CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Later Atticus was to write young Marcus Tullius Cicero, and with sadness: “Your father was Rome, and her history was his history. All those whom men account great touched his life, and he touched theirs. They brought evil and blood and despair on their country; he brought valor and virtue. They succeeded. He did not succeed. But in the final accounting between man and God who knows but what a man’s defeat is victory before the Almighty?”

If he wished to survive, physically, Cicero knew that he must have some abeyance in his life, some self-wrought peace. He immured himself in his library; he wrote some of his noblest books which were to survive the ages and warn men yet unborn with fear for their own countries. He had long conversations with his son, young Marcus, and did not know, mercifully, that the boy listened to him with a sober face but with inner mockery. He visited his daughter and his beloved island. He resolutely shut from his awareness the events transpiring in Rome. He could do nothing; to fight any longer would be to impale himself on a sword.

“You are a pillar of iron,” Noë wrote him. “And God has indicated that a just man is such, among nations. Long after the polished marble has crumbled the iron of justice remains and upholds the roof over man. Without such as you, dear Marcus, throughout all history, nations would die and man would be no more.”

“They die, and some day man will be no more,” Cicero wrote to his friend in a period of despondency. “Have you not told me of the prophecies?* The awful day of the wrath of God upon man, and whirlwinds and fire and universal destruction of the ‘fenced cities’ and ‘the high bulwarks,’ and the obscurity of the sun, and the falling of the mountains and the burning of the seas—have you not told me of this? Man offends God by his very existence, for his heart is evil and his ways are the ways of death.”

His law business unaccountably—at least to himself—began to flourish. The number of his clients increased enormously from week to week, and as the majority were men of substance who could make excellent gifts Cicero found his coffers filling satisfactorily again. Civil law did not entangle him with politicians and for the time being, at least, he shunned politicians who sickened him with their wily cunning and their expediency.

Then one day to his astonishment he was appointed to a vacancy on the Board of Augurs in Rome, a life office not only of dignity but of large remuneration. Atticus rejoiced for him, but Cicero was skeptical though pleased. The Board was composed of agnostics who disputed with the College of Pontices (Pontiffs) on obscure religious doctrines. Then a disagreeable thought of much involvement came to Cicero: The College of Pontices had always shown him a deep friendliness, as he was a devoutly religious man. The Board of Augurs contended often with them. Who was it who wished to reconcile both the Augurs and the Pontiffs, and in his person? Letter to Caesar:

“It may be news to you, dear friend, and again it may not, to hear that I have been appointed to the Board of Augurs. Do I discern your fine and subtle hand in this? You will not, certainly, tell me the truth. I am conjecturing just how you believe I can serve you in my present capacity.”

Caesar’s reply was full of affection and amazement and congratulation. “Why do you not accept the manifest truth, dear Marcus, that the gods moved to have you appointed to the Board of Augurs to repay you for your devotion to them, and to indicate their approval of your virtue and honor?”

Aha, thought Cicero, on reading this letter. A dim lamp is beginning to brighten my darkness.

He took his duties very seriously, though he privately considered much of the augurs’ prophecies and divinations to be absurd. But he was enough of a mystic to believe that God often indicated the future to a few adoring souls. Terentia was delighted with his appurtenances: The shepherd’s staff free from all knots, and a toga of bright scarlet stripes with a purple border. She was proud of the honor paid to her husband, which again she ascribed to her own peculiar rapport with the gods and their admiration of her. Then Caesar’s letters from Gaul to Cicero soon made it evident that he wished his favorite augur to divine for him, and Cicero’s quieted alarm suddenly sharpened again. Julius had his plans which he was not confiding to anyone. He trusted Cicero not to lie.

It was the custom of an augur to divine from signs in the sky—the domain of Jupiter, who was the patron of Julius—and from the flight of birds. By night the augur could designate with his staff the space to be allotted to him for his studies, usually a silent hill and in the presence of a magistrate who would then report to the Pontiffs. The augur prayed, sacrificed. Under the shelter of a tent he then observed the heavens and asked for a sign, and waited. He always gazed south, with the lucky quarter, the east, on his left. After the sign was given him he made his report to the magistrate, and the sign, thereafter, governed the affairs of Rome to a great extent. It had often come to Cicero that a corrupted augur could proclaim in favor of any powerful politician. Fortunately for Rome the augurs had, in most cases, been singularly free from corruption, for their office was never threatened by dismissal and their stipend was very high. Thus they owed nothing to anyone and could be truthful. In theory, it was wise. But men can be corrupted by other things besides money.

