The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (33 page)

We had often asked Gaius to stay with us, but you know his brusque independence. So when he appeared at our door one morning, followed by old Fusco carrying his bedding, and asked to live in our garden house, then I knew he was really ill. My husband reported this move at once to the Dictator. The Dictator promptly sent over his physician, a Greek named Sosthenes, the most conceited pig-headed young man I have ever met. I have no hesitation in saying that I am an excellent physician myself. I think it’s a gift which the Immortal Gods confer on all mothers, but this Sosthenes kept brushing away remedies which have
proved
their efficacy since time immemorial. But that’s a long story.

Now, Postumia, there’s not the slightest doubt that
that woman
killed him. After leading him through every avenue of hell for three years, she suddenly became all kindness and that’s how she killed him. She never appeared herself, but every day came letters, gifts of food – and what food! – Greek manuscripts, and messages of inquiry twice a day. All this made Gaius very happy, but there are all kinds of happiness; this was that puzzled bodiless happiness which, I suppose, deceived husbands feel when their wives are suddenly very kind to them. As the days went by and she did not appear herself we could see that he was resigning all hope of health and letting himself drift into death. At about three o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh his servant Fusco – you remember him; he used to tend boats on Lake Garda – came running to the house. He said that his master was delirious and was dressing himself to go to the Queen of Egypt’s reception. I hurried out to the garden house and found him lying unconscious in a great pool of bile which he had vomited up. My husband sent at once for Sosthenes who came and sat with Gaius until his death an hour before dawn. I was not permitted entrance to the sickroom, but who should appear at about ten o’clock but the Dictator himself. He was splendidly dressed and must have slipped away from the Queen’s reception which, after all, was less than a mile away. All night we could hear the orchestras and see the sky lit up by her bonfires. I overheard Fusco telling my husband that when the Dictator first came into the room, Gaius raised himself on one elbow and shouted to him wildly to go away. He called him ‘thief of liberty,’ ‘monster of greed,’ ‘murderer of the Republic’ and many more names, all of which are, of course,
absolutely true.
My husband joined them at about that time – he had been away hunting for our old balsam-burner. He tells me that the Dictator was receiving all this in silence, but that he was as white as a ghost. It had probably been some time since Caesar had been ordered to leave a room, but he left.

He returned at about two hours after midnight, having changed from his fine clothes. Gaius was sleeping; when he awoke he seemed to be reconciled to his visitor. My husband said he even smiled and said, ‘What, no fringes, great Caesar?’ Well, as you know, my husband worships the man. (For the most part we’ve arranged in our house simply not to discuss him.) Cornelius says that Caesar was quite wonderful from then on, wonderful in his silences and in his replies. He says that, of course, Caesar had been present at more deathbeds than anyone else. You know all those stories about Gaul, of how the wounded soldiers used to refuse to die until their General had made his nightly rounds. Oh, I confess, Postumia, that – wicked ruler though he is – there is something very impressive and yet unforced about his presence. My husband says that he himself stayed in one corner of the room with Sosthenes and that he could hear very little of what the two were saying. Apparently at one point, Gaius, the tears streaming down his face, almost flung himself out of bed crying that he had wasted his life and his song for the favours of a harlot. I would not have known how to answer that, but it seems that the Dictator could. My husband says that he talked in even lower tones, but he gathered that Caesar was praising Clodia Pulcher as though she were some Goddess. Gaius was not in pain, but he was growing weaker. He lay with his eyes on the ceiling, listening to Caesar’s words. From time to time Caesar fell silent, but when the silence had lasted too long for him, Gaius touched his wrist with his fingers, as though to say ‘go on, go on.’ And all Caesar was doing was talking about Sophocles! Gaius died to a chorus from
Oedipus at Coloneus.
Caesar placed the coins on his eyes, embraced Cornelius and the wretched physician, and went home, without guards, through the first light of dawn.

You may wish to repeat some of this to his mother and father, though it seems to me that it would only distress them further. I should feel no small responsibility if either of my boys were to succumb to such an infatuation as we have witnessed here. I think I may say that their
upbringing
will have spared them that!

[
The letter continues with the discussion of the sale of some real estate
.]

Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

[
Night of October 27 – 28
.]

1013. [
On the death of Catullus.
] I am watching beside the bed of a dying friend, the poet Catullus. From time to time he falls asleep; I then take to my pen, as always, perhaps to avoid reflection. (Though I should have learned by now that to write to you is to invoke from the depths of my mind those questions which I have spent my life evading.)

He just opened his eyes, gave the names of six of the Pleiades, and asked me that of the seventh.

Even as a young man, Lucius, you possessed an unerring eye for the Inevitable Occasion and the Inevitable Consequence. You wasted no time in wishing that things were otherwise. From you I learned, but slowly, that there are large fields of experience which our longing cannot alter and which our fears cannot forfend. I clung for years to a host of self-delusions, to the belief that burning intensity in the mind can bring a message from an indifferent loved one and that sheer indignation can halt the triumphs of an enemy. The universe goes its mighty way and there is very little we can do to modify it. You remember how shocked I was when you let fall so lightly the words: ‘Hope has never changed tomorrow’s weather.’ Adulation is continually assuring me that I have ‘accomplished the impossible’ and ‘reversed the order of nature’; I receive these tributes with a grave inclination of the head, but not without a wish that the best of my friends were present to share with me the derision they deserve.

I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it. The achievements of men are more remarkable when one contemplates the limitations under which they labor.

