Caesar (26 page)

"Caesar," I said, and hesitated, like a fisherman gazing on a turbulent sea, and uncertain whether to launch his boat or stay safe on shore. I swallowed twice and cast myself upon the waves.

"Caesar, I have come to urge you to a course from which I fear you will immediately recoil."

"This is portentous stuff, Mouse."

"I have fought long and hard at your side, upholding your cause. You have been kind enough to praise my efforts. No battle required of me the courage I need now: to tell you what you do not wish to hear."

"I've never doubted your courage. Carry on. They say it's good for all men to hear unwelcome opinions . . . from time to time. So carry on. How have I offended you, Mouse?"

"You have offended Rome, Caesar."

"Be careful what you say."

"You have offended Rome, Caesar. Every conversation I have, with men of our own rank, yes, and with inferiors also, leads me to that conclusion. Your monopoly of power is increasingly resented. It is resented even by your dearest friends. And that's not all. The other day, I was writing a letter. It doesn't matter to whom. And I found myself writing this sentence: 'It is a rare felicity to be allowed to think what you like and say what you think: how long will this still be permitted us?' I crossed it out, did not despatch the letter. Caesar, I know you as well as any man can claim to know you, and I know that you are not a tyrant. Many men who know you less well than I, think you are. That may not matter, though I cannot be certain, all the less because of your refusal to surround yourself with a personal bodyguard. But you are erecting a system which will breed tyranny. You control the army. You have in effect abolished the elections. All public appointments are in your gift. You will have a successor who will cement your system. He will have successors who will not consider that there could be another way of governing the Republic and the Empire. They will not have your virtues. Liberty will be no more, and we shall no longer enjoy the rare felicity of being permitted to feel as we please, and speak our minds."

I kept my eyes fixed on him as I spoke, watching for the signs of anger I knew so well: a straightening of the upper lip, a harshness in the eye, a red spot on his left cheek and drumming of the fingers of one hand against the back of the other. But I saw none of this. Instead a friendly smile lit up his face.

"And what would you have me do, Mouse?"

"I would have you withdraw, abandon, or at least postpone the Parthian campaign, give our institutions the chance to work freely under your benevolent eye. Caesar, as long as you live, you will surpass all in authority. But there is a distinction to be made between authority and power. You cannot share your authority, for that has been acquired by your deeds and virtue; but you can relinquish power. You have stabilised the State; now you can restore it."

"Well, Mouse, I can see that it took courage to nerve yourself to speak to Caesar in this fashion. But what you recommend is absurd, impractical. I have already explained this to you. The

Republic is moribund. Its institutions are no longer equal to the task of government. If I withdrew, as you advise, the order I have restored would again disintegrate. Rome would once again be a prize to be fought over by warring factions. Liberty is a fine word, but liberty can only be enjoyed when men also enjoy security. That Caesar has provided. There is now in Rome, and throughout the Empire, an ordered liberty. It is all men are fit for. It is only on that basis that the Empire can be governed. Do not suppose that Caesar has not thought long on these matters. They disturb my nights. You offer me a great temptation. Do you suppose I don't have moments when I yearn for the tranquillity of my villa overlooking Lake Albano, when I do not imagine how I might fruitfully employ my last years in the pleasures of literature, philosophy, and country life? We were all educated to revere the memory of Cincinnatus, called from the plough to save Rome, and then, having performed the necessary task, returning home to guide his team of oxen; or of Scipio Africanus, my greatest predecessor in the annals of Roman war, whose exploits were all but equal to Caesar's; who, having conquered Hannibal and Antiochus, retired, disdaining the squabbles and petty jealousies of the Senate, to his country seat at Liternum in Campania. Yes, Scipio's example is a temptation, for his virtue has ensured him enduring fame. But Scipio is also a warning. Like Caesar he was offered the dictatorship for life; unlike Caesar, he declined it. Was Rome better for his act of self-abnegation? Or was it not the case that his disinclination to accept the power he was offered opened the way to a sea of troubles? Caesar will resist temptation. Caesar will do his duty, whatever the dangers - and do not suppose I am unaware of them. I repeat what I have said to you before. You cannot breathe life into a corpse; and the Republic is all but a corpse. No, it is already a corpse. Rome and the Empire require the government of a single person; by which I mean, the concentration of authority and power in a single pre-eminent being. It does not matter what he is called: Dictator, King, Imperator, Caesar, God. Names are devices to satisfy the vulgar. Reality is different. Those who pretend that the Republic can be restored, that Rome can flourish again by means of institutions suitable only for a city-state, delude themselves with charming dreams
..."

He rose, walked behind me, stroked my neck (on which I felt the hairs rise), pinched my ear.

"Reality . .." he nipped harder. "Read Thucydides, Mouse, not Plato, history not philosophy. It is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes Thucydides from Plato. The great philosopher is a coward before the harsh imperatives of reality; so he flees into the Ideal, where, by the way, Cicero follows him. But Thucydides confronts the facts, exercises self-control. Therefore he also maintains control of things. So also with Caesar. Idealists are all cowards, for they would have things as they are not. Caesar's goddess is Necessity; who is therefore also Caesar's guide."

I left him in sadness. He was a great man, and I owed him much, but the more stridently he talked of reality, the less his ear seemed to be attuned to any murmurings which might disturb his devoted contemplation of his own glory. What is this world, O soldiers: it is Caesar. What is this waste of sand but Caesar? What is Rome but Caesar? What is Parthia but the means of fulfilling Caesar's Destiny?

"It is a strange thing to remark," Cicero said, "but Caesar has no hinterland."

"What do you mean? I don't follow you." My cousin Marcus Brutus frowned. "No hinterland? I don't understand you." He was like a soldier advancing beyond the frontier, lost as soon as he had left the road with its regular milestones.