The birds of good fortune were the eagle and the vulture, the alites; the malign were the raven, the crow and the owl. Their flight, their manner of taking food, the sounds they made, were interpreted strictly by the rules of the Board of Augurs. There were other means of divination, such as the behavior of animals in the field, the appearance of rats in a temple, animals slain for sacrifice. Powerful men frequently requested the augurs to make comment on a proposed adventure they had in mind, the time for battle, the time to run for election, sittings of the Senate, and thousands of other actions. To be sure that the augurs did not lean consciously for or against a certain proposal the man seeking the offices of the augurs often merely indicated “my special intentions.” If the augur reported lightning in the sky the client did not act the next day but awaited a more auspicious sign.

Caesar wrote to Cicero: “I have a special intention for the future, a special prayer. Do then, dear friend and comrade, consult the sky for me on a certain night,” which he designated. Cicero should have preferred to refuse, but it was his duty. Moreover, he confessed he was curious. He took his staff, and a magistrate, outside the city walls and swung the staff about him in a circle, feeling a trifle foolish. Oddly enough, the staff suddenly appeared to manifest a life of its own; it tugged in his hand; it pulled him forward. It plunged into the earth, warm and grassy with summer, like a sharp pike. Cicero’s heart began to beat with uncomfortable dread. “Here shall I set up my tent for tonight,” he told the magistrate.

Awaiting midnight, and his car which would take him and the magistrate to the hill, Cicero pondered with growing and mysterious uneasiness. His oath required him to report truthfully. Let there be no sign of consequence, or only vague ones subject to a thousand divinations, he implored the starry and moonless heavens as he reached the spot at midnight with the magistrate.

He sat within the shelter of the tent. The night was windless; in the distance tall and climbing Rome glittered redly and whitely with torches and moving lanterns and lamps. The everlasting dull roar of the city reached this spot with a murmurous sound. Black cypresses surrounded the tent, which faced an open spot to the south, with the east on the left. The air was pervaded with the scent of hot grass now beginning to be bedewed; though no wind stirred a fragrance came to Cicero from ripening fruits and grapes and grains in the surrounding fields. The air was so very still, and so very warm. Somewhere restless cattle lowed in their paddocks. A dog howled and then was abruptly still. A vehicle, in haste, rumbled along a stony road toward the gates of the city. There was the hint of fresh water as the night lengthened.

Above, the purple roof of heaven appeared unusually crowded with flashing stars tonight, as if they were filled with unease. It is ridiculous for me to feel there is anything particularly portentous in the sky at this hour, Cicero said to himself. It is only the effect of a clear atmosphere outside the city that the stars seem so unquiet and so imminent. It is really peaceful; why, then, do I feel so without peace? Do not men project on disinterested nature the quality of their own disquiet and forebodings or maladies of the body or the mind? The magistrate sat respectfully and in silence at his side, his stylus ready, his tablet prepared for swift notes.

This was Cicero’s first time to divine, though he had assisted the other augurs in divinations. He believed that God often gave signs, but he also believed that God was displeased when asked for them. For some reason Cicero began to think of Noë’s account of Elias and the fiery chariot and the fiery horses which had borne the prophet to heaven in the thunder of the whirlwind. Possibly to prevent him from being murdered by man, thought Cicero cynically. Then he started, as he sat at the threshold of his tent, and his flesh turned icy.

For suddenly, imposed on the furious white lightning of the stars, there had appeared a great and blazing chariot complete with four rushing and blazing horses! Cicero’s breath halted. About the chariot he had the impression of multitudes and the shouting of tens of thousands of men. In that chariot—and he could see all clearly—stood Julius Caesar crowned with laurel, as splendid as a god, holding glittering reins, and laughing the terrible and exultant laughter of a divinity. His robes were purple and gold. He held his right hand uplifted, and in it was a sword, twisted and turning like fire, which reached to the zenith. On his left shoulder stood a mighty eagle with eyes like jewels. Behind him banners appeared, blood-red, with a wreath of laurel circled on them. All was movement; the horses raced, their legs bent under them; the sparkling wheels of the chariot churned.

Then on his head shone and coruscated a crown. Even while the trembling Cicero observed that crown it faded, reappeared, faded once more. The black eagle lifted its wings and uttered a frightful cry, but did not depart from Caesar’s shoulder. Cicero did not know when the apparition of a woman arrived, but suddenly she was there at the front of Caesar’s chariot, hailing him, a beautiful woman hardly more than a girl, with flowing black hair crowned with golden serpents and with a hawk on her shoulder. Then Caesar bent down, laughing, and lifted the girl beside him in the chariot and they embraced. His crown appeared, more brilliant than before. Cicero had the impression, then, of thunder from earth and heaven.

“What do you see, lord?” asked the magistrate, aware of Cicero’s pale and staring face. But Cicero did not answer for he did not hear.

