Even Cicero, who regarded the notion of a sibyl living in a jar and predicting the future as entirely fatuous, was impressed. ‘Three, two, one, none … Well we know who the three are – that’s obvious. And I can guess who the one will be. But who will be the two? And what does she mean by none? Is that her way of predicting chaos? If so, I agree – that’s what will follow if we allow Caesar to tear up the constitution. But for the life of me I can’t see how I am to stop him.’
‘Why should you be the one to stop him?’ demanded Terentia.
‘I don’t know. Who else is there?’
‘But why does it always fall to you to block Caesar’s ambitions when Pompey, the most powerful man in the state, will do nothing to assist you? Why is it your responsibility?’
Cicero fell silent. Eventually he responded, ‘It’s a good question. Perhaps it’s just conceit on my part. But can I really, with honour, stand back and do nothing, when every instinct tells me the nation is heading for disaster?’
‘Yes!’ she cried with passion. ‘Yes! Absolutely! Haven’t you suffered enough for your opposition to Caesar? Is there another man in the world who has endured more? Why not let others take up the fight? Surely you’ve earned the right to some peace at last?’ Then quietly she added, ‘I am sure that I have.’
Cicero did not answer for a long time. The truth, I suspect, is that from the moment he learnt about the Luca agreement, he knew in his heart that he could not continue opposing Caesar – not if he wanted to live. All he needed was for someone to put the issue to him bluntly, as Terentia had just done.
Finally he sighed with a weariness I had never before heard. ‘You’re right, my wife. At least no one will ever be able to reproach me for not having seen Caesar for what he is, and for not trying to stop him. But you are right – I’m too old and tired to fight him any longer. My friends will understand and my enemies will denounce me whatever I do, so why should I care what they think? Why shouldn’t I enjoy some leisure at last down here in the sun with my family?’
And he reached over and took her hand.
Nevertheless, he was ashamed of his capitulation. I know that, because although he wrote a long letter to Pompey in Sardinia setting out his change of heart – his ‘palinode’, he called it – he never let me see it and kept no copy. Nor did he show it to Atticus. At the same time he wrote to the consul Marcellinus announcing that he wished to withdraw his motion calling on the Senate to re-examine Caesar’s land laws. He offered no explanation; he did not need to; everyone recognised that the political firmament had shifted and the new alignment was against him.
We returned to a Rome full of rumours. Few knew for sure what Pompey and Crassus were planning, but gradually word got around that they were intending to run on a joint ticket for the consulship, just as they had in the past, even though everyone knew they had always loathed one another. Some senators, however, were determined to fight back against the cynicism and arrogance of the Three. A debate was scheduled on the allocation of consular provinces, and one motion called for Caesar to be stripped of both Nearer and Further Gaul. Cicero knew that if he attended the chamber, he would be asked his views. He considered staying away. But then he reasoned that he would have to recant publicly sooner or later: he might as well get it over with. He began working on his speech.
And then, on the eve of the debate, after more than two years away in Cyprus, Marcus Porcius Cato returned to Rome. He arrived in fine style, in a flotilla of treasure ships, sailing up the Tiber from Ostia, accompanied by his nephew, Brutus, a young man of whom great things were expected. The whole of the Senate, and all of the magistrates and priests, as well as most of the population, turned out to welcome Cato home. There was a landing stage with painted poles and ribbons where he was supposed to disembark and meet the consuls, but he sailed on past them, standing in the prow of a royal galley that had six banks of oars, his bony profile fixed straight ahead, wearing a shabby black tunic. The crowds at first gasped and groaned with disappointment at his high-handedness, but then his treasure started to be unloaded – ox wagon after ox wagon of it, seven thousand silver talents’ worth in all, that wound in procession from the Navalia all the way to the state treasury in the Temple of Saturn. With this one contribution, Cato transformed the finances of the nation – it was enough to provide free grain to the citizenry for five years – and the Senate went into immediate session to vote him an honorary praetorship, together with the right to wear a special purple-bordered toga.
Called upon by Marcellinus to respond, Cato scornfully denounced what he called ‘these corrupt baubles’: ‘I have discharged the duty placed upon me by the Roman people – an assignment I never requested and would have preferred not to have undertaken. Now that it is done, I need no Eastern flattery or showy garments to puff myself up: the knowledge that I have performed my duty is reward enough for me, as it should be for any man.’
He was back in the chamber for the next day’s debate on the provinces, as if he had never been away – sitting in his customary position, going through a set of the treasury’s accounts as he always did to make sure there was no waste in public expenditure. Only when Cicero rose to speak did he put them aside.
It was quite late on in the session and most ex-consuls had already given their opinions. Even so, Cicero managed to spin out the suspense a little longer by devoting the first part of his speech to an attack on his old enemies Piso and Gabinius, governors of Macedonia and Syria respectively. Then the consul, Marcius Philippus, who was married to Caesar’s niece, and who was growing restless like many others, interrupted him to ask why he spent all his time attacking those two puppets when the man who had really instigated the campaign that led to his exile was Caesar. This gave Cicero precisely the opening he wanted. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I am taking account of the public welfare rather than my own grievances. It is this old and unfailing loyalty of mine to the republic which restores, reconciles and reinstates me in friendship with Gaius Caesar.
‘For me,’ he went on, having to shout now to be heard above the jeers, ‘it is impossible not to be the friend of one who renders good service to the state. Under Caesar’s command we have fought a war in Gaul, whereas before we merely repelled attacks. Unlike his predecessors he believes the whole of Gaul should be brought under our rule. And so he has, with brilliant success, crushed in battle the fiercest and greatest tribes of Germania and Helvetia; the rest he has terrified, checked and subdued and taught to submit to the rule of the Roman people.
‘But the war is not yet won. If Caesar is removed, the embers may yet burst out again into flame. Therefore, as a senator – even as the man’s personal enemy, if you like – I must lay aside private grievances for the sake of the state, for how can I be the enemy of this man, whose dispatches, whose fame, whose envoys fill our ears every day with fresh names of races, peoples and places?’
It was not his most convincing performance, and towards the end he rather tripped himself up by trying to pretend that he and Caesar had never really been enemies at all, a piece of sophistry that was greeted with derision. Still, he got through it. The motion to replace Caesar was defeated and at the end of the session, even though the most passionate anti-Caesareans – men like Ahenobarbus and Bibulus – pointedly turned their backs on him in contempt, Cicero walked towards the exit with his head unbowed. That was when Cato intercepted him. I was waiting by the door and was able to overhear their whole exchange.
Cato: ‘I am beyond disappointed in you, Marcus Tullius. Your desertion has just cost us what may have been our last chance to stop a dictator.’