Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

The day was the tenth one of December when Cicero learned how Pompey felt about civil war; on the same day in Rome, Mark Antony took office as a tribune of the plebs. And proceeded to demonstrate that he was as able a speaker as his grandfather the Orator, not to mention quick-witted. He spoke tellingly of the offering of the sword and the illegality of the junior consul's actions in such a stentorian voice that even Cato understood he could not be shouted down or drowned out. "Furthermore," he thundered, "I am authorized by Gaius Julius Caesar to say that Gaius Caesar will be happy to give up the two provinces of Gaul on the far side of the Alps together with six of his legions, if this House permits him to keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions." "That's only eight legions, Marcus Antonius," said Marcellus Major. "What happened to the other legion and those twenty-two cohorts of recruits?" "The ninth legion, which for the moment we will call the Fourteenth, will vanish, Gaius Marcellus. Caesar doesn't hand over an under-strength army, and at the moment all his legions are well under strength. One legion and the twenty-two cohorts of new men will be incorporated into the other eight legions." A logical answer, but an answer to an irrelevant question. Gaius Marcellus Major and the two consuls-elect had no intention of putting Antony's proposal to a vote. The House was, besides, barely up to quorum number, so many senators were absent; some had already left Rome for Campania, others were desperately trying to squirrel away assets or collect enough cash to be comfortable in an exile long enough to cover the period of the civil war. Which now seemed to be taken for granted, though it was also becoming generally known that there were no extra legions in Italian Gaul, and that Caesar sat quietly in Ravenna while the Thirteenth Legion enjoyed a furlough on the nearest beaches. Antony, Quintus Cassius, the consortium of bankers and all of Caesar's most important adherents inside Rome fought valiantly to keep Caesar's options open, constantly assuring everyone from the Senate to the plutocrats that Caesar would be happy to hand over six of his legions and both the further Gauls provided he could keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions. But on the day following Curio's arrival in Ravenna, Antony and Balbus both received curt letters from Caesar which said that he could no longer entirely ignore the possibility that he would need his army to protect his person and his dignitas from the boni and Pompey the Great. He had therefore, he said, sent secretly to Fabius in Bibracte to ship him two of the four legions there, and sent with equal secrecy to Trebonius on the Mosa to ship three of his four legions at once to Narbo, where they were to go under the command of Lucius Caesar and prevent Pompey's Spanish legions from marching toward Italia. "He's ready," said Antony to Balbus, not without satisfaction. Little Balbus was less plump these days, so great had been the strain; he eyed Antony apprehensively with those big, brown, mournful eyes, and pursed his full lips together. "Surely we will prevail, Marcus Antonius," he said. "We must prevail!" "With the Marcelli in the saddle and Cato squawking from the front benches, Balbus, we don't stand a chance. The Senate at least that part of it which can still pluck up the courage to attend meetings will only go on saying that Caesar is Rome's servant, not Rome's master." "In which case, what does that make Pompeius?" "Clearly Rome's master," said Antony. "But who runs whom, do you think? Pompeius or the boni?" "Each is sure he runs the other, Marcus Antonius."

December continued to run away with frightening rapidity attendance in the Senate dwindled even more; quite a number of houses on the Palatine and the Carinae were shut up fast, their knockers removed from their doors; and many of Rome's biggest companies, brokerages, banks and contractors were using the bitter experience accumulated during other civil wars to shore up their fortifications until they were capable of resisting whatever was to come. For it was coming. Pompey and the boni would not permit that it did not. Nor would Caesar bend until he touched the ground. On the twenty-first of December, Mark Antony gave a brilliant speech in the House. It was superbly structured and rhetorically thrilling, and detailed with scrupulous chronology the entire sum of Pompey's transgressions against the mos maiorum from the time, aged twenty-two, when he had illegally enlisted his father's veterans and marched with three legions to assist Sulla in that civil war; it ended with the consulship without a colleague, and appended an epilogue concerning the acceptance of illegally tendered swords. The peroration was devoted to a mercilessly witty analysis of the characters of the twenty-two wolves who had succeeded in cowing the three hundred and seventy senatorial sheep. Pompey shared his copy of the speech with Cicero; on the twenty-fifth day of December they encountered each other in Formiae, where both had villas. But it was to Cicero's villa that they repaired, therein to spend many hours talking. "I am obdurate," said Pompey after Cicero had exhausted himself finding reasons why conciliation with Caesar was still possible. "There can be absolutely no concessions made to Caesar. The man does not want a peaceful settlement, I don't care what Balbus, Oppius and the rest say! I don't even care what Atticus says!" "I wish Atticus were here," said Cicero, blinking wearily. "Then why isn't he? Am I not good enough company?" "He has a quartan ague, Magnus." "Oh." Though his throat hurt and that wretched inflammation of the eyes threatened to return, Cicero resolved to plod on. Hadn't old Scaurus once single-handedly turned around the entire Senate united against him? And Scaurus wasn't the greatest orator in the annals of Rome! That honor belonged to Marcus Tullius Cicero. The trouble was, reflected the greatest orator of all time, that ever since his illness at Neapolis, Pompey had grown overweeningly confident. No, he hadn't been there to witness it, but everyone had told him about it, first in letters, then in person. Besides, he could see for himself some of the same smugness Pompey used to own in abundance when he was seventeen years old, had still owned when he marched to help Sulla conquer. Spain and Quintus Sertorius had beaten it out of him, even though he ended in winning that tortuous war. Nor had it ever re-emerged until now. Perhaps, thought Cicero, in this cataclysmic confrontation with another military master, Caesar, he thought to relive that youth, to entrench himself for all time as the greatest man Rome produced. Only was he? No, he surely couldn't lose (and had decided that for himself, else he wouldn't be so determined on civil war) because he was busy making sure he outnumbered Caesar at least two to one. And would forever after be hailed as the savior of his country because he refused to fight on his country's soil. That was self-evident too. "Magnus, what's the harm in making a tiny concession to him? What if he were to agree to keep one legion and Illyricum?" "No concessions," said Pompey firmly. "But surely somewhere along the way we've all lost the plot? Didn't this start over refusing Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia? So that he could keep his imperium and avoid being tried for treason? Wouldn't it be more sensible to let him do that? Take everything from him except Illyricum take all his legions! Just let him keep his imperium intact and stand for the consulship in absentia!" "No concessions!" snapped Pompey. "In one way Caesar's agents are right, Magnus. You've had many concessions greater than that. Why not Caesar?" "Because, you fool, even if Caesar were reduced to a privatus no provinces, no army, no imperium, no anything! he'd still have designs on the State! He'd still overthrow it!" Ignoring the reference to foolishness, Cicero tried again. And again. But always the answer was the same. Caesar would never willingly give up his imperium, he would elect to keep his army and his provinces. There would be civil war. Toward the end of the day they abandoned the major issue and concentrated instead on the draft of Mark Antony's speech. "A distorted tissue of half truths" was Pompey's final verdict. He sniffed, flicked the paper contemptuously. "What do you think Caesar will do if he succeeds in overthrowing the State, when a tawdry, penniless minion like Antonius dares to say such things?" With the result that a profoundly glad Cicero saw his guest off the premises, then almost resolved to get drunk. What stopped him was a horrible thought: Jupiter, he owed Caesar millions! Millions which would now have to be found and repaid. For it was the height of bad form to owe money to a political opponent.