On the day before Caesar received Pompey’s letter, the thirteenth day of January, a man on a foundering horse had crossed the Mulvian Bridge north of Rome. The guard posted there after the Senatus Consultum Ultimum had been passed informed the man that the Senate was meeting in Pompey’s curia on the Campus Martius, and gave him a fresh mount to finish the last few miles of his journey. A client of Pompey’s who had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on the road between Ravenna and Ariminum, the horseman had chosen to make the ride to Rome himself because he was dying to see how the Senate took the news he was bringing. As anyone would who had a sense of history and a wish to belong to a great moment, he reflected as he spurred his horse with a loud clatter onto the terrazzo floor outside the Curia Pompeia.
He slid off the animal, walked to the closed pair of bronze doors and hammered them with his fist. A startled lictor opened one to stick his head around it; Pompey’s client yanked the door wide, then strode into the chamber.
“Here, you can’t enter the Senate in closed session!” cried the lictor.
“Fathers of the Senate, I have news!” the invader roared.
Every head turned; both Marcellus Minor and Lentulus Crus rose from their ivory chairs to stand gaping at him while he looked about for Pompey, whom he located in the front row on the left-hand side.
“What news, Nonius?” asked Pompey, recognizing him.
“Gaius Caesar has crossed the Rubicon and is advancing on Ariminum with one legion!”
In the act of rising, Pompey froze for a moment before he flopped limply back onto his curule chair. All feeling seemed to have gone; he was conscious only of a ghastly numbness, and could not manage to speak.
“It’s civil war!” whispered Gaius Marcellus Minor.
Lentulus Crus, a more dominant man by far than Marcellus Minor, took a faltering step forward. “When, man?” he asked, face faded to grey.
“He rode his battle horse with the toes across the Rubicon shortly before sunset three days ago, honored consul.”
“Jupiter!” squeaked Metellus Scipio. “He did it!”
These words acted like the opening of a sluice gate upon a dammed-up flood; the senators rushed headlong for the doors, became jammed in the aperture, fought and scrabbled to get out, fled in panic across the peristyle and away toward the city.
A moment later, only a handful of boni remained.
Sensation returned to Pompey, who managed to get up. “Come with me,” he said curtly, going to the door which permitted entry into his villa.
Cornelia Metella took one look at their faces as the band streamed into the atrium and decided to absent herself, which left Pompey to hand his client Nonius to the steward with a request that he be well treated.
“My thanks,” he said, patting the man on the shoulder.
Well pleased with his contribution to history, Nonius went off.
Pompey led the rest into his study, where everyone clustered around the console table bearing wine and poured it unwatered with shaking hands. Save Pompey, who sat in his chair behind his desk without caring what sort of insult that was to consuls and consulars.
“One legion!” he said when his guests had all found seats and were looking at him as if at the only piece of cork in a tempestuously heaving sea. “One legion!”
“The man must be insane,” muttered Gaius Marcellus Minor, wiping the sweat from his face with the purple border of his toga.
But those anguished, bewildered eyes fixed on him seemed to have a more tonic effect than wine would have; Pompey threw his chest out, put his hands on his desk and cleared his throat.
“The sanity of Gaius Caesar is not the issue,” he said. “He’s challenged us. He’s challenged the Senate and People of Rome. With one legion he’s crossed the Rubicon, with one legion he’s advancing on Ariminum, with one legion he intends to conquer Italia.” Pompey shrugged. “He can’t do it. Mars couldn’t do it.”
“I suspect, from all one knows about Mars, that Caesar is a better general,” said Gaius Marcellus Major dryly.
Ignoring this, Pompey looked at Cato, who hadn’t said one word since Nonius strode into the chamber—and had gulped down a very large quantity of unwatered wine.
“Well, Marcus Cato?” Pompey asked. “What do you suggest?”
“That,” said Cato in his most unmusical tones, “those who create great crises should also be the ones to put an end to them.”
“Meaning you had nothing to do with it, and I everything?”
“My opposition to Caesar is political, not military.”
Pompey drew a breath. “Does this mean, then, that I am in command of resistance?” he asked Gaius Marcellus Minor, the senior consul. “Does it?” he asked the junior consul, Lentulus Crus.
“Yes, of course,” said Lentulus Crus when Marcellus Minor stayed mute.
“Then,” said Pompey briskly, “the first thing we have to do is send two envoys to Caesar at once and at the gallop.”
“What for?” asked Cato.
“To discover on what terms he would be prepared to withdraw into Italian Gaul.”
“He won’t withdraw,” said Cato flatly.