I had arranged a small dinner-party. My original intention had been to ask only Markie and his wife Porcia. Then I added Cicero. He would be indiscreet, and therefore stimulating, I thought; besides, with him there, Markie would be less suspicious of my motives. I had also invited Cicero's young wife, to satisfy my own curiosity; but he did not bring her. They had fallen out, decisively perhaps.

"Ah, you are puzzled, Brutus." Cicero was delighted by the admission. "Well, it is natural. Caesar's genius is so dazzling. But of course I have the advantage over you; I knew Caesar well before he was Caesar, with all the connotations that illustrious name now bears. Of course he has always been brilliant; yet his brilliance sheds no light around him. It is, you might say, a concentrated brilliance. And when I say he has no hinterland," he continued, with no pause for breath between sentences, lest someone should interrupt him, "I mean simply this: Caesar has no real sense of the past, no sympathy with the way others may think, no sensitivity to immemorial affections. Perhaps this is one reason for his success: his very limitation. That's an interesting thought, which it might be fruitful to explore. Is it even, one wonders, a criterion for a certain type of worldly success that a man should never pause to consider the other side, the other side of the question, to gaze, if you like, across the valley that divides the present from the past?"

"But I don't understand," Markie said. "Caesar is always talking about his ancestors."

"Remote ancestors," Cicero said. "So remote as to be unreal. But the tradition of the Republic - ah, that is a reality from which he prefers to avert his eyes."

Longina sighed and caught my eye. I imagined that she was thinking how very much more entertaining Caesar was as a dinner-companion.

Porcia said: "My father always used to say that Caesar was a careerist, nothing else, that he cared for nothing but his own position, and would be absolutely unscrupulous in advancing it."

"But that precisely confirms what I have been telling you," Cicero said. "I would expect, of course, nothing but good sense and accurate observation from Marcus Cato. Caesar is essentially limited. He feels none of the affections which bind men to each other and to their ancestors. I do not think it has ever occurred to Caesar that society is a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born."

"I have heard Caesar deny the very existence of society," I said. "In his opinion, society is an invented concept which enables men to acquit themselves of full responsibility for their actions."

"Precisely," Cicero said again. "I have talked to you, before now, Decimus Brutus, of the threat which I choose to call individualism - which, by the way, is my own poor attempt at providing a Latin equivalent for a Greek philosophical term -the threat which this presents to the community of Rome, and by community I would wish you to understand that I mean all that we have inherited from our ancestors who forged the

Republic and the means of Rome's greatness, and also what we are in duty bound to transmit to our children and grandchildren. I am an old man, near the end of life, near at least the natural term of days, and I see very clearly that, however conscious each of us may be of his own self, and of the demands it makes, the desires it engenders, yet we are all caught in a web of circumstance and connection, which in our case is Rome - its history, its political structure, the duties it imposes. Therefore, in the last resort, I say that whoever injures Rome, injures me, injures my friends, injures all I hold dear and reverent."

Cicero left early, explaining that, at his age (which in conversation he sometimes liked to exaggerate, perhaps to make himself seem more remarkable, or in an effort to attract sympathy) he required longer hours of sleep - "not that I sleep sound, you understand, but I must at least rest in bed" - than vigorous youth or beauties like Longina and Porcia.

It was, incidentally, absurd to describe Porcia as a beauty. She was very thin, and her lower jaw was of the type described, I believe, as "lantern" - long and lean. Moreover, her eyes were dull, without sparkle. You had only to look at her to sense that she was devoid of imagination.

"What an old bore he is," Longina said. "I had to keep pinching myself to keep awake and not yawn in his face." She giggled. "He would have liked that, I don't think."

Markie frowned again.

"He is a man of the very greatest distinction. I confess I find it difficult sometimes to follow his conversation, partly because it's so copious, but I never leave Cicero's company without feeling enriched."

"Yes," Porcia said. "A very great man, but a thinker, not a man of action, and as my father, the great Cato, used to say, 'Action is the test of a man.' I think that's so true. After all, anyone is capable of speaking virtuously, even the greatest hypocrites, even Caesar when he pleases, but to act virtuously, in accordance with the example of our ancestors, and the duties enjoined on us by the gods, that's a different matter."

"There's something strange, and disturbing, about which I wish to consult with you, cousin," Markie said. "I don't know quite what it means or how I should respond."

"Well?"

"It's been reported to me, reliably reported, that a paper has been found under the statue of our great ancestor who destroyed the Tarquins, with the legend: 'O, that we had a Brutus now! O, that Brutus were living at this hour!' Then, when I took my seat as praetor at the tribunal today, I discovered a message laid before me there, which read: 'Brutus, thou sleepest. Thou art not a true Brutus if you will not wake from your shameful slumber.' I am puzzled to know the import of these things."

"Husband," Porcia said, while I still deliberated how I should best answer my wooden-headed cousin, "husband, you are too modest, and it makes you slow. These messages which puzzle you so strangely ought not to do so. They are arrows directed at your conscience. They call upon you to imitate the action of your great ancestor, and rid Rome of a tyrant."

"A tyrant? Caesar?"

Longina shifted on her couch. Like me, I think, she suspected her father's hand in these messages.

"Yes," Porcia said, "a tyrant. One who is smothering liberty in Rome as surely as he destroyed my noble father. And so the people turn to you, Brutus, as one whose virtue they recognise."

It was as if she had forgotten our presence. She was concentrated utterly on her husband.

"But Caesar has been kind to me," Brutus said. "I bear him no grudge, have nothing with which to reproach him. And, compared to those who have gone before, like Marius and Sulla, he has displayed a notable clemency to those who fought against him. I can't forget that, or ignore it. What do you say, Mouse?"