Book 3, Letter 12, Part 3 of 4. To Cicero, on the Civil War

While this was going on, your close friend and secretary, your freedman Tiro, was ill again, and many letters pass between you, as with your customary paternal concern, you insist on his resting and getting the best medical care that your substantial wealth can afford before travelling to join with you again.

CCLXXXIV

To Tiro

November 3^rd, 50BCE

“If you do what will best conduce to your recovery, you will be most strictly be obeying my wishes. In considering these matters let your own heart be your guide. I miss you : yes! But I also love you. Love prompts the wish to see you in good health; the other motive would make me wish to see you as soon as possible. The former is therefore to be preferred. Accordingly, let your first care be to get well : of the innumerable services which you have done me this will be the most acceptable.”

CCLXXXV

To Tiro

November 5^th, 50BCE

“I cannot express to you in a letter, nor do I wish to do so, what my feelings are. I will merely say, that the greatest possible pleasure both to yourself and me will be to see you as soon as possible in restored health. We arrived at Alyzia on the third day after leaving you. The place is 120 stades (about 15 miles) south of Leucas. At Leucas I am expecting either to receive you, or a letter from you by the hands of Mario. Let your efforts to be well be as strong as your affection for me, or as you know mine to be for you.”

I have been reading Seneca's epistle on friendship, and with your life thus encompassed by the troubles of your friends, I found this little section worth quoting here from Epistle IX, On Philosophy and Friendship, from the Epistulae Morales.

“For what purpose then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge too....Beyond question, the feeling of a lover has in it something akin to friendship; one might call it friendship run mad.”

This idea, this feeling, that true friendship is the willingness to die for that friend is a powerful sentiment that seems extreme in my peaceful life, yet, only a few weeks ago a friend of mine expressed a similar notion. She stated that she could never love a man whom she felt would not willingly sacrifice his life to protect her. This concept of sacrifice, which must be familiar to you Cicero, considering your feelings for Pompey and his cause, runs somewhat against the grain of my own feeling, which has more in common with a statement made by the 20^th century military commander, Patton, which, as he was addressing his soldiers, went something like this:

People say that you must be willing to sacrifice your life to protect your country. This is wrong. You have to live! You have to make the enemy sacrifice his life.

Of course, this is a hypothetical discussion, there are circumstances where sacrifice is the only option, dangerous situations in which no enemy is present that might be slain for the greater good of protecting what I love. I, like you Cicero, am no soldier, no trained combatant, and do not possess the skills for military action, yet you led troops to battle (not 'in battle'), to protect the Roman province of Cilicia, and at the end of your life, you willingly stuck your neck out for the assassins sword, not to protect any friend, but in defence of your own dignity, knowing that to go on living in fear, on the run, served no good purpose. Even though your son would then live without his father, you died in such a way that your courage would be an example. Perhaps this was your last gift to him.

But I am getting ahead of myself, there are many years to go before that day.

So, getting back to Caesar, there is something about the debt situation in Rome that I would like to bring up. It goes back to the Gracchus brothers, and it concerns the obscene levels of debt experienced by both rich and poor in Rome. The proposal of debt cancellation is generally thought of as a policy which would be supported by the plebeian poor, but there were just as many of the upper class citizens who were in debt 'up to their eyeballs' as we say, and whose votes and political support could be bought with the promise of debt cancellation. Of course, most of the tribunes and senators who had tried to introduce such a policy in the past were assassinated, but Caesar found a different solution. Plutarch tells it this way in his Life of Caesar:

[29.2]

However, by the time that the consulship of Marcellus was over Caesar was already in a most lavish way making available to public figures in Rome the wealth which he had won in Gaul. He paid the enormous debts of the tribune Curio; and he gave the consul Paulus fifteen hundred talents with which he added to the beauty of the forum by building the famous Basillica which was erected in the place of the one known as 'the Fulvia'.

Basilica Fulvia-Aemilia

*

By December 50 BCE, War was knocking on the door. Pompey was already marching with his forces and Caesar got closer to Rome every day. You write to Atticus (CCXCV) “The political situation gives me great terror every day...what we want is peace. From a victor, among many evil results, one, at any rate will be the rise of a tyrant. Later, in speaking of Caesar, you point out the ugly truth of your own involvement in the present trouble. For I am one who thinks it more expedient to yield to his demands than to fight. For it is too late in the day to be resisting a man, whom we have been nursing up against ourselves the ten years past.