“One step at a time, Marcus Cato.” Pompey’s eyes roved over the ranks of the fifteen men who sat there and alighted upon young Lucius Caesar and his boon companion, Lucius Roscius. “Lucius Caesar, Lucius Roscius, you’re elected to do the galloping. Take the Via Flaminia and commandeer fresh horses before the ones you’re on fall dead under you. You don’t stop, even to take a piss. Just aim backward from the saddle.” He drew paper toward him and picked up a pen. “You are official envoys and you’ll speak for the entire Senate, including its magistrates. But you’ll also carry a letter from me to Caesar.” He grinned without amusement. “A personal plea to think of the Republic first, not to injure the Republic.”
“All Caesar wants is a monarchy,” said Cato.
Pompey didn’t reply until the letter was written and sprinkled with sand. Then he said, rolling it up and heating wax to seal it, “We don’t know what Caesar wants until he tells us.” He pressed his ring into the blob of wax, handed the letter to Roscius. “You keep it, Roscius, as my envoy. Lucius Caesar will do the talking for the Senate. Now go. Ask my steward for horses—they’ll be better than anything you’ve got. We’re already north of the city, so it will save time to start from here.”
“But we can’t ride in togas!” said Lucius Caesar.
“My man will give you riding gear, even if it doesn’t fit. Now go!” barked the General.
They went.
“Spinther’s in Ancona with as many men as Caesar has,” said Metellus Scipio, brightening. “He’ll deal with it.”
“Spinther,” said Pompey, showing his teeth, “was still busy dithering over sending troops to Egypt after Gabinius had already restored Ptolemy Auletes to his throne. So let’s not get our hopes up by expecting great things from Spinther. I’ll send word to Ahenobarbus to join up with him and Attius Varus. Then we’ll see.”
But every scrap of news over the next three days was dismal: Caesar had taken Ariminum, then he had taken Pisaurum, then he had taken Fanum Fortunae. With cheers and garlands, not opposition. And that was the real worry. No one had thought of the people of rural Italia and the smaller cities, the many towns. Particularly in Picenum, Pompey’s own purlieu. To discover now that Caesar was advancing unopposed—with a mere two cohorts!—paying for what he ate and harming no one, was appalling news.
Capped in the afternoon of the seventeenth day of January by two messages: the first, that Lentulus Spinther and his ten cohorts had quit Ancona to retreat to Asculum Picentum; and the second, that Caesar had been cheered into Ancona. The Senate met at once.
“Incredible!” shouted that famous fence-sitter Philippus. “With five thousand men, Spinther wouldn’t stay to meet Caesar and a thousand men! What am I doing here in Rome? Why am I not taking myself to grovel at Caesar’s feet this moment? The man’s got you bluffed! You’re exactly what he always calls you—couch generals! And that goes for you too these days, Pompeius Magnus!”
“I am not responsible for deputing Spinther to defend Ancona!” Pompey roared. “That, Philippus, if you remember, was the decision of this House! And you voted for it!”
“I wish I’d voted to make Caesar the King of Rome!”
“Shut your seditious mouth!” shrieked Cato.
“And you, you pokered-up bag of meaningless political cant, can shut yours!” Philippus shouted back.
“Order!” said Gaius Marcellus Minor in a tired voice.
Which seemed to work better than a holler; Philippus and Cato sat down, glaring at each other.
“We are here to decide on a course of action,” Marcellus Minor went on, “not to bicker. How much bickering do you think is going on at Caesar’s headquarters? The answer to that, I imagine, is none. Caesar wouldn’t tolerate it. Why should Rome’s consuls?”
“Because Rome’s consuls are Rome’s servants, and Caesar has refused to be anyone’s servant!” said Cato.
“Oh, Marcus Cato, why do you persist in being so difficult, so obstructive? I want answers, not irrelevant statements or silly questions. How do we proceed to deal with this crisis?”
“I suggest,” said Metellus Scipio, “that this House confirm Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in command of all our troops and legates.”
“I agree, Quintus Scipio,” said Cato. “Those who precipitate great crises should be the ones to put an end to them. I hereby nominate Gnaeus Pompeius as commander-in-chief.”
“Listen,” growled Pompey, acutely aware that Cato had refrained from using Magnus, “you said that to me the other day, and I resent it! I didn’t cause this ‘great crisis,’ Cato! You did! You and all the rest of your boni confederates! I’m just the one you expect to get you out of the shit! But don’t blame me for dropping us into it! You did, Cato, you did!”
“Order!” sighed Marcellus Minor. “We have a motion, but I doubt a division is necessary. I’ll see hands and hear ayes.”
The House voted overwhelmingly to appoint Pompey commander-in-chief of the Republic’s forces and legates.
Marcus Marcellus rose to his feet. “Conscript Fathers,” he said, “I hear through Marcus Cicero that recruitment in Campania is atrociously slow. How can we speed matters up? We have to lay our hands on more soldiers.”
“Ha ha ha!” sneered Favonius, smarting because Pompey had chastised his beloved Cato. “Who was it always used to say that all he had to do to raise troops in Italia was stamp his foot on the ground? Who was that?”
