back my liberty.’

The others agreed and we set off at once, all four of us, with a few slaves for protection – along the slope of the Palatine, down the steps into the valley and across the road of Jugarius to the foot of the Tarpeian Rock. The air was eerily still and torpid with an approaching storm; the thoroughfare, normally busy with ox carts, was deserted apart from a few people wandering in the direction of the Forum. Their expressions were stunned, bewildered, fearful. And certainly if one sought for portents one had only to glance up at the sky. Massy dense black clouds seemed to be pressing down upon the roofs of the temples, and as we began to climb the steep flight of steps there was a flash and a crack of thunder. The rain was cold and heavy. The stones became slippery. We had to pause halfway to recover our breath. Beside us a stream ran over the green mossy rock and turned into a waterfall; below us I could see the curve of the Tiber, the city walls, the Field of Mars. I realised then how shrewd a piece of military planning it had been to retire straight from the scene of the assassination to the Capitol: its sheer cliffs made it a naturally impregnable fortress.

We pressed on until we came to the gate at the summit, which was guarded by gladiators, fearsome-looking characters from Nearer Gaul. With them was one of Decimus’s officers. He recognised Cicero and ordered the men to admit us, then he conducted us himself into the walled compound, past the chained dogs that guarded the place at night, and into the Temple of Jupiter, where at least a hundred men were gathered, sheltering in the gloom from the rain.

As Cicero entered he was greeted with applause and he went round shaking hands with all of the assassins apart from Brutus, whose hand was bandaged because of the wound Cassius had accidentally inflicted on him. They had changed out of their bloodied clothes into freshly laundered togas, and their demeanour was sober, even grim, with nothing left of the euphoria that had immediately followed the killing. I was amazed to see how many of Caesar’s closest followers had rushed to join them: L. Cornelius Cinna, for example, the brother of Caesar’s first wife and uncle of Julia – Caesar had recently made him praetor, yet here he was with his ex-brother-in-law’s murderers. And here too was Dolabella – the ever-faithless Dolabella – who had raised not a finger to defend Caesar in the Senate chamber, and who now had his arm round the shoulder of Decimus, the man who had lured their old chief to his doom. He came over to join in the conversation that Cicero was having with Brutus and Cassius.

Brutus said, ‘So you approve of what we have done?’

‘Approve? It’s the greatest deed in the history of the republic! But tell me,’ asked Cicero, with a glance around the sombre interior, ‘why are you all cooped up here out of sight like criminals? Why aren’t you down in the Forum rallying the people to your cause?’

‘We are patriots, not demagogues. Our aim was to remove the tyrant, nothing more.’

Cicero stared at him in surprise. ‘But then who is running the country?’

Brutus said, ‘At the moment, no one. The next step is to establish a new government.’

‘Shouldn’t you simply declare yourselves to be the government?’

‘That would be illegal. We didn’t pull down a tyrant in order to set ourselves up as tyrants in his place.’

‘Well then summon the Senate here now, to this temple – you have the power as praetors – and let the Senate declare a state of emergency until elections can be held. That would be entirely legal.’

‘We think it would be more constitutional if Mark Antony, as consul, summoned the Senate.’

‘Mark Antony?’ Cicero’s surprise was turning to alarm. ‘You mustn’t let him anywhere near this business. He has all of Caesar’s worst qualities and none of his best.’ He appealed to Cassius to back him up.

Cassius said, ‘I agree with you. In my view we should have killed him at the same time as we killed Caesar. But Brutus wouldn’t tolerate it. Therefore Trebonius delayed him on his way in to the chamber, so that he could get away.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘Presumably in his house.’

‘That I would doubt, knowing him,’ said Dolabella. ‘He will be busy in the city.’

Throughout these exchanges I had noticed Decimus talking to a couple of his gladiators. Now he hurried across, his expression grim. He said, ‘There’s a report that Lepidus is moving his legion off Tiber Island.’

Cassius said, ‘We’ll be able to see for ourselves from here.’

We went outside and followed Cassius and Decimus around the side of the great temple to the raised paved area to the north that gives a view for miles over the Field of Mars and beyond. And there was no doubt of it: the legionaries were marching across the bridge and forming up on the riverbank nearest the city.

Brutus betrayed his anxiety by a constant tapping of his foot. He said, ‘I sent a messenger to Lepidus hours ago but he hasn’t returned an answer.’

Cassius pointed. ‘That’s his answer.’

Cicero said, ‘Brutus, I implore you – I implore you all – go down to the Forum and tell the people what you’ve done and why you’ve done it. Fire them with the spirit of the old republic. Otherwise Lepidus will trap you up here and Antony will take control of the city.’