The type of the Inevitable is death. I remember well that in my youth I believed that I was certainly exempt from its operation. First when my daughter died, next when you were wounded, I knew that I was mortal; and now I regard those years as wasted, as unproductive, in which I was not aware that my death was certain, nay, momently possible. I can now appraise at a glance those who have not yet foreseen their death. I know them for the children they are. They think that by evading its contemplation they are enhancing the savour of life. The reverse is true: only those who have grasped their non-being are capable of praising the sunlight. I will have no part in the doctrine of the stoics that the contemplation of death teaches us the vanity of human endeavor and the insubstantiality of life’s joys. Each year I say farewell to the spring with a more intense passion and every day I am more bent on harnessing the course of the Tiber, even though my successors may permit it to expend itself senselessly in the sea.

He has opened his eyes again. We have had a paroxysm of grief. Clodia! Every moment as I watch this I understand more clearly her ruined greatness.

Oh, there are laws operating in the world whose import we can scarcely guess. How often we have seen a lofty greatness set off a train of evil, and virtue engendered by wickedness. Clodia is no ordinary woman and colliding with her Catullus has struck off poems which are not ordinary. At the closer range we say
good
and
evil,
but what the world profits by is intensity. There is a law hidden in this, but we are not present long enough to glimpse more than two links in the chain. There lies the regret at the brevity of life.

He is sleeping.

Another hour has gone by. We talked. I am no stranger to deathbeds. To those in pain one talks about themselves; to those of clear mind one praises the world that they are quitting. There is no dignity in leaving a despicable world and the dying are often fearful lest life was not worth the efforts it had cost them. I am never short of subjects to praise.

During this last hour I have paid an old debt. Many times during the ten years of my campaigns I was visited by a recurrent waking dream. I have walked to and fro before my tent at night improvising a speech. I imagined that I had collected before me an audience of chosen men and women, particularly the young, to whom I wished to communicate all that I owed – boy and man, soldier and administrator, lover, father, son, sufferer and rejoicer – to Sophocles. Once before I died I wished to empty my heart – so promptly refilled – of that thanks and praise.

Oh, yes, he was a man and that was a man’s work. An old question is answered. It is not that the Gods refused to help him, though it is certain They gave him no help. That is not Their way. If They were not hidden he would not so have peered to find Them. I too have journeyed through the highest Alps when I could not see a foot before me, but never with his composure. It was enough for him to live
as though the Alps were there.

And now Catullus, too, is dead.

Caesar to Cytheris.

[
November 1
.]

You may well imagine, gracious lady, that one in my position hesitates to submit requests to those for whom he holds the highest regard, lest the request seem to carry a weight that he does not intend to put upon it. Assume that I am in no other situation than that when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance and when you first aroused an admiration which has only increased with the passing of time.

My wife has been learning the responses which fall to her in certain ceremonies which will take place in December. I have been permitted to instruct her in these, but only to that limited extent which their secrecy admits. Could I request you to accord a few hours to instructing her in the delivery of these responses and in the deportment consonant with their solemnity?

As the Queen of Egypt is to be present at a portion of the ceremonial I should be particularly gratified if she were permitted to share whatever hours of instruction you felt able to give my wife.

It was with great happiness that I learned by accident a few days ago that you were a cherished friend of Lucius Mamilius Turrinus and that you occasionally visited him on the Island of Capri. It is his wish that as little reference be made to him as possible and even these lines confer upon this letter a character of secrecy. My happiness is not only that you enjoy his friendship and he yours, but that through you (and I hope, madam, through me) his genius may – if I may use the expression – operate in the world, even though we are not permitted to use his name. It would be remarkable enough that any man should have passed through the desperate situation that he did and be enduring its consequences and yet remain unshaken in soul; but that this should have befallen him who was already superior to all men in wisdom as he was superior to them in those attributes of soul which we call beauty is a subject of wonder, the limits of which I have never reached. The Island of Capri is surrounded for me by an air which I can only call awe. That I am not the sole reflector of that genius is not only a happiness to me, but a relief. Many things remain unspoken between my friend and myself. Among them is the regulation that I receive no letters from him and that I may visit him but once a year. I am occasionally saddened by these restrictions, but with the passing of time I come to see that they too are marked by that almost other-worldly wisdom that he never fails to impart.

Since we are talking of great men, I enclose transcripts of the last verses written by Gaius Valerius Catullus who died five nights ago.

The Queen of Egypt: Memorandum for her Secretary of State.

[
November 6
.]

The Queen of Egypt has received with satisfaction the information you have submitted to her. Her commendation has particular reference to your reports of October 29 and November 3, together with their attached documents.

The Queen has taken notice of your appraisal of the centers of discontent.

[
Here follow Cleopatra’s comments on twelve individuals or groups from among whom attempts to overturn the state or assassinate the Dictator might be expected. The potential conspirators do not include the Cascas, Cassius, or Brutus. Material from this section is reflected in our Book Four
.]

In addition, the Queen calls your attention to the following matters:

1. The reports from Source 14 [
Abra
] are worthless. Her simplicity is feigned. It should not be difficult to increase their value by threats of exposure and by other pressures.

2. Are you convinced that you have explored all the significance of the Dictator’s disappearance during my reception on the 27th? His attendance at the sickbed of a scurrilous versifier does not appear to afford a sufficient explanation.

3. Every effort should be made to place an agent in the household of Marc Antony. The evidence you have collected of his disloyalty to the Dictator in [
46
] is herewith returned. It should be deposited among the documents which you are safeguarding against any possible theft or confiscation. I am retaining the other material you found in his home.

4. The dressmaker Mopsa. Obtain for me as soon as possible a complete account of her life, parentage, associates, and so on. Also a schedule of her engagements during this month. She is coming to me on the 17th to make my robe for the Ceremonies of the Good Goddess.