“You, Favonius, have four legs, whiskers and a long, naked tail!” snarled Pompey. “Tace!”
“Speak as a result of the motion, Gnaeus Pompeius,” said Gaius Marcellus Minor.
“Very well then, I will!” snapped Pompey. “If recruitment in Campania is proceeding at a snail’s pace, one can only blame those doing the recruiting. Like Marcus Cicero, whose head is probably in some obscure manuscript when it ought to be bent over the enlistment books. There are many thousands of soldiers to be had, Conscript Fathers, and you have just made it my job—my job!—to produce them. I will produce them. But a lot faster if the rats who skitter around Rome’s sewers get out of my way!”
“Are you calling me a rat?” yelled Favonius, leaping up.
“Oh, sit down, you dullard! I called you a rat ages ago!” said Pompey. “Attend to business, Marcus Favonius, and try to use what passes for your mind!”
“Order!” said Marcellus Minor wearily.
“That’s the trouble with this wretched body!” Pompey went on wrathfully. “You all think you’re entitled to your say! You all think you’re entitled to run things! You all think every decision made has to be a democratic one! Well, let me tell you something! Armies can’t be run on democratic principles. If they are, they founder. There’s a commander-in-chief, and his word is law! LAW! I am now the commander-in-chief, and I won’t be harassed and frustrated by a lot of incompetent idiots!”
He got to his feet and walked to the middle of the floor. “I hereby declare a state of tumultus! On my say-so, not your vote! We are at war! And the last vote you made was the one that gave me the high command! I am assuming it! You will do as you are told! Hear me? Hear me? You will do as you are told!”
“That depends,” drawled Philippus, grinning.
A comment Pompey chose to ignore. “It is my command that every senator leave Rome immediately! Any senator who remains in Rome beyond tomorrow will be regarded as a partisan of Caesar’s, and be treated accordingly!”
“Ye Gods,” said Philippus with a huge sigh, “I hate Campania with winter coming on! Why shouldn’t I remain in nice, snug Rome?”
“By all means do so, Philippus!” said Pompey. “You are, after all, husband to Caesar’s niece!”
“And father-in-law to Cato,” purred Philippus.
*
The state of absolute confusion which followed upon Pompey’s order only made things worse for those in Rome below the level of senator. From the time the fleeing Conscript Fathers had broadcast the news that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, the city had spun into a panic. The word the knights used most frequently was that frightful word which had come into existence under the dictatorship of Sulla: “proscription.” The emblazoning of one’s name on a list pinned to the rostra, which meant that one was declared an enemy of Rome and the dictatorship, that any person seeing one could kill one, that one’s property and money was confiscate to the State. Two thousand senators and knights had died, and Sulla had filled his empty treasury on the profits.
For everyone with much to lose assumed as a matter of course that Caesar would follow in Sulla’s footsteps—wasn’t it exactly like that time after Sulla landed in Brundisium and marched up the peninsula? With the common folk cheering and throwing flowers? He too had paid for every leaf, sheaf, root and shoot his army ate. What was the difference between a Cornelian and a Julian, after all? They existed on a plane far above knight-businessmen, who were less to them than the dust beneath their feet.
Only Balbus, Oppius, Rabirius Postumus and Atticus tried to stem the panic, explain that Caesar was no Sulla, that all he was after was the vindication of his battered dignitas, that he was not about to assume the dictatorship and slaughter people indiscriminately. That he had been forced to march by the senseless, obdurate opposition of a small clique within the Senate, and that as soon as he had forced that clique to recant its policies and its decrees, he would revert to ordinary behavior.
It did little good; no one was calm enough to listen and common sense had flown away. Disaster had struck; Rome was about to be plunged into yet another civil war. Proscriptions would follow—hadn’t everyone heard that Pompey too had spoken angrily of proscriptions, of thousands being thrown off the Tarpeian Rock? Oh, caught between a harpy and a siren! Whichever side won, the knights of the Eighteen were sure to suffer!
Most of the senators, packing trunks, trying to explain to wives, making new wills, had no idea exactly why they had been ordered to leave Rome. Not requested: ordered. If they stayed they would be regarded as Caesar’s partisans, that was all they really understood. Sons over the age of sixteen were demanding to come too; daughters with a wedding date fixed shrilled and fluttered; bankers and accountants ran from one noble senatorial client to another, explaining feverishly that cash was in short supply, now was not the time to sell land, sleeping partnerships were worth nothing when business had slumped.
Little wonder, perhaps, that the most important thing of all was entirely overlooked. Not Pompey, not Cato, not any of the three Marcelli, not Lentulus Crus nor anyone else had so much as thought of emptying the Treasury.