Even Brutus could now see the wisdom of this, and so a procession of the conspirators – or assassins, or freedom fighters, or liberators: no one ever could agree exactly what to call them – descended the twisting road that led from the summit of the Capitol around behind the Temple of Saturn and down into the Forum. At Cicero’s suggestion they left their bodyguard of gladiators behind: ‘It will make the best possible impression of our sincerity if we walk alone and unarmed; besides, if there is trouble, we can retreat quickly enough.’

It had stopped raining. Three or four hundred citizens had gathered in the Forum and were standing around listlessly among the puddles, apparently waiting for something to happen. They saw us coming when we were still quite a long way off, and moved towards us. I had no idea how they would react. Caesar had always been a great favourite of the mob, although latterly even they had come to weary of his kingly ways – to dread his looming wars and to pine for the old days of elections when they had to be courted by the dozens of candidates with flattery and bribes. Would they applaud us or try to tear us apart? In the event they did neither. The crowd watched in absolute silence as we entered the Forum and then parted to let us pass. The praetors – Brutus, Cassius and Cinna – went up on to the rostra to address them, while the rest of us, including Cicero, stood at the side to watch.

Brutus spoke first, and although I can remember his sombre opening line – ‘As my noble ancestor Junius Brutus drove the tyrant-king Tarquin from the city, so today have I rid us of the tyrant-dictator Caesar’ – the rest of it I have forgotten. That was the problem. He had obviously laboured hard over it for days, and no doubt as an essay on the wickedness of despotism it read well. But as Cicero had long tried to convince him, a speech is a performance, not a philosophical discourse: it must appeal to the emotions more than to the intellect. A fiery oration at that moment might have transformed the situation – might have inspired the crowd to defend the Forum and their liberty from the soldiers who even now were massing on the Field of Mars. But Brutus gave them a lecture that was three parts history to one part political theory. I could hear Cicero beside me muttering under his breath. It did not help that while he was speaking, Brutus’s wound began to bleed beneath its bandage; one was distracted from what he was saying by that gory reminder of what he had done.

After what felt like a long time, Brutus ended to applause best described as thoughtful. Cassius spoke next, and not badly either, for he had taken lessons in oratory from Cicero in Tusculum. But he was a professional soldier who had spent little time in Rome: he was respected but he was not much known, let alone loved. He received less applause even than Brutus. The disaster, however, was Cinna. He was an orator of the old-fashioned, melodramatic school, and tried to inject some passion into proceedings by tearing off his praetorian robe and hurling it from the rostra, denouncing it as the gift of a despot that he was ashamed to be seen wearing. The hypocrisy was too much to bear. Someone yelled out, ‘You didn’t say that yesterday!’ The remark was cheered, which emboldened another heckler to shout: ‘You’d have been nothing without Caesar, you old has-been!’ In the chorus of jeering, Cinna’s voice was lost – and the meeting with it.

Cicero said, ‘Now this is a fiasco.’

‘You are the orator,’ said Decimus. ‘Will you say something to retrieve the situation?’ and to my horror I saw that Cicero was tempted. But at that moment Decimus was handed a new report that Lepidus’s legion appeared to be moving towards the city. He beckoned urgently to the praetors to come down off the rostra, and with as much confidence as we could muster, which was little, we all trooped back up to the Capitol.

It was typical of Brutus’s other-worldliness that he should have believed right up until the last moment that Lepidus would never dare to break the law by bringing an army across the sacred boundary and into Rome. After all, he assured Cicero, he knew the Master of Horse extremely well: Lepidus was married to his sister Junia Secunda (just as Cassius was married to his half-sister Junia Tertia).

‘Believe me, he’s a patrician through and through. He won’t do anything illegal. I have always found him an absolute stickler for dignity and protocol.’

And at first it seemed he might be right, as the legion, after crossing the bridge and moving towards the city walls, halted on the Field of Mars and pitched camp about half a mile away. Then soon after nightfall, we heard the plaintive notes of the war horns. They set the dogs barking in the walled compound of the temple and sent us hurrying out to see what was going on. Heavy cloud obscured the moon and stars but the distant lights of the legion’s campfires shone clearly in the darkness. Even as we watched, the fires seemed to splinter and rearrange themselves into snakes of fire.

Cassius said, ‘They are marching with torches.’