The choice between tyrants is no choice at all. Seneca, who was writing a hundred years after your death, said something rather poignant on the topic, and though it regards that gruff stoic, Cato, I think perhaps that it might apply to you as well. I quote now from Epistle XIV

“Cato's voice strove to check a civil war. Cato parted the swords of maddened chieftains. When some fell foul of Pompey and others fell foul of Caesar, Cato defied both parties at once! Nevertheless, one may question whether, in those days, a wise man ought to have taken any part in public affairs,...It is not now a question of freedom; long since has freedom gone to rack and ruin. The question is whether it is Caesar or Pompey who controls the state. Why, Cato, should you take sides in that dispute? It is no business of yours; a tyrant is being selected. What does it concern you who conquers? 'The better man may win; but the winner is bound to be the worse man'.”

'Potest melior vincere, non potest non peior esse, qui vicerit'

Or, as Tacitus puts it in his Histories (Bk 1, section 50) “Prayers for either would be impious, vows for either would be blasphemy, when from their conflict you can learn only that the conqueror must be the worse of the two.”

Though Tacitus was in that instance making this point about Otho and Vitellius, he knew very well the history of Pompey and Caesar. Tacitus, like Seneca, had probably read some of your books, Cicero, perhaps even some of your letters. Yet it is eerily familiar that in politics it so often boils down to a choice between two tyrants. What is a wise man to do in such a circumstance? It would be expedient to simply leave Italy, to take your family and run as far from Rome as possible. But you, Cicero, could never abandon the Republic, though it had long since crumbled and you stood trembling in the ruins calling for peace, for justice.

CCXCVII

To Atticus

December 50 BCE

“We should have resisted him (Caesar) when he was weak, and that would have been easy. Now we are confronted by eleven legions, cavalry at his desire, the Transpandani, the city rabble, all these tribunes, a rising generation corrupted as we see, a leader of such influence and audacity. With such a man we must either fight a pitched battle, or admit his candidature in virtue of the law. “Fight,” say you, “rather than be a slave.” To what end? To be proscribed if beaten : to be a slave after all, if victorious. “What do you mean to do then?” say you. Just what animals do, who when scattered follow the flocks of their own kind. As an ox follows a herd, so shall I follow the loyalists or whoever are said to be the loyalists, even if they take a disastrous course.”

Book 3, Letter 12, Part 2 of 4 To Cicero, on the Civil War

Dear Cicero

It seems important to speak for a moment, Cicero, about your place in the lives of these two men, Pompey & Caesar. You had known Pompey most of your life, and considered him one of your absolute best friends, and a loyal political ally. Even after Pompey had failed to prevent your being exiled on charges of unlawfully executing the Catilinarian conspirators, you still loved Pompey. When he secured your return from exile you forgave him his weakness and were thankful for his help. You believed that Pompey represented the old Republic, the true Republic, and you were willing to stand by him and his policies, even should it be the cause of your death.

Pompey

Caesar too you had known for many years, you watched his rise through the ranks of politics, you saw his first struggles to become elected Consul. You saw his march to Gaul, read his dispatches from the battle front. You own brother Quintus served in that war with Ceasar, putting his life on the line to defend a Roman fort from being overwhelmed by a huge Gallic force. You Cicero, who loved philosophy and sculpture, and drama and poetry and gardens and music, you were a lifelong friend and political associate of both Pompey and Caesar and your position between them is a defining part of this story.

Caesar

Caesar offered you a place in his new alliance (which was not then known as the Triumvirate, that is is later title given to it by historians), a position you refused out of loyalty to the old ways of Rome's Republican order. Your position was filled by Crassus, the money man of Rome – a man who would later die horrifically, and foolishly, along with his own son, on the battlefield fighting the Parthians in their desert homeland. (Crassus' story is long and complicated and I will definitely write about him in another letter...) But Crassus' story is not so important here...it is your friendship with both Caesar and Pompey that put you in the uniquely difficult position of trying to negotiate for peace between the two after their political alliance fell apart, and after Crassus had died.

It fell apart, when Julia died.

Here's how Plutarch describes it:

[53.3] Once it happened that during the elections for the aedileships a fight broke out and numbers of people were killed near the place where Pompey was standing. As he was covered with their blood he changed his clothes. His servants ran to his house with the blood-stained garments, making a great noise, and his young wife, who was pregnant at the time, fainted at the sight of the toga all covered with blood, and was only brought back to life again with great difficulty. As it was, the shock to her feelings caused a miscarriage.

[53.4] It was natural, therefore, that even those who most disapproved of Pompey because of his friendship with Caesar could not blame him for the love he felt for his wife. Later, however, she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter; but she died in the process of giving birth and the child only survived her for a few days. Pompey made preparations to have her buried at his country estate near Alba, but the people insisted on taking the body down to the Field of Mars to be buried there. They did this rather out of pity for the young woman than as a mark of favor to Pompey.

