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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER VAntony's Entrance into Politics on the Side of the Democrats.62-58 BC
The crushing of the Catilinarian revolution by no means reduced the Democratic
Party to impotence. Most of the extremists, it is true, had been killed around
their leader, Catiline; but other suspected men, such as Caesar, were still
alive, and the whole party eagerly awaited news of Pompey, whose expected
return in glory, like a second Alexander the Great, at the head of a
glittering, irresistible army, was the subject of excited speculation. After
his military triumphs, after nearly four years of absolute power in the East,
was he still an unspoilt democrat, or would he give some support to the aristocratic oligarchy? The
latter party, under its chief spokesmen, Cicero and Cato, was now more powerful
than it had ever been since the death of the Dictator Sulla; but this very fact
had given the People's cause the impetus of resentment, and had lent them the
boldness to show openly their hostility to the astonished Cicero, who felt
himself just now to be a very king amongst men and was amazed to find that
there were those who did not agree with him upon this point.
During his Consulship, a certain Metellus Nepos, one of Pompey’s most
trusted officers, had returned to Rome to stand for a Tribuneship of the People
for the year 62 BC. His father had
been a first-cousin of that Metellus who was the patron of Marius and
afterwards his rival in the war against Jugurtha: and though his family was of
plebeian origin, it had had such a long and illustrious history that, as in the
case of Antony, Metellus was accepted as one of Rome’s socially elect. He was,
however, an ardent democrat, and the conservatives therefore attempted to
oppose his election, their own candidate being the austere and fanatical Cato,
who was an uncompromising and slightly absurd aristocrat. There were other
candidates, of course, but in the end both these men were elected, and at the
beginning of 62 BC, when they assumed
office, everybody wondered how long it would be before they came to blows.
Metellus was the first to start the fight. He had the hardihood openly
to attack Cicero on the grounds that his execution of Antony's stepfather had
been illegal; and he put forward a proposal that Pompey should be asked to come
back to Rome at once to restore order, that is to say to defend the People’s
party against the tyrannical behavior of the conservatives. Cesar, whose efforts
to save the Catilinarian prisoners had endeared him to the mob, strongly
supported the motion; but Cato attacked it with vehemence, and he and Metellus
so thoroughly lost their tempers that people began to think that they were both
a little crazy. When the day arrived for the bill to be put to the vote in the Comitia,
Metellus, anticipating trouble, drafted a strong force of armed men into the
assembly, and took his seat upon the rostra, with Caesar beside him, surrounded
by a powerful bodyguard. As they sat talking, however, Cato charged through the
crowd, sprang onto the platform, and sat himself down with a thud between them,
suddenly interrupting their conversation and causing them the profoundest
astonishment.
The clerk then rose to read Metellus’s motion;
but Cato at once jumped to his feet and forbade him to do so. Metellus grabbed
hold of the document and was about to read it when Cato snatched it from him
and tore it up. Metellus, however, knew the words by heart and began to recite
them; but Cato pushed him back onto his seat, and, with the assistance of a
friend who had come to his support, held his colleague's mouth shut with his
hand, so that only a stifled mumble passed his lips. Thereat, his armed
followers scrambled onto the platform to protect him, and, after a free fight,
Cato was dragged away to safety by some of his friends. Metellus then began to
recite the motion again; but suddenly the battered Cato, who had collected some
armed men of his own, burst into the meeting once more, and Metellus and Caesar
were obliged to take to their heels. The upshot was that the government
stupidly asserted its despotic power by commending Cato, and deposing both
Metellus from his Tribuneship and Caesar from the Praetorship which this year
was his. Metellus thereupon fled from Rome, and with difficulty made his way to
Pompey; but Caesar, always daring, remained where he was, and when an angry
rabble marched to his house to otter him their protection and support, he
handled them so diplomatically and dispersed them with such obvious regard for
law and order, that the startled Senate highly commended his conduct and used
the pretext to reinstate him in his office, his unexpected, popularity with the
masses having brought them to their senses.
But Pompey was not yet ready to come home. He had just crowned his career
of conquest by capturing Jerusalem, where, at the fall of the city, it may be
mentioned, he had entered the temple and had boldly walked into Jehovah's Holy
of Holies to have a look at the Ark of the Lord, the seven-branched
candlestick, the golden table of the Law, and all the other mysterious objects
of that interesting faith, for which, however, he showed his gentlemanly regard
by looting none of these things nor touching the temple's treasury. From
Palestine he sent a report to the Senate recounting his victories, and he also
wrote a private letter to Cicero wherein he said nothing complimentary about
the orator’s behavior in the Catilinarian affair, of which he had just heard;
and this omission greatly offended that personage, who, in view of the hostile behavior
of the mob towards him, was painfully eager for commendation.
