VIII
A terrible melancholy now overcame Cicero, of a depth I had never seen before. Terentia went off with the children to spend the rest of the summer in the higher altitudes and cooler glades of Tusculum, but the consul stayed in Rome, working. The heat was more than usually oppressive, the stink of the great drain beneath the forum rose to envelop the hills, and many hundreds of citizens were carried off by the sweating fever, the stench of their corpses adding to the noisome atmosphere. I have often wondered what history would have found to say about Cicero if he had also succumbed to a fatal illness at that time – and the answer is 'very little'. At the age of forty-three he had won no military victories. He had written no great books. True, he had achieved the consulship, but then so had many nonentities, Hybrida being the most obvious example. The only significant law he had carried on to the statute book was Servius's campaign finance reform act, which he heartily disliked. In the meantime Catilina was still at liberty and Cicero had lost a great deal of prestige by what was seen as his panicky behaviour on the eve of the poll. As the summer turned to autumn, his consulship was almost three quarters done and dribbling away to nothing – a fact he realised more keenly than anybody.
One day in September I left him alone with a pile of legal papers to read. It was almost two months after the elections. Servius had made good his threat to prosecute Murena and was seeking to have his victory declared null and void. Cicero felt he had little choice except to defend the man whom he had done so much to make consul. Once again he would appear alongside Hortensius, and the amount of evidence to be mastered was immense. But when I returned some hours later the documents were still untouched. He had not moved from his couch, and was clutching a cushion to his stomach. I asked if he was ill. 'I have a dryness of the heart,' he said. 'What's the point of going on with all this work and striving? No one will ever remember my name – not even in a year's time, let alone in a thousand. I'm finished – a complete failure.' He sighed and stared at the ceiling, the back of his hand resting on his forehead. 'Such dreams I had, Tiro – such hopes of glory and renown. I meant to be as famous as Alexander. But it's all gone awry somehow. And do you know what most torments me as I lie awake at night? It's that I cannot see what I could have done differently.'
He continued to keep in touch with Curius, whose grief at the death of his mistress had not abated; in fact he had become ever more obsessed. From him Cicero learned that Catilina was continuing to plot against the state, and now much more seriously. There were disturbing reports of covered wagons full of weapons being moved under cover of darkness along the roads outside Rome. Fresh lists of possibly sympathetic senators had been drawn up, and according to Curius these now included two young patrician senators, M. Claudius Marcellus and Q. Scipio Nasica. Another ominous sign was that G. Manlius, Catilina's wild-eyed military lieutenant, had disappeared from his usual haunts in the back streets of Rome and was rumoured to be touring Etruria, recruiting armed bands of supporters. Curius could produce no written evidence for any of this – Catilina was much too cunning for that – and eventually, after asking a few too many questions, he came under suspicion from his fellow conspirators and began to be excluded from their inner circle. Thus Cicero's only first-hand source of information gradually ran dry.
At the end of the month he decided to risk his credibility once again by raising the matter in the senate. It was a disaster. 'I have been informed-' he began, but could proceed no further because of the gusts of merriment that blew around the chamber. 'I have been informed' was exactly the formulation he had used twice before when raising the spectre of Catilina, and it had become a kind of satirical catchphrase. Wags in the street would shout it after him as he went by: 'Oh, look! There goes Cicero! Has he been informed?' His enemies in the senate yelled it out while he was speaking: 'Have you informed yourself yet, Cicero?' And now inadvertently he had said it again. He smiled weakly and affected not to care, but of course he did. Once a leader starts to be laughed at as a matter of routine, he loses authority, and then he is finished. 'Don't go out without your armour!' someone called as he processed from the chamber, and the house was convulsed with mirth. He locked himself away in his study soon after that and I did not see much of him for several days. He spent more time with my junior, Sositheus, than he did with me; I felt oddly jealous.
There was another reason for his gloom, although few would have guessed it, and he would have been embarrassed if they had. In October his daughter was to be married – an occasion, he confided to me, that he was dreading. It was not that he disliked her husband, young Gaius Frugi, of the Piso clan: on the contrary, it was Cicero, after all, who had arranged the betrothal, years earlier, to bring in the votes of the Pisos. It was simply that he loved his little Tulliola so much that he could not bear the thought of their being parted. When, on the eve of the wedding, he saw her packing her childhood toys away as tradition demanded, tears came into his eyes and he had to leave the room. She was just fourteen. The following morning the ceremony took place in Cicero's house, and I was honoured to be asked to attend, along with Atticus and Quintus, and a whole crowd of Pisos (by heavens, what an ugly and lugubrious crowd they were!). I must confess that when Tullia was led down the stairs by her mother, all veiled and dressed in white, with her hair tied up and the sacred belt knotted around her waist, I cried myself; I cry now, remembering her girlishly solemn face as she recited that simple vow, so weighted with meaning: 'Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia.' Frugi placed the ring on her finger and kissed her very tenderly. We ate the wedding cake and offered a portion to Jupiter, and then at the wedding breakfast, while little Marcus sat on his sister's knee and tried to steal her fragrant wreath, Cicero proposed the health of the bride and groom.
'I give to you, Frugi, the best that I have to give: no nature kinder, no temper sweeter, no loyalty fiercer, no courage stronger, no-'
He could not go on, and under cover of the loud and sympathetic applause he sat down.
Afterwards, hemmed in as usual by his bodyguards, he joined the procession to Frugi's family home on the Palatine. It was a cold day. Not many people were about; few joined us. When we reached the mansion, Frugi was waiting. He hoisted his bride into his arms and, ignoring Terentia's mock entreaties, carried her over the threshold. I had one last glimpse of Tullia's wide, fearful eyes staring out at us from the interior, and then the door closed. She was gone, and Cicero and Terentia were left to walk slowly home in silence, hand in hand.
That night, sitting at his desk before he went to bed, Cicero remarked for the twentieth time on how empty the place seemed without her. 'Only one small member of the household gone, and yet how diminished it is! Do you remember how she used to play at my feet, Tiro, when I was working? Just here.' He gently tapped his foot against the floor beneath his table. 'How often did she serve as the first audience for my speeches – poor uncomprehending creature! Well, there it is. The years sweep us on like leaves before a gale, and it cannot be helped.'