CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

It was at sunset that Marcus felt both old and very young, almost a child. The clarity of air, the pure transparency of light purged of heat, the soft stillness that had seemed to draw within its mouth all the clamorings of the day and had silenced them, the faint gilt that lay on limb and branch and leaf, the sweet clattering of the fountains, the murmurous dialogue of birds, the silent freshness of a quiet wind—all these, to him, seemed a profound and intimately personal blessing of the gods bestowed on men, a hiatus of refreshment and reflection, a holy hour. Then one could forget the city so close below, the swelter of the hills, the hot-faced Tiber, and the harsh walls and the many roads of Rome, and could contemplate for a blessed time relieved of both the pressure of the day and the sombreness of night.

The Egyptian and other eastern temples possessed bells. At this hour they rang over the mighty and heaving city, sweetly, haunting, speaking only to the soul, calling for prayer and meditation, for men to leave the office, the bank, the market place, and to enter into the quietness of shadowy portico, altar fires and incense; for men to realize if but for an hour that they were spirits as well as animals.

Marcus was very tired. He was feeling, again, that burden of the mind and heart which had so afflicted him years ago and had immobilized his body and had tormented his brain. Now the burden was almost always present on him, a tangible presence he carried on his shoulders; he was like one of the unfortunate condemned who must bear on his back the weight of the cross upon which, in a last agony, he must expire. He no longer said to himself: Tomorrow I will be refreshed and buoyant. Tomorrow, I will again be eager. He knew that this was the illusion of very early youth. To the mature and thinking man tomorrow was the stony road that led only to frustration and extinction and the eternal question: Wherefore am I living, and to what purpose, and to what end? Why should I, tomorrow, take up again what I lay down today?

There was often little comfort when he said to himself resolutely, I live for abstract and eternal justice; I serve God, when I remember Him.

“Once the evening had been for him a period of tranquil expectation. Now, he knew that expectation was the sole possession of innocent youth, and that it was a deceit to persuade the intelligent organism to continue and not to die in despair. He had much money, land, orchards, groves, fields, meadows, cattle; he had villas and he had farms; he had his ancestral island. He had wife and child and parents. He had fame of a considerable order. But still, he now had nothing to expect. He had no desire to excel in the eyes of others. To him, these were the vanities of childhood, the dreams of rank youth, and not the concern of ripened men. Crassus was an old man, but he was ambitious. Crassus was old, but he wished still to be acclaimed. The conclusion, then, was that some men never matured whatever their years and he, Cicero, was not one of them. There were times when he felt envy for an illusion, for a lie. Then he would not have hours like these, listening to the warm bells of the eastern temples, and aching and yearning after what he knew not, and looking into a future which held no more than this.

Contentment! The drug and stupefaction of little souls! What man of thought could be contented? Happiness, bliss: They meant different things to different men, and they too had no reality. Marcus looked at the wide and golden sky. He looked at the columned façade of his house, and it too was as gold as butter and shining in the light of the dropping sun.

Simplicity, said the Stoics, enviously staring at those who were not simple and were not poor. Resignation, said the eastern gods—but resignation to what? God, said the Jews. But He was unknowable and silent, if He existed at all. Yet, if one could but know Him perhaps one would know rapture, and life at its best and its worst would be endurable.

“Why so grave?” said a voice near Marcus, both mocking and fond, and Marcus turned on the marble bench under the myrtle trees to see Julius Caesar, magnificent as always, smiling at him.

Marcus rose quickly and grasped the hands of his old friend with a vehemence and a smile that agreeably startled the younger man and made him peer inquisitively into Marcus’ face. Marcus laughed, as if delivered, and embraced Julius, then held him off to look at him.

“When did you return from Further Spain?” Marcus demanded.

“But last night, very late. What! Is it possible that you are happy to see me?”

“Yes. Do not ask me why. Sit beside me. Let me look upon you. It has been two years since last we met. Ah, you have not aged in those hot Spanish suns!” Marcus clapped his hands loudly for a slave, then beamed on Julius, who sat beside him. Then Marcus no longer smiled.

“I forget. You are still in mourning for your sweet wife, Cornelia, who died while you were a quaestor in Spain.”

“The sweetest of women,” said Julius, and for a moment or two he stared at the golden and sandy earth that surrounded the flowerbeds and the trees and cypresses, and his antic dark face was sombre. Then he smiled again, quickly. “She has been relieved of her pain, which she suffered for years, and is at peace.”

For some reason, obscure even to himself, this annoyed Marcus. “And you are still young,” he said.

