Caesar (13 page)

"I spoke of ordinary men, not of the exceptional man. Yes, I myself . . ." he paused, drummed his fingers on the table and looked, for a long silence, into the distance as if great armies ranged themselves before him and he gazed on twilight battlefields disturbed only by the cries of the wounded and the circling of those birds of prey that feed on the dead. "Yes, Caesar may be driven by the loves you speak of, the desire for fame and glory, for that supreme virtue that stands aloof from the common run of curs, but they, snarling and cringing in the mire, what can they know of such things? No, fear and greed are the passions that make men what they are . . . There are moments also, at owl-light, when it seems to me that even Caesar's search for glory is but another, more rarefied expression of greed. It may be a form of fear also; for what would Caesar be without such glory — something which even he dare not contemplate? No, Mouse, Vercingetorix must die the death prepared and ordained for him. Besides," his voice lightened and he bestowed on me that smile which of all smiles could most surely charm men, "the mob might turn against me if I spared him. They like death and executions, haven't you noticed?"

He stood up, took my arm and led me to the window whence we could gaze down on the Forum, busy in preparation for tomorrow's Triumph. He pinched my ear.

"Mouse, there have been moments when I have hoped that you at least understood me. But it seems not. So let me speak plainly. You compare my determination that Vercingetorix should die with my clemency towards those senators and others who have opposed me in our terrible civil wars, and you confess yourself baffled. But consider that clemency: does it abate the fear I arouse in such men? Not at all. Almost the reverse. A Roman nobleman who owes his life to my clemency feels himself forever my inferior. He knows my greatness, because he can never forget that for one terrible long hour I held his life, his neck, between my thumb and forefinger. He has faced extinction at my hands. And he is made conscious of his inferiority by the action of my grace. But a barbarian cannot think like that. He is incapable of it, because his sense of honour is quite different from ours. He would merely think I had in some way gone soft, that Rome could therefore be opposed with impunity. The Roman senator, whom I spare, feels on the other hand in Caesar's clemency Caesar's strength. He stands rebuked by Caesar's refusal to punish him. Besides, Mouse, you must think of this. It is against the law to put Roman citizens to death without trial, and Cicero has never been forgiven for his decision to do so in the case of those who joined with Catiline. But it is different with barbarians, and so Vercingetorix must die."

They say he did so with great courage.

Was it further to mark out his pre-eminence that, in the Pontic Triumph which followed, Caesar ordered that one of the decorated wagons should bear, instead of the customary stage-set representing scenes from the war, merely the legend:

"I came, I saw, I conquered."

The simplicity of the sentiment struck awe and dread in the hearts of all.

I was exhausted when the month of Triumphs was over, for I had been entrusted with many onerous duties and grave responsibilities. These included the organisation of the Troy Game, that sham fight which is one of the oldest and most hallowed of our rituals. It was founded, we believe, by the Father of the Roman People, Aeneas himself, and only youths of noble birth are permitted to take part. There is naturally much competition for selection and this itself would impose a considerable burden on the Master of the Game, for there is no end to the attempts made by parents of candidates of dubious eligibility to persuade him that their son should qualify. I can tell you, I could have had my pick of more than a couple of dozen matrons in the week of selection. Even when the two troops have been chosen, the management of this mimic war is no easy task. It is amazing how even well-bred youths will cheat shamelessly to gain an advantage.

I am proud to be able to say that my mastership of the Troy Game was regarded as exemplary.

I was given one other task of a surprising nature in the weeks that followed the Triumphs. It was a time when Caesar was much occupied with administrative reforms (some of them ill-thought-out) and with the reform of the calendar which Alexandrian Greeks had persuaded him to be desirable. This had taken possession of his mind and was one of the few occasions when he risked unpopularity with the mob, which always hates change of this sort.

While Caesar was involved with these matters, Cicero took it upon himself to publish a eulogistic biography of Cato. I do not think this was intended as a deliberate act of provocation, though no one can be certain of the motives of a man as complicated as Cicero. On the one hand his relations with Caesar were friendly. They dined together, and Cicero rejoiced in the evident delight which Caesar took in his conversation, which, if you discounted the strain of persistent egotism (itself indeed at times almost endearing) was witty, agreeably malicious and superbly wide-ranging. It would indeed have been a dull man who resisted the charm of his historical and philosophical speculations. Of course there were many such dull men, who agreed with Mark Antony that the old man was a prosy bore; but Caesar was not one of them, and neither was I.

Moreover Caesar carried hi
s admiration further. When Quin
tus Ligarius was prosecuted for bearing arms against Caesar (this prosecution being a notable exception to Caesar's rule of general clemency), he invited Cicero to defend him. "Invited" is too weak an expression; he implored him to do so in terms that could not fail to flatter a man with half Cicero's allotment of vanity. Nevertheless Cicero hesitated, being, as I supposed, fearful of how Caesar would view his intervention. Caesar, however, remarked: "Why may we not give ourselves a pleasure we have not enjoyed for such a long time: of hearing Cicero plead a cause? Especially since I have already determined what I think of Ligarius, who is clearly a bad man as well as my enemy." When these sentiments were relayed to Cicero, he felt it was safe to accept the brief. He spoke with all his old eloquence. Young men who had not previously had the opportunity to hear him in action were amazed. Some were even moved to tears, such was the pathos he evoked. The charm of his delivery, the fertility of his argument, the copiousness of his illustrative examples, combined to render him irresistible. Men reared in camps, who had spent ten years in grim warfare, felt perhaps for the first time the power of oratory. No doubt in the great days of the Republic, they said, such experiences were common; but they came as a revelation in the new world of the dictatorship.

