Dictator

His remarks elicited warm applause and entirely set the course of the debate – so much so that Isauricus, with icy formality and a glare at Cicero, later withdrew his proposal and it was never voted upon.

I asked Cicero if he intended to write to Octavian to explain his stand. He shook his head. ‘My reasons are in my speech and he will have it in his hands soon enough – my enemies will see to that.’

In the days that followed he was as busy as he had ever been – writing to Brutus and Cassius to urge them to come to the aid of the tottering republic (the commonwealth is in the gravest peril because of the criminal folly of M. Lepidus), overseeing the tax inspectors as they set about raising revenue, touring the blacksmiths’ yards to cajole them into making more weapons, inspecting the newly raised legion with Cornutus, who had been appointed military defender of Rome. But he knew the cause was hopeless, especially when he saw Fulvia being carried openly in a litter across the Forum, accompanied by a large entourage.

‘I thought we were rid of that shrew, at least,’ he complained over dinner, ‘yet here she is, still in Rome and flaunting herself around, even though her husband has at last been declared a public enemy. Is it in any wonder we’re in such desperate straits? How is it possible, when all her property is supposed to have been seized?’

There was a pause and then Atticus said quietly, ‘I lent her some money.’

‘You?’ Cicero leaned across the table and peered at him as if he were some mysterious stranger. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

‘I felt sorry for her.’

‘No you didn’t. You wanted to put Antony under an obligation to you. It’s insurance. You think we’re going to lose.’

Atticus did not deny it, and Cicero left the table.

At the end of that wretched month, ‘July’, reports reached the Senate that Octavian’s army had struck camp in Nearer Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and was marching on Rome. Even though he had been half expecting it, the news still struck Cicero as a tremendous blow. He had given his word to the Roman people that if ‘the heaven-sent boy’ was given imperium, he would be a model citizen. Every imaginable evil chance has dogged us in this war, he lamented to Brutus. As I write, I am in great distress, because it hardly looks as though I can make good my promises in respect to the young man, boy almost, for whom I went bail to the republic. It was then he asked me if I thought he was honour-bound to kill himself, and for the first time I saw that he was not saying it for effect. I replied that I did not think it had come to that yet.

‘Perhaps not, but I must be ready. I don’t want these veterans of Caesar’s torturing me to death as they did Trebonius. The question is how to do it. I’m not sure I could face a blade – do you think posterity will reckon the less of me if I choose Socrates’s method and take hemlock instead?’

‘I am sure not.’

He asked me to acquire some of the poison on his behalf and I went to see his doctor that same day, who gave me a small jar. He did not ask why I wanted it; I suppose he knew. Despite the wax seal, I could smell its rank odour, like mouse droppings. ‘It’s made from the seeds,’ he explained, ‘the most poisonous part of the plant, which I have crushed into a powder. The smallest dose, no more than a pinch, swallowed with water, should do the trick.’

‘How long does it take to work?’

‘Three hours or thereabouts.’

‘Is it painful?’

‘It induces slow suffocation – what do you think?’

I put the jar into a box in my room, and placed the box inside a locked chest, as if by hiding it away, death itself could be postponed.

The next day, gangs of Octavian’s legionaries began to appear in the Forum. He had sent four hundred on ahead of his main army, with the aim of intimidating the Senate into granting him the consulship. Whenever they saw a senator, they surrounded him and jostled him and showed him their swords, although they never actually drew their weapons. Cornutus, as an old soldier, refused to be threatened. Determined to visit Cicero on the Palatine, the urban praetor pushed and shoved them back until they let him through. But he advised Cicero that on no account should he venture out himself unless he had a strong escort: ‘They hold you as much responsible for Caesar’s death as they do Decimus or Brutus.’

‘If only I had been responsible! Then we would have taken care of Antony at the same time and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.’