The Dictator (54 page)

Cicero was carried into the villa, and the gate and door were locked behind him.

I saw little of him after that. As soon as he had had his bath, he took a little food and wine in his room and then retired to sleep.

I slept myself—and very deeply, despite my anxieties, for such was my exhaustion—and the following morning had to be roughly woken by one of the slaves I had stationed along the Via Appia. He was out of breath and frightened. A force of thirty legionaries on foot, with a centurion and a tribune on horseback, was marching towards the house from the north-west. They were less than half an hour away.

I ran to wake Cicero. He had the covers up to his chin and refused to stir, but I tore them off him anyway.

“They are coming for you,” I said, bending over him. “They’re almost here. We have to move.”

He smiled at me, and laid his hand on my cheek. “Let them come, old friend. I am not afraid.”

I pleaded with him: “For my sake, if not for yours—for the sake of your friends and for Marcus—please
move
!”

I think it was the mention of Marcus that did it. He sighed. “Very well, then. But it is quite pointless.”

I withdrew to let him dress and ran around issuing orders—a litter to be ready immediately, the boat prepared to sail with the sailors at their oars, the gate and the door to be locked the moment we were out of the villa, the household slaves to vacate the premises and hide wherever they could.

In my imagination I could hear the steady tramp of the legionaries’ boots becoming louder and louder…

At length—far too great a length!—Cicero appeared looking as immaculate as if he were on his way to address the Senate. He walked through the villa saying goodbye to everyone. They were all in tears. He took a last look around as if saying farewell to the building and all his beloved possessions, and then climbed into the litter, closed the curtains so that no one could see his face, and we set off out of the gate. But instead of the slaves all making a run for it, they seized such weapons as they could find—rakes, brooms, pokers, kitchen knives—and insisted on coming with us, forming a homely rustic phalanx around the litter. We went the short distance along the road and turned down the path into the woods. Through the trees I could glimpse the sea shining in the morning sun. Escape seemed close. But then, at the bottom of the path, just before it opened out on to the beach, a dozen legionaries appeared.

The slaves at the front of our little procession cried out in alarm, and those carrying the litter scrambled to turn it round. It swayed dangerously and Cicero was almost pitched to the ground. We struggled back the way we had come, only to discover that more soldiers were above us, blocking access to the road.

We were trapped, outnumbered, doomed. Nevertheless, we determined to make a fight. The slaves set the litter down and surrounded it. Cicero drew back the curtain to see what was going on. He saw the soldiers advancing rapidly towards us and shouted to me: “No one is to fight!” Then to the slaves he said: “Everyone lay down your weapons! I am honoured by your devotion, but the only blood that needs to be shed here is mine.”

The legionaries had their swords drawn. The military tribune leading them was a hirsute, swarthy-looking brute. Beneath the ridge of his helmet his eyebrows merged together to form a continuous thick black line. He called out, “Marcus Tullius Cicero, I have a warrant for your execution.”

Cicero, still lying in his litter, his chin in his hand, looked him up and down very calmly. “I know you,” he said, “I’m sure of it. What’s your name?”

The military tribune, plainly taken aback, said, “My name, if you must know it, is Caius Popillius Laenas, and yes, we do know one another: not that it will save you.”

“Popillius,” murmured Cicero, “that’s it,” and then he turned to me. “Do you remember this man, Tiro? He was our client—that fifteen-year-old who murdered his father, right at the beginning of my career. He’d have been condemned to death for parricide if I hadn’t got him off—on condition he went into the army.” He laughed. “This is a kind of justice, I suppose.”

I looked at Popillius and indeed I did remember him.

Popillius said, “That’s enough talk. The verdict of the Constitutional Commission is that the death sentence should be carried out immediately.” He gestured to his soldiers to drag Cicero from his litter.

“Wait,” said Cicero, “leave me where I am. I have it in mind to die this way,” and he propped himself up on his elbows like a defeated gladiator, threw back his head and offered his throat to the sky.

“If that’s what you want,” said Popillius. He turned to his centurion. “Let’s get it over with.”

The centurion took up his position. He braced his legs. He swung his sword. The blade flashed, and in that instant for Cicero the mystery that had plagued him all his life was solved, and liberty was extinguished from the earth.

—

Afterwards they cut off his head and hands and put them in a sack. They made us sit down and watch them while they did it. Then they marched away. I was told that Antony was so delighted with these extra trophies that he gave Popillius a bonus of a million sesterces. It is also said that Fulvia pierced Cicero’s tongue with a needle. I do not know. What is certainly true is that on Antony’s orders the head that had delivered the Philippics and the hands that had written them were nailed up on the rostra, as a warning to others who might think of opposing the Triumvirate, and they stayed there for many years, until finally they rotted and fell away.

After the killers had gone, we carried Cicero’s body down to the beach and built a pyre, and at dusk we burned it. Then I made my way south to my farm on the Bay of Naples.

Little by little I learned more of what had happened.

Quintus was soon afterwards captured with his son and put to death.

Atticus emerged from hiding and was pardoned by Antony because of the help he had given Fulvia.

And much, much later, Antony committed suicide together with his mistress Cleopatra after Octavian defeated them in battle. The boy is now the Emperor Augustus.

