Dictator

As arranged, I arrived at the villa in Formiae on the afternoon of my fiftieth birthday, the twenty-eighth day of April. It was cold and blustery, not at all propitious, with rain gusting off the sea. I still felt frail. The effort of hurrying into the house so as not to be soaked left me dizzy. The place appeared deserted and I wondered if I had misunderstood my instructions. I went from room to room, calling out, until I heard a young boy’s stifled laughter coming from the triclinium. I pulled back the curtain and discovered the whole dining room crammed full of people trying to stay silent: Cicero, Terentia, Tullia, Marcus, young Quintus Cicero, all the household staff, and (even more bizarrely) the praetor Caius Marcellus with his lictors – that same noble Marcellus whose wife Caesar had tried to bestow on Pompey, and who had a villa nearby. At the sight of my astonished face they all started laughing, then Cicero took me by the hand and led me into the centre of the room while the others made space for us. I felt my knees weaken.

Marcellus said, ‘Who wishes this day to free this slave?’

Cicero replied, ‘I do.’

‘You are the legal owner?’

‘I am.’

‘Upon what grounds is he to be freed?’

‘He has shown great loyalty and given exemplary service to our family ever since he was born into the condition of slavery, and to me in particular, and also to the Roman state. His character is sound and he is worthy of his freedom.’

Marcellus nodded. ‘You may proceed.’

The lictor briefly touched his rod of office to my head. Cicero stepped in front of me, grasped my shoulders and recited the simple legal formula: ‘This man is to be free.’ He had tears in his eyes; so had I. Gently he turned me round until I had my back to him, and then he let me go, as a father might release a child to take its first steps.

It is difficult for me to describe the joy of becoming free. Quintus expressed it best when he wrote to me from Gaul: I could not be more delighted, my dear Tiro, believe me. Before you were our slave but now you are our friend. Outwardly, nothing much changed. I continued to live under Cicero’s roof and to perform the same duties. But in my heart I was a different man. I exchanged my tunic for a toga – a cumbersome garment that I wore without ease or comfort, but with intense pride. And for the first time I began to make plans of my own. I started to compile a comprehensive dictionary of all the symbols and abbreviations used in my shorthand system, together with instructions on how to use it. I drew up a scheme for a book on Latin grammar. I also went back through my boxes of notes whenever I had a spare hour and copied down particularly amusing or clever quotations thrown out by Cicero over the years. He greatly approved of the idea of a book of his wit and wisdom. Often after a particularly fine remark he would stop and say, ‘Note that down, Tiro – that’s one for your compendium.’ Gradually it became understood between us that if I outlived him, I would write his biography.

I asked him once why he had waited so long to set me free, and why he had decided to do it at that moment. He answered, ‘Well, you know I can be a selfish man, and I rely on you entirely. I thought to myself, “If I free him, what’s to stop him going off and transferring his allegiance to Caesar or Crassus or someone? They’d certainly pay him plenty for all he knows about me.” Then when you fell ill in Arpinum I realised how unjust it would be if you died in servitude, and so I made my pledge to you, even though you were too feverish to understand it. If ever there was a man who deserved the nobility of freedom, it is you, dear Tiro. Besides,’ he added with a wink, ‘nowadays I have no secrets worth selling.’

Love him though I did, I nevertheless wanted to end my days under my own roof. I had some savings and now was paid a salary; I dreamed of buying a smallholding near Cumae where I could keep a few goats and chickens and grow my own vines and olives. But I feared loneliness. I suppose I could have gone down to the slave market and bought myself a companion, but the idea repulsed me. I knew with whom I wanted to share this dream of a future life: Agathe, the Greek slave girl whom I had met in the household of Lucullus and whose freedom I had asked Atticus to purchase on my behalf before I went into exile with Cicero. Atticus confirmed he had done as I asked and that she had been manumitted. But although I made enquiries as to what had happened to her, and always kept an eye out whenever I walked through Rome, she had vanished into the teeming multitudes of Italy.

I did not have long to enjoy my freedom in tranquillity. My modest plans, like everyone else’s, were about to be mocked by the immensity of events. As Plautus has it:

Whatever the mind may hope for