There are many features of Cicero’s character which must always arouse
derision in the minds of those whose reverence for the outward proprieties is
not over-developed. He was so precisely what is now called a pillar of the church
and state that had he been living some ninety years later in the country from
which Pompey wrote to him he would assuredly have come under the castigation of
that Teacher who could not abide a parade of virtue. Yet there was one quality
at least in him which endears him to us, notwithstanding his self-importance,
his vanity and his cant, namely his frank admission of his love of applause,
and his ability sometimes to laugh at himself on this account. In a letter to
his friend Atticus he asks if there were ever a human action in history so glorious as his handling of the Catilinarian
conspirators; but he says with a smile “I hope you don't object to my blowing
my own trumpet”. As soon as his Consulship was over he began to write a history
of it both in Latin and in Greek; and he told Atticus that he was going to
compose a poem about it so that I may not omit any form of self-laudation. He
wrote, too, to the historian Lucceius, begging that he would praise his Consulship unstintingly,
and if possible, write a special treatise about it.
He was frankly hurt, therefore, at Pompey’s casual letter, and he
replied saying how sorry he was to observe that it contained such scant
expressions of regard. “My achievements have been such”, he complains, “that I
did expect some recognition of them in your letter, for I assure you that my
action for the preservation of our country has met with a chorus of approval”.
The chorus, to which he referred, however, was only that of the aristocratic
party, who, indeed, at Cato’s suggestion had conferred on him the title of
Father of his Country; but he did not mention the fact that the mob was now in
the habit of booing him. In regard to this title, by the way, he wrote in the
above mentioned poem of self-praise the famous line “0 fortunatam natam me consule Roman” of which a good paraphrase is “O
happy fate of Rome to date her birthday from my consulate”—words which, in
their vanity, are almost without parallel.
His unbounded conceit—a conceit so ridiculously
human as almost to win our smiling indulgence—now led him into financial
transactions which were not at all in keeping with his professed ideals. During
his Consulship he had made a compact with his colleague Caius Antonius, Antony’s
uncle, that at the close of their year of office Antonius should be given the
governorship of the province of Macedonia, and it seems to have been agreed
between them that they should share whatever money could be wrung from the
Macedonians, for every Roman provincial governor expected to make a fortune out
of his province. But before this money arrived Cicero’s
sense of his own importance induced him to buy from the millionaire Crassus a
magnificent house on the Palatine hill. The price was colossal, and to raise
the amount he had to borrow large sums from all those who wanted his services
in the law-courts, where his eloquence always commanded high fees.
It is not possible to suppose that he could have expected to pay back
these debts, or even to live in a style commensurate with this mansion, without
setting about the making of his fortune by more or less corrupt means; and
there can be no question that from now onwards his professions of high
principle in financial matters were somewhat hypocritical.
The common people knew this, and henceforth they regarded him as one of
the thieving rich. It is true that Caesar was also deeply in debt at this time;
but the difference was that Caesar had spent his money on the People in pursuit
of their votes and support, whereas Cicero, who did not need to do this so long
as the wealthy aristocracy was behind him, was incurring his financial
obligations entirely for his own social aggrandizement. The unfortunate Antony,
meanwhile, and his mother and brothers, were more or less impoverished, and, if
we are to take literally a later sneer of Cicero’s, had not even a home they
could call their own.
Antony, however, was a light-hearted young man, and having been brought
up from childhood in an atmosphere electric with the demands of creditors, gave
little attention to the dark menace of his ever-growing debts. He could not pay
for the good time to which he was accustomed to treat himself; but neither his
father nor his stepfather had ever allowed an actual or a partial bankruptcy to
interfere with their social life, and Antony did not know what it was to deny
himself. Indeed, he may well have asked why on earth he should do so, for most
of his young friends were in debt, and yet were sowing their wild oats with the
utmost prodigality; and, in his own case, his relationship to Caius Antonius
and to the Caesars indicated that one day he would find means to make a
fortune—an expectation which was usually sufficient for the money-lenders.
