Then there was Pompeia, the daughter of Pompey. She had been the wife of Faustus Sulla, the owner of Aristotle’s manuscripts, recently killed fighting for the Senate’s cause in Africa. But if he married her, that would make Gnaeus – the man who had threatened to kill him at Corcyra – his brother-in-law. It was unthinkable. Besides, she bore a strong facial resemblance to her father. ‘Can you imagine,’ he said to me with a shudder, ‘waking up beside Pompey every morning?’
That left the least suitable match of all. Publilia was only fifteen years old. Her father, M. Publilius, a wealthy equestrian friend of Atticus, had died leaving his estate in trust for his daughter until she married. The principal trustee was Cicero. It was Atticus’s idea – ‘an elegant solution’, he called it – that Cicero should marry Publilia and so gain access to her fortune. There was nothing illegal about this. The girl’s mother and uncle were all for it, flattered by the prospect of forming a connection with such a distinguished man. And Publilia herself, when Cicero hesitantly broached the subject, declared that she would be honoured to be his wife.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked her. ‘I am forty-five years older than you – old enough to be your grandfather. Do you not find that … unnatural?’
She stared at him quite frankly. ‘No.’
After she had gone, Cicero said, ‘Well, she seems to be telling the truth. I wouldn’t dream of it if she was repulsed by the very thought of me.’ He sighed heavily and shook his head. ‘I suppose I had better go through with it. But people will be very disapproving.’
I could not help remarking, ‘It isn’t people you have to worry about.’
‘What are you referring to?’
‘Well, Tullia, of course,’ I replied, amazed that he hadn’t considered her. ‘How do you think she is going to feel?’
He squinted at me in genuine puzzlement. ‘Why would Tullia be opposed? I’m doing this for her benefit as much as mine.’
‘Well,’ I said mildly, ‘I think you’ll find she will mind.’
And she did. Cicero said that when he told her of his intention she fainted, and for an hour or two he feared for her health and that of the baby. When she recovered, she wanted to know how he could possibly think of such a thing. Was she really expected to call this child her stepmother? Were they to live under the same roof? He was dismayed by the strength of her reaction. However, it was too late for him to back out. He had already borrowed from the moneylenders on the expectation of his new wife’s fortune. Neither of his children attended the wedding breakfast: Tullia moved to live with her mother for the final stages of her pregnancy, while Marcus asked his father for permission to go out and fight in Spain as part of Caesar’s army. Cicero managed to persuade him that such an action would be dishonourable to his former comrades, and instead he went to Athens on a very generous allowance to try to have some philosophy dinned into his thick skull.
I did attend the wedding, which took place in the bride’s house. The only other guests from the groom’s side were Atticus and his wife Pilia – who was herself, of course, thirty years her husband’s junior but who seemed quite matronly beside the slender figure of Publilia. The bride, dressed all in white, with her hair pinned up and wearing the sacred belt, looked like an exquisite doll. Perhaps some men could have carried the whole thing off – Pompey I am sure would have been entirely at ease – but Cicero was so obviously uncomfortable that when he came to recite the simple vow (‘Where you are Gaia, I am Gaius’), he got the names the wrong way round, an ill omen.
After a long celebratory banquet the wedding party walked to Cicero’s house in the fading daylight. He had hoped to keep the marriage secret and almost scuttled through the streets, avoiding the gaze of passers-by, gripping his wife’s hand firmly and seeming to drag her along. But a wedding procession always attracts attention, and his face was too famous for anonymity, so that by the time we reached the Palatine we must have been trailing a crowd of fifty or more. At least that number of applauding clients was waiting outside the house to throw flowers over the happy couple. I had worried that Cicero might injure his back if he tried to carry his bride over the threshold, but he hoisted her easily and swept her into the house, hissing at me over his shoulder to close the door behind us, quick. She went straight upstairs to Terentia’s old suite of rooms, where her maids had already unpacked her belongings, to prepare for her wedding night. Cicero tried to persuade me to stay up a little longer and take some wine with him, but I pleaded exhaustion and left him to it.
The marriage was a disaster from the start. Cicero had no idea how to treat his young wife. It was as if a friend’s child had come to stay. Sometimes he played the role of kindly uncle, delighting in her playing of the lyre or congratulating her on her embroidery. On other occasions he was her exasperated tutor, appalled at her ignorance of history and literature. But mostly he tried to keep out of her way. Once he confided to me that the only workable basis for such a relationship would have been lust, and that he simply did not feel. Poor Publilia – the more her famous husband ignored her, the more she clung to him, and the more irritated he became.
Finally Cicero went to see Tullia to plead with her to move back in with him. She could have the baby at his house, he said – the birth was imminent – and he would send Publilia away, or rather he would get Atticus to send her away for him, as he found the situation too upsetting to deal with. Tullia, who was distressed to see her father in such a state, agreed, and the long-suffering Atticus duly found himself having to visit Publilia’s mother and uncle to explain why the young woman would have to return home after less than a month of married life. He held out the hope that once the baby was born the couple might be able to resume their relationship, but for now Tullia’s wishes took priority. They had little option but to agree.
It was January when Tullia moved back into the house. She was brought to the door in a litter and had to be helped inside. I recall a cold winter’s day, everything very clear and bright and sharp. She moved with difficulty. Cicero fussed around her, telling the porter to close the door, ordering more wood for the fire, worrying that she would catch a chill. She said that she would like to go to her room to lie down. Cicero sent for a doctor to examine her. He came out soon afterwards and reported that she was in labour. Terentia was fetched, along with a midwife and her attendants, and they all disappeared into Tullia’s room.
The screams of pain that rang through the house did not sound like Tullia at all. They did not sound like any human being in fact. They were guttural, primordial – all trace of personality obliterated by pain. I wondered how they fitted in to Cicero’s philosophical scheme. Could happiness remotely be associated with such agony? Presumably it could. But he was unable to bear the shrieks and howls and went out into the garden, walking around and around it, for hour after hour, oblivious to the cold. Eventually there was silence and he came back in again. He looked at me. We waited. A long time seemed to pass, and then there were footsteps and Terentia appeared. Her face was drawn and pale but her voice was triumphant.
‘It’s a boy,’ she said, ‘a healthy boy – and she is well.’
She was well. That was all that mattered to Cicero. The boy was robust and was named Publius Lentulus, after his father’s adopted patronymic. But Tullia could not feed the infant and the task was assigned to a wet nurse, and as the days passed following the trauma of the birth, she did not seem to get any stronger. Because it was so cold in Rome that winter, there was a lot of smoke, and the racket from the Forum disturbed her sleep. It was decided that she and Cicero should go back to Tusculum, scene of their happy year together, where she could recuperate in the tranquillity of the Frascati hills while he and I pressed on with his philosophical writings. We took a doctor with us. The baby travelled with his nurse, plus a whole retinue of slaves to look after him.