On the eighteenth day of January, amid overladen baggage carts trundling in hundreds through the Capena Gate en route to Neapolis, Formiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Capua and other Campanian destinations, the two consuls and almost all the Senate fled out of Rome. Leaving the Treasury stuffed to the rafters with money and bullion, not to mention various emergency hoards of bullion in the temples of Ops, Juno Moneta, Hercules Olivarius and Mercury, and thousands of chests of money in Juno Lucina, Iuventus, Venus Libitina and Venus Erucina. The only man who had thought to draw money from the tribuni aerarii in charge of the Treasury had been Ahenobarbus some days earlier; he had asked for and received six million sesterces to pay the many troops he confidently expected to obtain among the Marsi and Paeligni. The public fortune of Rome remained inside Rome.
Not every senator left. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Lucius Piso Censor and Lucius Marcius Philippus were among those who stayed. Perhaps to reinforce this decision in each other, they met for dinner on the nineteenth at Philippus’s house.
“I’m a newly married man with a baby son,” said Piso, his bad teeth showing. “A perilous enough situation for a man of my age without rushing off like a Sardinian bandit after a sheep!”
“Well,” said Cotta, smiling gently, “I stayed because I do not believe Caesar will lose. He’s my nephew, and I’ve never known him to act without caution, despite his reputation. It’s all thought out very carefully.”
“And I stayed because I’m too lazy to uproot myself. Huh!” Philippus snorted. “Fancy haring off to Campania with winter in the offing! Villas shut up, no staff to light the braziers, the fish sleepy and the diet endless plates of cabbage.”
Which struck everyone as funny; the meal proceeded merrily. Piso had not brought his new wife, and Cotta was a widower, but Philippus’s wife attended. So did her thirteen-year-old son, Gaius Octavius.
“And what do you think of it all, young Gaius Octavius?” asked Cotta, his great-great-uncle. The boy, whom he knew from many visits (Atia worried about her great-uncle, who lived alone), fascinated him. Not in the same way as Caesar had when a child, though there were similarities. The beauty, certainly. What good luck for young Gaius Octavius, however, that his ears stuck out! Caesar had had no flaw at all. The boy was very fair too, though his eyes were more widely opened and a luminous grey—not eerie eyes like Caesar’s. Frowning, Cotta sought for the correct word to describe their expression, and settled upon “careful.” Yes, that was it. They were careful. At first one thought them innocent and candid, until one realized that they never really told one what the mind behind them was thinking. They were permanently veiled and never passionate.
“I think, Uncle Cotta, that Caesar will win.”
“In which we agree. Why do you think so?”
“He’s better than they are.” Young Gaius Octavius found a bright red apple and sank his even white teeth into it. “In the field he has no equal—Pompeius is second rate as a general. A good organizer. If you look at his campaigns, he always won because of that. There are no brilliant battles, battles wherein his strategy and tactics will inspire another Polybius. He wore his opponents down; that was his strength. Uncle Caesar has done that too, but Uncle Caesar can boast of a dozen brilliant battles.”
“And one or two, like Gergovia, that were not brilliant.”
“Yes, but he didn’t go down in them either.”
“All right,” said Cotta, “that’s the battlefield. What else?”
“He understands politics. He knows how to manipulate. He doesn’t tangle himself in lost causes or associate with men who do. He’s quite as efficient as Pompeius off the battlefield. A better speaker, a better lawyer, a better planner.”
Listening to this analysis, Lucius Piso became conscious that he disliked its author. Not proper for a boy of that age to speak like a teacher! Who did he think he was? And so pretty. Far too pretty. Another year, and he’d be offering his arse; he had that smell about him. A very precious boy.
*
Pompey, the consuls and a good part of the Senate reached Teanum Sidicinum in Campania on the twenty-second day of January, and here halted to bring a little order out of the chaos of evacuating the capital. Not all the senators had tacked themselves onto Pompey’s cometish tail; some had scattered to invade their shut-up villas on the coast, some preferred to be anywhere other than wherever Pompey was.
Titus Labienus was waiting; Pompey greeted him like a long-lost brother, even embraced him and kissed him on the cheek.
“Where have you come from?” Pompey asked, surrounded by his senatorial watchdogs—Cato, the three Marcelli and Lentulus Crus—and bolstered by a mournful Metellus Scipio.
“Placentia,” said Labienus, leaning back in his chair.
Though all present knew Labienus by sight and remembered his activities as tribune of the plebs, it was ten years since any of them (including Pompey) had set eyes on him, for he had left Rome to take up duties in Italian Gaul while Caesar was still consul. They gazed at him now in some dismay; Labienus had changed. In his early forties, he looked exactly what he had become: a hard-bitten, ruthlessly authoritarian military man. His tight black curls were peppered with grey; his thin, liver-colored mouth bisected his lower face like a scar; the great hooked nose with its flaring nostrils gave him the look of an eagle; and his black eyes, narrow and contemptuous, gazed upon all of them, even upon Pompey, with the interest of a cruel boy in a group of insects owning potentially detachable wings.
