Dictator

He enfolded her in his arms, to the crowd’s delight, and after a long embrace took a step back to examine her. ‘My dearest child, you cannot imagine how much I have yearned for this moment.’ Still holding her hands, he switched his gaze to the faces behind her and scanned them eagerly. ‘Is you mother here, and Marcus?’

‘No, Papa, they’re in Rome.’

This was hardly surprising – in those days it was an arduous journey, especially for a woman, of two or three weeks from Rome to Brundisium, with a serious risk of robbery in the remoter stretches; if anything, the surprise was that Tullia had come, and come alone at that. But Cicero’s disappointment was obvious although he tried to hide it.

‘Well, it’s no matter – no matter at all. I have you, and that’s the main thing.’

‘And I have you – and on my birthday.’

‘It’s your birthday?’ He gave me a reproachful look. ‘I almost forgot. Of course it is. We shall celebrate tonight!’ And he took her by the arm and led her away from the harbour.

Because we did not yet know for certain that his exile had been repealed, it was decided that we should not set off for Rome until we had official confirmation, and once again Laenius Flaccus volunteered to put us up at his estate outside Brundisium. Armed men were stationed around the perimeter for Cicero’s protection, and he spent much of the next few days with Tullia, strolling through the gardens and along the beach, learning at first hand how difficult her life had been during his exile – how, for example, her husband, Frugi, had been set upon by Clodius’s henchmen when he was trying to speak on Cicero’s behalf, stripped naked and pelted with filth and driven from the Forum, and how his heart had ceased to beat properly afterwards until, a few months later, he died in her arms; how, because she was childless, she had been left with nothing except a few pieces of jewellery and her returned dowry, which she had given to Terentia to help pay off the family’s debts; how Terentia had been obliged to sell a large part of her own property, and had even steeled herself to plead with Clodius’s sister to intercede with her brother to grant her and her children some mercy, and how Clodia had mocked her and boasted that Cicero had tried to have an affair with her; how families they had always thought of as friends had closed their doors on them in fear; and so on and so forth.

Cicero told me all this sadly one night after Tullia had gone to bed. ‘Little wonder Terentia isn’t here. It seems she avoids going out in public as much as she can and prefers to stay cooped up in my brother’s house. As for Tullia, we need to find her a new husband as soon as possible, while she’s still young enough to give a man some children safely.’ He rubbed his temples, as he always did at times of stress. ‘I’d thought that coming back to Italy would mark the end of my troubles. Now I see it is merely the beginning.’

It was on our sixth day as Flaccus’s guests that a messenger arrived from Quintus with the news that despite a last-minute demonstration by Clodius and his mob, the centuries had voted unanimously to restore to Cicero his full rights of citizenship, and that he was accordingly a free man once more. Oddly, the news did not seem to give him much joy, and when I remarked on his indifference he replied: ‘Why should I rejoice? I have merely had returned to me something that should never have been taken away in the first place. Otherwise, I am weaker than I was before.’

We began our journey to Rome the next day. By then the news of his rehabilitation had spread among the people of Brundisium, and a crowd of several hundred had gathered outside the gates of the villa to see him off. He got down from the carriage he was sharing with Tullia, greeted each well-wisher with a handshake, made a short speech, and then we resumed our journey. But we had not gone more than five miles when we encountered another large group at the next settlement, also clamouring for the opportunity to shake his hand. Once again he obliged. And so it went on throughout that day, and the days that followed, always the same, except that the crowds grew steadily larger as word preceded us that Cicero would be passing through. Soon people were coming from miles around, even walking down from the mountains to stand by the roadside. By the time we reached Beneventum, the numbers were in their thousands; in Capua, the streets were entirely blocked.

To begin with, Cicero was touched by these unfeigned demonstrations of affection, then delighted, then amazed, and finally thoughtful. Was there some means, he wondered, of turning this astonishing popularity among the ordinary citizens of Italy into political influence in Rome? But popularity and power, as he well knew, are separate entities. Often the most powerful men in a state can pass down a street unrecognised, while the most famous bask in feted impotence.