But I have written enough.

Many years have passed since the episodes I have recounted. At first I thought I would never recover from Cicero’s death. But time wipes out everything, even grief. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that grief is almost entirely a question of perspective. For the first few years I used to sigh and think, “Well, he would still be in his sixties now,” and then a decade later, with surprise, “My goodness, he would be seventy-five,” but nowadays I think, “Well, he would be long since dead in any case, so what does it matter how he died in comparison with how he lived?”

My work is done. My book is finished. Soon I will die too.

In the summer evenings I sit on the terrace with Agathe, my wife. She sews while I look at the stars. Always at such moments I think of Scipio’s dream of where dead statesmen dwell in
On the Republic:

I gazed in every direction and all appeared wonderfully beautiful. There were stars which we never see from earth, and they were all larger than we have ever imagined. The starry spheres were much greater than the earth; indeed the earth itself seemed to me so small that I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point, as it were, upon its surface.

“If only you will look on high,” the old statesman tells Scipio, “and contemplate this eternal home and resting place, you will no longer bother with the gossip of the common herd or put your trust in human reward for your exploits. Nor will any man’s reputation endure very long, for what men say dies with them and is blotted out with the forgetfulness of posterity.”

All that will remain of us is what is written down.

aedile
an elected official, four of whom were chosen annually to serve a one-year term, responsible for the running of the city of Rome: law and order, public buildings, business regulations, etc.

auspices
supernatural signs, especially flights of birds and lightningflashes, interpreted by the
augurs
; if ruled unfavourable no public business could be transacted

Carcer
Rome’s prison, situated on the boundary of the Forum and the Capitol, between the Temple of Concord and the Senate house

century
the unit in which the Roman people cast their votes on the Field of Mars at election time for consul and praetor; the system was weighted to favour the wealthier classes of society

chief priest
see
pontifex maximus

comitium
the circular area in the Forum, approximately 300 feet across, bounded by the Senate house and the rostra, traditionally the place where laws were voted on by the people, and where many of the courts had their tribunals

consul
the senior magistrate of the Roman Republic, two of whom were elected annually, usually in July, to assume office in the following January, taking it in turns to preside over the Senate each month

curule chair
a backless chair with low arms, often made of ivory, possessed by a magistrate with imperium, particularly consuls and praetors

dictator
a magistrate given absolute power by the Senate over civil and military affairs, usually in a time of national emergency

equestrian order
the second most senior order in Roman society after the Senate, the “Order of Knights” had its own officials and privileges, and was entitled to one-third of the places on a jury; often its members were richer than members of the Senate, but declined to pursue a public career

Gaul
divided into two provinces:
Nearer Gaul
, extending from the River Rubicon in northern Italy to the Alps, and
Further Gaul
, the lands beyond the Alps roughly corresponding to the modern French regions of Provence and Languedoc

haruspices
the religious officials who inspected the entrails after a sacrifice in order to determine whether the omens were good or bad

imperator
the title granted to a military commander on active service by his soldiers after a victory; it was necessary to be hailed imperator in order to qualify for a triumph

imperium
the power to command, granted by the state to an individual, usually a consul, praetor or provincial governor

legate
a deputy or delegate

legion
the largest formation in the Roman army, at full strength consisting of approximately 5,000 men

lictor
an attendant who carried the fasces—a bundle of birch rods tied together with a strip of red leather—that symbolised a magistrate’s imperium; consuls were accompanied by twelve lictors, who served as their bodyguards, praetors by six; the senior lictor, who stood closest to the magistrate, was known as the proximate lictor

manumission
the emancipation of a slave

Order of Knights
see
equestrian order

pontifex maximus
the chief priest of the Roman state religion, the head of the fifteen-member College of Priests, entitled to an official residence on the Via Sacra

praetor
the second most senior magistrate in the Roman Republic, eight of whom were elected annually, usually in July, to take office the following January, and who drew lots to determine which of the various courts—treason, embezzlement, corruption, serious crime, etc.—they would preside over; see also
urban praetor

prosecutions
as there was no public prosecution system in the Roman Republic, all criminal charges, from embezzlement to treason and murder, had to be brought by private individuals

public assemblies
the supreme authority and legislature of the Roman people was the people themselves, whether constituted by
tribe
(the
comitia tributa,
which voted on laws, declared war and peace, and elected the tribunes) or by
century
(the
comitia centuriata,
which elected the senior magistrates)

quaestor
a junior magistrate, twenty of whom were elected each year, and who thereby gained the right of entry to the Senate; it was necessary for a candidate for the quaestorship to be over thirty and to show wealth of one million sesterces

rostra
a long, curved platform in the Forum, about twelve feet high, surmounted by heroic statues, from which the Roman people were addressed by magistrates and advocates; its name derived from the beaks (
rostra
) of captured enemy warships set into its sides

Senate
not
the legislative assembly of the Roman Republic—laws could only be passed by the people in a tribal assembly—but something closer to its executive, with 600 members who could raise matters of state and order the consul to take action or to draft laws to be placed before the people; once elected via the quaestorship (see
quaestor
) a man would normally remain a senator for life, unless removed by the censors for immorality or bankruptcy, hence the average age was high (
senate
derived from
senex
= old)