forces of the enemy.” Cicero had been victorious on both fronts.15
The senate discussed the request for a supplicatio sometime during
April or May 50, and Caelius instantly reported back to Cicero, still in
Playing by the Rules
193
his province, that the result was a success, although some hard work had
been necessary behind the scenes. Other factors had come into play, par-
ticularly the anxiety of the tribune Caius Scribonius Curio that a cere-
mony of thanksgiving, which could last for days, would occupy some of
the time available for legislation and so get in the way of his political
aims. In a deal brokered by Caelius, the consul Paullus agreed to circum-
vent this (Cicero must have felt that his letter had not been in vain),
guaranteeing that the supplicatio would not actually take place till the
next year.
Meanwhile there was potential opposition from one of the two men
to whom Cicero had not written. Hirrus threatened to make a long
speech, but Caelius and his friends persuaded him not to (“We got to
him”)—so successfully that he did not even attempt to hold up business
by objecting, as he could have, that the meeting was not quorate when
the number of animal victims to be sacrificed at the thanksgiving was
decided. The vote in the end went Cicero’s way, though we do not
know how many days of thanksgiving were agreed (the silence suggests
that it was rather few), nor indeed whether they were ever held; having
been postponed in the deal with Curio, they were presumably lost in the
outbreak of civil war early in 49. According to Caelius, the voting pat-
tern was maverick: some voted for the honor without wanting it to
succeed (they assumed wrongly that Curio would veto the decision);
Cato, by contrast, spoke about Cicero in most honorific terms but voted
against.16
Cato proceeded to write to Cicero in a letter that has been vari-
ously judged by modern readers as “ponderous pedantry,” “priggish and
crabbed,” or “entirely free of rudeness or insult.” His main point was to
justify his vote on the grounds that a supplicatio implied that the responsibility for the victory lay with the gods, whereas he gave the credit to
Cicero himself. But he also warned that a triumph did not always follow
a thanksgiving—and that, in any case, “much more glorious than a tri-
umph is for the senate to judge that a province has been held and pre-
served by the governor’s mild administration and blameless conduct.”17
For Cicero and his secretaries, a further flurry of correspondence must
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
1 9 4
have followed. Thank-you letters survive to Marcellus and to his prede-
cessor in Cilicia, Appius Claudius, who had worked for Cicero’s
thanksgiving as Cicero (whatever the mixed feelings) had worked for
his.18 To Cato, Cicero managed a reply in superficially gracious terms.
Nothing, he wrote, could be more complimentary than the speech
which Cato had made in the senate in praise of his achievements; in
fact, if the world were populated by the likes of Cato, then such an
encomium would be worth more than any “triumphal chariot or laurel
crown.” But, of course, the real world was not run along Catonian
lines, and there these honors counted. Cicero concluded with an awk-
ward passage of fence-sitting—and perhaps calculated understate-
ment—about just how important to him the thanksgiving or projected
triumph was. It was more a question, he emphasized, of not being averse
to it, rather than especially wanting it. A triumph was “not to be un-
duly coveted,” but at the same time it was certainly not to be rejected
if offered by the senate. His hope was that the senate would consider
him “not unworthy” of such an honor, especially as it was such a com-
mon one.19
The letters penned over the next few months, during Cicero’s final
weeks in Cilicia and through the journey back to Rome, return time
and again to the possible triumph. In these, too, the themes of ambition
and the desire for glory are prominent: how far was it proper actively to
want (or to be seen to be wanting) a triumph? Cicero repeatedly stresses
that he is not going to do anything that smacks of “eagerness” for the
honor—though he could wish, on occasion, that Atticus showed himself
a little more “eager” for Cicero to achieve it. He also takes care to blame
his ambitions on others—on Caelius who “put the idea in his head”
(when in fact a safe return home would be “triumph” enough) or on his
friends who “beckon” him back to a triumph.20
Nonetheless, the letters also document how energetically he was can-
vassing for the award, with Pompey and Caesar among others. And
when Bibulus was voted a thanksgiving of (probably) twenty days, with
Cato this time strongly behind the motion, there was no concealing,
from Atticus at least, his eagerness and jealousy: “As far as the triumph is
Playing by the Rules
195
concerned, I wasn’t ever at all eager for it until Bibulus sent those outra-
geous letters which resulted in a thanksgiving on a most lavish scale . . .
the fact that I did not win the same honor is a humiliation for you as
well as for me.”21
Inevitably, his ambitions had wider implications. Cicero was anxious
about the cost of any triumph, especially in the face of a loan repayment
to Caesar: “What I find most annoying is that Caesar’s money has to be
repaid and the means of my triumph diverted in that direction.”22 He
also found that his triumphal aspirations seriously affected his political
position in Rome during the run-up to civil war. He tried to use at least
one of the constraints to his advantage: the prohibition on a general en-
tering the city before a triumph seemed a convenient excuse for not be-
coming involved in the dangerous and compromising negotiations that
were going on there.23
But any such advantages were rare. When Pompey advised him not to
attend the senate (presumably meeting outside the city boundary) in
case he ended up getting on the wrong side of potential supporters of his
honor, we may suspect that Pompey might have had other motives for
wanting Cicero well clear of the senatorial debates.24 Perhaps even worse,
far from keeping him out of things, his presence just outside the city,
while he still possessed military authority (imperium), made him a sit-
ting target for being sent off to take charge of a region such as Sicily in
the looming civil conflict.25 He himself put the dilemma neatly when he
wrote to Atticus: “Two parts that it’s impossible to play simultaneously
are candidate for a triumph and independent statesman.”26
The last occasion on which we know that Cicero’s prospective tri-
umph was part of public business was on January 7, 49 bce, at the meet-
ing of the senate which marked the formal outbreak of civil war. Cicero
claims that, even at this moment of crisis, “a full senate” demanded a tri-
umph for him, but the consul procrastinated by saying (not unreason-
ably, given the circumstances) that he would put it to the vote when he
had settled the urgent matters of state.27 But his triumphal ambitions
did not fade away at once. He continued to consult Atticus on the mat-
ter and—as a consequence of not laying down his office from which he
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
1 9 6
hoped to triumph—to be encumbered by his official attendants (or
lictors) with their fasces, or rods of office, wreathed in fading laurel. It seems that he did not dismiss these men until 47 and in the process gave