Moreover, Antony happened to be a very attractive stripling, and for the
last few years various men older than himself had attached themselves to him
and had seen that he did not want; for fashionable society at that time was
even more prone to curious, romantic attachments of this sort than it is at the
present day, and a youth without such a companion was almost a phenomenon. In
spite of the fact that Antony in after years was only abnormal in the excessive
masculinity of his behavior, there is no doubt that in early life he was all
too similar to his friend Julius Caesar at the same age.
Scribonius Curio was to Antony what the King of Bithynia had been to Caesar.
Curio was some years older than Antony, but was described by Cicero as “a slip
of a girl”, which indicates that he was an effeminate little man, although, as
we have already seen, he had been prepared to defend Caesar that day in the
Senate even at the cost of his life. He had been a friend of Catiline and was a
keen democrat, having by his very nature a hearty distaste for the habits of
the conservative. His father, still living, was a man of wealth who had been
Consul in 76 BC, and was the son of a
famous orator, who, like Antony’s grandfather, the orator Marcus Antonius, was
of illustrious plebeian family. “No boy”, says Cicero, “was ever so wholly in
the power of an elder man as Antony was in the power of Curio, who, burning
with devotion, was unable to bear the misery of being
separated from him”. They went about together everywhere, and into such wild
extravagances did Curio lead him, or he Curio, that soon his debts amounted to a
considerable fortune, and he was obliged to borrow a large sum from
money-lenders, Curio standing as surety for the loan. On hearing of this,
however, the elder Curio refused to invite Antony into his house, and told the
servants not to let him in, after which his friends, always ready for
adventure, was obliged to smuggle him into his own quarters by way of a ladder
and the roof.
In due course the money-lenders demanded repayment, and Curio was faced
with the prospect of having to pay up, whereupon his angry father threatened to
bring an action against Antony in this event for the recovery of as much of the
money as possible. At this Curio went to Cicero, who was an old acquaintance of
his father's, and begged him with tears in his eyes to try to set the matter to
rights, for, he declared, if Antony were to be condemned as a debtor and
expelled from Rome he himself would go into banishment with him, having been
the real cause of the trouble, and being unable, anyway, to tolerate the
thought of existence without his friend. Such, at least, is Cicero’s account of
the interview; but it is not unlikely that Curio’s object was to ask Cicero to
help Antony and his family to recover some of the money lost, if not actually
confiscated, at the time of his stepfather’s conviction, or, alternatively, to
induce Caius Antonius to help the young man. Cicero, however, if he is to be
believed, persuaded the elder Curio to pay the debt himself, but advised him to
forbid his son ever to meet Antony again. It is unknown whether or not this
advice was put into execution; but it may be supposed that the intimacy, in any
case, came to an embarrassing end as Antony began to grow a beard and to
develop that prize-fighter’s physique and those robust manners which presently
earned for him the name of Hercules.
Towards the close of the year 62 BC while all Rome was anxiously awaiting the return of Pompey and his victorious
army, and while Caesar, who was engaged in a violent love-affair with Mucia,
Pompey’s wife, was gradually becoming the acknowledged leader of the democrats
in their struggle against a tyrannical aristocracy led by the plausible Cicero
and the fanatical Cato, a very curious incident occurred which developed into a
first-class political scandal. One of the outstanding figures amongst the
younger politicians at this time was Publius Clodius,
nicknamed Pulchellus, “The Beauty”, who although he
must have been some thirty years of age, had a face like a girl—a fact which
often led him, for the entertainment of his friends, to dress up as, and to
imitate the manners of a woman. It is generally thought that he was, indeed, an
effeminate creature whose undoubtedly licentious and immoral habits were of the
emasculated kind so common in Rome at that time, but I believe this to be a
mistake: he was, as our authorities really make quite clear, so masculine in his
behavior that his feminine appearance must have been a matter for laughter
rather than disgust.
Of extremely aristocratic ancestry, he was the son of one of one of
Sulla’s patrician officers who had died at the Colline Gate in 82 BC, and in 70 BC he had served in Asia under Lucullus to whom his sister, Clodia,
was married. A few years later, being a born fighter, he had joined the Syrian
army in their war against the Arabs, and, after many breathless adventures, had
returned to Rome in 65 BC, where he
came into prominence as one of the aristocrats who brought the charge of
extortion against Catiline for the purpose of preventing his candidature for
the Consulship; but in 63 BC after a
year of service m Gaul, he gave his support to the conspirators, and, in spite
of some further changes of face, came out at last on the democratic side for
good. Plutarch describes him as a man of brave and resolute character, eminent,
too, both for his wealth and his eloquence; but although there were some who
considered him a very decent, and even religious, member of society, it seems
to be widely agreed that when he was not gallantly fighting or violently
engaging in politics, his life was really outrageous in its profligacy.
