A worried Cicero wrote to Atticus: “He does seem very fond of his mother, as he should be, and extraordinarily fond of you. But the boy’s nature, though gifted, is complex and I have plenty to do in guiding it.” With Cicero’s encouragement, Quintus played a part in helping to reconcile his parents. The divorce did not take place.
Serious trouble was also brewing closer to home. In June 50 Cicero broached a highly sensitive topic with Atticus, writing in veiled terms and in Greek. Terentia had sent him out to Cilicia to see Cicero and his behavior had been strange. “There’s something else about which I must write to you en langue voilée, and you must lay your nose to the scent. From the confused and incoherent way he talked the other day, I formed the impression that my wife’s freedman (you know to whom I refer) has cooked the accounts regarding [a property purchase]. I am afraid that something—you’ll take my meaning. Please look into it.… I can’t put all I fear into words.” The implication is that his wife was somehow involved.
The divorced Tullia had now settled on a new husband and she could hardly have made a more unsatisfactory choice. Her eye had fallen on a handsome young aristocrat, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Dolabella. A reckless and womanizing playboy, he was not at all the match Cicero had been hoping for.
Tullia seems usually to have gotten her way with her indulgent father, and on this occasion he knew little of what was afoot until she and her mother presented him with a fait accompli. He made the best of a bad situation, although the marriage placed him in Appius Claudius’s bad books just when he thought he had gotten out of them. AS luck would have it, Dolabella was in the process of bringing Appius to trial on a treason charge. “Here I am in my province paying Appius all kinds of compliment, when out of the blue I find his prosecutor becoming my son-in-law!”
In the summer of 50, much to his relief, Cicero had reached the end of his posting and set off for Rome, despite the brief threat of another Parthian invasion. On the journey home he had plenty of time to think about the political situation he was going to find on his return. He called at Rhodes and Athens and wrote an affectionate letter to his “darling and much-longed-for Terentia,” complimenting her on her letters to him, which “covered all items most carefully,” and asking her to come and meet him in Brundisium if her health allowed. He reached the port in late November at the same time as his wife arrived at the city gates: they met in the market square. The suspicions he had raised with Atticus had evidently been lulled, at least for the time being. He was also coming to terms with Tullia’s new husband, the playboy Dolabella. “We all find him charming, Tullia, Terentia, myself,” he told Atticus. “He is as clever and agreeable as you please. Other characteristics, of which you are aware, we must put up with.”
Cicero was in no hurry to reach Rome and did not arrive there until early January 49. He would need to retain his governor’s imperium until he crossed the city boundary, if he were to be awarded a Triumph or an Ovation, and so he stayed at Pompey’s grand country house outside the capital, accompanied by his official guard of lictors, their axes now wreathed in laurel because of his title of imperator. Cicero was back where he felt he belonged, and he did not intend to be inactive.
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.