“When did you leave Placentia?” asked Pompey.
“Two days after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.”
“How many legions has he got in Placentia? Though no doubt they’re already marching to join him.”
The greying head reared back, the mouth opened to display huge yellow teeth; Labienus laughed heartily. “Ye Gods, you are fools!” he said. “There are no legions in Placentia! There never were. Caesar has the Thirteenth, which he sent to Tergeste and back on a training exercise which appears to have escaped your notice. Most of the time he was in Ravenna he was without troops of any kind. He’s marched with the Thirteenth, and he has no other legions coming to help him. Ergo, he thinks he can do the job with the Thirteenth. From what I’ve seen, he is probably right.”
“Then,” said Pompey slowly, beginning to revise his plans to quit Italia in favor of Macedonia and Greece, “I can move to contain him in Picenum. If Lentulus Crus and Attius Varus haven’t already done that. He split the Thirteenth, you see. Antonius is holding Arretium and the Via Cassia with five cohorts, and”—Pompey winced—”Curio has ejected Thermus from Iguvium with three more cohorts. All Caesar has at present are two cohorts.”
“Then why are you sitting here?” demanded Labienus. “You ought to be halfway up the Adriatic coast by now!”
Pompey cast a look of burning reproach at Gaius Marcellus Major. “I was led to believe,” he said with great dignity, “that Caesar possessed four legions. And though we did hear that he was marching with no more than one, we assumed the others were doing things in his rear.”
“I don’t think,” said Labienus deliberately, “that you want to fight Caesar at all, Magnus.”
“I don’t think so either!” said Cato.
Oh, was he never going to be free of this carping criticism? Wasn’t he the officially appointed commander-in-chief? Hadn’t he informed them that democracy was over, that he’d do things his way, that they’d better pipe down? Now here was another critic, Titus Labienus, feeding lines to Cato!
Pompey drew himself up in his chair, expanded his chest until his leather cuirass creaked. “Listen, all of you,” he said with commendable restraint, “it’s my command, and I will do things my way, do you hear? Until my scouts inform me exactly what Caesar is doing whereabouts, I’ll bide my time. If you’re right, Labienus, then there’s no problem. We’ll advance into Picenum and finish him off. But the most important thing in my agenda is the preservation of Italia. I have sworn not to fight a civil war on her soil if it assumes anything like the dimensions of the Italian War. That ruined the country for twenty years. I won’t have my name associated with that kind of odium! So until I hear what’s happening in Picenum, I’ll continue to bide my time. Once I know, I’ll make my decision whether to attempt to contain Caesar inside Italia, or whether to remove myself, my armies and the government of Rome to the East.”
“Leave Italia?” squeaked Marcus Marcellus.
“Yes, just as Carbo should have when Sulla threatened.”
“Sulla beat Carbo,” said Cato.
“On Italian soil. That’s my whole point.”
“Your whole point should be,” said Labienus, “that you are indeed in Carbo’s position. Handicapped by troops who’ll be too old or too raw to deal with an army of veterans who’ve just emerged from a long and grueling foreign war. Caesar is in Sulla’s shoes. He’s the one with the veterans.”
“I have the Sixth and the Fifteenth in Capua,” said Pompey, “and I very much doubt anyone can call them either too old or too raw, Labienus!”
“The Sixth and the Fifteenth belonged to Caesar.”
“But they’re seriously disaffected with Caesar,” said Metellus Scipio. “Appius Claudius told us!”
They’re like children, thought Labienus in wonder. They’ve made not one single effort to establish a good intelligence force, and they’re still believing whatever they’re told. What has happened to Pompeius Magnus? I served with him in the East and he wasn’t like this. He’s either past it or intimidated. But who is doing the intimidating? Caesar or this motley crew?
“Scipio,” Labienus said very slowly and distinctly, “Caesar’s troops are not disaffected! I don’t care how august the man is who told you, nor what evidence you’ve actually seen to confirm it. Just take it from one who knows—Caesar’s troops are not disaffected.” He turned to Pompey. “Magnus, act now! Take the Fifteenth, the Sixth and whatever other troops you can scrape together, and march to contain Caesar now! If you don’t, other legions will arrive to reinforce him. I said there were none in Italian Gaul, but that won’t last. The rest of Caesar’s legates are his men to the death.”
“And why aren’t you, Labienus?” asked Gaius Marcellus Major.
The dark, oily skin took on a purple hue; Labienus paused, then said evenly, “I think too much of Rome, whichever Marcellus you might happen to be. Caesar is acting treasonously. I refuse to commit treason.”
Whereabouts this turn in the conversation might have led was never known; the two envoys, Lucius Caesar Junior and Lucius Roscius, reported in.
“How long is it since you left?” asked Pompey eagerly.