Now it so happened that in this year 62 BC his latest mistress was none other than Caesar’s wife, Pompeia,
the great Sulla’s granddaughter, who, having been married for some six years to
a man incapable of being faithful to her for as many weeks, had at last
retaliated by responding to the overtures of this wealthy and dashing young
nobleman with the girlish face and the lion's heart. The fact that Caesar’s
mother, Aurelia, lived in the house with Pompeia, and kept an annoyingly
watchful eye upon her, only added to the ardor of Clodius; and at length, in
December, he planned a daring escapade by which he hoped to find himself alone
with his lady-love in her own house, in the middle of the night, and under very
exciting conditions.
One of the great goddesses of Rome, whose worship under various names
was almost world-wide, was Bona Dea, the patroness of
women, particularly in their character of actual or potential mothers; and
twice in the year—in May and December—there was an important festival in her
honor, the former being, I fancy, the date of its original celebration in Rome,
and the latter that adapted from foreign usage. At the December festival the
women were wont to gather at the house of one of the Consuls or Praetors, where
the Vestal Virgins performed certain very secret rites relative to the
propagation of the race, and the whole company kept a night-long vigil, playing
games and listening to music to pass the time, nobody of the other sex being
allowed in the house from nightfall until the following morning. This year the
ceremonies were to be performed at the house of Caesar, who was Praetor; and
since he would have to sleep elsewhere that night, the daring idea of attending
the secret rites, disguised as a woman, presented itself to Clodius, who
supposed that he would thus be able to enjoy a little time alone with Pompeia.
By arrangement with her maid he was admitted into the house, when the
time came, disguised as an Egyptian singing-woman, wearing an Egyptian headdress
and veil, a sleeved gown, and a sash around his middle, his feet being bandaged
to make them look smaller; but while he was awaiting the return of this maid,
who had gone to see whether her mistress were ready to receive him, the glances
directed at him by passing women made him feel so uneasy that he decided to
find his own way to Pompeia’s room. He had not gone far, however, when one of
Aurelia’s own maids encountered him and asked him whom he was looking for, whereupon his stammered reply, uttered in a very masculine voice,
revealed his sex, and soon the place was in an uproar. Aurelia rushed into the
hall wherein the rites were to be performed and covered up the sacred images
and symbols; the doors of the house were shut; and at last Clodius was discovered
hiding in a dark room into which he had been dragged by Pompeia's maid. His
clothes were half torn from him by the furious women; his identity was
revealed; and he was driven into the street again with a chorus of screams and
imprecations following him as he ran painfully through the darkness in his
tight shoes.
Next morning everybody was talking about his impious prank, and a few
days later the very serious charge of sacrilege was brought against him, to
which was added that of adultery with Pompeia. Thereupon Caesar let it be
understood that he did not think she was guilty, but divorced her nevertheless
on the afterwards famous grounds that Caesar’s wife ought to be above suspicion.
The aristocratic party were glad to discredit Clodius, who had recently been
making himself obnoxious to them; and, raking amidst the refuse of his past,
they produced the further charge that he had had incestuous relations with his
three sisters, one of whom, at any rate, was so notorious for her immoralities
that anything might be believed of her—she was, in fact, nicknamed Quadrantia, which may be translated ‘Pennyworth’, because
of the low price at which her favors had been valued by a certain disillusioned
lover of hers, and she had lately caused a scandal by buying a villa from which
she could obtain a good view of the place where the young men bathed.
The trial which ensued, early in the new year,
61 BC, became a cause célèbre, like that of Verres eight years before. The
aristocratic party, headed in this case by Cato, was determined that he should
be punished; the People were determined that he should be acquitted, and were
very pleased with Caesar when he refused to make any charge against him. Cicero
was all for hushing up the whole affair, but his wife Terentia, who at this
time dominated him, urged him to support the prosecution; and when Clodius
audaciously put forward an alibi, saying that he had been at Interamna (Terni), fifty miles from the capital, at the
time in question, Cicero gave evidence that, on the contrary, the accused had
visited him at his house in Rome on that day. Crassus, on the other hand, not
only gave his support to Clodius, but so heavily bribed everybody who would
take his money that most of the large body of jurors voted for his acquittal,
and those whose consciences would not permit them to do so scrawled their written verdicts so illegibly that nobody could read them. Clodius thus
escaped punishment, and the Democratic Party was able to congratulate itself
upon an important victory over the republicans or conservatives.
