A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  Just before the Saturnalia the Senate passed a motion that both Pompey and Caesar must lay down their arms. Caesar responded to this motion with public enthusiasm, and the people acclaimed him, for they were fearful of a civil war between those two mighty opponents. But Pompey was not deceived. He suspected the dexterity of Caesar, and as an old acquaintance and former friend and son-in-law, he knew Julius too well. He said to the Senate, “I will not lay down my arms, the only protection Rome possesses for law and order, until Caesar retires to civilian life. I will not countenance him as Consul again.” He had received, he told the Senate, stories of disaffection among Caesar’s legions, and that one of Caesar’s own generals, Labienus, was ready to desert to the Senate. “It is no longer a struggle between Pompey and Caesar,” they said to each other. “It is a struggle between law and Caesar.”

  The Senate then named a day when Caesar must lay down his arms and relinquish his provinces or be declared a public enemy. To enforce this, the Senate declared martial law—under Pompey. Cicero again went to visit his old friend and to plead with him in the name of Rome. Julius listened, and replied with such sincerity that Cicero was forced to listen:

  “I do not wish civil war, the gods forbid, Marcus! To be candid with you, my own personal safety now depends on my armies; Pompey desires my death. Let Pompey lay down his arms on the day I am commanded to lay down my arms, and we will meet as equals.” He smiled faintly, and added, “If we meet so, then I will have no difficulty with Pompey.”

  Cicero went to Pompey and pleaded with him also, and asked him to meet Caesar in person. Pompey listened in sullen silence and drank wine slowly and stared into space. Then he said, “We have known Caesar a long time, you and I, Marcus. He has often deceived even you, with his charm, and you are a man of mind. He would beguile me with his lies and his promises. Do you think that he has ever swerved from his ambitions to be emperor of Rome? I prefer the rule of law, under the Senate, the Assemblies and the tribunes, however cumbersome and weak and bumbling. Caesar despises law, and that you know, except his own.”

  Cicero believed Pompey. Pompey had too little imagination to be a liar, and as a true soldier he preferred order. He had plotted with Caesar and Crassus, and probably even Catilina, in the past, under the impression that only stern military law would restore Rome to peace and tranquillity. But personal power for the sake of power only had not been one of his schemes.

  Then to Cicero’s stupefaction many of the tribunes openly deserted Caesar, who pretended love for them as representatives of the people. The Senate proscribed them. Caesar was indignant, or at least he affected to be so. He spoke to his devoted legions at Ravenna, declaring himself “the guardian of law,” and indicating that the Senate, in proscribing the tribunes, “the representatives of the humble Roman people,” had violated law and shown extreme arrogance and contempt for all Rome. “We are oppressed by a few fractious men!” he cried. “We have been betrayed! I defend the liberty of the people of Rome and the dignity of the tribunes! My own injuries at the hands of the Senate, and Pompey, are trivial in comparison.” He wept openly; the refugee tribunes and the legions wept with him. When this was reported to Cicero he said with bitter irony, “He was ever an actor, the best in Rome!”

  The white winter was particularly vicious that year. Military operations during that period were usually suspended. Pompey, the man of little imagination, believed that Julius, far from Rome now, would also suspend military operations. After all, it was customary! But winter, and custom, meant nothing to Julius. Cicero wrote to Atticus, “Julius moved so rapidly. He is a man of frightful vigilance and energy. But I cannot arouse Pompey, who believes in seasons!”

  All else is violent history. Caesar gathered his devoted legions from Gaul, and started down the Adriatic coast to Rome. He crossed the Rubicon, a tiny river, on the border of northern Italy. Thus he violated law and became an enemy of the government in Rome. “Let the die be cast!” he shouted to his soldiers. His spies had assured him that the northern towns were with him and loved him. He ran down the coast like a line of fire, with his enthusiastic and cheering legions. Pompey moved to block him. Caesar rushed to stop him at Brindisi, but Pompey’s forces broke through. However, at Corfinium, Pompey’s legions surrendered with hardly a show of resistance to Caesar, and he accepted them into his own forces, and with affection. He said, “Nothing is more remote from my disposition than cruelty.” But hearing of this Cicero exclaimed in despair, “Julius is a madman, a wretch!”