“Four days,” said young Lucius Caesar.
“In four days,” said Labienus, drawing attention to himself, “anyone working for Caesar would have covered four hundred miles. What have you covered, less than a hundred and fifty?”
“And who,” said young Lucius Caesar in freezing tones, “are you to criticize me?”
“I’m Titus Labienus, boy.” He looked young Lucius Caesar up and down scornfully. “Your face says who you are, but it also says you’re not in your father’s league.”
“Yes, yes!” snapped Pompey, temper fraying. “What was going on when you left?”
“Caesar was in Auximum. Which welcomed him with open arms. Attius Varus and his five cohorts fled before we got there, but Caesar sent his lead century after them, and caught them. There was a small engagement. Attius Varus was defeated. Most of his men surrendered and asked to join Caesar. Some scattered.”
A silence fell, which Cato broke. “Caesar’s lead century,” he said heavily. “Eighty men. Who defeated over two thousand.”
“The trouble was,” said Lucius Roscius, “that Varus’s troops didn’t have their hearts in it. They were shivering in their boots at the very thought of Caesar. Yet once Caesar had charge of them, they cheered up and began to look like soldiers. Remarkable.”
“No,” said Labienus, smiling wryly. “Normal.”
Pompey swallowed. “Did Caesar issue terms?”
“Yes,” said young Lucius Caesar. He drew a long breath and launched into a carefully memorized speech. “I am authorized to tell you, Gnaeus Pompeius, the following: One, that you and Caesar should both disband your armies. Two, that you should withdraw at once to Spain. Three, that Italia should be completely demobilized. Four, that the reign of terror should come to an end. Five, that there should be free elections and a return to properly constitutional government by both Senate and People. Six, that you and Caesar should meet in person to discuss your differences and reach an agreement to be ratified by oath. Seven, that once this agreement is reached, Caesar should hand over his provinces to his successors. And eight, that Caesar should contest the consular elections in person inside Rome, not in absentia.”
“What rubbish!” said Cato. “He doesn’t mean a word of it! A more absurd set of conditions I’ve never heard!”
“That’s what Cicero said when I told him,” said young Lucius Caesar. “Manifestly absurd.”
“And where,” asked Labienus dangerously, “did you encounter Marcus Cicero?”
“At his villa near Minturnae.”
“Minturnae… What an odd route you took from Picenum!”
“I needed to visit Rome. Roscius and I were with Caesar for much longer than we’d thought. I stank!!”
“Now why didn’t I think of that?” asked Labienus wearily. “You stank. Did Caesar stink? Or his men?”
“Not Caesar, no. But he bathes in freezing cold water!”
“That’s how you keep smelling sweet on campaign, true.”
Pompey attempted to regain control of proceedings. “Well, there are his terms,” he said. “He’s issued them officially, no matter how absurd. But I do agree. He doesn’t mean them, he’s just buying time.” He opened his mouth and shouted. “Vibullius! Sestius!”
Two of his prefects entered the room. Lucius Vibullius Rufus belonged to the engineers, Sestius to the cavalry.
“Vibullius, go at once to Picenum and find Lentulus Spinther and Attius Varus. Urge them to come to grips with Caesar as soon as possible. He has two cohorts, therefore they can beat him—if they manage to explain that fact to their soldiers! Instruct them from me to do so.”
Vibullius Rufus saluted and left.
“Sestius, you’re ordered to proceed as an envoy to the camp of Gaius Caesar. Tell Gaius Caesar that his terms are unacceptable until he gives up the towns he is currently occupying in Picenum and returns across the Rubicon into Italian Gaul. If he does all that, I’ll take it as evidence of his good faith, and then we shall see. Emphasize that there’s no deal while he’s on the Italian side of the Rubicon, because that means the Senate cannot return to Rome.”
Publius Sestius, prefect of cavalry, saluted and left.
“Good!” said Cato, satisfied.
“What did Caesar mean, ‘reign of terror’? What reign of terror?” asked Metellus Scipio.
“We think, Roscius and I,” said young Lucius Caesar, “that Caesar was referring to the panic inside Rome.”
“Oh, that!” sniffed Metellus Scipio.
Pompey cleared his throat. “Well, noble friends, we’ve come to the parting of the ways,” he said with more satisfaction than Cato and Metellus Scipio combined. “Tomorrow Labienus and I are heading for Larinum. The Sixth and the Fifteenth are already en route. Consuls, you’ll go to Capua and whip up the recruitment rate. If and when you see Marcus Cicero, tell him to stop dithering and start producing. What’s he doing in Minturnae? Not enlisting men, I’ll warrant! Too busy scribbling to Atticus and the Gods know who else!”
“And from Larinum,” said Cato, “you’ll march north toward Picenum and Caesar.”
“That,” said Pompey, “remains to be seen.”