A line of light began wavering along the road towards the Carmenta Gate. Presently on the moist night air we heard the faint tramp of the legionaries’ boots. The gate was almost directly beneath us, obscured from sight by outcrops of rock. Lepidus’s vanguard found it locked and hammered for admittance and cried out to the porter. But I guess he must have run away. There was a long interval when nothing happened. Then a battering ram was brought up. A series of heavy thuds was followed by the noise of splintering wood. Men cheered. Leaning over the parapet, we watched the legionaries with their torches slip quickly through the ruptured gate, deploy around the base of the Capitol and fan out across the Forum to secure the main public buildings.

Cassius said, ‘Will they attack us tonight, do you think?’

‘Why should they,’ replied Decimus bitterly, ‘when they can take us at their leisure in the daylight?’ The anger in his tone suggested he held the others responsible, that he regarded himself as having fallen in among fools. ‘Your brother-in-law, Brutus, has proved more ambitious and more daring than you led me to believe.’

Brutus, his foot tapping ceaselessly, did not respond.

Dolabella said, ‘I agree, a night attack would be too hazardous. Tomorrow is when they’ll make their move.’

Now Cicero spoke up. ‘The question is surely whether Lepidus is acting in alliance with Antony or not. If he is, then our position is frankly hopeless. If he isn’t, then I doubt Antony will want him to have the sole glory of wiping out Caesar’s assassins. That, gentlemen, I fear, is our best hope.’

Cicero was now obliged to take his chances with the rest: it would have been far too risky to attempt to leave – not in darkness, with the place surrounded by potentially hostile soldiers and with Antony at large in the city. So there was nothing for it except to settle down for the night. It was to our advantage that the summit of the Capitol can only be approached in four ways: by the Moneta Steps to the north-east, the Hundred Steps to the south-west (the route we had climbed that afternoon) and by the two routes that lead up from the Forum – one a flight of stairs, the other a steep road. Decimus strengthened the guard of gladiators at the top of each and then we all retreated to the Temple of Jupiter.

I cannot say we got much rest. The temple was damp and chilly, the benches hard, the memory of the day’s events too vivid. The dim light from the lamps and candles played upon the stern faces of the gods; from the shadows of the roof the wooden eagles looked down with disdain. Cicero talked for a while with Quintus and Atticus – quietly, so as not to be overheard. He couldn’t believe how ill-thought-out the assassination had been. ‘Was ever a deed carried through with such manly resolution and yet such childish judgement? If only they had brought me into their confidence! I could at least have told them that if you are going to kill the devil, there’s no point in leaving his apprentice alive. And how could they have neglected Lepidus and his legion? Or let an entire day go by with no attempt to seize control of the government?’

The edge of frustration in his voice, if not the words themselves, must have carried to Brutus and Cassius, who were sitting nearby, and I saw them look across at Cicero and frown. He noticed them too. He lapsed into silence and sat propped up against a pillar, huddled in his toga, doubtless brooding on what had been done, what hadn’t, and what might be done yet.

With the dawn it became possible to see the main event that had occurred overnight. Lepidus had moved perhaps a thousand men into the city. The smoke from their cooking fires rose over the Forum. A further three thousand or so remained encamped on the Field of Mars.

Cassius, Brutus and Decimus convened a meeting to discuss what should be done. Cicero’s proposal of the previous day, that they should summon the Senate to the Capitol, had plainly been overtaken by events. Instead it was decided that a delegation of ex-consuls, none of whom had been party to the assassination, should go to the house of Mark Antony and ask him formally, as consul, to convene the Senate. Servius Sulpicius, C. Marcellus and L. Aemilius Paullus, the brother of Lepidus, all volunteered to go, but Cicero refused to join them, arguing that the group would do better to approach Lepidus directly: ‘I don’t trust Antony. Besides, any agreement reached with him will only have to be approved by Lepidus, who at the moment is the man with the power, so why not deal with him and cut out Antony altogether?’ But Brutus’s argument that Antony had legal if not military authority carried the day, and in the middle of the morning the former consuls set off, preceded by an attendant carrying a white flag of truce.

We could do nothing now except wait and watch developments in the Forum – literally so, for if one was willing to scramble down to the roof of the public records office, one had a clear view of proceedings. The entire space was packed with soldiers and civilians listening to speeches from the rostra. They crammed the steps of the temples and clung to the pillars; more still were pressing to enter from the Via Sacra and the Argiletum, which were backed up as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately we were too far away to be able to hear what was being said. Around noon, a figure in full military uniform and the red cloak of a general began to address the crowd and spoke for well over an hour, receiving prolonged applause: that, I was told, was Lepidus. Not long afterwards, another soldier – his Herculean swagger and his thick black hair and beard identifying him unmistakably as Mark Antony – also appeared on the platform. Again, I could not hear his words, but it was significant simply that he was there at all, and I hastened back to tell Cicero that Lepidus and Antony were now apparently in alliance.

