Dictator

I did as he requested and the courier returned with a scrawled reply that Cicero ought to go and talk to Octavian: ‘You will find him, I am sure, as I did, disposed to mercy.’

Wearily Cicero got to his feet. The big house, usually thronged with visitors, was empty. It felt as if no one had lived in it for a long time. In the late summer afternoon sun the silent public rooms glowed as if made of gold and amber.

We went together, in a pair of litters accompanied by a small escort, to the house of Philippus. Sentries guarded the street and the front door but they must have been given orders to let Cicero through, for they parted at once. As we crossed the threshold, Isauricus was just leaving. I had expected him, as Octavian’s future father-in-law, to give Cicero a smile of condescension or of triumph; instead he scowled at him and hurried past us.

Through the heavy open door we could see Octavian standing in a corner of the tablinum dictating a letter to a secretary. He beckoned to us to enter. He seemed in no hurry to finish. He was wearing a simple military tunic. His body armour, helmet and sword lay scattered on a couch where he had flung them. He looked like a young recruit. Finally he ended his dictation and sent the secretary away.

He scrutinised Cicero in an amused way that reminded me of his adopted father. ‘You are the last of my friends to greet me.’

‘Well, I imagined you would be busy.’

‘Ah, is that it?’ Octavian laughed, revealing those terrible teeth of his. ‘I was presuming that you disapproved of my actions.’

Cicero shrugged. ‘The world is as it is. I have given up the habit of approving and disapproving. What’s the point? Men do as they please, whatever I think.’

‘So what is it you want to do? Do you want to be consul?’

For the merest fraction of a moment Cicero’s face seemed to flood with pleasure and relief, but then he understood that Octavian was joking and immediately the light went out of it again. He grunted, ‘Now you’re toying with me.’

‘I am. Forgive me. My colleague as consul will be Quintus Pedius, an obscure relative of mine of whom you will never have heard, which is the whole point of him.’

‘So not Isauricus?’

‘No. There seems to have been some misunderstanding there. I shan’t be marrying his daughter either. I shall spend some time here settling matters and then I must go and confront Antony and Lepidus. You can leave Rome too if you like.’

‘I can?’

‘Yes, you can leave Rome. You can write philosophy. You can go anywhere you please in Italy. However, you cannot return to Rome in my absence, nor can you attend the Senate. You cannot write your memoirs or anything political. You cannot leave the country and go to Brutus or Cassius. Is that acceptable? Will you give me your word? I can assure you my men would not be so generous.’

Cicero bowed his head. ‘It is generous. It is acceptable. I give you my word. Thank you.’

‘In return I will guarantee your safety, in recognition of our past friendship.’ He picked up a letter to signal that the audience was at an end. ‘One last thing,’ he said as Cicero turned to leave. ‘It makes no difference, but I would like to know: was it a joke, or would you really have erased me?’

‘I believe I would have done exactly the same as you are doing now,’ replied Cicero.

XIX

AFTER THAT, HE seemed to become an old man very suddenly. He retired to Tusculum the next day and immediately started complaining about his eyesight. He refused to write or even read: he said it gave him a headache. He took no solace from his garden. He visited no one and no one visited him, apart from his brother. They would sit together for hours on a bench in the Lyceum, mostly in silence. The only subject Quintus could tempt him to discuss was the distant past – their shared memories of childhood and of growing up in Arpinum – and for the first time I heard Cicero talk at length about his father and mother. It was unnerving to see him, of all men, so disconnected from the world. Throughout his life he had demanded to know the latest news from Rome. Now, when I told him what I had heard was happening – that Octavius had set up a special court to try the assassins of Caesar, or even that he had left the city at the head of an army of eleven legions to fight Antony – he made no comment, save that he preferred not even to think about it. A few more weeks of this, I thought to myself, and he will die.

People often ask me why he did not try to run away. After all, Octavian did not yet have any firm control of the country. The weather was still clement. The ports were not watched. Cicero could have slipped out of Italy to join his son in Macedonia: I am sure Brutus would have been only too pleased to offer him sanctuary. But the truth was he lacked the will to do anything so decisive. ‘I am finished with running,’ he sighed to me. He couldn’t even summon the energy to go down to the Bay of Naples. Besides, Octavian had guaranteed his safety.