“I can see why the consuls are needed at Capua,” said Cato, warming up, “but the rest of us will be with you, of course.”
“No, you won’t!” Pompey’s chin trembled. “You’ll all remain in Capua for the time being. Caesar has five thousand gladiators in a school there, and they’ll have to be broken up. It’s times like this I wish we owned a few prisons, but as we don’t, I’ll leave it to all you couch experts how to solve the situation. The only one I want to accompany me to Larinum is Titus Labienus.”
*
It was true that Cicero dithered, and also true that he was not occupying himself in recruitment duties, either in Minturnae or at his next stop on that round of beautiful villas he owned from one end of the Campanian coast to the other. Misenum was next to Minturnae, therefore Misenum was his next stop. He wasn’t alone; Quintus Cicero, young Quintus Cicero and his own son, Marcus, were with him; and so too were his twelve lictors, their fasces wreathed in laurels because Cicero was a triumphator who had not yet held his triumph. A big enough nuisance to have the male members of the family in attendance, but not half the nuisance those wretched lictors were! He couldn’t move without them, and since he still held his imperium and his imperium was a foreign one, the lictors were clad in all the glory of crimson tunics broadly belted in black leather studded with brass emblems, and bore the axes in their fasces among the thirty rods. Imposing. But not to a man burdened with as many cares as Cicero.
He’d been visited by none other than his protégé, that most promising young advocate Gaius Trebatius Testa, who had been released from service with Caesar so thoroughly indoctrinated to Caesar’s way of thinking that he would hear not one word against him. Trebatius came, podgy as ever, to beg that Cicero return at once to Rome, which desperately needed, said Trebatius, the genuine stability of a knot of consulars.
“I will not go anywhere at the behest of an outlaw!” said Cicero indignantly.
“Marcus Cicero, Caesar is no outlaw,” pleaded Trebatius. “He has marched to retrieve his dignitas, and that is proper. All he wants is to ensure its continuance. After that—and in concert with that—he wants peace and prosperity for Rome. He feels that your presence in Rome would be a calming one.”
“Well, let him feel what he likes!” snapped Cicero. “I will not be seen to betray my colleagues who are dedicated to the cause and preservation of the Republic. Caesar wants to be a king, and candidly, I believe Pompeius Magnus wouldn’t refuse if he were asked to reign as King Magnus. Hah! Magnus Rex!”
Which reply left Trebatius with no alternative other than to litter himself away.
Next came a letter from Caesar himself, its brevity and off-the-point paragraph symptomatic of Caesar’s exasperation.
My dear Marcus Cicero, you are one of the few people involved in this mess who may have the foresight and the courage to choose an intermediate path. Night and day I worry over the plight of Rome, left rudderless by the deplorable exodus of her government. What kind of answer is it to cry tumultus and then desert the ship? For that is what Gnaeus Pompeius, egged on by Cato and the Marcelli, has done. So far I have received no indication that any of them, including Pompeius, are thinking of Rome. And that despite the rhetoric.
If you would return to Rome, it would be a great help. In this, I know, I am supported by Titus Atticus. A great joy to know him recovered from that terrible bout of the ague. He doesn’t take enough care of himself. I remember that Quintus Sertorius’s mother, Ria— she cared for me when I almost died of the ague without a rhythm— sent me a letter after I returned to Rome advising me which herbs to hang and which herbs to throw on a brazier to avoid contracting the ague. They work, Cicero. I haven’t had the ague since. But though I told him what to do, Atticus can’t be bothered.
Do please consider coming home. Not for my sake. Nor will anyone apostrophize you as my partisan. Do it for Rome.
But Cicero wouldn’t do it for Rome; did he do it, he would be acting to oblige Caesar. And that, he vowed, he would never do!
But by the time that January ended and February arrived, Cicero was very torn. Nothing he heard inspired any confidence. One moment he was assured that Pompey was marching for Picenum to finish Caesar before he got started; the next moment he was being told that Pompey was in Larinum and planning to march for Brundisium and a voyage across the Adriatic to Epirus or western Macedonia. Caesar’s letter had tickled an itch, with the result that Cicero fretted about Pompey’s indifference to Rome the city. Why wasn’t he defending her? Why?
By this time the whole of the north was open to Caesar, from the Via Aurelia on the Tuscan Sea to the Adriatic coast. He held every great road or knew they contained no troops to oppose him; Hirrus had vacated Camerinum, Lentulus Spinther had fled from Asculum Picentum, and Caesar held all of Picenum. While, apparently, Pompey sat in Larinum. His prefect of engineers, Vibullius Rufus, had encountered Lentulus Spinther in disarray on the road after quitting Asculum Picentum, and stood up to the haughty consular sturdily. With the result that he took over command of Lentulus Spinther’s troops and hied them, plus the dejected Lentulus Spinther, to Corfinium, where Ahenobarbus had established himself.