Caesar was in Gaul when Julia died, and in Plutarch's Life of Caesar, he describes it thus:

[23.3]“In Gaul he found letters from his friends in Rome which were just going to be sent across to him. They informed him of the death of his daughter; she had died in childbirth in Pompey's house. Both Pompey himself and Caesar were greatly distressed at this, and their friends were disturbed too, since it seemed to them that the bond of relationship was now broken which had preserved peace and concord in a state which was, apart from his bond, falling to pieces.”

Your book of letters, Cicero, weighs a tonne. When I pick it up now it weighs as much as two years of life might weigh, and these two years in your life are heavy business. Its 406 pages contain some seven hundred days of your life – your thoughts and feelings and fears and triumphs. It's not just a story, it's the truth, your truth, the truth of your experience and now that I have read it, I am anchored by it, held fast in the tide of my life, attached as I am to you, Cicero. Attached as I am to the fate of the Republic.

I am unsure how to proceed in telling the next part of the story. Caesar was returning from his conquest of Gaul with his army, while Pompey was still in Italy with his army. Caesar was demanding the right to stand for the Consulship with his army intact while he was himself still absent from the city of Rome – a situation contrary to tradition and law. You explain it well in another letter to Rufus:

CCLXXIX

To M.Caelius Rufus

September 50BCE

“The point on which the men in power are bound to fight, is this: Cn Pompeius (Pompey) has made up his mind not to allow C.Caesar to become consul, except on the condition of his first handing over his army and provinces : while Caesar is fully persuaded that he cannot be safe if he quits his army. He however proposes as a compromise that both should give up their armies. So that mighty love and unpopular union of theirs has not degenerated into mere secret bickering, but is breaking out into open war. Nor can I conceive what line to take in my own conduct – and I feel sure that this doubt will exercise you a good deal also – for between myself and these men there are ties of affection and close connexion, since it is the cause, not the men, that I dislike.”

Then, a month later, the creeping doom continues its march into your heart, Cicero. As you so often do, you write to Atticus beseeching him to advise you regarding your unique dilemma, being forced, so it seems, to choose between two friends.

CCLXXIII

To Atticus

October 16, 50BCE

“It is my own particular “problem” that I could bid you to take up. Don't you see that it was on your advice that I sought the friendship of both? Yes, and I could wish that I had listened to your most friendly hints from the beginning:

“But in my breast my heart thou couldst not sway.” (From Homer's Illiad)

Yet at length, after all you did persuade me to embrace the one, because he had done me eminent service, and the other, because he was so powerful. I did so, therefore : and by shewing them every kind of attention contrived that neither of them should regard anyone with more affection that myself. My idea, in fact, was this – if I were allied with Pompey, I should not hereafter be compelled to take any any improper step in politics, nor, if I agreed with Caesar, have to fight with Pompey : for their union was so close. Now there is impending, as you shew, and as I see, a mortal combat between them. Each of them, again, regards me as his own, unless by chance one of them is playing a part. Pompey of course, has no doubt : for he rightly judges that his present view of politics has my approbation. From each, however, I received a letter, at the same time as yours, of a kind calculated to shew that neither values anyone in the world above myself. But what am I to do? I don't mean in the last resort of all – for, if it shall come to downright war, I see clearly that it is better to be beaten with the one, than to conquer with the other - but as to what will be in actual debate when I arrive : that he be not a candidate without returning to Rome – that he dismiss his army....”

Book 3, Letter 12, part 1 of 4 To Cicero, on The Civil War

Dear Cicero,

My apologies, dear friend, for the lateness of this letter. I have been busy with a dance festival, and if it interests you, you may read my account of the opening concert, and the part I played...

www.drumarabesque.blogspot.com

The first letter I ever wrote to you, I asked you a question, do you remember? (Insert link to first letter) I asked you to tell me what Caesar was really like, and Pompey. Well, now you have begun to tell me. I have been reading your letters again, and every night I have held your book in my hand and felt the anxiety, uncertainty and wild sense of chaos as Caesar marches closer to Rome, and every day his army gets stronger while Pompey shrinks and runs towards his own shadow. Fleeing Italy, abandoning the Republic. Every night I fall asleep with your troubles on my mind.

I've become so wrapped up in your story Cicero, that sometimes I don't even know what is going on in my own time. I was asked today if I knew what the weather was going to be like tomorrow, I just pulled at my hair and laughed, joking: Caesar is in Rome with his legions and you ask me about the weather!?