While this affair was engaging the attention of the public, Pompey
arrived back in Italy; but to the blank astonishment of both parties he
immediately disbanded his army instead of marching it to the gates of Rome, as
everybody had breathlessly expected, to support either one side or the other in
the political troubles with which the city was seething. The conservatives were
delighted, and Cicero prepared himself to take advantage of Pompey’s pacific
gesture by attempting to win him over to the side of the aristocracy; but these
plans were thwarted by Cato, who, mistrusting the great general, abused him so
openly that Pompey was thrown back upon the democrats. He was in something of a
dilemma because, on the one hand, he did not like the rigid conventionality and
despotic tendencies of the aristocratic party, and, on the other, he detested
the unruly habits of the mob which formed an important part of the Democratic
Party. Moreover, although he was at heart a true democrat, the situation was a
little complicated for him by the fact that Caesar, who was now the real leader
of the People, had been making love to his, Pompey's, wife Mucia during his
absence, as has already been said. That matter, however, was amicably settled.
Pompey divorced Mucia because of her adultery with Caesar, and shortly
afterwards arranged to marry Caesar's girl Julia instead, to show that there
was no ill-feeling. Julia was the daughter of Caesar’s first wife, Cornelia,
daughter of the famous democratic leader, Cinna: she was a beautiful young
woman in the early twenties, and Pompey was twice her age; but, fortunately,
she found him so attractive as a lover that she was able to respond with
genuine warmth to his equally genuine ardor, and was evidently delighted to
make amends in person to him for her father’s theft of Mucia.
Caesar, however, very wisely did not remain in Rome to attempt the
impossible task of sharing the leadership of the People with Pompey. Now that
his term of office as Praetor was over, he was anxious, too, to go abroad to
try to make some money by means fair or foul, for at the moment he required
about twenty-five million sesterces to make him worth precisely nothing, as he put it. He therefore accepted a
governorship in Spain, and although he had. great difficulty in pacifying his
creditors, and had in the end to ask Crassus to stand surety for him for a huge
sum of money to keep the most dangerous of them quiet, he was enabled in the
end to make a successful escape from the others, although, to do so, he had to
slip away before his baggage and a military escort were ready.
In the autumn of 61 BC Pompey
celebrated his triumph, and for two days the Roman populace gazed in wonder at
a seemingly endless procession of soldiers, booty, and captive kings and
princes. It was the barbarous Roman custom to kill the important prisoners
after they had been led in chains through the streets; but Pompey again
revealed his humanity by putting to death only two such persons out of the
three hundred and more who had been brought to Rome, and by sending almost all
the others back to their own countries at the public expense. He also displayed
an exalted sense of citizenship by divesting himself of his military apparel
and marks of rank at the end of the Triumph, and going quietly to his house,
dressed as an ordinary civilian. His behavior at this time, in fact, was like
the abdication of a monarch at the height of his glory; but it was far too
altruistic for the taste of Rome, and his popularity was doffed with his
raiment. The democrats did not altogether trust him, and the conservatives,
unable to win him over, did their best to crush him.
Matters, however, now hung fire for a while in Rome, though in Spain Caesar
proved himself to be a very energetic military commander, and conducted some
minor campaigns with distinction; but in the middle of the next year, 60 BC Caesar, aching with ambition,
returned home in order to become a candidate for one of the Consulships of 59 BC. The aristocratic party did its best
to oppose his election, but the most it could do was to put forward its own
candidate for the other Consulship, a man named Calpurnius Bibulus; and the
result of the elections was that Caesar and Bibulus, representing the two
political extremes, became Consuls together, entering into office at the
beginning of 59 BC to the
accompaniment of the rival acclamations of the two parties. They were like opposing fighting-cocks rather than colleagues, the one
being backed most prominently by Pompey and Crassus, and the other by Cicero
and Cato. The democrats, however, obviously had the better champion; and they
felt sufficiently confident of their strength to try to pay off their old
scores against the opposing faction in regard to the treatment of the late Catiline
and his friends.