Of all the legates the Senate had dispatched to defend Italia back in those far-off days before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, only Ahenobarbus had fared well. In Alba Fucentia beside the Fucine Lake he had marshaled two legions of Marsi, a warlike and ardent people in his clientele. He had then proceeded with them to the fortress city of Corfinium on the river Aternus, resolved to hold Corfinium and its sister city, Sulmo, in Caesar’s teeth. Thanks to Vibullius, he received Lentulus Spinther’s ten cohorts— and five more cohorts Vibullius poached from Hirrus, retreating from Camerinum. Thus, or so it seemed to Cicero, Ahenobarbus looked like the only serious foe Caesar was likely to meet. For Pompey, it was clear, didn’t want to meet him.
The stories about what Caesar intended to do once he owned Italia and Rome were legion and horrifying: he was going to cancel all debts; proscribe the entire knight class; hand the Senate and the Assemblies over to the rabble, the Head Count who owned nothing and could give the State nothing save children. It was perhaps something of a comfort to know that Atticus stoutly maintained Caesar would do none of these things.
“Don’t dismiss Caesar as a Saturninus or a Catilina,” said Atticus to Cicero in a letter. “He’s a very able and clever man with a mine of common sense. Far from believing that he would do anything as foolish as cancel debts, I think him absolutely committed to protecting and ensuring the well-being of Rome’s commercial sphere. Truly, Cicero, Caesar is no radical!”
Oh, how much Cicero wanted to believe that! The trouble was that he couldn’t, chiefly because he listened to everyone and deemed everyone right at the time. Save those, like Atticus, who kept blowing Caesar’s trumpet, no matter in how restrained and reasonable a way. For he couldn’t like Caesar, couldn’t trust Caesar. Not since that dreadful year when he had been consul, when Catilina had plotted to overthrow the State, and Caesar had accused him of executing Roman citizens without a trial. Inexcusable. Unforgivable. Out of Caesar’s stand came Clodius’s persecution and eighteen months in exile.
“You’re an outright, downright fool!” snarled Quintus Cicero.
“I beg your pardon!” gasped Cicero.
“You heard me, big brother! You’re a fool! Why won’t you see that Caesar is a decent man, a highly conservative politician, and the most brilliant military man Rome has ever produced?” Quintus Cicero emitted a series of derisive raspberries. “He’ll wallop the lot of them, Marcus! They do not stand a chance, no matter how much they prate about your precious Republic!”
“I will repeat,” said Cicero with great dignity, “what I have already said several times. It’s infinitely preferable to be beaten with Pompeius than victorious with Caesar!”
“Well,” said Quintus, “don’t expect me to feel the same way. I served with Caesar. I like him. And, by all the Gods, I admire him! So don’t ask me to fight against him, because I won’t.”
“I am the head of the Tullii Cicerones!” cried big brother. “You will do what I say!”
“I’ll cleave to the family in this much, Marcus—I won’t enlist to fight for Caesar. But nor will I take up a sword or a command against him.”
And from that stand little brother Quintus would not be budged.
Which led to more and fiercer quarrels when Cicero’s wife and daughter, Terentia and Tullia, joined them at Formiae. As did Quintus’s wife, Pomponia, the sister of Atticus and a worse termagant than Terentia. Terentia sided with Cicero (not always the case), but Pomponia and Tullia sided with Quintus Cicero. Added to which, Quintus Cicero’s son wanted to enlist in Caesar’s legions, and Cicero’s son wanted to enlist in Pompey’s legions.
“Tata,” said Tullia, big and pretty brown eyes pleading, “I do wish you’d see reason! My Dolabella says Caesar is everything a great Roman aristocrat ought to be.”
“As I know him to be,” said Quintus Cicero warmly.
“I agree, Pater,” said young Quintus Cicero with equal warmth.
“My brother Atticus thinks him an excellent sort of man,” said Pomponia, chin out pugnaciously.
“You’re all mentally deficient!” snapped Terentia.
“Not to mention getting ready to suck up to the man you think will win!” yelled young Marcus Cicero, glaring at his cousin.
“Tacete, tacete, tacete!” roared the head of the Tullii Cicerones. “Shut up, the lot of you! Go away! Leave me in peace! Isn’t it enough that I can’t persuade anybody to enlist? Isn’t it enough to be plagued by twelve lictors? Isn’t it enough that the consuls in Capua have got no further than boarding out Caesar’s five thousand gladiators among loyal Republican families? Where they’re eating their hosts out of house and home? Isn’t it enough that Cato can’t make up his mind whether to stay in Capua or go to govern Sicily? Isn’t it enough that Balbus writes twice a day, begging me to heal the breach between Caesar and Pompeius? Isn’t it enough that I hear Pompeius is already transferring cohorts to Brundisium to ship across the Adriatic? Tacete, tacete, tacete!”