  The unfortunate Cicero was beside himself. As Caesar was now rapidly approaching Rome, Pompey fled to Macedonia to raise legions in his behalf. Cicero, against the advice of his brother Quintus, went to Durazzo to join Pompey. On hearing of his resolution, Terentia cried, “It is finished! You are no more my husband! You have betrayed your family!” Cicero replied, “I have never betrayed Rome, and a man’s country and his God must be first in his life for he has nothing else besides.”

  On his way to Pompey, Cicero wrote to Atticus, “What I wish is only peace. From the victory of Caesar will arise a tyrant. A strange madness has possessed not only bad men but even those who are esteemed good, so that all desire only to fight, while I, only I, cry out in vain that nothing is worse than civil war and nothing more evil.”

  He did not love Pompey. He had begun to doubt his resolution. But he had no choice now. Pompey was on the side of the Constitution and law. Julius had challenged the government on invading Italy. “No matter who wins,” he wrote sadly to his publisher, “the Republic is dead. I can only hope that by supporting Pompey something may be saved for the liberty of the people.” He understood that in his support of Pompey his own life was at stake, but he no longer cared. However he wrote to Atticus, “What kind of attack will Caesar employ against me and my property in my absence? Something more violent than in the case of Clodius, for he will think that he has a chance of winning popularity by damaging me.”

  He knew that any love for him in Rome was now confined to a very few. He suspected many of the Senators of being secret supporters of Caesar. He had given so much time to the support of Pompey in Rome that his law practice had again disappeared. He had not guarded his investments. He had done nothing but serve his country. And the majority in his country now loathed him, for the people adored Julius. He had compounded his unpopularity by joining Pompey in Macedonia. “Above all things,” he wrote to his wife, “the rabble despises law and order and prefers grandeur in a tyrant. They especially love a mountebank who flatters them, and a malefactor is close to their hearts.”

  He had not as yet come to terms with his conciliatory nature. As a man of peace he had gone to Pompey. Yet he could not completely relinquish his affection for Julius, and his dreams were haunted by memories of childhood. Sometimes he awoke in terror after a dream that Julius had been murdered. He would say to himself, “It would be excellent for Rome!” Nevertheless, his heart would be heavy and he would eagerly await news that Julius was still living. Pompey could not understand him. “You hate what Julius is, but I suspect your heart is sore concerning him and you do not wish him to die.” To which Cicero replied with sorrow, “Love is a great betrayer. Justice has her demands, but love pleads against her.” It was unreasonable. But Reason always fought with Love. He wrote to Atticus, “I would die for Pompey, but for all that I do not believe that all hope for the Republic is centered in him.” He knew that the Republic was dead. Nevertheless, he still hoped, and hope, he knew, could also be a betrayer. “I prefer peace at any price,” he said, and wondered if that, too, was not a betrayal. He was torn by a thousand winds.

  He had discovered what many brave and wise men had discovered before him, that it is illogical to expect men to be thoughtful and dedicated to virtue. Most especially, it was stupid to expect a man to be a rational creature. It was true, as Scaevola had often said, that none but a complete fool was unaware of the difference between good and evil, reason and insanity. But, Cicero thought: Had Scaevola ever counted the fo
ols in the world? They were far worse than evil men, for they gave evil men authority and their applause.

  Caelius wrote to him, “Did you ever see a more futile person than your friend, Pompey, or ever read of anyone prompter in action than our friend Caesar, or more moderate in victory?” Poor Cicero was inclined to agree and became critical that Pompey had abandoned Rome to Caesar and had withdrawn across the Adriatic. He even wrote to his brother that Pompey was “a poor statesman and a rotten soldier.” He was angered against Pompey, who had been hopelessly outnumbered by Caesar’s army. “It is better to die in a just cause than to live,” he remarked to Pompey, to which Pompey replied, “It is better to fight in a just cause than to die in it.”

  Cicero had not thought Pompey subtle enough to say that, and pondered on whether Pompey had fully understood what he had said. Pompey saw him pondering and smiled grimly. He found Cicero very trying to a man of action and a soldier. He respected him, but he was also impatient. He thought of young Dolabella, who was a Caesarian and said in a rallying voice, “Where is your son-in-law?” To which Cicero in exasperation replied, “With your father-in-law.” Those who heard this acid exchange were highly amused, but Cicero was lately wanting in a sense of humor and Pompey did not like his retort. He also owed Cicero money, and suspected, wrongly, that Cicero was wondering if he had not wasted his sesterces. “We shall move,” he said with irritability. “Are you not an augur? Tell me when!”

