The Dictator (20 page)

Against the advice of more experienced officers, M. Crassus ordered the army to be drawn up in a single large square, twelve cohorts across. Our archers were then sent forward to engage the enemy. However, they were soon obliged to retreat in the face of the Parthians’ vastly superior forces and speed of manoeuvre. Their arrows spread much slaughter through our packed ranks. Nor did death come easily or quickly. In the convulsion and agony of their pain, our men would writhe as the arrows struck them; they would snap them off in their wounds and then lacerate their flesh by trying to tear out the barbed arrowheads that had pierced through their veins and muscles. Many died in this way, and even the survivors were in no state to fight. Their hands were pinioned to their shields and their feet nailed through to the ground so that they were incapable of either running away or defending themselves. Any hopes that this murderous rain would exhaust itself were dashed by the sight of fresh supplies of arrows appearing on the battlefield on heavily laden camel trains.

Apprehending the danger that the army would soon be entirely wiped out, P. Crassus applied to his father for permission to take his cavalry, together with some infantry and archers, and pierce the encircling line. M. Crassus endorsed the plan. This breakout force of some six thousand men moved forwards and the Parthians quickly withdrew. But although Publius had been expressly ordered not to pursue the enemy, he disobeyed these instructions. His men advanced out of sight of the main army, whereupon the Parthians reappeared behind them. Rapidly surrounded, Publius withdrew his men to a narrow ridge, where they presented an easy target. Once again the enemy’s archers did their murderous work. Perceiving the situation to be hopeless and fearing capture, Publius bade his men farewell and told them to look after their own safety. Then, since he was unable to use his hand, which had been pierced through with an arrow, he presented his side to his shield-bearer and ordered him to run him through with his sword. Most of his officers followed his example and put themselves to death.

Once they had overrun the Roman position, the Parthians cut off the head of Publius and mounted it on a spear. They then carried it back to the main Roman army and rode up and down our lines, taunting M. Crassus to come and look upon his son. Seeing what had happened, he addressed our men as follows: “Romans, this grief is a private thing of my own. But in you, who are safe and sound, abide the great fortune and the glory of Rome. And now, if you feel any pity for me, who have lost the best son that any father has ever had, show it in the fury with which you face the enemy.”

Regrettably, they paid no heed. On the contrary, this sight more than all the other dreadful things that had happened broke the spirit and paralysed the energies of our forces. The airborne slaughter resumed, and it is a certainty that the entire army would have been annihilated had not night fallen and the Parthians withdrawn, shouting that they would give Crassus the night to grieve for his son and would return to finish us off in the morning.

This provided us with an opportunity. M. Crassus being prostrate with grief and despair, and no longer capable of issuing orders, I took over the direction of our forces, and in silence and under cover of darkness those who could walk made a forced march to the town of Carrhae, leaving behind, amidst the most piteous cries and pleadings, some four thousand wounded who were either massacred or enslaved by the Parthians the following day.

At Carrhae our forces divided. I led five hundred men in the direction of Syria while M. Crassus took the bulk of our surviving army towards the mountains of Armenia. Intelligence reports indicate that outside the fortress of Sinnaca he was confronted by an army led by a subordinate of the Parthian king, who offered a truce. M. Crassus was compelled by his mutinous legionaries to go forward and negotiate, even though he believed it to be a trap. As he went, he turned and spoke these words: “I call upon all you Roman officers present to see that I am being forced to go this way. You are eyewitnesses of the shameful and violent treatment that I have received. But if you escape and get home safely, tell them all that Crassus died because he was deceived by the enemy, not because he was handed over to the Parthians by his own countrymen.”

These are his last known words. He was killed along with his legionary commanders. I am informed that afterwards his severed head was delivered personally to the king of the Parthians by Sillaces during a performance of
The Bacchae
and that it was used as a prop on stage. Afterwards the king caused Crassus’s mouth to be filled with molten gold, remarking: “Gorge yourself now with that metal for which in life you were so greedy.”