The tension on the Capitol by this time was acute. We had had little to eat all day. Nobody had slept much. Brutus and Cassius expected an attack at any time. Our fate was out of our hands. Yet Cicero was oddly serene. He felt himself to be on the right side, he told me, and would take the consequences.

Just as the sun was starting to go down over the Tiber, the delegation of ex-consuls returned. Sulpicius spoke for them all: ‘Antony has agreed to call a meeting of the Senate tomorrow at the first hour in the Temple of Tellus.’

Joy greeted the first part of his statement, groans the second, for the temple was right across town, on the Esquiline, very close to Antony’s house. Cassius said at once, ‘That’s a trap, to lure us out of our strong position. They’ll kill us for sure.’

Cicero said, ‘You may be right. But you could all stay here and I could go. I doubt they’d kill me. And if they did – well, what does it matter? I’m old, and there could be no better death than in defence of freedom.’

His words lifted our hearts. They reminded us why we were here. It was agreed on the spot that while the actual assassins would remain on the Capitol, Cicero would lead a delegation to speak on their behalf in the Senate. It was also decided that rather than spend another night in the temple, he and all the others who were not actually part of the original conspiracy would return to their homes to rest before the debate. Accordingly, after an emotional farewell, and under the flag of truce, we set off down the Hundred Steps into the gathering twilight. At the foot of the stairs, Lepidus’s soldiers had erected a checkpoint. They demanded Cicero go forward and show himself. Fortunately he was recognised, and after he had vouched for the rest of us, we were all allowed to go through.

Cicero worked on his speech late into the night. Before I went to bed he asked if I would accompany him to the Senate the next day and take it down in shorthand. He thought it might be his last oration and he wanted it recorded for posterity: a summation of all he had come to believe about liberty and the republic, the healing role of the statesman and the moral justification for murdering a tyrant. I cannot say I relished the assignment but of course I could not refuse.

Of all the hundreds of debates Cicero had attended over the past thirty years none promised to be tenser than this one. It was scheduled to begin at dawn, which meant that we had to leave the house in darkness and pass through the shuttered streets – a nerve-racking business in itself. It was held in a temple that had never before served as a meeting place for the Senate, surrounded by soldiers – and not just those of Lepidus but many of Caesar’s roughest veterans, who on hearing the news of their old chief’s murder had armed themselves and come to the city to protect their rights and take revenge on his killers. And finally when we had run the gauntlet of pleas and imprecations and entered the temple, it proved so cramped that men who hated and distrusted one another were nonetheless packed into close proximity so that one sensed that the slightest ill-judged remark might turn the thing into a bloodbath.

And yet from the moment Antony rose to speak it became clear that the debate would be different to Cicero’s expectation. Antony was not yet forty – handsome, swarthy, his wrestler’s physique fashioned by nature for armour rather than a toga. Yet his voice was rich and educated, his delivery compelling. ‘Fathers of the nation,’ he declared, ‘what is done is done and I profoundly wish it were not so, because Caesar was my dearest friend. But I love my country more even than I loved Caesar, if such a thing is possible, and we must be guided by what is best for the commonwealth. Last night I was with Caesar’s widow, and amid her tears and anguish that gracious lady Calpurnia spoke as follows: “Tell the Senate,” she said, “that in the agony of my grief I wish for two things only: that my husband be given a funeral appropriate to the honours he won in life, and that there be no further bloodshed.”’

This drew a loud, deep-throated growl of approval, and to my surprise I realised the mood was more for compromise than revenge.

‘Brutus, Cassius and Decimus,’ continued Antony, ‘are patriots just as we are, men from the most distinguished families in the state. We can salute the nobility of their aim even as we may despise the brutality of their method. In my view enough blood has been shed over these past five years. Accordingly I propose that we show the same clemency towards his assassins that was the mark of Caesar’s statecraft – that in the interests of civic peace we pardon them, guarantee their safety, and invite them to come down from the Capitol and join us in our deliberations.’

It was a commanding performance, but then of course Antony’s grandfather was regarded by many, including Cicero, as one of Rome’s greatest orators, so perhaps the gift was in his blood. At any rate he set a tone of high-minded moderation – so much so that Cicero, who spoke next, was entirely wrong-footed and could do little except praise him for his wisdom and magnanimity. The only point with which he took issue was Antony’s use of the word ‘clemency’:

‘Clemency in my view means a pardon, and a pardon implies a crime. The murder of the Dictator was many things but it was not a crime. I would prefer a different term. Do you remember the story of Thrasybulus, who more than three centuries ago overthrew the Thirty Despots of Athens? Afterwards he instituted what was called an amnesty for his opponents – a concept taken from their Greek word amnesia, meaning “forgetfulness”. That is what is needed here – a great national act not of forgiveness but of forgetfulness, that we may begin our republic anew freed from the enmities of the past, in friendship and in peace.’

