Dictator

Cicero shook his emphatically. ‘No, no. They’re the traitors, not I. Damn them, I’ll not run away. Find Appuleius,’ he ordered the urban praetor briskly, as if he were his head steward. ‘Tell him to call a public assembly and then to come and fetch me. I’ll speak to the people. I need to steady their nerves. They must be reminded that there’s always bad news in war. And you,’ he said to the messenger, ‘had better not breathe a word of this to another soul, do you understand, or I’ll have you put in chains.’

I never admired Cicero more than I did that day, when he stared ruin in the face. He went into his study to compose an oration, while I, from the terrace, watched the Forum begin to fill with citizens. Panic has its own pattern. I had learned to recognise it over the years. Men run from one speaker to another. Groups form and dissolve. Sometimes the public space clears entirely. It is like a cloud of dust drifting and whirling before the onset of a storm.

Appuleius came toiling up the hill as requested and I took him in to see Cicero. He reported that the current rumour going round was that Cicero was to be presented with the fasces of a dictator. It was a trick, of course – a provocation that would be the pretext for his murder. The Antonians would then ape the tactics of Brutus and Cassius and seize the Capitol and try to hold it until Antony arrived in the city to relieve them.

Cicero asked Appuleius, ‘Will you be able to guarantee my security if I come down to address the people?’

‘I can’t give an absolute guarantee, but we can try.’

‘Send as big an escort as you can. Allow me one hour to get myself ready.’

The tribune went away, and to my astonishment Cicero then announced that he would have a bath and be shaved, and change into a fresh set of clothes. ‘Make sure you write all this down,’ he said to me. ‘It will make a good end for your book.’

He went off with his body slaves, and by the time he came back an hour later, Appuleius had assembled a strong force out in the street, consisting mostly of gladiators along with his fellow tribunes and their attendants. Cicero braced his shoulders, the door was opened, and he was just about to cross the threshold when the lictors of the urban praetor came hurrying up the road, clearing a path for Cornutus. He was holding a dispatch. His face was wet with tears. Too out of breath and emotional to speak, he thrust the dispatch into Cicero’s hands.

From Hirtius to Cornutus. Before Mutina.

I send you this in haste. Thanks be to the gods, we have this day retrieved an earlier disaster and won a great victory over the enemy. What was lost at noon has been recouped at sunset. I led out twenty cohorts of the Fourth Legion to relieve Pansa and fell upon Antony’s men when they were celebrating prematurely. We have captured two eagles and sixty standards. Antony and the remnants of his army have retreated to his camp, where they are trapped. Now it is his turn to taste what it is like to be besieged. He has lost the greater part of his veteran troops; he has only cavalry. His position is hopeless. Mutina is saved. Pansa is wounded but should recover. Long live the Senate and people of Rome. Tell Cicero.

XVIII

WHAT FOLLOWED WAS the greatest day of Cicero’s life – more hard-won than his victory over Verres, more exhilarating than his election to the consulship, more joyful than his defeat of Catilina, more historic than his return from exile. All those triumphs dwindled to nothing in comparison to the salvation of the republic.

That day I reaped the richest of rewards for my many days of labour and sleepless nights, wrote Cicero to Brutus. The whole population of Rome thronged to my house and escorted me up to the Capitol, then set me on the Speakers’ Platform amid tumultuous applause.