I await the Senate’s orders.

When Pompey finished reading, there was silence.

Finally Cicero said, “How many men have we lost, do we have any idea?”

“I estimate thirty thousand.”

There was a groan of dismay from the assembled senators. Someone said that if that were true, then it was the worst defeat since Hannibal had wiped out the Senate’s army at Cannae, one hundred and fifty years before.

“This document,” said Pompey, waving Cassius’s dispatch, “must go no further than this room.”

Cicero said, “I agree. Cassius’s frankness is admirable in private, but a less alarming version must be prepared for the people, stressing the bravery of our legionaries and their commanders.”

Scipio, who was Publius’s father-in-law, said, “Yes, they all died heroes—that’s what we must tell everyone. That’s what I’m going to tell my daughter, certainly. The poor girl is a widow at nineteen.”

Pompey said, “Please give her my condolences.”

Then Hortensius spoke up. The ex-consul was in his sixties and mostly retired, but still listened to with respect. “What happens next? Presumably the Parthians won’t leave it at that. Knowing our weakness, they’ll invade Syria in retaliation. We can barely muster a legion in its defence and we have no governor.”

“I would propose we make Cassius acting governor,” said Pompey. “He’s a hard, unsparing man—exactly what this emergency demands. As for an army—well, he must raise and train a new one locally.”

Ahenobarbus, who never lost an opportunity to undermine Caesar, said, “All our best fighting men are in Gaul. Caesar has ten legions—a huge number. Why don’t we order him to send a couple to Syria to fill the breach?”

At the mention of Caesar’s name there was a perceptible stirring of hostility in the room.

“He recruited those legions,” pointed out Pompey. “I agree they would be more useful in the east. But he regards those men as his own.”

“Well, he needs to be reminded they are not his own. They exist to serve the republic, not him.”

Looking round at the senators all nodding vigorously in agreement, Cicero said afterwards that it was only at that moment that he realised the true significance of Crassus’s death. “Because, dear Tiro, what have we learned while writing our
Republic
? Divide power three ways in a state and tension is balanced; divide it in two and sooner or later one side must seek to dominate the other—it is a natural law. Disgraceful as he was, Crassus at least preserved the equilibrium between Pompey and Caesar. But with him gone, who will do it now?”

—

And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it. “Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens’ militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?”

And then at other times he would dismiss such apocalyptic talk as excessively gloomy and argue that the republic had endured all manner of disasters in the past—invasions, revolutions, civil wars—and had always somehow survived them: why should this time be any different?

But it was.

The elections that year were dominated by two men. Clodius sought to be praetor. Milo ran for the consulship. The violence and the bribery of the campaign were beyond anything the city had ever seen, and yet again polling day had to be postponed repeatedly. It was now more than a year since the republic had elected legitimate consuls. The Senate was presided over by an interrex, often a nonentity, on a rolling five-day mandate; the fasces of the consuls were placed symbolically in the Temple of Libitina, goddess of the dead.
Hurry back to Rome,
Cicero wrote to Atticus, who was on another of his business trips.
Come and look at the empty husks of the real old Roman Republic we used to know.

It was a measure of how desperate things were becoming that Cicero vested all his hopes in Milo, even though Milo was entirely his opposite: crude and brutal, lacking in eloquence or indeed any political skill apart from the staging of gladiatorial games to enthuse the voters, the costs of which had left him bankrupt. Milo had outlived his usefulness to Pompey, who would have nothing more to do with him, and who was supporting his opponents, Scipio Nasica and Plautius Hypsaeus. But Cicero still needed him.
I have firmly concentrated all my efforts, all my time, care, diligence and thought, my whole mind in short, on winning the consulship for Milo.
He saw him as the best bulwark against the eventuality he dreaded most: Clodius’s election to the consulship.

Cicero often asked me to perform small services for Milo during that campaign. For example, I went back through our files and prepared lists of our old supporters for him to canvass. I also set up meetings between him and Cicero’s clients in the various tribal headquarters. I even took him bags of money that Cicero had raised from wealthy donors.