All eyes turned to Caesar as he sat in judgment. It was seen that he grew pale. He could not sit still. It was evident that his mind was torn with conflicting passions. At last, when Cicero summoned up the terrible memory of the battle at Pharsalus, describing it in terms worthy of Homer, representing Caesar as Achilles and Pompey as Hector (a dangerous comparison, in my opinion, since we Romans are the heirs of Troy) Caesar was seen to tremble - I wondered if he was on the brink of one of those epileptic fits of which he was so ashamed - he let the documents in the case slip to the floor, raised his right hand, and cried:

"Enough. Caesar conquered Pompey, but Cicero has conquered Caesar by his eloquence. I order that the prosecution be abandoned."

Then he signalled to me to help him from the court. His whole frame trembled as he leaned on my arm.

Perhaps it was on account of this triumph that Cicero felt bold enough to publish his
Cato.
That was itself an extraordinary performance. Of course he had reason to feel gratitude to the dead man, because it was Cato who, many years before, when a tribune, had proposed that Cicero be accorded the honorific title of "Father of his Country". At the same time, while Cicero's respect for Cato's obstinate adherence to the old, unreformed Republic was certainly genuine, he was far too intelligent and civilised to have ta
ken any pleasure in Cato's boor
ishness, xenophobia, and contempt for intellectuals. The eulogy was therefore an act of will; it was also - it could not fail to be — the most coherent and persuasive criticism of Caesar's dictatorship. The language was of course coded; Cicero was far too cautious and timid to offer overt criticism of Caesar. But he was a master of all the rhetorical skills, and no one could read his
Cato
without feeling the force of his implicit thesis: that government by a single person was contrary to both the traditions and interests of Rome. The Republic, he insinuated, had served Rome well, and secured our liberties. Republican institutions had been sufficiently flexible to endure for centuries and to enable Rome to withstand a succession and variety of crises. Was it right to cast our inheritance aside either to gratify the ambition of a single person, however noble and virtuous, or to resolve a temporary difficulty?

"The science of constructing a commonwealth," I had heard Cicero declare, "or renovating it, or reforming it, is like any experimental science, not to be taught
a priori.
Nor is it a short experience - the experience, let us say, of a single generation — that can instruct us in that practical science, because the consequences of moral causes are rarely immediate; and that which now appears desirable, even speciously necessary, may be prejudicial in its remoter operations."

Holding court at his dinner-table, reclining on his couch, with his eagle head quivering, his scraggy neck extended (as if inviting the sword), he spoke with a lucidity inspired by his passionate commitment to what he saw as truth. (That was how it impressed me at the time; in retrospect I wondered if this was not yet another extraordinary piece of advocacy. How do you gauge the sincerity of a master of language?)

"Man's nature is intricate, and the objects of society are of the greatest conceivable complexity. It follows therefore that no simple disposition of power within a State can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. The government of a single person is simplicity indeed, better suited to barbarian tribes than to Roman citizens. When I hear men like Antony boast of the simplicity of contrivance aimed at, and achieved, in any reformed Constitution, then I stand amazed by such a display of ignorance of the complexities of political science. Simple governments are fundamentally defective. When ancient opinions and rules of life inherited from our illustrious forefathers are taken away, the loss cannot be estimated.

"Men talk," he said, "of the necessity of the moment. That is easy talk, superficially cogent. A man like Antony" - and when he said Antony, did he use the name, I wondered even then, as a code for Caesar? - "men like Antony, incapable of reflection, devoid of the impulse of veneration, an impulse which should defend us against rash speculation, talk of the need for innovation. Well, it is true, I admit, that a state without the means of reform is without the means of its own preservation. But, my friends, but - and it is a great and powerful but - we should remember this: a spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. Men will not look forward intelligently to posterity, who never look backward, with admiration and affection, to their ancestors. I have talked to you before of the dangers of what I term individualism. Why? Because, my friends, I am afraid - we should all be afraid - to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; for that stock can only be petty and narrow in its foundation. We would do better to avail ourselves of the general bank and capital of wisdom and experience which we have inherited from the generations that made Rome what it is.

"I am told," he continued, "that the times are out of joint. It may be so. Indeed it is only too evident that in certain respects they are so. But seek the reason, my friends. Do not be satisfied with easy answers. Is it not apparent that men like Antony" - and, as his lip curled and his voice trembled, I could have no doubt that, if he had dared, he would have substituted the name of Caesar — "such men have no respect for the wisdom of others, no respect for tradition, no respect for our inheritance? But they pay it off by a very full confidence in their own wisdom. I would be more comfortable if I could find myself in agreement with them; more comfortable and more foolish . . .

"So the times are out of joint? Very well. Be it so. Our age is unhappy, riven by civil war, disputes, selfish ambition. But even that is not the sum of our misfortunes. It is the true misfortune of our time, of this decadent age, that everything we have inherited has become the topic of debate, that the Constitution of Rome, constructed with care, intelligence and patriotic fervour across the centuries, has become a subject for altercation rather than enjoyment. If we continue to follow this course, we shall have no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected custom, to restrain absolute power. Instead of finding ourselves obliged, and comfortably and properly obliged, to conform to a fixed constitution, we shall find ourselves subject to a few men of power - dynasts, to use the Greek term - who will make for themselves a new Constitution that will conform only to their own designs and selfish ambitions."

He dared not speak so openly in his
Cato
as he did to guests at his dinner-table, but such were the arguments - what the Greeks call "the sub-text" - which underlay the biography. Cato had become less a man than a symbol. Well, that was fair enough. He was a better and more effective symbol than he had been a man, throughout his blundering and stupid life.