Cicero received the same applause as Antony and a motion was immediately proposed by Dolabella offering amnesty to all those who had taken part in the assassination and urging them to come to the Senate. Only Lepidus was opposed: not I am sure out of principle – Lepidus was never a man for principles – so much as because he saw his chance of glory slipping away. The motion passed and a messenger was dispatched to the Capitol. During the recess while this was being done, Cicero came to the door to talk to me. When I congratulated him on his speech, he said, ‘I arrived expecting to be torn to pieces and instead I find myself drowning in honey. What is Antony’s game, do you suppose?’

‘Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps he is sincere.’

Cicero shook his head. ‘No, he has some plan, but he’s keeping it well hidden. Certainly he’s more cunning than I gave him credit for.’

When the session resumed, it soon became not so much a debate as a negotiation. First Antony warned that when the news of the assassination reached the provinces, particularly Gaul, it might lead to widespread rebellion against Roman rule: ‘In the interests of maintaining strong government in a time of emergency, I propose that all the laws promulgated by Caesar, and all appointments of consuls, praetors and governors made before the Ides of March should be confirmed by the Senate.’

Then Cicero rose. ‘Including your own appointment, of course?’

Antony replied, with a first hint of menace, ‘Yes, obviously including my own – unless, that is, you object?’

‘And including Dolabella’s, as your fellow consul? That was Caesar’s wish as well, as I recall, until you blocked it by your auguries.’

I glanced across the temple to Dolabella, suddenly leaning forward in his place.

This was obviously a bitter draught for Antony to swallow – but swallow it he did. ‘Yes, in the interests of unity, if that is the will of the Senate – including Dolabella’s.’

Cicero pressed on. ‘And you confirm therefore that both Brutus and Cassius will continue as praetors, and afterwards will be the governors of Nearer Gaul and Syria, and that Decimus will in the meantime take control of Nearer Gaul, with the two legions already allotted to him?’

‘Yes, yes and yes.’ There were whistles of surprise, some groans and some applause. ‘And now,’ continued Antony, ‘will your side agree: all acts and appointments issued before Caesar’s death are to be confirmed by the Senate?’

Later Cicero said to me that before he rose to make his answer, he tried to imagine what Cato would have done. ‘And of course he would have said that if Caesar’s rule was illegal, it followed that his laws were illegal too and we should have new elections. But then I looked out of the door and saw the soldiers and asked myself how we could possibly have elections in these circumstances – there would be a bloodbath.’

Slowly Cicero got to his feet. ‘I cannot speak for Brutus, Cassius and Decimus, but speaking for myself, since it is to the advantage of the state, and on condition that what goes for one goes for all – yes, I agree that the Dictator’s appointments should be allowed to stand.’

‘I cannot regret it,’ he told me afterwards, ‘because I could have done nothing else.’

The Senate continued its deliberations for the whole of that day. Antony and Lepidus also laid a motion calling for Caesar’s grants to his soldiers to be ratified by the Senate, and in view of the hundreds of veterans waiting outside, Cicero could hardly dare to oppose that either. In return Antony proposed abolishing forever the title and functions of dictator; it passed without protest. About an hour before sunset, after issuing various edicts to the provincial governors, the Senate adjourned and walked through the smoke and squalor of the Subura to the Forum, where Antony and Lepidus gave an account to the waiting crowd of what had just been agreed. The news was greeted with relief and acclamation, and this sight of Senate and people in civic harmony was almost enough to make one imagine the old republic had been restored. Antony even invited Cicero up on to the rostra, the first time the ageing statesman had appeared there since he had addressed the people after his return from exile. For a moment he was too emotional to speak.

‘People of Rome,’ he said at last, gesturing to quiet the ovation, ‘after the agony and violence not just of the last few days but of the last few years, let past grievances and bitterness be set aside.’ Just at that moment a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, gilding the bronze roof of Jupiter’s temple on the Capitol, where the white togas of the conspirators were plainly visible. ‘Behold the sun of Liberty,’ cried Cicero, seizing the moment, ‘shining once again over the Roman Forum! Let it warm us – let it warm the whole of humanity – with the beneficence of its healing rays.’