If there be any lingering doubt in the mind of the reader as to the
correctness of the assertion which I made in the previous chapter that
Catiline, with all his faults, was the beloved leader of the People, and not
merely the irresponsible monster which official history has deemed him, it must
surely be dissipated by the fact that the bulk of the democratic party behind Caesar
now began to devote its energy to the punishment of those who had brought about
the destruction of the so-called Catilinarian conspirators, and Caesar, himself
more moderate in this matter, had difficulty in keeping his followers in
control. One of the first moves was the impeachment of Caius Antonius, Antony’s
uncle, for the second time, on the nominal charge of having extorted money from
his province of Macedonia, but for the real reason that he had turned against
Catiline and had commanded the forces sent to overthrow him. Cicero, of course
defended him; but he was condemned nevertheless, and was exiled to the island
of Cephalonia, in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Greece, where he remained,
it may be added, for the next fifteen years. The young Antony, now twenty-four
years of age, seems to have sided with those who condemned his uncle, for he
had already attached himself enthusiastically to the Democratic Party and had
struck up a great friendship with Clodius, who, in spite of his affair with
Caesar’s wife, was now his most active supporter. Antony’s mother, Julia, widow
of that Lentulus whom Cicero had caused to be put to death as Catiline's chief
agent, was also glad enough, no doubt, to witness the punishment of her former
brother-in-law. She was herself of the family of the Caesars, and her sympathies
would naturally have been with her kinsman, Julius Caesar, and his party, even
if his political opponent, Cicero, had not been her personal enemy. As soon as
Caius Antonius was condemned a crowd of people hurried off to the tomb of
Catiline, and triumphantly decked it with flowers; and it may well be that in
that crowd Antony and his mother were to have been seen.
The various measures which Caesar, as Consul, brought forward were of a
popular character, and were designed to benefit the masses; but they were all
opposed by his colleague Bibulus, and at length a serious riot took place. One
day, while Caesar was speaking in the Forum, Bibulus, who had just had a
basketful of dung emptied over his head, burst into the meeting to stop him,
whereupon a free fight ensued. Bibulus leapt upon the platform, and thrusting
his head forward and pointing to his throat, shouted out to Caesar’s supporters
to kill him if they dared. “I cannot persuade Caesar to do right”, he cried, “I
can at least affix upon him the stigma of my death!” His friends, however,
dragged him away; and thereupon the irrepressible Cato mounted the platform and
began to denounce Caesar and all his works. The democrats at once pounced upon
him, and carried him off kicking, depositing him outside the circle of the
crowd. Cato, however, made his way by side streets around to the back of the
rostra, and suddenly climbed up onto it again, and there stood shouting his
denunciations until once more he was lifted off his feet and thrown down at a
safe distance, while the meeting, after further uproar, ended in a victory for
the democrats.
One of Caesar’s measures was that of approving all the dispositions made
by Pompey in the countries he had conquered, these having been refused
ratification by the aristocratic party on the disgruntled advice of Lucullus,
their own deposed general whom Pompey had replaced in the East. Caesar and
Pompey, in fact, were now working together on terms of apparent friendship,
although Pompey, who had now completely lost his heart to his new wife, Julia,
Caesar’s daughter, was far more interested just now in her than in politics,
and could with difficulty be dragged from her side, a condition of mind which Caesar
at once turned to his own advantage by borrowing a handsome sum of money from
the ardent lover. Caesar himself had just married Calpurnia, daughter of Lucius
Calpurnius Piso, the democratic Consul-elect for the following year; but this
was a political union and in no way interfered with business—the marriage, in
fact, had led Cato to make the caustic remark that the Senate nowadays seemed
to be nothing more than a matrimonial agency.
During the second half of the year Caesar’s behavior became very
autocratic, and at last Bibulus, finding himself deprived of all power and not
a little in danger of his life, shut himself up in his house and could not be
induced to show his nose at any public meetings or functions. The Senate,
which, almost to a man, belonged to the aristocratic party, was powerless to
act; and, indeed, so entirely was the control of affairs in Caesar’s hands, and
so blindly did the Comitia, the People’s assembly, follow him, that the
democrats jestingly referred to this Consulship of Caesar and Bibulus as that
of Julius and Caesar.
