Dictator

Plancius had arranged an escort to conduct me back over the mountains to Dyrrachium, and there I took ship and sailed to Italy – not straight across to Brundisium this time, but north-west, to Ancona. It was a much longer voyage than our original crossing and took almost a week. But it was still quicker than going overland, with the added advantage that I would not encounter any of Clodius’s agents. I had never before travelled such a long distance on my own, let alone by ship. My terror of the sea was not the same as Cicero’s – of shipwreck and of drowning. It was rather of the vast emptiness of the horizon during the day and the glittering, indifferent hugeness of the universe at night. I was at this time forty-six, and conscious of the void into which we all are voyaging; I thought of death often while sitting out on deck. I had witnessed so much; ageing in body though I was, in spirit I was even older. Little did I realise that actually I had lived less than half my life, and was destined to see things that would make all the wonders and dramas that had gone before seem quite pallid and insignificant.

The weather was favourable, and we landed at Ancona without incident. From there I took the road north, crossing the Rubicon two days later and formally entering the province of Nearer Gaul. This was territory familiar to me: I had toured it with Cicero six years earlier, when he was seeking election as consul and canvassing the towns along the Via Aemilia. The vineyards beside the road had all been harvested weeks before; now the vines were being cut back for winter, so that as far as one could see, columns of white smoke from the burning vegetation were rising over the flat terrain, as if some retreating army had scorched the earth behind it.

In the little town of Claterna, where I stayed the night, I learned that the governor had returned from beyond the Alps and had set up his winter headquarters in Placentia, but that with typical restless energy he was already touring the countryside holding assizes: he was due in the neighbouring town of Mutina the next day. I left early, reached it at noon, passed through the heavily fortified walls, and made for the basilica on the forum. The only clue to Caesar’s presence was a troop of legionaries at the entrance. They made no attempt to ask my business, and I went straight inside. A cold grey light from the clerestory windows fell upon a hushed queue of citizens waiting to present their petitions. At the far end – too far away for me to make out his face – seated between pillars, dispensing judgement from his magistrate’s chair, in a toga so white it stood out brightly amid the locals’ drab winter plumage, was Caesar.

Uncertain how to approach him, I found myself joining the line of petitioners. Caesar was issuing his rulings at such a rate that we shuffled forwards almost continuously, and as I drew closer I saw that he was doing several things at once – listening to each supplicant, reading documents as they were handed to him by a secretary, and conferring with an army officer who had taken off his helmet and was bending down to whisper in his ear. I took out Cicero’s letter so that I would have it ready. But then it struck me that this was not perhaps the proper place to hand over the appeal: that it was unconducive somehow to the dignity of a former consul for his request to be considered alongside the domestic complaints of all these farmers and tradespeople, worthy folk though they no doubt were. The officer finished his report, straightened, and was just walking past me towards the door, fastening his helmet, when his eyes met mine and he stopped in surprise. ‘Tiro?’

I glimpsed his father in him before I could put a name to the young man himself. It was M. Crassus’s son, Publius, now a cavalry commander on Caesar’s staff. Unlike his father he was a cultured, gracious, noble man, and an admirer of Cicero, whose company he used to seek out. He greeted me with great affability – ‘What brings you to Mutina?’ – and when I told him, he volunteered at once to arrange a private interview with Caesar and insisted I accompany him to the villa where the governor and his entourage were staying.

‘I’m doubly glad to see you,’ he said as we walked, ‘for I’ve often thought of Cicero, and the injustice done to him. I’ve talked to my father about it and persuaded him not to oppose his recall. And Pompey, as you know, supports it too – only last week he sent Sestius, one of the tribunes-elect, up here to plead his cause with Caesar.’

I could not help observing, ‘It seems that everything these days depends upon Caesar.’