Chapter VII #3
We entered the city through the Triumphal Gate and marched directly to the Temple of Concordia, where the Senate was meeting.
At the entrance, I told the attendant I wished to deliver a letter from Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus to the urban praetor.
He tried to take it from me, but I said my instructions were to hand it over personally. He went off to consult.
I could hear voices inside raised in argument. When the attendant returned, he announced that the urban praetor was willing to receive me.
Leaving the bulk of my men on the steps of the temple, where a crowd was beginning to gather, I led fifty legionaries inside with me.
I remember as if it were yesterday that long walk towards the dais, the packed benches, the appalled groans and shouts of outrage at the sight of the legionaries, and Cicero, sitting on the front bench with his legs outstretched, watching me suspiciously.
I was aware of scuffles behind me. I glanced over my shoulder as some of the senators rose and jostled the soldiers, who pushed them back roughly into their seats.
Cornutus took the letter and appealed for calm so that he could read it aloud. Gradually the noise subsided, and in the silence, he began to speak.
Octavius thanked the Senate for placing their trust in him, congratulated them on their victory at Mutina, regretted the death of their heroic consuls, repeated that his legions would not agree to follow Decimus, and finally demanded their permission to stand for the consulship in the forthcoming elections.
His honour and safety required it. His army was at the gates of Rome.
If his request was denied, he could not answer for the consequences.
There was a moment of quiet before a great bellow of protest erupted.
Cicero, his face flushed, rose to speak but was shouted down.
Nobody wanted to hear from him. His authority lay in ruins.
He had given them his personal guarantee that he could control ‘the Heaven-sent boy’ – and now this!
In the end, he had to give up. He shrugged and sat heavily on the bench, his chin sunk on his chest, staring at the floor.
Cornutus let the demonstration go on for a while, then stuffed Octavius’s letter back into my hand.
– There is your answer, young man. Go back and tell your master we will fight to the death rather than bow to his demands.
I asked him who would do the fighting. He blustered.
– We have legions loyal to the Republic.
I slipped the letter inside my chainmail.
– I think you will find they are our legions now.
When I returned to Octavius and described what had happened, he grinned and performed a little dance on the spot, and for a moment I glimpsed the schoolboy still inside him.
If the Senate had complied with his request, they might have ensnared him in their politics, perhaps obliged him to take one of their number as his fellow consul.
As it was, they had played into his hands.
There would now be only one master in Rome.
He left it a few days to let the hopelessness of their position sink in, then gave orders to the army to follow him onto the Field of Mars.
As we approached the city, many senators, bowing to the new reality, came out to greet him. But not Cornutus, who had committed suicide the night before, and not Cicero, who chose to avoid humiliating himself in public and came to see him privately instead.
I had never thought I would be capable of feeling sorry for the old man.
Yet I did that day. When he entered through the cordon of legionaries protecting Philippus’s house, to which Octavius had returned, he was thinner, greyer, stooped.
All his old bombast had gone. Octavius looked him up and down with cold amusement.
– You are the last of my friends to greet me.
– Forgive me, I thought you would be busy.
– Ah, is that it? I presumed you must disapprove of my actions.
– I have given up approving or disapproving. The world goes on as it does, heedless of my opinions. You will soon be consul and the burden will be yours.
– Yes, I will be consul, and I shall need a partner.
Poor Cicero. For a moment his expression was eager. ‘While there is life, there is hope’ – that was one of his sayings. But Octavius was toying with him, a young cat with an elderly wounded mouse.
– I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have selected my kinsman Pedius. He received a share of Caesar’s estate and loaned it to me. It is the least I can do in return. The question is, what is to become of you?
– Yes, that is the question. And what is the answer?
Octavius told him he was free to leave Rome and retire to one of his estates in the country. But he was not to meddle in politics, or come back to the city, or try to leave Italy to join the assassins Brutus and Cassius, who were still at large in the east.
– In return, I will guarantee your safety.
It was not a bad bargain. Cicero bowed his head in acceptance of his fate.
When he was at the door, Octavius called after him.
– That joke of yours, that I was to be ‘raised, praised, erased’. Tell me – it does not matter now – would you really have erased me?
– I believe I would have done exactly the same to you as you are doing to me now.
Those were the last words I heard Cicero utter.