The vision remained, glowing blindingly, infused with incredible movement yet not moving. Then from the right appeared a flock of ravens and owls and crows, swarming multitudes of them. Each carried a dagger in his mouth. They circled the head of Caesar and the woman. The woman in the chariot disappeared. An enormous soldier appeared before the galloping horses, his sword drawn and pointed at Caesar. Caesar lifted his flaming sword and struck down the soldier and there was a tremendous clash as of fallen armor. The soldier’s place was taken by a tall and empty throne, and Caesar seized the reins of his chariot and raced toward it, shouting and triumphant.

The voices of the seen yet unseen multitudes changed from hailing to challenge and fury. Caesar disregarded them; he was bent almost double in his efforts to reach the prize, which appeared to retreat before him. His crown shot tongues of fire into the air.

Then the birds of ill omen circled closer. They fell upon Caesar, with the daggers in their mouths, and they slashed him with many wounds. He threw up his arms to ward them off; they uttered piercing cries of vengeance. He seized the crown as if in despair and placation, and hurled it from him. But the birds were not appeased. They struck him again and again, and then he collapsed within the chariot.

The vision was gone, and now only the stars remained, breathless with light as if spent. “What do you see, lord?” the magistrate questioned again. He could feel the shudders of the augur and, in the starlight, the beads of sweat on his forehead. But Cicero did not answer. A fearful vision was rising before his eyes. The gates of Rome were open, and it was as if brilliant sunlight flooded the city. Triumphal arches appeared, showering down torrents of flowers. A man was riding through them, standing in his chariot, a fair young man whose face was veiled with haze, a young man with a huge crown. He carried a scepter. Before his feet ran a river of blood, and thousands of corpses lay in his path. From many voices, coming from the four corners of the heavens, came a direful dirge: “Woe, woe to Rome!”

Then the vision went up in an enormous sheet of fire in which the city was engulfed. Cries of terror thronged the air, cries of agony and despair. The city crumbled, became embers, turned black. Then it was rebuilt in a twinkling, but it was not the city Cicero knew. The gates flew open; countless hordes of bearded men rushed into the city with swords and pikes and lances and spears, striking death on every side. Their voices were hoarse thunder, like beasts. The city collapsed slowly, its white walls turning gray and dun and red.

Swirling mist crept over the city, darkening, twisting, and stone fell from stone, and pillar crashed against pillar, and the pavements heaved and were lost in grass and the wild scarlet poppy. A deep silence swallowed all sound except for a few fitful footsteps of unseen runners. Then in the semidarkness a mighty dome appeared like a sun, a dome of such dimension as to stagger the eye that tried to encompass it. From its summit rose a golden fire that gathered itself together and formed a cross that pierced heavens suddenly as blue and mild as an infant’s eye. From the doors of the walls which opened below the dome many men came in dignity and clothed in white, one by one, each following the other, each holding up a staff such as an augur’s, and each turning his head earnestly as if confronting hidden multitudes. From their mouths, as each spoke, issued the words, “Peace. Peace on earth to men of good will.”

The last man to emerge lifted his voice even higher than the others and repeated the same words. But a dark and crimson confusion began to form before him; he faced it resolutely. Thunder roared from a thousand different quarters. The heavens blackened, were tongued with fire and flame and rolling balls like individual suns, which, turning and churning and leaping and falling, devoured all they touched. Their horrible and deadly light flowed over the man in his snowy robes. He confronted them without fear. But more and more appeared, and now the whole earth was scarlet and burning and all became chaos. “Lord, have mercy on us!” cried the man in white. There was the sound of mountains falling, and whirlwinds.

“Lord!” cried the magistrate on the dark and peaceful grass of midnight. But Cicero had fainted. He lay like the dead on the threshold of his tent.

He was sick for many days. The other augurs came to see him, for they guessed he had witnessed strange and awful visions. But to all of them he said, “Woe, woe to Rome.” And then, “Woe to all the world!”

Then, at last, he wrote to Julius Caesar: “I have seen auguries which defy the power of any man to describe, even I who am known to have a way with words. One concerns you, Julius. While you still have time, refrain from your dream of splendor and conquest and triumph. You will surely die—as I have warned you before.”

When Julius received this letter he was angered. Then he laughed to himself and thought, “He has indeed seen my splendor. And my triumph and conquest. So be it. After that, what does it matter?”

Only to Atticus did Cicero try to convey his visions, and Atticus was confounded. Atticus wrote to his author: “What all this portends I do not even dare to question. I do not understand the dome, of incredible dimensions, nor the sign on it, the infamous sign, the cross of execution. There is no such building in Rome—therefore it is of the future. Who are the men in dignified white, who exhort ‘Peace on earth to men of good will!’ That astounds me, for it has no meaning to my mind. What you saw of the last was the destruction of the world. Let us pray that we do not see the end as you saw it.”*

*Joel, Chapters 1 and 2.

*Letter to Cicero, 52 B.C.