“We have not lost our waspish tongue,” said Julius, and his white teeth flashed in a wider smile. He had always been elegant and there had always been about him the iron scent of potency. The elegance remained; the aura of power was almost visible now, and Marcus thought of the terrible lightnings of Jupiter, the patron of Julius. These were in no wise diminished by the splendor of raiment, his silver armor, the leopard cloak on his shoulders, his heavier but still virile flesh, the foreign length of his sword in its Spanish enameled sheath, and the high silver boots embroidered and tasseled. Julius had passed his thirty-fourth birthday this very summer, and only six weeks ago, and his fine black hair was patched with the first gray on his temples. But he was vital as always and exuded a delicate force, as always, and his immense intelligence glittered restlessly in his dark and ironical eyes.

In his turn Julius studied his friend and saw the weary lines about the still beautiful and changeful eyes, the paling streaks in the mass of brown and curling hair, the clefts that enclosed the controlled lips, and the thin furrow that ran horizontally and deeply across a noble forehead that had long since lost its innocence and had acquired exhausted wisdom in its place.

A slave brought refreshments, and in a little silence poured wine. The sound of the pouring was loud and musical in the quiet; rays of sunlight pierced the falling column of fluid and lighted it up so that it resembled bright blood. Then Julius said, “I encountered your brother, Quintus, in Spain.”

“Yes. So he wrote me.” The slave placed a tray of delicacies on the round marble table near at hand, and Marcus dismissed him. Julius raised his goblet in salute, poured a little libation, and put the goblet to his lips. Marcus drank also. His first pleasure was subsiding. He felt oddly depressed. He continued: “And your duties, Julius, are completed in Spain?”

“Completed.”

Marcus inquired about Julius’ family and their health, and particularly about young Julia. “I am betrothing her to Pompey,” said Julius.

“That child?”

“She is no child, Marcus. She has passed her fourteenth birthday and should be betrothed.” Julius paused, then grinned into Marcus’ eyes. “And I, not one to be left mourning forever, am to marry again. Pompeia. A man needs a dear companion as he grows older.”

“You have never lacked companions, Julius. And you have always deplored marriage. Yet you wish to assume its burdens again.”

(It was not possible for them to know that at that very hour, leagues across the brilliant sea, in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, a foolish Greek Pharaoh, disdainfully called “the divine flutist,” leaned over his” infant daughter’s cradle and said in his light and lilting voice, “She shall be called Cleopatra, for she is the glory of her country.” As the two men sat in a Roman garden the babe opened eyes the color of violets and stared at her father and her cheeks were flushed with rose.)

“But Pompeia will be my last love,” said Julius, and his eyes twinkled. His skin, darkened deeply by Spanish sun, sprayed into fine lines of gay mockery.

“I am certain she will be,” said Marcus with sarcasm. “What are your plots now?”

“I find a certain repetitious tedium in your words,” said Julius. “You have never ceased asking me the same question, and my reply is the same: I do not plot. I love life and I accept each day as it comes, with no thought of the morrow. I am not ambitious.”

“No?”

“No. But let us talk of you, dear friend. You grow increasingly famous. Yet, you do not appear content or happy.”

“Perhaps I do not have the gift of happiness. And I lack contentment, but what it is I wish I do not know.” Marcus’ face turned melancholy again. “I have all that most men desire, yet I do not know peace.”

“I heard, in Spain, that in every man’s garden there lurks a hidden tiger waiting to devour him. What is your tiger, Marcus?”

Marcus did not answer. Julius studied him with a secret smile. Then Julius said, “Could it be your gift for compromise, which I hear is becoming more evident each day?”

“I do not compromise on principle,” said Marcus with some anger. “If I am excessive or too ardent in any matter, then I await the arguments of more objective men and balance them against mine. When a whole object is not obtainable, I am agreeable to part.”

“It is still your tiger, Marcus. This is an eminently unreasonable and irrational world. A man who compromises is considered guileful, and therefore dangerous, and not to be trusted. We all proclaim our admiration for restraint and reason, but they are the most detested of virtues. The man who succeeds—and thus is adored—is a man who never compromises, for good or for evil, and especially evil. To whom are our statues and monuments raised? To Socrates, to Homer, to Plato? No. They are raised to generals who were obdurate and could not be moved. They are raised to political murderers, who pursued their own way and did not hearken to others. In short, they were successful, and the world loves success no matter how it is obtained.”

“And what is your tiger, Julius?” asked Marcus.

Julius raised his eyebrows. “Mine? Possibly the love for women. A most delightful tiger.”

“I think your tiger bears another name.”

Julius shook his head. “No. Even that should be obvious to you now. I have no political power; I have displayed no greed for it, despite what you always say. I am a man no longer young. I have been only a quaestor in Further Spain, and it was tedius to me. Now I ask only a pleasant life.”