Presently he caused a law to be passed that any senator who obstructed
the passage of one of his popular measures should be put to death, after which
he had little further trouble with any member of that body, except, of course,
with Cato, who did not cease to challenge everything he did, until at last he
was carried off struggling, and pitched into prison for a while. The Comitia
having now more or less taken over the functions of the Senate, Caesar thought
it would be as well for his chief lieutenant, Clodius, the Beauty, to serve as
a Tribune of the People; but since this office could only be held by a man of
plebeian family, and the family of Clodius was patrician, Caesar caused him to
be adopted by a certain plebeian gentleman as his son, and thus, by a stroke of
the pen, made him eligible.
It is a very remarkable fact that at these times the leaders of the now
dominant Democratic Party, with its rough, working-class following, were men of
elegant, effeminate appearance. Curio, that slip of a girl, as Cicero called
him was one of Caesar’s chief supporters. Clodius looked like a woman, and had
passed himself off as one at the Bona Dea rites in Caesar’s
house. The debonair Pompey, although a normal man in his habits, is described
by Plutarch as having languishing eyes, and a gentle, graceful bearing. Caesar
himself, in spite of his vital energy, his commanding character, and his reckless
bravery, was still laughed at as an effeminate fop. In the Senate, at about
this time, when he had declared that in spite of his enemies he would obtain
what he desired and would make that assembly submissive to his pleasure, one of
the senators sneeringly retorted: “That will not be an easy task for a woman!” And Antony, who, as the close
friend now of Clodius, was beginning to play an active role in the party, had
only lately begun to reveal those manly qualities which later were his
particular characteristic, but which in his youth had been concealed behind the
soft manners and appearance typical in all ages of the male of the intermediate
sex. In his case, obviously, this was to a great extent a fashionable pose; but
it is not without a sense of surprise that one observes how the rude
proletariat had allied itself with these charming exquisites, and how the
aristocratic party, on the other hand, was identified with the more severe and
manly tradition of ancient Rome.
The highly respectable Cicero was all at sea in this paradoxical
situation. Shocked and frightened at the bitter criticisms leveled against him
by the democrats, he bored his friends almost to distraction by repeating to
them at great length the story of the Catilinarian conspiracy and of his behavior
at that time, stating over and over again that he had saved the fatherland on
that occasion. He tried hard to fortify his failing courage by telling himself
what a very noble person he was, and by writing to his friends describing his
successful speeches and the approval they evoked in the minds of all virtuous
men.
“I am maintaining my position with dignity”, he declared. “I am supported
by everybody’s good will. You know how I can deliver my thunders”, he wrote to
his friend Atticus in reference to his defence against his enemies. “Well, this
time I brought the house down! Great heavens!—how I battled and spread desolation
around me! What onslaughts I made on my opponents! I wish you could have seen how
grandly I was fighting”. Herein he was deliberately refusing in his vanity to
face the fact that he was now hated by the masses; but when his letter-writing
was finished, and ugly reality returned to brush aside this pathetic pretence,
his depression was deep, and, as in the case of most boastful men, his bombast
collapsed like a pricked balloon. As Appian says, he was “utterly unnerved”.
It has already been pointed out that Caesar was closely cooperating
with Pompey at this time, and presently these two drew the enormously wealthy
Crassus into their mutual league, as a result of which the three of them became
the absolute rulers of Rome. The coalition was nicknamed the Tricaranus, the “Three-headed
Monster”; and for their chief agent they used Antony’s great friend, Clodius,
who, as soon as he entered, in December, 59 BC,
upon his duties as Tribune of the People, launched a violent attack upon the
fallen Cicero, having for its object nothing less than the ex-Consul’s banishment
from the city. In this onslaught Antony played a very prominent part, and was, indeed,
described as the brand which fired every conflagration. Daily Clodius pressed
more vigorously the charge against Cicero of having acted illegally in putting
Lentulus to death; and Antony, excited by the thought of avenging his
stepfather, helped him in every way to arouse the anger of the people.
Time after time Cicero came to verbal blows with his antagonists, and
not all the scurrilous invective for which he was famous saved him from
frequent humiliation. Once when it had been mentioned that Cicero had paid a
recent visit to Baiae, the fashionable and exclusive
watering-place on the Bay of Naples, the elegant Clodius cut him to the quick
by asking with a sneer what on earth a mere person from Arpinum could find to do at a place patronized by society. And when Cicero talked of
laying his case before a jury, Clodius replied with the remark—all the more
scathing because it was rather true—that no jury would believe a word he said
even when he was speaking on oath.
