fic: 'Simulacra', Rome, R
Title: Simulacra: Prologue (1/10)
Fandom: Rome (BBC/HBO)
Rating: R
Words: 3,775 / c. 50,000
Pairing: Brutus/Cicero, Brutus/Cassius
Disclaimer: Rome property Bruno Heller / BBC / HBO, etc.
A/N: find notes, a glossary, trivia, etc. HERE.
Summary: Marcus Tullius Cicero and Marcus Junius Brutus both played their part in the destruction of the Roman Republic. While one vacillated on the fringes of power, the other was persuaded to figurehead the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar. With a supporting cast of friends, relatives, eunuchs and conspirators, this is the (somewhat) true story of how it happened.
Prologue // 1: Good Omens // 2: On a Knife’s Edge // 3: The Die Is Cast // 4: Liberators // 5: Born Again // 6: Power and Freedom // 6a: Two Letters on the Subject of Antony // 7: The Bravery of a Nervous Man // 8: A Debt of Nature
________________
NB re: dates - dates given throughout are in the calendar of Numa (pre-45 BC) and the Julian calendar (45 BC and later). Rather than give the number of years ab urbe condita (since the founding of Rome), which I find completely bewildering, I’ve used the modern Western convention of counting years B.C. and A.D.
Therefore a.d. iv Id. Quint. 48 = ante diem iv Ides Quintilis 48 = c. 11th July 48 BC. None of this is crucial to reading and following the story but, you know, FYI.
________________
Prologue
Nil igitur fieri de nilo posse putandam es servire quando opus est rebus. -
One cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
Lucretius, De rerum natura, I 206
a.d. iv Id. Quint. 48
It was midsummer on the Pharsalian plain. The stench of rotten horseflesh was rising higher with every moment under the midday sun, with the result that it was unbearable to sit outside and even worse to recline in the stultifying heat of the tents, without the merest breeze to provide relief from the heavy humidity.
“Oh, for a world without armies,” muttered Cicero, tugging testily at the collar of his tunic, still uncomfortable in breastplate and cuirass despite the months they had spent in Greece with Pompey’s legions. “This is no way for a civilised man to dress.”
“What would you have, Cicero, for the sake of your comfort?” Ahenobarbus was reclining inelegantly at the opposite side of the table; he had been affected badly by the sun and was permanently red-faced, giving him the appearance of being extremely angry even as he levered himself onto his elbow to peer at Cicero with amused curiosity. “A republic built on rhetoric, entirely without an army? How do you propose we keep our Provinces?”
“I would see the republic as the republic once was. In the time of Africanus the army was no bad thing - these days it is simply the play thing of powerful men. Let the senate rule the army and not the other way around!”
Brutus looked up from his contemplation of one of the small, sour apples which seemed in such sudden abundance, which he had been passing from hand to hand in listless agitation. “How often must we argue over this, Cicero? A general will always be popular with his men; that is the nature of a long campaign. They create veterans with loyalty only to their leaders, not to the republic. Caesar spent years in Gaul; it’s little wonder he has the Thirteenth with him, and the best of the Fifth.”
“Yes, well, one wonders whether all this might have been avoided had we reigned in Caesar’s ambition a little earlier.”
“Ah, but we could never have done it,” Ahenobarbus concluded, spitting out a plum stone. “He was winning - therefore he was allowed to continue.”
Cicero frowned and said nothing, a sure sign that he had lost the argument; it was one that had been played out countless times in the months since the departure of the senate from Rome.
Outside in the sun, Pompey’s son Quintus was throwing his dagger at something hidden in the shadow of the cypress trees, and when Brutus craned his neck he saw that it was the body of a dog - one of Quintus’ own hunting pack which he had brought with him to Greece and which had kept the camp awake at night with their howling and barking. An emaciated and wretched animal, it lay where it had fallen through neglect and want of water, chained to a tree and forgotten by its master, at least until he had found this purpose for it. Each time the knife struck and stuck in its flesh, Quintus beckoned to his slave, who removed the knife and returned it, only for Quintus to throw again - it was a lazy game for Pompey’s spoiled, indolent son. Brutus frowned in disgust and returned his attention to the conversation.