One day in the new year, Cicero asked me, as a favour, if I would spend a short time observing Milo’s campaign at first hand. “To put the matter bluntly, I’m worried he’s going to lose. You know elections as well as I do. Watch him with the voters. See if anything can be done to improve his prospects. If he loses and Clodius wins, I don’t need to tell you it will be a disaster for me.”

I cannot pretend that I was delighted with the assignment, but I did as I was asked, and on the eighteenth day of January I turned up at Milo’s house, which was on the steepest part of the Palatine, behind the Temple of Saturn. A listless crowd was gathered outside, but of the would-be consul himself there was no sign. I knew then that Milo’s candidacy was in trouble. If a man is standing for election and feels himself to have a chance of winning, he works every hour of the day. But Milo did not emerge until the middle of the morning, and when he did, he took me to one side to complain about Pompey, who he said was entertaining Clodius that very morning at his country house in the Alban Hills.

“The man’s ingratitude is unbelievable! Do you remember how he used to be so frightened of Clodius and his gang that he daren’t even set foot out of doors until I brought in my gladiators to clear the streets? And now he has taken that snake under his roof, yet he won’t even bid me good morning!”

I sympathised—we all knew what Pompey was like: a great man, but entirely preoccupied with himself—and then tried tactfully to steer the conversation back to Milo’s campaign. There was not long until polling day. Where did he plan to spend these precious final hours?

“Today,” he announced, “I am going to Lanuvium, my adopted grandfather’s ancestral home.”

I could scarcely believe it. “You’re leaving Rome, this close to the actual vote?”

“It’s only twenty miles. A new priest is to be nominated for the Temple of Juno the Saviour. She is the municipal deity, which means that the ceremony will be huge—you’ll see, hundreds of voters will be there.”

“Even so, surely these voters are already committed to you, given your family connection to the town? Wouldn’t your time be better spent pursuing voters who are undecided?”

But Milo refused to discuss it further. Indeed his refusal was so absolute that now, when I look back on it, I wonder if he hadn’t already given up hope of winning the election in the voting pens and decided to go looking for trouble instead. After all, Lanuvium is also in the Alban Hills, and the road to it would take us practically past Pompey’s gates. He must have calculated there was a good chance we would meet Clodius on the way. It would have been just the sort of opportunity for a fight he relished.

By the time we set out that afternoon he had gathered together a considerable wagon train of luggage and servants, protected by his usual small private army of slaves and gladiators armed with swords and javelins. Milo rode in a carriage at the head of this menacing column together with his wife, Fausta. He invited me to join them but I preferred the discomfort of horseback to sharing a carriage with those two, whose tempestuous relationship was notorious. We clattered off down the Via Appia, arrogantly forcing all the other traffic out of our way—again, I noted, poor electoral tactics—and had been going for about two hours when of course, on the outskirts of Bovillae, we duly encountered Clodius heading in the opposite direction, back to Rome.

Clodius was on horseback with perhaps thirty attendants—less well armed than Milo’s, and far less numerous. I was in the middle of our column. As he passed, he caught my eye. He knew me pretty well as Cicero’s secretary. He certainly gave me a foul look.

The rest of his party followed him. I averted my gaze. I wanted no trouble. But moments later, from behind me, there was a shout and then the clash of steel hitting steel. I turned and saw that a fight had broken out between our gladiators, who were bringing up the rear, and some of Clodius’s men. Clodius himself had already gone a little way further along the road. He drew up his horse and turned, and at that moment Birria, the gladiator who had sometimes acted as a bodyguard to Cicero, hurled a javelin at him. It did not hit him full on, but rather in his side as he was in the act of turning, and the force of it almost knocked him from his saddle. The barbed tip buried itself deep in his flesh. He looked at it in astonishment, and screamed and clutched at the shaft with both hands, his whitened toga turning crimson with blood.