Yet the memory will not leave me; surely, memory insists, there was some significance to that moment which the mind refuses to grasp. Or is perhaps incapable of grasping.
Now, considering it, it seems to me at the very least, part of a vaster mystery: why we subdued our wills to Caesar.
My cousin Marcus Brutus once spoke in terms of fatalism: we were doomed to submit to Caesar. My father-in-law Cassius rebuked him. The fault, he said, lay not in our stars. The fault was in our natures. No impersonal force, only our own weak- " ness, determined that we should be underlings.
Artixes has just left me. We have been drinking wine, thin, sour stuff such as they make in these barbarian parts, but wine nevertheless, and I think I am a little drunk.
No matter. There is truth in wine, or, as the proverb has it, wine releases the voice of truth.
Caesar: did I submit my will to him that morning when he emerged from my mother's bedchamber and I responded to his smile with a smile? And when I found Longina's door barred against me, and knew Caesar was within, and so left the house, and descended to the Suburra to a brothel where I paid for an African girl, was that merely yet another acknowledgment of my inferiority?
That was the trouble, wasn't it? Caesar diminished me. He diminished all of us. And we could never understand how or why.
There were times — I have recounted some — when I myself, by my words or actions, saved Caesar from the disaster for which he appeared to be heading — in Egypt and in Spain, for example. There were times when he set me tasks which I accomplished better than he could have performed them himself.
It made no difference.
As my mother said: "Of course we all adore Caesar but at the same time we know he cares nothing for us."
"That," some might say, "was because he was truly a god."
I have never seen Caesar afraid. I admit that. Gods are never afraid.
That proves nothing. There was a centurion from Aricia, I remember, a sour, bilious man who was never afraid. But Caesar had the imagination to sense fear. Did he? There were times when I have thought he lacked imagination. Certainly his literary style was peculiarly deficient in that quality. He once showed me a poem he had written. It was embarrassing. Catullus said that to me also.
Caesar… Suppose I had joined Pompey. I might have been killed at Pharsalus, but I would have died a free man.
Perhaps I should set myself to try to understand Labienus. We never made that attempt. It was simpler to condemn him.
But Labienus was my precursor. I see that now.
So: Labienus…
We spoke of him with bitterness, of course. He was a traitor. No man had been more richly rewarded by Caesar. Had things turned out otherwise, he would have shared the consulate with Caesar in 48, both supported by the authority of Pompey. Well, that was not to be, and in the crisis Labienus proved more mindful of old family loyalties to Pompey than of his long association with Caesar. When he departed, he did so scrupulously, not attempting to carry other of Caesar's officers with him. Later he regretted this failure, though at the time he considered his behaviour honourable. He wrote to me once on this matter. I still have the letter, which I recovered from the place of concealment I had thought fit for it, shortly before the disaster that landed me where I now find myself. It was in my travelling bureau when I was captured, and since my documents were recently restored to me, I think it proper to publish it now.
It is dated some months after Pharsalus, from Africa whither Labienus had fled, and directed to me at my mother's house in Rome.
Decimus Brutus,
An old colleague fallen into adversity greets you. I beg you not to yield to what I suppose may be your initial impulse which might lead you to destroy this letter without perusing it.
I write not to excuse myself, for in my opinion my conduct does not require exculpation. Nor do I write to seduce you from your loyalties, which would in any case — I have no doubt — be a vain effort.
You know of course that I was torn between two loyalties, and there is no need therefore to expatiate on the conflict of loyalties which engaged me. Suffice to repeat that I had obligations to both Caesar and Pompey, and that I chose to honour the latter.
It would be easy to maintain that that was all there was to my decision: that, since I recognised my loyalty to Pompey as being superior, and also anterior, to my loyalty to Caesar — a deeper thing altogether — this was the sole cause of my decision to adhere to Pompey. And I have sufficient confidence in your virtue to be assured that you would not question such an assertion, but would indeed honour me for my candour and for my recognition that certain loyalties should properly outweigh others, even when the latter appear more likely to bring personal advantage, and even greater glory.
For I must say this: I did not believe I was acting in such a way as would benefit myself. I had no confidence that I was joining the winning side.
I ask you fervently to believe that.
No man, except perhaps Cicero, was better acquainted with both Caesar and Pompey than I. Indeed, I can claim a deeper knowledge of both men than Cicero could possess, for he has met them chiefly at dinner-tables and in the Senate, while I have served under both in the field. Consequently I was aware that Caesar's star was in the ascendant, Pompey's in decline. Fortune, my dear Decimus, reflects character and capacity. I could not fail to compare Caesar's swiftness and certainty of judgment and the lucidity of his intellect, even the imperturbability of his courage, with my poor Pompey's ever-growing tendency to vacillation, and his inability to distinguish between illusion and reality. He still, as the clouds of crisis enfolded the Republic, could not perceive the nature of his own moral, intellectual and physical deterioration. At most, I could hope that, in adhering to him, I could supply the deficiencies I remarked in him.
Vain hope, as events have proved, for my advice was disregarded while it might have been valuable, and my counsels adopted only when matters were beyond remedy.
My judgment has been proved right, my fears justified, and yet I do not regret the course I took.
Now, when defeat, death, and even dishonour (for I can trust Caesar to see that I am dishonoured) stare me in the face, I can still maintain that I have no regrets.
Nevertheless, Decimus, since no man wishes to go down to the Shades without first speaking for himself and finding at least one man of virtue to attend to his words, I take this opportunity to try to explain my reasons for acting as I did. The world may howl against me, and I am indifferent to its execration; but I would not wish you to think badly of me.
Let me say therefore that I admire Caesar. I retain an affection for Caesar. I recognise the grandeur of Caesar's achievements, to which both you and I have made telling contributions. But none of this prevents me from seeing that the course on which Caesar has embarked is pernicious. It can lead to nothing but the destruction of the Republic which has been the means of Rome's greatness, and which can alone, through its time-honoured institutions, guarantee the survival of liberty in Rome.
The government of a single person sounds the death-knell of liberty. It will convert Roman noblemen into courtiers. Little by little, an Oriental despotism will be established in place of our free institutions. Men will no longer dare to speak their minds; they will suit their words to the wishes of the dictator.