The third letter was written a day after the second and dispatched from the foothills of the Alps: Antony is on the march. He is going to Lepidus. Please look to future action in Rome. You will counter the world’s malice towards me if you can.
‘He has let him get away,’ said Cicero, resting his head in his hand and reading the letters through again. ‘He has let him get away! And now he says that Octavian can’t or won’t obey him as commander-in-chief. Well, this is a pretty mess!’
He wrote a letter at once for the courier to take back to Decimus:
From what you write, the flames of war, so far from having been extinguished, seem to be blazing higher. We understood that Antony had fled in despair with a few unarmed and demoralised followers. If in fact his condition is such that a clash with him will be a dangerous matter, I do not regard him as having fled from Mutina at all but as having shifted the war to another theatre.
The next day, the funeral cortege of Hirtius and Pansa reached Rome, escorted by an honour guard of cavalry sent by Octavian. It passed through the streets to the Forum at dusk, watched by hushed and sombre crowds. At the base of the rostra the Senate, all in black togas, waited by torchlight to receive it. Cornutus gave a eulogy that Cicero had written for him, and then the vast assembly walked behind the biers to the Field of Mars, where the pyres had been prepared. As a mark of patriotic respect the undertakers, actors and musicians refused to take any payment; Cicero joked that when an undertaker won’t take your money, you know you are a hero. But beneath his public show of bravado, in private he was profoundly troubled. As the torches were put to the base of the pyres, and the flames shot up, Cicero’s face in the firelight looked old and hollowed with worry.
Almost as worrying as the fact that Antony had escaped was that Octavian either would not or could not obey Decimus’s order. Cicero wrote to him, pleading with him to abide by the Senate’s edict and place himself and his legions under the governor’s command: Let any differences be sorted out after victory has been attained; believe me, the surest way to achieve the highest honour in the state will be to play the fullest part now in destroying its greatest enemy. Ominously, he received no reply.
Then Decimus wrote again:
Labeo Segulius tells me that he has been with Octavian and that a good deal of talk about you took place. Octavian to be sure made no complaints about you, he says, except for a remark which he attributed to you: ‘The young man should be raised, praised and erased.’ He added that he had no intention of letting himself be erased. As for the veterans, they are grumbling viciously about you and you are in danger from them. They mean to terrorise you and replace you with the young man.
I had long warned Cicero that his fondness for making puns and amusing asides would one day land him in trouble. But he couldn’t help himself. He had always enjoyed a reputation as a caustic wit, and as he grew older he had only to open his mouth and people would flock around him, eager to laugh. The attention flattered him and served to inspire him to make ever more cutting remarks. His dry observations were quickly repeated; sometimes phrases were attributed to him he had never even uttered: indeed, I have compiled a whole book of these apocrypha. Caesar used to delight in his barbs, even when he was himself the target – for example, when as dictator he changed the calendar and someone enquired whether the Dog Star would still rise on the same date, Cicero replied, ‘It will do as it is told.’ Caesar was said to have roared with laughter. But his adopted son, whatever his other merits, was deficient when it came to a sense of humour, and for once Cicero took my advice and wrote a letter of apology.
I gather that confounded fool Segulius is going round telling all and sundry about some joke I am supposed to have made, and that now word of it has reached your ears. I cannot remember making the remark but I shall not disown it, for it sounds the sort of thing I might have said – lightly delivered, meant for the moment, not fit to be examined as a serious statement of policy. I know I do not need to tell you how fond I am of you, how zealously I guard your interests, how determined I am that you should play the leading part in our affairs in the years to come; but if I have caused offence, I am truly sorry.
His letter drew this response:
From G. Caesar to Cicero.
My feelings for you are unchanged. No apology is needed, although if it pleases you to make one, naturally I accept it. Unfortunately my supporters are not so easy-going. They warn me every day that I am a fool to put my faith in you and in the Senate. Your unguarded remark was catnip to them. Really – that Senate edict! How could I have been expected to place myself under the command of the man who lured my father to his death? My relations with Decimus are civil but we never can be friends, and my men, who are my father’s veterans, will never follow him. There is only one circumstance, they say, that would make them fight for the Senate without reservation: if I am made consul. Is that impossible? Both consulships are vacant after all, and if I can be pro-praetor at nineteen, why not consul?
This letter made Cicero blanch. He wrote back at once to say that, divinely inspired though Octavian was, the Senate would never agree to a man not yet even twenty becoming consul. Octavian replied equally swiftly:
My youth, it seems, is not an impediment to my leading an army on the field of battle but it is to my becoming consul. If age is the only issue, could I not have as a consular colleague someone who is as old as I am young, and whose political wisdom and experience would make up for my lack of it?
Cicero showed the letter to Atticus. ‘What do you make of this? Is he suggesting what I think he is?’
‘I’m sure that’s what he’s implying. Would you do it?’
‘I can’t pretend the honour would be meaningless to me – very few men have been consul twice; that would mean immortal glory, and I’m doing the job in all but name in any case. But the price! We’ve already had to confront one Caesar with an army at his back demanding an illegal consulship, and we ended up fighting a war to try to stop him. Do we now have to confront another, and this time tamely surrender to him? How would it look to the Senate, and to Brutus and Cassius? Who is planting these ideas in the young man’s head?’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t need anyone to plant them there,’ Atticus replied. ‘Perhaps they arise quite spontaneously.’
Cicero made no reply. The possibility did not bear contemplating.
Two weeks later, Cicero received a letter from Lepidus, who was encamped with his seven legions at Pons Argenteus in southern Gaul. After he had read it, he leaned forwards and rested his head on his desk. With one hand he pushed the letter towards me.
We have long been friends but I have no doubt that in the present violent and unexpected political crisis my enemies have brought you false and unworthy reports about me, designed to give your patriotic heart no small disquiet. I have one earnest request to make of you, dear Cicero. If previously my life and endeavour, my diligence and good faith in the conduct of public affairs have to your knowledge been worthy of the name I bear, I beg you to expect equal or greater things in time to come, as your kindness places me further and further in your debt.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why are you so upset?’
Cicero sighed and sat up straight. To my alarm I saw that he had tears in his eyes. ‘Because it means he intends to join forces with Antony and is providing himself with an alibi in advance. His duplicity is so clumsy it’s almost endearing.’
He was right of course. On that very day, the thirtieth of May, when Cicero was receiving Lepidus’s false assurances, Antony himself – long-haired and bearded after almost forty days on the run – was arriving on the riverbank opposite Lepidus’s camp. He waded chest-deep through the water wearing a dark cloak, went up to the palisade and began talking to the legionaries. Many recognised him from the Gallic and the civil wars; they flocked to hear him. The next day he brought all his forces over the river and Lepidus’s men welcomed them with outstretched arms. They tore down their fortifications and let Antony stroll unarmed into the camp. He treated Lepidus with the greatest respect, called him by the title ‘Father’ and insisted that if he joined his cause he would retain the rank and honours of a general. The soldiers cheered. Lepidus agreed.