Marcus was again pursuing his melancholy thoughts. “And that contents you?”

He was suddenly aware of a sharp silence. He looked up and saw Julius smiling at him quizzically. But Julius said, “I am content.”

“Then God preserve us from contented men!”

Julius was not offended. He laughed. Marcus said, “You remind me of Erisichthon, who cut down the sacred oak, in contempt for Ceres, the goddess of the earth and of calm contentment. Ceres delivered him to her dread sister, Famine, who gave him an insatiable appetite. He even sold his one and beloved daughter so that he could satisfy his ravenous stomach. Finally, he was forced to eat his own body. That is the story of ambition.”

“Are you trying to offend me, Marcus, your guest, your friend whom you have not seen for two years? Or do your own sad meditations inspire your bitter satire?”

“Forgive me!” cried Marcus.

Julius touched his hand quickly. His eyes danced. “I am not ‘selling’ my daughter to Pompey, in spite of your allusion. He is old enough to be her father, God knows, but such marriages are common enough in Rome. The girl is agreeable, for she is sensible, and more mature than her years. And I have a discriminating appetite for all things, unlike Erisichthon.”

But the obscure misery with which Marcus was beset made him oblivious again to courtesy, he who had once said that a discourteous man was a barbarian. He said, his pale face flashing as if the shadow of lighted glass had passed over it, “Before you left for Spain, Crassus and Pompey deprived the Senate of much of its debilitated power. It is more than rumor, Julius, that you were influential in this, and that you urged Crassus to restore power to the Equestrian Order—so that they now control the courts. Yet, to maintain the lie that Crassus really loved the man in the street you carried a bust of your uncle, the old murderer, Marius, in a populares procession that shouted acclamations for Crassus! Did I not see you in that very procession, before you left for Spain? How do you explain this hypocrisy?”

Julius was only amused. “Call it, if you will, your own urge to compromise. The Equestrian Order is not only rich; it is intellectual and learned in law. Do you think it impossible for such as the Equestrians to have no sympathy for the populace? On the contrary! Only the rich and powerful have solicitude for the people. The champions who rise from the populace are oppressors, for they know the populace only too well. But the rich and the powerful have illusions about their virtue and often believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Surely, were you on trial you should prefer Equestrians to judge you rather than the flea-bitten mob?”

“I should prefer honest men.”

“You will not find them on the streets and in the noxious alleys.”

Marcus moved restlessly. He said, “You are not only hypocritical, Julius, but you appear to me inconsistent.”

“You should not deride inconsistency. What! Did you not help prosecute Gaius Verres because of his extortion in Sicily, and then on the other hand did you not defend Marcus Fonteius on the identical charge of extortion in Gaul?”

Marcus caught himself before he could say, “But then, I love Sicily, and I do not love Gaul.” Watching him with amusement, Julius said, “No politician, dear Marcus, can remain free from corruption, for it is the business of politics to deal with the people, and the people inevitably corrupt. Only in the realm of the abstract can man remain good—that is, if he wishes to survive.”

“I do not compromise on principle,” Marcus repeated with stubbornness.

“No? Then how do you explain Verres and Fonteius?”

“You would not understand my explanation.”

Julius laughed loudly and merrily. “The aphorism of the politician! Come, Marcus, you did not always lack humor. I pity you: an honorable man who in some manner became a politician. Why did you enter politics?”

“So that I could help delay the inevitable despotism that will surely engulf Rome, and to insure that some law survives.”

“You are a good man, Marcus. Your virtue is acclaimed in Rome. But still, I pity you. There will be a day when you will not compromise, and that day will see your end. I hope I do not witness it, for I should grieve mortally.”

Marcus blurted without his will and not knowing why he did so, “Do not grieve! You will die before me!”

He was horrified. But Julius’ face had changed superstitiously, and he was staring at Marcus. Julius whispered, “Why do you say that, you who are older?”

“Forgive me,” said Marcus, with overwhelming contrition. “I have been unpardonably rude.”

But Julius thoughtfully refilled his goblet and then drank of it slowly.

“I have had many dreams,” he said, “and I have seen myself dying, flowing with my own blood. But who should wish to assassinate me, and why? You have a reputation as an augur.”

“That is truly superstition. I am no augur, and it comes to me now that I am very stupid or I should not have insulted you. I can only say that I have been depressed lately.” Marcus put his hand on his old friend’s arm with a pleading gesture. Julius immediately covered that hand with his own fingers, and pressed it.