  I should tell neither of you! thought the harassed Cicero, who found himself longing incontinently for Rome and sometimes cursing himself for ever having again taken up politics after his exile. “You can be certain of only one thing regarding politicians,” he wrote to Quintus, who was with Caesar now, “that you can never be certain. Do I wish either the death of Caesar or Pompey? No! I wish them only to halt their attempts to tear Rome apart. I came with Pompey because I considered his the only rightful cause. But any cause which precipitates civil war is not a good one, no matter how it is trumpeted. I cannot write you my thoughts on Caesar, for he is your general, and even for you to read my thoughts would be accounted treason in you!”

  Quintus, after some hesitation, and thinking of his brother’s life and future, took the letter to Caesar, laughing and saying, “My poor uncertain brother! He now loathes Pompey. He does not know how to extricate himself from an impossible situation. In all his life he has always fixed his bright eye on an impossible star. You will remember Livia, lord.”

  “Let him, then, return to Rome and others will imitate him, and that will be the end of the matter,” said Julius, who thought Cicero’s letter pathetic as well as risible. “I shall always love my poor Marcus who has never ceased his quest for virtue, not understanding that it does not exist in this world.”

  With bitterness Cicero thought, “Before the implacability of God’s will that men possess free will, and men’s will to commit evil, there is a great mystery.” Noë ben Joel had spoken of the omniscience of God. “When He created men He knew they would commit wickedness. Does that, therefore, make Him the Creator of wickedness?”

  The ancient question which had troubled the men of Israel, and the prophets, troubled Cicero while he waited in the camp of Pompey to see what Pompey would do, if anything. He mourned anew for Noë who had sent him many consolations. In the camp of Pompey at Durazzo God seemed to have retreated beyond the stars; His interpreter was silenced. Only the gods remained, vengeful, full of lust, regarding men as sport, and full of huge laughter against them. Nevertheless, it was easier to live with them than a paradox! The gods frequently assumed human form, and thus partook of human nature. But God had never been a man. The Jews declared that on a mysterious day He would do so, and be born of a Maiden Mother. The Unknown God. Yes, verily. He would remain unknown forever.

  Languishing in the sullen and restive camp of Pompey, and his mind darkened with doubt and despair, Cicero felt like Sisyphus who endlessly is condemned to roll a boulder uphill to have it endlessly fall back to the earth again. His thoughts ended nowhere, except in immense weariness. All hope he now had to reconcile Pompey with Caesar was gone. There could be nothing but civil war and blood and death. His life had been one long futility. He had accomplished nothing. His wife no longer wrote him; he wrote almost daily to his son and received few letters in return. Tullia wrote him, but she was in a difficult position. According to Rome—now adoring Caesar—her father was intransigent. According to her husband, Cicero was a fool. She did not tell her father but he was one of the greater causes of her estrangement from Dolabella. She wrote him loving letters which were poignant, he guessed, with what news she omitted.

  The cold winter did nothing to alleviate Cicero’s misery. He would not return to Rome, as Quintus was now urging him. He must remain with Pompey, who he was convinced was stagnating. Pompey’s two sons visited the camp briefly from their stations in Spain. They resembled their father, but they did not possess anything of his occasional integrity, and had a certain fierceness and wiliness of expression which frightened Cicero. One was named Gnaeus and the other Sextus. Cicero overheard them impatiently asking their father why he “permitted that dilapidated old lawyer, Cicero, to bedevil him with his presence and his contentious conversation.” “I owe him money, and much more,” Pompey had replied, and for a little while the coldness in Cicero’s heart was warmed.

  His hair was white and dry; his bones ached; his heart throbbed on exertion. He wondered why he had ever been born and remembered Job, who had cursed the day of his birth. He thought of the hopeful and valiant young Marcus Tullius Cicero who had believed that virtue and truth were indestructible, and he almost cursed the phantom of his youth for its folly. There was no tie any longer between him, an aging man with trembling hands, and the youth who had dreamed under the trees on the island. He fell ill, of both mind and body.

