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....”
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