It was at that moment that Terentia appeared, apparently unaware that her husband had a guest, and beside her walked the little Tullia, the heart of hearts to her father. Terentia started prettily at the sight of Julius, and cast down her eyes modestly. Her lashes swept her cheek becomingly, but this did not detract from the hard resolution of her mouth and the stoniness of her chin, both of which had increased during the past years. Marcus surveyed her with irritation, but Julius rose and kissed her hand with a flourish.

“I did not know that you had returned, Julius,” said Terentia, in her deceptively mild voice and displaying a matronly confusion which further irritated Marcus. “Had I known my husband had a guest I should not have intruded. Pardon me; I must return to the house.” But she stood her ground and now her shining brown eyes scrutinized Julius not only with curiosity but with avidity and excitement.

“Do not deprive us of your lovely presence,” said Julius. “I was about to depart.”

Terentia gave Marcus an impatient glance, and when he did not speak she said, “But surely you will dine with—with my husband. This household will be honored.”

Julius looked grave, and looked at Marcus through the corner of his eye.

“I am dining with the noble Crassus, Terentia.”

Terentia, forgetting that she was a retiring “old” Roman, and despising Marcus for his obdurate silence, said immediately, “But surely, tomorrow! You have been absent so long.”

Marcus, the almost always courteous, obstinately kept silent, and Julius had trouble restraining his mirth. Julius said, “I thank you, Terentia. It is I who am honored, for who does not acclaim the great Cicero and consider himself flattered at an invitation from him?”

At that moment Terentia was not only impatient with her husband but actually hated him for his silence and his set mouth. Julius was powerful; Julius could advance the career of her husband. Yet, he sat there like a lump of lard and said nothing. It was an affront to herself. He always availed himself of an opportunity to humiliate her, she thought with burning resentment. Her breast heaved under the brown linen which covered her now very ample breast.

Marcus said at last, “I am entertaining lawyers tomorrow, and Julius finds law dull.”

But Julius cried with vivacity, “No! I love lawyers! I shall bask in their wisdom.” Then he had pity on his friend and turned his attention on young Tullia. He touched her cheek with a kind and thin brown hand. “What is this? Is it not a beauty we have among us? She will ravish Rome.”

The girl dimpled and gazed at Julius with her father’s eyes, blue one moment, gray the next, and then clear amber. She curtsied politely. She was only seven years old but she had her father’s intelligence and his perceptiveness. Her curling brown hair caught gold from the sun. As a well-bred child she did not speak. She stood patiently beside Terentia.

Terentia clasped her hands and fastened a limpid gaze on Julius.

“How we sorrowed with you, Julius, when Cornelia died!”

“He is about to console himself,” said Marcus.

Julius decided that this was a tactful moment to depart. He kissed Terentia’s hand again, embraced Marcus as he still sat, patted Tullia’s head, and left in a swirl of cloak and perfume. The sunset garden appeared to be less shining when he had gone. Terentia said to her daughter in a pent voice, “Leave us, Tullia.” The little girl kissed her father’s cheek then ran toward the house. Marcus stared at the ground. Terentia folded her muscular arms on her breast and contemplated him with red-faced bitterness.

“Your rudeness is unpardonable,” she said harshly.

“I have no excuse, Terentia. Julius annoys me.”

“I have noticed that many things annoy you lately. You rarely speak to your father. You rarely condescend to speak to me. Your conversation, which is very infrequent, appears to confine itself to Tullia and your mother. I have heard you in brutal controversy with eminent lawyers and judges, when they dined in this house. Once you were a paragon of discretion and restraint. Now your voice is abrupt, and you do not control yourself in the presence of those who could advance your career.”

“So you have said many times.”

“It is always the truth. Do you think I am content with your status as of this day? No! I expect more of you. I am of a great house, and you have a duty to your family. You should be Praetor of the city, at the very least. Crassus has not even named you Magnus.”

“The title lost its meaning when Pompey was named it.” Marcus was ashamed of himself for his irritability and his growing aversion for his wife. He loathed ambitious women, of whom Rome now had too many. His sadness and his nervousness overwhelmed him again. “Give me peace,” he said.

“I owe it to my ancestors to see that my husband does not diminish them.”

Marcus stood up suddenly. “To Hades with your ancestors!” he exclaimed. His pale face was crimson. His hands clenched at his sides. Terentia, all at once, embodied what he most despised, what he most dreaded.

Terentia stepped back, truly aghast and white. “Their manes will imprecate you, Marcus!”

“Let it be. More tangible creatures than your ancestors’ manes imprecate me. I have told you many times that I seek no man’s favor. I particularly do not seek Caesar’s favor, for he is a liar and a hypocrite, and he is exigent.”

