At a personal level the two men had little in common. Antony, who was twenty years older than Octavian, was a playboy. He probably had no long-term strategy and seems not to have been particularly interested in avenging the Ides of March. He would react vigorously if prodded but preferred to live and let live. By contrast, Octavian had a colder personality and, although he told no one about it, intended to pursue the conspirators to the end. Yet, whether they liked it or not, the two men were obliged to cooperate. The legionnaires, aghast at their disagreements, forced a reconciliation and a special ceremony was held on the Capitoline Hill to mark the event.
Hopes of compromise dashed, Brutus and Cassius had finally made up their minds to abandon Italy, although their precise intentions after that were unclear. Servilia had evidently fulfilled her promise to work behind the scenes to get the corn commissions canceled and they had again been awarded new provinces, but they did not go to them. Instead, Brutus settled in Athens in the province of Macedonia where, hoping that the political situation would improve, he waited for as long as possible before determining whether or not to recruit an army. Cassius traveled to Syria (where he had been Quaestor in 51) with the idea of taking over the legions based in the region.
Cicero’s return to Rome on August 31 echoed the excitement and applause of his return from exile thirteen years earlier. The crowds that poured out to meet him were so large that the greetings and speeches of welcome at the city gates and during his entry into the city took up most of a day. It would be wrong to exaggerate Cicero’s influence, for he commanded no divisions, but his significance can also be undervalued. Perhaps he undervalued it himself; his letters show him to be much preoccupied with the preservation of his public standing, but they convey little awareness of his authority and influence.
That autumn a combination of factors conspired to give him real political influence for the first time since his Consulship. This was partly because he was one of the few senior statesmen of ability to have survived in a pollarded oligarchy. AS Brutus had recognized when he called out Cicero’s name at Pompey’s theater, he stood for the best of the past, the old days and the old ways. People were beginning to fear a new breakdown of the fragile Republic and Cicero was the one man who had proclaimed the need for reconciliation throughout his career. His proven administrative ability and formidable skills as a public speaker were assets that few other politicians of the time could deploy.
But the most important factor was the change which seems to have taken place in his personality. He showed a new ruthlessness and clarity, as if iron had entered his soul. Perhaps it was simply that by the standards of the age Cicero was an old man and felt he had little to lose. Perhaps his immersion in philosophy had made him clearer about what was important and what could be jettisoned. In any case, step by step, he let himself be drawn towards the center of events and, to the surprise of those who knew him well, Brutus above all, showed himself willing to use unscrupulous and even unconstitutional methods to achieve his ultimate goaclass="underline" the full, complete and permanent restoration of the Republic.
The day after Cicero’s return Antony called a Senate meeting at which he would propose a new honor in Julius Caesar’s memory. Cicero was working towards a coalition with moderate Caesarians including Hirtius and Pansa who revered the Dictator’s memory. If he opposed the measure publicly he would unnecessarily offend them. So he pleaded exhaustion and kept to his bed.
Antony was furious. During the debate he launched an outspoken attack on Cicero, threatening to send housebreakers in to demolish his home on the Palatine. On September 2, in the Consul’s absence, the Senate was reconvened and Cicero responded to the onslaught with the first of a series of speeches against Antony. He later nicknamed them his “Philippics” (after the Athenian orator Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip of Macedon) in a letter to Brutus, who for the time being was impressed by Cicero’s new firmness and replied that they deserved the title.
Avoiding personal insults and using studiously moderate terms, he followed up Piso’s criticisms a month earlier of Antony’s unconstitutional activities and fraudulent use of Julius Caesar’s papers. It was a well-judged address, carefully aimed at all who occupied the middle ground. The Consul well understood the threat it posed to his position and spent a couple of weeks in his country villa working up a counterblast. At a Senate meeting on September 19 he delivered a comprehensive onslaught on Cicero, who cautiously stayed away: he dissected his career, blaming him for the “murder” of Catilina’s followers, the death of Clodius and the quarrel between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Antony’s aim was to unite all the factions in Rome against Cicero and, above all, to show the veterans that here was the real contriver of their hero’s downfall. If he failed, little in the way of a power base would be left to him in Rome and the affections of the legions would continue to slide toward Octavian. In a letter to Cassius, alluding to a tendency of Antony’s to vomit in public (presumably when drunk), Cicero commented: “Everyone thought he wasn’t speaking so much as spewing up.”
Cicero settled safely in the countryside, where he spent the next month preparing the second of his Philippics, a lengthy, colorful but in the end unappealing invective against Antony, in which he reviewed the Consul’s life episode by episode. Like the speeches against Verres, it was never delivered. He wanted it published, but Atticus doubtless advised against, and the work did not appear until after its author’s death.
At about this time, Cicero learned that an old friend of his, Caius Matius, whom he nicknamed Baldy, was annoyed by some critical remarks he had reportedly made about him. Matius had been devoted to Julius Caesar and was one of the few who had worked for him without asking for any favors. He had been deeply upset by Caesar’s assassination and had irritated Cicero by his constant prophecies of doom and, indeed, by the very fact of his grief.
In a carefully composed letter, Cicero defended himself but made it clear that he did think Caesar had been a despot. He dropped a broad hint that in his view the claims of freedom came before those of affection. Matius wrote a reply, so open in its emotions that it still has the power to touch the reader.
I am well aware of the criticisms which people have leveled at me since Caesar’s death. They make it a point against me that I take a friend’s death so much to heart and am indignant that the man I loved has been destroyed. They say that country should come before friendship—as though they have already proved that his death was in the public interest.… It wasn’t Caesar I followed in the civil conflict but a friend whom I did not desert, even though I didn’t like what he was doing. I never approved of the civil war or indeed the origin of the conflict, which I did my very utmost to get nipped in the Bud.… Why are they angry with me for praying that they may be sorry for what they have done? I want every man to be sorry for Caesar’s death.
The letter is testimony to the magnetism of Caesar’s personality. Cicero had once given in to it himself, but, as he entered this last exclusively public phase of his life, he was becoming impervious to the claims of private feeling. In Duties, which he was writing at the time, he made no concession to the genius of his great contemporary; he condemned the
unscrupulous behavior of Caius Caesar who disregarded all divine and human law for the sake of the preeminence on which he had deludedly set his heart.… If a man insists on outcompeting everyone else, then it is hard for him to respect the most important aspect of justice: equality. Men of this type put up with no restraint by way of debate or due process; they emerge as spendthrift faction leaders, because they wish to acquire as much power as possible and would sooner gain the upper hand through force than fair dealing.