I've said it many times before, but the sense of your living spirit is so strong in your writing, and never more so as in your letters. I have just finished reading volume two (of four volumes), translated by Evelyn Shuckburgh in 1899. Letters spanning April 51 – June 49 BCE, two hundred and twenty one letters in all, to family, friends, allies, enemies and servants. The collected letters paint a more vibrant picture of real life in ancient Rome than anything else I have read, (with the possible exception of The social life of Rome in the time of Cicero by W.Warde Fowler, 1908). The frequent reference to the unreliable system by which letters were delivered by servants, the polite double-speak of political alliances, the gentle touches of friendship amidst the torment of impending civil war...it is all in full colour in my mind. Every night I read more, and, as only a true friend can, I feel the weight of your burden, and I suffer with you. I now more fully understand Petrarch  when he said:

As regards Cicero, I have known him as the best of consuls, vigilantly providing for the welfare of the State, and as a citizen who always evinced the highest love of country. But what more? I cannot bestow praise upon the instability of his friendships, nor upon the serious disagreements arising from slight causes and bringing destruction upon him and benefit to none, nor upon a judgement which, when brought to bear upon questions of private and public affairs, did not well accord with his remarkable acumen in other directions. Above all, I cannot praise, in a philosopher weighed down with years, an inclination for wrangling which is proper to youths and utterly of no avail. Of all this, however, remember that neither you nor anyone else can be in a fit position to judge, until you will have read, and carefully, all the letters of Cicero; for it is these which gave rise to the whole discussion.

I am on my way Cicero. There is a long road ahead of me, and I will walk it.

However, mid-journey as I am, I will try to understand this present part of your story, and I feel that I should begin with something you said of Rome itself, not the empire, but the City. This I quote from a letter to your friend and political ally, Rufus.

CCLXI

To M. Caelius Rufus

June 50BCE

“...The City, the City my dear Rufus – stick to that and live in its full light! Residence elsewhere – as I made up my mind early in life – is mere eclipse and obscurity to those whose energy is capable of shining at Rome...”

This part of your story, Cicero, has a lot to do with Caesar, and to understand your feelings about him, it seems important to understand the patriotism that moved you, and to what degree you were emotionally attached to both Rome, and to the old order of government. I can think of no other way to describe those feelings, than to use the word LOVE. Your duty of service to the state was an act of love. It was an act of disciplined virtue, it was the pursuit of the highest good for your nation, through the application of your skills and virtues.

Your passion for speaking in the courts seems born out of love for the majesty of your country, your people, your city. You were proud of your nation's history. You were very proud of your own achievements, proud to have stood as Consul and to have saved the republic from the Catiline conspiracy. You were proud to have served in Cilicia as governor, even though you quite plainly never wanted to serve in such a capacity, yet I seem to recall Plato remarking in The Republic that the best leaders, are often the ones most reluctant to take up the task. You were proud to have led your soldiers to fight the rebellious tribes of the Taurus Mountains and to have received from your soldiers the title Imperator for your success, (though the real weight and value of such a title is of some doubt). It is not in doubt that you loved your country Cicero, you loved your people, you hated corruption and greed and you fought every day, using your considerable skills with language, both spoken and written, to make the name of Rome shine brighter still in the minds of her subjects, and upon the pages of written history. You were honest when all around you seem duplicitous. You were generous when all others seem greedy. You were a voice crying for peace when all around you clamoured for war.

CCLXXII

To M Caelius Rufus

August 50BCE

“...Politics makes me very anxious. I am fond of Curio : I wish Caesar to shew himself an honest man : I could die for Pompey : but after all nothing is dearer in my sight than the Republic itself...”

So, with all this in mind, the story of Rome's violation by civil war seems bound up in the story of the first Triumvirate; the power sharing and political alliance between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. In every love triangle, there are always external forces exerting an influence on the spinning centre. I will deal with Crassus in another letter...for the moment I will focus on Pompey and Caesar...

 Pompey

Caesar

Julia

Cornelia

Cornelia Image: Published by Guillaume Rouille (1518?-1589) - "Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum"

Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, whose mother Cornelia, is also very interesting...

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_

Unlike many political marriages, and certainly differing from his prior disastrous relationships, Pompey absolutely loved Julia. This was considered rather uncommon in an age where men of high rank often had wives in order to produce children, but kept mistresses for the expressions of their love and affection. Pompey loved Julia so much people made fun of him for it, as Plutarch explains in his Life of Pompey

[47] For on a sudden, contrary to all expectation, he married Julia, the daughter of Cæsar, who had been affianced before and was to be married within a few days to Cæpio. And to appease Cæpio’s wrath, he gave him his own daughter in marriage, who had been espoused before to Faustus, the son of Sylla. Cæsar himself married Calpurnia, the daughter of Piso.

[53.2] Certainly the young wife's fondness for her husband was notorious, and Pompey, at his age, scarcely seemed to be a fit object for such passionate devotion. The reason for it seems to have lain in his constancy as a husband (since he remained entirely faithful to his own wife), and also in his ability to unbend from his dignity and to become really charming in personal relationships [...].

This politically arranged marriage was a binding force between Pompey and Caesar, it held them together when their policy differences may have driven them apart. Julia was the person of their common love, and that love held them together.

But when Julia died...that alliance died with it.