  Porcius Cato, who had championed Cicero before the Senate and had condemned the wiliness of Julius Caesar, visited him while he tossed on his cot, in the tent where he lay. “Our poor conciliator has suffered the fate of all conciliators,” said Cato, not without sympathy. “Do you not understand that there can be no meeting between good and evil?”

  “It is foolish to say that all good is on one side and all evil on another,” said the unfortunate Cicero, sweating in his fever. “One can only choose the party of the lesser evil, and hope for the best, and hope is always betrayed.”

  “You should have stayed in Rome and used your influence on Caesar, who loves you.”

  “You are jesting,” said Cicero. “He loves no one but himself. Pompey at least loves Rome. Much can be forgiven a man who prefers his country above anything else.”

  That night Cicero fell into unconsciousness. Pompey left his best physician with him. Cicero began to dream affrighted dreams. He saw Pompey on a long journey to a battlefield, in a strange country. He saw a mighty struggle, and caught glimpses of Caesar’s face, though Caesar did not actually appear to be present. Then he saw a hand reaching out in a bloody darkness, with a serpentine ring upon it, and it gave a dagger to another hand, eager and lustful, a hand with a dusky skin. He saw Pompey in shifting mist; the dusky hand was raised and it plunged the dagger into his heart. Again, Cicero saw Caesar’s face faintly smiling. Cicero awoke with a cry and the physician soothed him.

  “Where is Pompey!” Cicero exclaimed, struggling against the restraining hands. “I must warn him! He will be murdered at Caesar’s orders if he does not refrain—!”

  “Caesar is far away,” said the physician, preparing another sleeping draught. He did not tell the distraught man that Pompey was even now in battle with Caesar who had already crossed the Adriatic and was besieging Durazzo. The few left in the camp were desperately awaiting news from couriers. They were comforted by the fact that Pompey was a professional soldier, whereas Caesar was not. Brilliant tactics, they were certain, were not enough against trained and disciplined men. Caesar had with him young Mark Antony who was a professional soldier. But everyone knew that
Antony was given to impulsive decisions.

  The sleeping draught assuaged Cicero, and he fell into a deep sleep again. Then he found himself in a glowing garden filled with lilies and bright blue flowers and towering oak trees flaming with autumn colors. A stream ran nearby, the color of nacre. The voices of birds filled the air with joyous sounds. A white arched bridge was thrown across the stream and Cicero thought, Am I on the island? He was enchanted by the peace and tranquillity of the scene, at once familiar and unfamiliar to him. He searched for paths he had known and could not find them. Yet, when he turned his head he saw a clump of cypresses he well remembered. New delight seized him. Then he caught a glimpse of a slight female figure running across the carved and marble bridge toward him, a blue veil floating from its head and its lovely body clothed in white. He opened his arms mutely, and the figure fell into them and embraced him and he saw the face of Livia, sweet and vivid, with passionate azure eyes and with a mouth the hue of raspberries in the sun. Her kisses were like jasmine honey on his lips. He could not have enough of them. “Dear love,” he said, “I have had a most terrible dream. I dreamed that you were dead and I was old and white of hair and broken of heart.”

  “Dearest love,” she replied, in a voice he had never forgotten. “Be comforted. The time is not long. Heaven is astir. Soon we shall join our hands and wait.”

  “For what shall we wait?” he asked, holding her against his breast.

  “For God,” she replied. She smiled at him and her smile was like the beaming of the moon in midsummer. Then dimness began to fall. She gently extricated herself from his arms and he could not find her again. The scene faded. He cried wildly, “Livia! Livia, my love!” But now he was only in a mist and it was very cold and he was lost and there was nothing to be seen at all. He was bereft and terrified; he stumbled about, his arms outstretched. Weight encompassed him, and horrible weariness. He awoke. The sun of early winter was cold and bleak about him in the tent and the physician was still at his side. “You have slept well and long,” said the physician, cheerfully. “And I have good news for you. Caesar invaded Durazzo—do not start!—but Pompey’s superior troops drove them off and broke through them. Caesar is in retreat! He is withdrawing to Thessaly, where Pompey will surely overcome him. They will face each other for the last time near Pharsalus. Before the flowers of spring are blooming we shall be rejoicing in victory in Rome, and peace and order will be restored.”