Shortly afterwards Brutus and Cassius sent a message down to Antony that in view of what had been decided at the Senate, they were willing to leave their stronghold, but only on condition that he and Lepidus sent hostages to remain on the Capitol overnight as a guarantee of their safety. When Antony went up on to the rostra and read this aloud, there were cheers. He said, ‘As a token of my good faith, I am willing to pledge to them my own son – a lad of barely three, who the gods know I love more than any living thing. Lepidus,’ he said, holding out his hand to the Master of Horse who was standing next to him, ‘will you do the same with your son?’

Lepidus had little choice but to agree, and so the two boys – one a toddler, the other in his teens – were collected from their homes and taken with their attendants up on to the Capitol. As dusk fell, Brutus and Cassius appeared, descending the steps without an escort. Yet again the crowd roared its pleasure, especially when they shook hands with Antony and Lepidus, and accepted a public invitation to dine with them as a symbol of reconciliation. Cicero was also invited but he declined. Utterly exhausted by his efforts over the past two days, he went home to sleep.

At dawn the following day the Senate met again in the Temple of Tellus; and once again I went with Cicero.

It was astonishing to enter and see Brutus and Cassius sitting a few feet away from Antony and Lepidus and even from Caesar’s father-in-law, L. Calpurnius Piso. There were far fewer soldiers hanging around the door and the atmosphere was tolerant, indeed notable for a certain dark humour. For example when Antony rose to open the session he welcomed back Cassius in particular and said that he hoped this time he wasn’t carrying a concealed dagger, to which Cassius replied that he wasn’t, but would certainly bring a large one if ever Antony tried to set himself up as a tyrant. Everyone laughed.

Various items of business were transacted. Cicero proposed a motion thanking Antony for his statesmanship as consul, which had averted a civil war; it passed unanimously. Antony then proposed a complementary motion thanking Brutus and Cassius for their part in preserving the peace; that too was accepted without objection. Finally Piso rose to express his thanks to Antony for providing guards to protect his daughter Calpurnia and all Caesar’s property on the night of the assassination.

He went on: ‘It remains for us now to decide what to do with Caesar’s body and with Caesar’s will. As regards the body, it has been brought back from the Field of Mars to the residence of the chief priest, has been anointed and awaits cremation. As regards the will, I must tell the house that Caesar made a new one six months ago, on the Ides of September, at his villa near Lavicum, and sealed and deposited it with the Chief Vestal. No one knows its contents. In the spirit of openness and trust that has now been established, I move that both these things – the funeral and the reading of the will – should be conducted in public.’

Antony spoke strongly in favour of the proposal. The only senator who rose to object was Cassius. ‘This seems to me a dangerous course. Remember what happened the last time there was a public funeral for a murdered leader – when Clodius’s followers burned down the Senate house? Just as we’ve established a fragile peace, it would be insanity to put it at risk.’

Antony said, ‘From what I’ve heard, Clodius’s funeral was allowed to get out of hand by some who might have known better.’ He paused for laughter: everyone knew he was now married to Clodius’s widow, Fulvia. ‘As consul, I shall preside over Caesar’s funeral, and I can assure you order will be maintained.’

Cassius indicated by an angry gesture that he was still opposed. For a moment the truce threatened to break. Then Brutus rose. He said, ‘Caesar’s veterans who are in the city will not understand it if their commander-in-chief is denied a public funeral. Besides, what sort of message will it send to the Gauls, already said to be contemplating rebellion, if we dump the body of their conqueror in the Tiber? I share Cassius’s unease, but in truth we have no alternative. Therefore in the interests of concord and amity I support the proposal.’

Cicero said nothing and the motion carried.

The reading of Caesar’s will took place the following day, a little way up the hill in Antony’s house. Cicero knew the place well. It had been Pompey’s main residence before he moved out to his palace overlooking the Field of Mars. Antony, in charge of auctioning the confiscated assets of Caesar’s opponents, had sold it to himself at a knockdown price. It was not much changed. The famous battering rams of the pirate triremes, trophies of Pompey’s great naval victories, were still set into the outside walls. Inside, the elaborate decoration had scarcely been touched since the old man’s day.

Cicero found it unsettling to be back – the more so when he was confronted by the scowling face of the villa’s new mistress, Fulvia. She had hated him when she was married to Clodius, and now that she was married to Antony she hated him all over again – and made no attempt to hide it. The moment she saw him, she ostentatiously turned her back and began talking to someone else.

‘What a shameless pair of grave-robbers,’ Cicero whispered to me, ‘and how typical of that harpy to be here. Why is she, in fact? Even the widow isn’t here. What business of Fulvia’s is the reading of Caesar’s will?’

