The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (24 page)

Clodia to Caesar’s Wife.

[
From Capua, September 8
.]

Many thanks, my good, good friend, for entrusting the secret to me.

Your letter is very like you. How wise you are to look at the matter from all sides, and to see all the dangers that lie concealed behind the event you foretell. And how right and noble of you it is not to fly off into passionate indignation as so many other women would do.

May I make one small suggestion, however, and one which I would only make to you because only you
could
put it into effect? You might consider approaching this annoying visitor in another way. It occurs to me that if you conducted yourself – as only you can – with all the graciousness compatible with your dignity, how surprised she would be! In that way you could insinuate yourself into this visitor’s circle; you could keep your eye on what is going on; and you could prevent the Other Person in the Case from completely forgetting himself.

I would not recommend this course to anyone but you, for it requires great skill. You could do it. Do think this over.

I long to talk to you about it – which will be very soon. In the meantime I send you my admiration and affection and this bottle of Sicilian perfume.

Clodia, at Baiae, to Catullus in Rome.

[
August 25
.]

My sister tells me I should write you a letter. A number of other people have appointed themselves to be your advocate and have told me that I should write you a letter.

Here, then is a letter. You and I long since agreed that letters are nothing. Yours tell me what I knew already or could well imagine, and they frequently depart from the rule which we had laid down that a letter should consist principally of facts.

Here are my facts:

The weather has been incomparable. There have been many parties on sea and on land. I leave all reunions which have been abandoned to conversation only and for which the host has made no plans for entertainment. It is not necessary to say that conversation is more than usually insupportable in the environment of Baiae.

I studied astronomy with Sosigenes and am henceforth the enemy of all poets who enlarge upon their own idiotic sentiments in the presence of the stars. I took up the study of the Egyptian language. When I discovered that it sounded like the babbling of infants and that its grammatical structures were at a level with its sounds I gave it up. We did a great deal of amateur theatricals in Greek and Latin. I worked many days with Cytheris. She refused all payment and returned a present I had sent to her. When I insisted that she receive some mark of my indebtedness she asked for a poem of yours in your handwriting. I gave her ‘The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis.’ She refused to take part in any plays, but she declaimed that poem most remarkably, and during my lessons with her she frequently rendered portions of the tragedies. My style is very different from hers but she is absolute mistress of her style. Marc Antony often joined us at the end of my lessons. There is only one pleasing thing about him, his laughter; he laughs all the time and yet it is not tiresome. When she is not talking about her art, Cytheris is tiresome. She has the apathy of happy women. I discovered, though not from her, that she is one of the few persons who are permitted to visit Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on Capri. [
Clodia wrote to Turrinus, asking permission to visit him; she was courteously denied.
] I know a number of men whom I could love very much, if they were mutilated and blind. I went over Verus’s new book of verses with him.

I made a number of new enemies. You know that I never lie and that I do not permit people to lie in my presence. I was, as you call it, ‘unfaithful to you’ on a number of occasions. As I am unable to sleep at night, I sometimes arrange companionship for those hours.

Those are the facts concerning my life this summer and those are the answers to the questions contained in your extremely monotonous letters. On rereading them I find that you have given me very few facts. You have not been writing to me but to that image of me lodged in your head whom I have no wish to confront. The facts about you I have learned from my sister and your other advocates. You have paid visits to my sister and to Manilius and Livia [
Torquatus
]. You have taught their children how to swim and how to sail. You have taught their children how to train dogs. You have written reams of verses for children, and another poem for a wedding. I tell you again you will lose your poetic gift, if you abuse it. Such verses can only increase the blemish that already mars so much of your work, that resort to colloquial terms and provincial expressions. Many people are already denying that you are even a Roman poet. You and I are agreed that Verus has not the basic talent which you have, but both in his manners and in his verses he has a uniform elegance and taste; while you continue to cultivate a
northern
uncouthness.

This letter, like all letters, is totally unnecessary. However, I have two more things to say: on the last day of September, my brother and I are giving a dinner and I hope you will be present. I have asked the Dictator and his wife. (Incidentally, I am told that you have been spitting some more epigrams; why do you not acknowledge that you know nothing and care nothing about politics? What possible satisfaction can you derive from making vulgar little noises in the shadow of that great man?) I have also asked his aunt, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio.

I am starting north on the eighth. I am bringing a number of friends with me, including Mela and Verus. We shall stop a number of days with Quintus Lentulus Spinther and Cassia at Capua. I suggest that you join us there on the ninth and return with us to the city a few days later.

Should you decide to come to Capua I beg of you to entertain no expectation of sharing my insomnia. For the tenth time I ask you to consider the nature of friendship, to learn its advantages and to abide within its limits. It makes no claims; it establishes no possession; it is not competitive. I have made some plans for my life during the coming year. It will differ widely from that of the year just passed. The dinner to which I have invited you will give you an idea of its character.

Catullus:

Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire

Et quod vides perisse perditum ducas.

Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,

Cum ventitabis quo puella ducebat,

Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.

Ibi illa multa tum jocosa fiebant;

Quae tu volebas nec puella nolebat.

Fulsere vere candidi tibi soles.

Nunc iam illa non volt; tu quoque inpotens, noli,

Nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser vive;

Sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.

At tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.

‘Wretched Catullus, put an end to your raving

And that which you see to be lost, count it truly lost.

Radiant were the days that formerly shone upon you

When you hastened whither the girl led the way –

She who was loved by you and me as no woman will ever be loved.

Many then were the delights;

What you wished for she wished no differently.

Radiant indeed were the days that shone upon you.

