Tullia’s death spelled the end of Cicero’s brief marriage to Publilia. She was said to be pleased that someone she had seen as a rival had been removed from the scene, and Cicero could not forgive this. Even if the story was false, his bereavement pushed her to the far periphery of his concerns. Publilia was not allowed to visit him and he asked for Atticus’s support in preventing either her or her relatives from seeking him out. “I want you to find out just how long I can stay here [at Astura] without getting caught.” His mind was set on divorce and before long the baffled and relieved teenager was out of his life for good.
Letters of condolence for Tullia’s death poured in, among them from Brutus and from Caesar in Spain, who knew well the agony of grief for a dead daughter. His friend the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus wrote a long, touching epistle that brought home to Cicero the mutability of human affairs.
I want to tell you of something which has brought me no small comfort, in the hope that perhaps it may have some power to lighten your sorrow too. AS I was on my way back from Asia [to Rome on changing sides after Pharsalus], sailing from Aegina towards Megara, I began to gaze at the landscape around me. There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes. [These cities had not recovered from the Roman annexation of Greece in the middle of the previous century: Corinth had been sacked.] I began to think to myself: “Ah, how can we little creatures wax indignant if one of us dies or is killed, ephemeral beings as we are, when the corpses of so many towns lie abandoned in a single spot? Check yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a mortal man.” That thought, I do assure you, strengthened me not a little. If I may suggest it, picture the same spectacle to yourself. Not long ago so many great men died at one time, the Roman Empire was so gravely impaired, all its provinces shaken to pieces; can you be so greatly moved by the loss of one poor little woman’s frail spirit?
Slowly Cicero began to get better. With an effort of will he returned to Tusculum towards the end of May. One good sign was that he transposed his emotions onto an external project. He conceived the idea of erecting a shrine to Tullia’s memory. This would give her immortality of a sort, for it would celebrate her “glory.” The Greeks and Romans believed that in exceptional cases a bridge could be built between the human and the divine. In Asia Minor there was an established tradition of worshiping great men and according divine status to rulers. Cicero was not going as far as that, but he wanted his daughter’s remarkable qualities to receive a permanent memorial. In a fragment from the Self-Consolation he wrote that if it had been appropriate for heroes of Greek mythology to be raised to heaven, “surely she too deserves the same honor and devotion, and I shall give it to her.”
Atticus thought the scheme eccentric, but he went patiently along with his friend and for some months they discussed various possible sites Cicero might purchase. It was important that the monument should not be off the beaten track, so perhaps somewhere in the suburbs of Rome would be best. Price was not an object, for Cicero would happily sacrifice some of his luxuries or even one of his villas to raise the necessary funds. He considered a wide range of properties, including one belonging to one of Clodius’s sisters.
By the summer the project was abandoned. Cicero’s engagement with and curiosity about the world around him were returning. He wrote a new will to take account of his short-lived grandson and Terentia made a nuisance of herself about it. He paid increasingly affectionate attention to Atticus’s daughter, who was born around 51. Although she was only about five or six years old, she already had a tutor. She had a tendency towards fevers and Cicero was always asking after the little girl. She was no replacement for Tullia, but she took his mind off his loss.
On March 17, 45, Caesar won the battle of Munda against an army led by Pompey’s son Cnaeus. His victory, although total, was narrowly achieved. Afterwards he admitted: “Today, for the first time, I fought for my life.” His old comrade-in-arms, Labienus, who had deserted him at the start of the civil war, lay among 30,000 Republican dead. Cnaeus was caught and killed in flight.
Caesar remained for a few months in Spain reorganizing the provincial administration before setting out for home. Exhausted and unwell, he did not go to the capital immediately but spent some time on one of his country estates. There he wrote his will, which he deposited in September with the Vestal Virgins, as custom dictated. This was a personal, not a political, testament and disposed of his immense private fortune; however, when it was published after his death, it was to change the course of Roman history.
The civil war was conclusively over. The human price had been high, for it has been estimated that 100,000 Roman citizens had lost their lives since the opening of hostilities in 49. No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. His leading opponents were dead. The Republic was dead too: he had become the state.
By agreement with Balbus and Oppius, Atticus suggested that Cicero write a letter of advice to Caesar, in which he could return to the theme of the restoration of the constitution. Cicero obediently attempted a draft and, out of courtesy and caution, showed it to the two confidential agents before sending it off. They thought it too outspoken and counseled a revision. On May 25, Cicero informed Atticus that it would be better not to write anything. He was relieved to have extricated himself because it now occurred to him that Caesar would interpret the letter as an apology for the Cato. But Atticus would not give in and continued to badger him. On the following day, Cicero came to a final decision. He announced that he was simply unable to write the letter, not so much because he would be ashamed of its contents as because he could not think of anything else to say.
Cicero no longer entertained hopes that the Republic would be restored and moved gradually from collaboration to opposition. It was becoming common knowledge in the Dictator’s circle that, despite the end of the war, he had no intention of settling permanently in Rome; he had decided that the continuing Parthian threat should be addressed once and for all. So he would soon be marching off on another military campaign. Clearly he was uninterested in addressing constitutional issues.
Also, perhaps, the deep depression from which Cicero was emerging had hardened him and made him less inclined to compromise. Tullia’s death and the quarrels in his family circle meant that old ties had loosened and that he could follow his own wishes.
A by-product of this more explicit disillusionment with the present state of affairs was the cooling of Cicero’s friendship with Brutus. He had already been irritated by an inaccurate and less than generous account of his Consulship in 63 in Brutus’s book on Cato. “Brutus reports that Caesar has joined the honest men,” he wrote sardonically to Atticus. “Good news! But where is he going to find them—unless he hangs himself? AS for Brutus, he knows which side his bread is buttered.”
In June, Dolabella, with whom Cicero was still friendly, paid a visit and reported some new scandal concerning young Quintus. “Dolabella came this morning,” Cicero wrote to Atticus. “We got on to Quintus. I heard of much that is too bad for utterance or narration, and one thing of such a kind that if the whole army did not know of it I should not dare to put it on paper myself, let alone dictate it to Tiro.” The nature of this thing is not disclosed, for at this point the letter has been cut, probably by Atticus when he began to allow his friends to read his collection of Cicero’s correspondence. It is hard to conceive of what new offense the young man could have committed.
In August Quintus, now back in Italy after the Spanish campaign, fell out with his mother. For this reason he needed to have a house of his own and his father wondered whether to vacate his own home to make room for him. But Quintus was still doing his best to blacken his uncle’s reputation and was now busy criticizing his father as well. Cicero told Atticus that, according to Hirtius, he “is at it constantly, especially at dinner parties. When he finishes with me he comes back to his father, his most plausible line being that we are thoroughly hostile to Caesar and are not to be trusted.”