But that was Fulvia. More than any other woman in Rome – more even than Servilia, Caesar’s old mistress, who at least had the grace to operate behind the scenes – Fulvia loved meddling in politics. And watching her move from visitor to visitor, ushering them towards the room where the will was to be read, I felt a sudden sense of unease: what if hers was the brain behind Antony’s skilful policy of reconciliation? That would put it in a very different light.

Piso stood on a low table so that everyone could see him, and with Antony on one side and the Chief Vestal on the other, and with all the most prominent men of the republic listening in the audience, he first displayed the wax seal to show that it had not been tampered with, then broke it open and started to read.

To begin with, its meaning buried in legal jargon, the will seemed entirely innocuous. Caesar left his whole estate to any son that might be born to him after the drawing up of the document. However, in the absence of such a son, his wealth passed to the three male descendants of his late sister: that is to Lucius Pinarius, Quintus Pedius and Gaius Octavius, to be divided in the proportions one eighth each to Pinarius and Pedius and three quarters to Octavius, whom he now adopted as his son, henceforth to be known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus …

Piso stopped reading and frowned, as if he was not sure what he had just announced. An adopted son? Cicero glanced at me, screwed up his eyes in an effort at memory and mouthed, ‘Octavius?’ Antony meanwhile looked as if he had been struck in the face. Unlike Cicero, he knew at once who Octavius was – the eighteen-year-old son of Caesar’s niece Atia – and for him it must have been a bitter disappointment as well as a total surprise: I am sure he must have hoped to be named as the Dictator’s main heir. Instead, he was merely mentioned as an heir in the second degree – that is, one who would inherit only if the first heirs died or turned down their legacy – an honour he shared with Decimus, one of the assassins! In addition, Caesar bequeathed every citizen of Rome the sum of three hundred sesterces in cash, and decreed that his estate beside the Tiber should become a public park.

The meeting broke up into puzzled groups, and afterwards, walking home, Cicero was full of foreboding. ‘That will is a Pandora’s box – a posthumous poisoned gift to the world that lets loose all manner of evils amongst us.’ He was thinking not so much of the unknown Octavius, or Octavian as he was now restyled, who promised to be a short-lived irrelevance (he was not even in the country but was in Illyricum); it was the mention of Decimus combined with the gifts to the people that troubled him.

All through the remainder of that day and throughout the next, preparations went on in the Forum for Caesar’s funeral. Cicero watched them from his terrace. A golden tabernacle, built to resemble the Temple of Venus the Victorious, was erected on the rostra for the body to lie in. Barriers were put up to control the crowds. Actors and musicians rehearsed. Hundreds more of Caesar’s veterans began to appear on the streets, carrying their weapons: some had travelled a hundred miles to attend. Atticus came round and remonstrated with Cicero for having allowed such a spectacle to go ahead: ‘You and Brutus and the others have all gone mad.’

‘It’s easy for you to say that,’ replied Cicero, ‘but how was it to be prevented? We control neither the city nor the Senate. The crucial mistakes were made not after the assassination but before it – a child should have foreseen the consequences of simply removing Caesar and leaving it at that. And now we have the Dictator’s will to contend with.’

Brutus and Cassius sent messages to say that they intended to remain indoors throughout the day of the funeral: they had hired guards and advised Cicero to do the same. Decimus with his gladiators had barricaded his house and turned it into a fortress. Cicero, however, refused to take such precautions, although he prudently decided not to show himself in public. He suggested instead that I might attend the funeral and report back to him.

I did not mind going. No one would recognise me. Besides, I wanted to see it. I could not help feeling a certain secret regard for Caesar, who over the years had always been civil to me. Accordingly I went down into the Forum before dawn (this was now five days after the assassination – it was hard, amid the rush of events, to keep track of time). The centre of the city was already packed with thousands, women as well as men – not so much the polite citizenry but mostly old soldiers, the urban poor, many slaves, and a large contingent of Jews, who revered Caesar for allowing them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I managed to work my way around the vast crowd to the corner of the Via Sacra, where the cortege would pass, and a few hours after daybreak I saw in the distance the procession start to leave the official residence of the chief priest.