At the close of the year 59 BC Caesar’s somewhat uninspired Consulship came to an end, and by arrangement with
Pompey and Crassus he obtained for himself the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul,
that is to say the part of northern Italy corresponding more or less to Lombardy,
to which was added an indefinite region beyond the Alps; and at his special
request a law was passed giving him the military command of these regions for
five years. Just as he was about to leave Rome a law was proposed in the
Comitia by Clodius that any man who had condemned a Roman citizen to death
without allowing him the right of appeal to the People should be exiled; and at
this the unfortunate Cicero abandoned all attempts to maintain his dignity or
self-respect, and, with the dread of exile hanging over him, dressed himself as
a supplicant and visited his friends or accosted them in the street, pouring
out his woes to them and weeping over his lot until his unseemly behavior
aroused general disgust and ridicule. The mob booed and hissed him whenever
they saw him, calling him the murderer of Lentulus and his comrades; and
sometimes they flung mud and garbage at him as, blinded by tears, he groped his
importunate way from door to door under cover of night. The old conservative or
republican party, however, lay powerless beneath the weight of the Three-headed
Monster, and could not save him from the wrath of Antony and Clodius; while
Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, although rather sorry for him, could not now check
the storm of popular hatred against him which at first they had allowed Clodius
to raise. Caesar, in particular, tried to find him a loophole of escape by
offering to give him a job on his staff in Gaul, a kindly action inspired, one
may suppose, by a genuine admiration for Cicero’s oratory and mastery of
elegant language—an admiration which was reciprocated by Cicero, who, in later
years, admitted that Caesar was in command of a splendid, noble, and magnificent
vein of eloquence. Cicero, however, could not bring himself to accept a minor
post of this kind, and the matter dropped.
At last, in the first days of March, 58 BC, Cicero ignominiously fled from Rome; and as soon as Caesar had
gone to his new post in Gaul, and Pompey and Crassus to their country seats,
Clodius and Antony led a mob to the orator’s gorgeous mansion on the Palatine,
and, turning his wife Terentia and her children out of it, set the
house-wreckers to work to raze it to the ground. When the destruction was
complete, builders were called in to erect a temple to the goddess of Liberty upon
the site; and at its dedication one may suppose that Antony and his widowed
mother, Julia, were the guests of honor.
The two Consuls for this year were Piso, whose daughter Caesar had
married, and Aulus Gabinius, the man who in 65 BC had proposed Pompey as
commander-in-chief against the pirates: both of them were democrats. It was
arranged that at the end of their term of office Gabinius should be given the
governorship of the province of Syria; and now this personage invited Antony to
join his staff there when the time came. Antony, however, did not like the idea
of a staff appointment, but said that he would willingly accept a cavalry
command, so that there might be some chance of active service for him; and
eventually this was arranged.
Meanwhile, however, he was feeling somewhat uncomfortable in Rome; for
not only were his creditors pressing him, but he had involved himself so deeply
with the more violent elements of the democratic party that he could see a good
deal of trouble brewing for him in the future. His friend Clodius was
altogether out of hand; and, although Antony had enjoyed the overthrowing of
Cicero, now that he had avenged his stepfather he was not happy in the situation
which had developed. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus were all moderate democrats,
who might at any moment repudiate the reckless Clodius; and a change in public
opinion might bring Cicero back from exile.
He therefore decided that the best thing for him to do would be to go
over to Greece for the purpose of taking lessons in oratory at Rhodes or
somewhere, just as Caesar had done; and then, when Gabinius should pass through
Greece on his way to Syria at the beginning of the next year, he would meet him
and go with him to take up his cavalry command. He was now twenty-five years of
age, and he must have been conscious that so far his career had not been at all
reputable. He had in recent years involved himself in a serious love affair
with a girl named Fadia, whose social standing was deplorable;
and the fact that he made quite a boast of his being the father of her two or
three babies seems to have been thought a little more unconventional than was
necessary. The phase of his effeminacy, at any rate, was over, but it had been
followed by a period of violent tub-thumping and mob-leading which had
culminated in the recent scenes of destruction on Cicero's Palatine property;
and perhaps Caesar, who was his hero, had warned him to mend his ways, and had
advised him to learn that self-control which a school of oratory best could
teach. At any rate it is to the young man’s credit that he set forth from Rome,
in this year 58 BC, with the intention not only of returning thus to tutelage
for a while, but of passing on thence to the discipline and the hardships of
military service in far lands. As Plutarch puts it,
he was weary of madness.
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