“You have no care for your own future! Therefore, it is all left to me.”

“Refrain,” said Marcus. “I beg of you, refrain.”

“I shall not refrain!” cried Terentia with passion.

Marcus sat down heavily, the color leaving his face. Terentia breathed loudly. The song of the birds grew more insistent. The fragrant wind rose to sound and the leaves of the trees spoke in answer. Terentia considered her husband, and his mute face and dropped eyelids. She considered many things. Men were men. She said accusingly, “Have you a mistress?”

“Yes,” said Marcus. “Too many to count, too many to be named. I am bankrupt for paying for their favors.”

His satirical voice angered Terentia.

“Nevertheless, you love another woman,” she said, but not believing it.

Slowly, painfully, Marcus lifted his eyelids and looked at her fully.

“That is true,” he said, and stood up and went toward his house. Terentia gazed after him and suddenly put her clenched hand against her lips. Her eyes filled with tears.

Marcus was alone on the ancestral island in the autumn, as he had desired it. He ate, slept deeply, swam in the murmurous waters, walked in the forests, inspected his herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, talked desultorily with the slaves, read, contemplated, wrote on his next book of essays.

Nothing comforted him, nothing eased him, nothing gave him satisfaction.

I am growing old, he thought. There is a darkness in my mind which nothing lifts, nothing assuages. I want nothing, and surely that is the prelude to death. There is no promise in my life which I can discern. I am defeated; I am lost. The multitude of letters which came to him from Rome remained unopened, the seals intact. He looked in his mirror and did not see therein a man with vital and glistening eyes and browned cheeks and ruddy lips, the result of his sojourn on the island. He saw a wan and aging man. For Livia haunted the island as she had not haunted it for many years.

She was alive as no woman had ever been alive for him. He heard her eerie song in the trees, caught the flutter of her veil and palla between the dark trunks in the forest, heard her voice in the river. Sometimes he could not bear his sorrow, despite all the years in which Livia had rested in her grave. He pursued her bright shadow; sometimes the slaves heard his desperate calling. I am becoming mad, he would say to himself, as he ran like a youth through the dim woods looking for Livia. Sometimes he clasped a young tree in his arms, like Apollo, and pressed his face against the living bark and wept. He felt he was embracing Livia, who, like a nymph, had fled from him and had changed into a sapling. A mysterious agony was upon him, as if he had been newly bereaved.

It is for myself that I grieve, he thought once with sudden clarity. It is for my youth that I grieve, my hopes and my dreams, my phantom of lying promise, the wreathed years when I believed that life was of significance. How do other men bear this burden? How did my grandfather endure, and Scaevola, and Archias, and all the others of my beloved whose shades haunt the halls of my past? How could they have lived out the years of their lives? What sustained them? There is nothing but empty vessels on my table and the ewer of my wine is full of dried dregs. Why had they never said, “You are eager and thirsty, and you will be deprived and you will not want to drink again?”

“Livia!” he called to the woods. He stood on the bridge with Livia where he had stood so long ago, and he saw the white warm curve of her arm near his, and the blazing blue of her eyes as they looked into his own. He put his head down on the stony balustrade.

He thought of his father, whom he had abandoned in impatience. Had Tullius ever dreamed, been deprived, tilted a goblet which contained nothing? He stood in Tullius’ library and looked at the silent books, then opened them as if searching for a message. He found one, and it filled him with renewed despair, for Tullius had written in a margin: “To dream is to live. To awaken is to die.”

His physician in Arpinum said to him, “When men reach your age, and are neither young nor old, they question themselves and their lives. They suffer. But it will pass. I am seventy years old, and I tell you that this will pass.”

Marcus did not believe him. “I want nothing,” he said. The physician smiled. “There is God,” said the physician. “There is eternity.”

“To what, then, can a man be reduced!” exclaimed Marcus. “If there is nothing but those, how passionless is life!” The physician smiled again.

Finally he forced himself to read the many letters which had come to him.

Terentia had written him a bitter letter. Lucius Sergius Catilina had been appointed Praetor of Rome by Crassus. “This was withheld from you, my dear husband,” she wrote. “Now the murderer of my sister, her seducer, occupies a great position. Had you been present this should never have come to pass.”

A mighty wave of rage and passion and hate rolled over Marcus, and he forgot that he would never feel emotion again. He forgot that his life had ended, and had no meaning any longer. He forgot that existence had been reduced to sterility, and that there was nothing for which a man could in all honesty fight, and give his life.

He left the next morning for Rome. It seemed to him that Livia rode beside him and spurred him on, her veil blowing in his face.