Now she is of a different mind; you, being helpless, give up your longing;

Cease to pursue the fleeing and to live in wretchedness;

But endure with affirmed heart; hold fast.

You, Catullus, since these things are so, hold fast.’

The Commonplace Book of Cornelius Nepos.

[
This entry is of a later date
.]

‘Do you not find it extraordinary,’ I asked, ‘that Catullus should let these poems pass from hand to hand? I can think of no precedent for so candid a revelation.’

‘Everything there is extraordinary,’ replied Cicero, raising his eyebrows and lowering his voice as though we were being overheard. ‘Have you remarked that he is constantly holding a dialogue with himself? Whose is this other voice that is so often addressing him – this voice that urges him to ‘bear up’ and to ‘pull himself together’? Is that his genius? Is that some other-self? Oh, my friend, I resist this poetry as long as I can. There is something indecorous about it. Either it is the raw experience of life which has not yet sufficiently made its transmutation into poetry or it is a new kind of sensibility. His grandmother, I am told, was from the North Country; perhaps these are the first airs blowing on our literature from the Alps. They are not Roman. Before these verses a Roman does not know where to rest his glance; a Roman blushes. Nor is it Greek. Poets before now have told us of their sufferings, but their sufferings are already half-healed by song. But these! – there is no mitigation. This man is not afraid to acknowledge that he suffers. Perhaps that is because he shares it in dialogue with his genius. But what is this other-self? Have you one? Have I one?’

Caesar in Rome to Cleopatra in Carthage.

[
The following letter, in the Dictator’s hand, accompanied a formal greeting on the Queen’s approach to Rome
.]

[
September 3
.]

August Queen, it gives me no pleasure to add to this most sincere message of welcome the following injunctions: I must remind you that I place much importance on the conditions you agreed to when this visit to Rome was planned. I refer to the number of persons in your retinue, the regulations concerning the arboring of royal insignia, and to the requirement that there shall be no child under five years of age in your company. Should you fail to observe this agreement I shall be obliged to distress myself and to distress you by taking action derogatory to your dignity and inconsonant with the esteem I bear you. Should there be any children now in your company you will either leave them at Carthage or return them to Egypt.

Do not allow the severity of my words, however, to mislead you as to the great satisfaction with which I look forward to your stay in Rome. Rome gains heightened interest for me when I think that I shall be soon showing it to the Queen of Egypt, the Rome that is here now and the Rome that I am planning. The world holds but a few rulers, and among them but a small number who have any inkling of what it is to direct the fortunes of nations. The Queen of Egypt is great in genius as she is great in position.

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows. In looking forward to the Queen’s visit I promise myself a mitigation of the solitude in which I live and work.

I have this morning made a visit to the palace which is being prepared for the Queen. Nothing is being left undone which would minister to her comfort.

First Reply to the Above Letter. Cleopatra to Caesar.

[
In hieroglyphs, preceded by the Queen’s titles, descent, etc., on an enormous sheet of papyrus, followed by the Latin translation; sent through the Roman administration’s messenger service in advance of the royal progress
.]

[
September 2.
]

The Queen of Egypt has directed me, her unworthy chamberlain, to acknowledge the reception of the Dictator’s letter and presents.

The Queen of Egypt thanks the Dictator for the presents she has received.

Second Reply. Cleopatra to Caesar.

[
Sent from the royal ship on its arrival at Ostia, October 1
.]

The Dictator has sent the Queen of Egypt a letter on the difficulties of being a monarch.

There are others.

A Queen, great Caesar, may be a mother. Her royal position renders her more, not less, subject to those loving anxieties which all mothers feel, particularly if their children are of delicate health and affectionate disposition. You have told me that you were, in your time, a loving parent. I believed you. You defended yourself to me against the charge that you permitted reasons of state to force you to deal unfeelingly with your daughter. [
Apparently at the instigation of her father, Julia broke her engagement to one man in order to marry pompey. She died before the Civil War arose between Caesar and pompey, but the marriage was a completely happy one.
]

Unfeelingly you have dealt with me, and not only with me but with a child who is no ordinary child, being the son of the greatest man in the world. He has returned to Egypt.

You have described to me the solitude of a ruler. A ruler has reason to feel that most of the approaches made to him are coloured with self-interest. Is it not the danger of rulers to increase this solitude by ascribing to others that motivation alone? I can imagine a ruler turned to stone by such a view of his fellow men and turning to stone all those who approach him.

As I approach the city I wish to say to its master that I am the Queen and the servant of Egypt and that my country’s fortunes are never absent from my mind, but that I would feel myself less than royal did I not recognise also that I am a mother and a woman.

To return to you your own words:
Do not allow the severity of my tone, in the words I have just written, to mislead you as to the satisfaction with which I look forward to my stay in Rome.

I ascribe the ungentleness of your conduct to the fact that you have, indeed, created for yourself a solitude that is excessive even for the ruler of a world. You have said that it may be possible that I might lighten that burden.

Catullus to Clodia, in Rome.

[
The following two letters, probably written on Sept. 11 or 12, were never sent. They are the drafts for the letter already given as Document XIII. Catullus did not destroy them at once, for two weeks later they were discovered in the poet’s rooms by Caesar’s secret police and copies of them were forwarded to the Dictator
.]

Kill me outright – since that is what you desire – I cannot kill myself – it is as though my eyes were bound on some play, as though I were watching breathlessly – to see what new horror you would devise. I cannot kill myself until I have seen the last terrifying exposure of what you are – what are you? – murderess – torturer – mountain of lies – laughter – mask – traitor – traitor of our whole human race.