It paraded right in front of me, and I was amazed by the planning that had gone into it: Antony and I am sure Fulvia had left out nothing that might be relied upon to inflame the emotions. First came the musicians, playing their haunting plangent dirges; then dancers dressed as spirits from the Underworld, who ran up shrieking to the front of the crowd striking poses of grief and horror; then came household slaves and freedmen carrying busts of Caesar; then not one but five actors went marching past representing each of Caesar’s triumphs, wearing masks of the Dictator fashioned from beeswax that were so incredibly lifelike one felt he had risen from the dead five-fold in all his glory; then, carried on an open litter, came a life-size model of the corpse, naked except for a loincloth, with each of the stab wounds, including that to his face, depicted as deep red gashes in the white wax flesh – this caused the spectators to gasp and cry and some of the women to swoon; then came the body itself, lying on an ivory couch, carried on the shoulders of senators and soldiers and shrouded from view by covers of purple and gold, followed by Caesar’s widow Calpurnia and niece Atia, veiled in black and holding on to one another, accompanied by their relatives; and finally came Antony and Piso, Dolabella, Hirtius, Pansa, Balbus, Oppius, and all the leading supporters of Caesar.

After the cortege had passed, there was a strange hiatus while the body was taken to the steps behind the rostra. Neither before nor afterwards did I ever hear such a profound silence in the centre of Rome in the middle of the day. During this ominous lull the leading mourners were filing on to the platform, and when at last the corpse appeared, Caesar’s veterans began banging their swords against their shields as they must have done on the battlefield – a terrific, warlike, intimidating din. The body was placed carefully into the golden tabernacle; Antony stepped forward to deliver the eulogy, and held up his hand for silence.

‘We come to bid farewell to no tyrant!’ he declared, his powerful voice ringing round the temples and statues. ‘We come to bid farewell to a great man foully murdered in a consecrated place by those he had pardoned and promoted!’

He had assured the Senate he would speak with moderation. He broke that assurance with his opening words, and for the next hour he worked the vast assembly, already aroused by the spectacle of the procession, to a pitch of grief and fury. He flung out his arms. He sank almost to his knees. He beat his breast. He pointed to the heavens. He recited Caesar’s achievements. He told them of Caesar’s will – the gift to every citizen, the public park, the bitter irony of his honouring of Decimus. ‘And yet this Decimus, who was like a son to him – and Brutus and Cassius and Cinna and the rest – these men swore an oath – they made a sacred promise – to serve Caesar faithfully and to protect him! The Senate has given them amnesty, but by Jupiter what revenge I should like to take if prudence did not restrain me!’ In short he used every trick of oratory that the austere Brutus had rejected. And then came his – or was it Fulvia’s? – masterstroke. He summoned up on to the platform one of the actors wearing Caesar’s lifelike mask, who in a rasping voice declaimed to the crowd that famous speech from Pacuvius’s tragedy The Trial for Arms:

That ever I, unhappy man, should save

Wretches, who thus have brought me to the grave!

The impersonation was uncannily good. It was like a message from the Underworld. And then, to groans of horror, the manikin of Caesar’s corpse was raised by some mechanical contraption and rotated full circle so that all the wounds were shown.

From that point onwards Caesar’s funeral followed the pattern of Clodius’s. The body was supposed to be burned on a pyre already prepared on the Field of Mars. But as it was being borne down from the rostra, angry voices cried out that it should instead be cremated in Pompey’s Senate chamber, where the crime was committed, or on the Capitol, where the conspirators had taken refuge. Then the crowd, with some collective impulse, changed its mind and decided that it should be burned on the spot. Antony did nothing to stop any of this but looked on indulgently as once again the bookshops of the Argiletum were ransacked and the benches of the law courts were dragged into the centre of the Forum and stacked in a pile. Caesar’s bier was set upon the bonfire and torched. The actors and dancers and musicians pulled off their robes and masks and threw them into the flames. The crowd followed suit. They tore at their own clothes in their hysteria and these along with everything else flammable went flying on to the fire. When the mob started running through the streets carrying torches, looking for the houses of the assassins, I finally lost my nerve and headed back to the Palatine. On my way I passed poor Helvius Cinna, the poet and tribune, who had been mistaken by the mob for his namesake the praetor Cornelius Cinna, whom Antony had mentioned in his speech. He was being dragged away screaming with a noose around his neck, and afterwards his head was paraded around the Forum on a pole.

When I staggered back into the house and told Cicero what had happened, he put his face in his hands. All that night the sounds of destruction went on and the sky was lit up by the houses that had been set on fire. The following day Antony sent a message to Decimus warning that the lives of the assassins could no longer be protected and urging them to withdraw from Rome. Cicero advised them to do as Antony suggested: they would be more useful to the cause alive than dead. Decimus went to Nearer Gaul to try to take control of his allotted province. Trebonius travelled by a circuitous route to Asia to do the same. Brutus and Cassius retreated to the coast at Antium. Cicero headed south.