The conspirators’ position was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and a conference was called in Antium to consider the situation. Cicero was invited to attend. He gave Atticus a long description of what was said. Those present included Brutus and Cassius, together with their wives. Brutus’s mother and Julius Caesar’s onetime lover, Servilia, was also in attendance. For many years this well-connected and astute matriarch had been an influential figure in Roman politics behind the scenes, and she was still in a position to pull strings when necessary.
Without revealing his source, Cicero passed on Hirtius’s advice that Brutus should not leave Italy. A general conversation followed, full of recriminations about lost opportunities. Cicero remarked that he agreed with what was being said, but there was no point in crying over spilled milk. He then launched into a reprise of all his familiar views (“nothing original, only what everyone is saying all the time”): Antony should have been killed alongside Julius Caesar, the Senate should have met immediately after the assassination and so forth. He was doing exactly what he had just criticized the others for, and no doubt at much greater length. Servilia lost her temper. “Really, I’ve never heard anything like it!” This silenced Cicero and the gathering went on to debate, with little success, what should be done next. The only firm decision taken was that the official Games, which Brutus was financing in his capacity as Praetor, should go ahead in his absence. Servilia promised to use her good offices to get the corn commissions revoked.
“Nothing in my visit gave me any satisfaction except the consciousness of having made it,” Cicero concluded. “I found the ship going to pieces, or rather its scattered fragments. No plan, no thought, no method. AS a result, though I had doubts before, I am now all the more determined to escape from here, and as soon as I possibly can.”
It would have been out of character if he had not delayed acting on his decision, and for the next month he nervously pondered the best route to take. The Macedonian legions being brought back to Italy by Antony would land at Brundisium, so he had better avoid the place. He worried that people might blame him for running away, but if he promised to return for the new year when Antony’s Consulship would have finally ended, surely that would pacify his critics? Brutus had, after all, decided to leave the country and perhaps he would allow Cicero to accompany him. (In fact, he was not very enthusiastic.)
Despite his anxieties, Cicero insisted to Atticus that his underlying frame of mind was firm. He attributed his calmness to the “armor-proofing” of philosophy and it is evidence of Cicero’s creativity that he continued producing a flood of books and essays, including his treatise for Marcus, Duties. He monitored Octavian’s activities with interest and suspicion. “Octavian, as I perceived, does not lack intelligence or spirit,” he remarked to Atticus in June. “But how much faith to put in one of his years and name and heredity and education—that’s a great question.… Still, he is to be encouraged and, if nothing else, kept away from Antony.”
He found it shocking that Brutus’s Games were advertised for “July,” the new name in honor of Julius Caesar that had replaced the month of Quintilis. The Republican Sextus Pompey, who had survived the disaster at Munda, was running a fairly successful guerrilla war in Spain and it was thought he might march his forces to Italy against Antony. If he turned up, it would create an awkward dilemma for Cicero, for there would be no mercy for neutrals this time around. It may have come as a relief when news arrived later that Sextus Pompey had come to terms with an army led by Lepidus, the Dictator’s onetime Master of the Horse.
On the domestic front, young Quintus wanted to get back into Cicero’s good books. He claimed to have quarreled with Antony and to have decided to switch his allegiance to Brutus. Cicero did not believe a word of it. He asked Atticus: “How much longer are we going to be fooled?” More credibly, Quintus had apparently used his father’s name without permission in some dubious financial transaction. (It may well be that shortage of funds was behind much of his political maneuvering and his efforts to regain his family’s confidence.) He was still wife hunting and had found a possible candidate. His uncle was unimpressed: “I suspect he’s romancing as usual.”
AS he was getting nowhere at a distance, Quintus decided to spend some days with Cicero at Puteoli and see what persuasion in person could achieve. He wanted an introduction to Brutus, which his embarrassed uncle could not decently refuse. Also he was anxious for a family reconciliation and Cicero wrote Atticus a dissembling letter in which he pretended to be convinced that the young man’s reformation was sincere. He warned Atticus under separate cover that he had written in these terms only under pressure from Quintus and his father.
At long last, on July 17, Cicero set sail for Greece from his house in Pompeii in three ten-oared rowing boats. AS he boarded, he was, of course, already having second thoughts. A long sea voyage would be fatiguing for a man of his age. (He was now 62.) The timing of his departure was unfortunate, for he was leaving peace behind him with the intention of returning when the Republic would very probably be at war. Also, he was going to miss his country estates. His financial affairs were in their usual state of disarray.
The little flotilla sailed at a comfortable speed down to Syracuse, from where it would set out west across the open sea. But a southern gale blew the boats back to the toe of Italy. Cicero stayed for a few days at a friend’s villa near Regium and waited for more favorable weather. While he was there a local delegation returned from the capital on August 6 with some exciting news.
The story was that disorder on the streets of Rome and Octavian’s ceaseless efforts to gain the public-relations initiative were shifting the Consul’s policy again. Perhaps, after all, Antony was believed to think, his best bet would be to return to the March 17 settlement and align himself with moderate, antiwar Caesarians and the Senate. He delivered a speech in which he made some friendly references to the conspirators. A Senate meeting was called for August 1, which Brutus and Cassius begged all ex-Consuls to attend.
Cicero also learned, to his dismay, that people were commenting adversely on his absence. Atticus was having second thoughts too and, although he had endorsed Cicero’s original plan to spend some time in Athens, now took him to task. Cicero decided to abandon the expedition. On his way back to Rome he met Brutus, who was in the southwest of Italy gathering ships in preparation for his departure for Macedonia. “You wouldn’t believe how delighted he was at my return or rather my turning back!” Cicero told Atticus. “Everything he had held back came gushing out.”
Unfortunately, the Republicans had been tempted by a false dawn. Caesar’s father-in-law, Piso, who Cicero still believed had connived at his exile and whom he consequently loathed, launched a fierce attack on Antony at the August Senate meeting. He received no support, but, if a tentative rapprochement was being considered, this was enough to halt it in its tracks.
In fact, the idea had probably never been seriously viable. Octavian, or his advisers, was too canny to allow a complete breach with his competitor. Dealing with Antony was a balancing act: on the one hand the two were rivals for popularity with the army—that is, for Caesar’s political succession, for whoever controlled the legions in the last analysis controlled Rome. On the other hand, it was essential not to drive the Consul back into the arms of the optimates. The task was to manage him, not to crush him.