“My mood has turned as sour as this wine,” Cicero was saying, casting a contemptuous glance into the depths of his cup. He set it down heavily on the table before him and stood as though to leave, tugging uncomfortably at the collar of his breastplate. “Curse this ridiculous military costume! I am a senator, not a centurion!”
He exited the tent and strode through the trees towards the edge of the camp, wishing to put as much space between himself and the rest of Pompey’s followers as possible. Quintus, still reclining in the shade beneath a broad-branched pine tree, caught his eye as he hurried past and smirked with lazy insolence.
“You’d better not be running off to join Caesar, old man,” he taunted, fingering the blade of the dagger which lay beside him on the arm of his chair.
Cicero bristled at the sly implication rather than fear of the threat and snapped back at him to no avail. “You would do better to remember who you are talking to, boy.”
Quintus laughed and shrugged and had the temerity not to respond. Cicero huffed a sigh of disgust and turned his back.
Brutus watched him go, and looked down at his own cup before setting it on the table. Ahenobarbus was picking his teeth idly and no doubt about to strike up further inane conversation, so Brutus saw little reason to remain where he was and endure another sally on the subject of his relative inexperience in the field of battle. Besides which, no matter how foul his mood, Cicero was better company than the rest of their party put together - increasingly these days his dissenting opinions chimed a chord with Brutus’ own sentiments. They were both weary of the wait for decisive action, both at odds with Cato and his blind insistence on clinging to values which may have been admirable in centuries before, at the time of the wars against Carthage, but now were redundant and sounded nothing more than the rantings of an old man with an increasingly irritating, incessant refrain of Caesar delenda est.
Cicero strode to the edge of the camp, noting with irritation the increasing permanence of the footings for the horaria, the great granaries raised on stilts to allow air to circulate and prevent the grain from spoiling, a sign that the quartermasters at least were preparing for a protracted stay in Pharsalus. The sun was still high, and as he passed the sentries the back of his breastplate chafed at his neck, where it rubbed the already flushed and peeling skin and made him wish, above all things, for the cooler climes of the Palatine and the soft caress of a freshly laundered toga.
The land directly to the north of the camp was open and arid, blown by sand and with only sparse patches of grass covering the hard-baked ground, but it was elevated and blessed by a hot, stinging breeze which, though it did little to relieve the heat of the afternoon, provided some relief from the incessant, torpid stillness of the air around the camp. Cicero pushed himself to walk further, to gain higher ground in search of a little wind, and soon he found himself gazing, short-of-breath, at the Mare Nostrum, which sparkled white and dark blue beyond the trees and the inelegant sprawl of Pompey’s army.
He felt dismayed to be so breathless after the short climb up the hill; as a young man he had prided himself on his stamina, believing as his tutor had taught him that physical endurance was as necessary an ability in an orator as a firm grasp of rhetoric. Tiro, poor Tiro, had trained with him every day, and had counted the steps they took around the palaestra in Greece, and around the Forum in Rome, reliable as a water clock marking time. Each day they had striven to go further, to last longer; he had taken to performing exercises every morning before breakfast, and he had felt strong and alive and ready to face whatever his position as Praetor, and then Consul, could summon to test him. Then had come exile in Cilicia, and his interest in training had waned. In other regards, he found the loss of his youth mattered little, but the fleeting vestiges of his former physique made a mockery of him in his encroaching old age, constant and unforgiving.
He stood and gazed out to sea for some long minutes more in order to regain his breath, and cast his thoughts to Tiro, adrift again and separated from him by ill health and circumstances beyond either of their control. The physical intimacy which he had so cherished in their youth had faded to a distant memory, but the friendship and counsel which Tiro offered in difficult times were things Cicero greatly missed. Letters had arrived, that morning, from Atticus in Butrint, assuring him that Tiro was recovering from his latest fever, and from Tiro himself, complaining of the doctor’s overzealous determination to confine him to his bed. Cicero had scribbled off brief, unsatisfactory notes to them both, imploring them to heed the doctor’s instructions and on no account to return to Rome - or worse, in Tiro’s case, to attempt to join him in Greece.
A letter had come, too, from Tullia, and even the familiar shape of her handwriting had sprung a well of longing inside him, for Italy, for the farm, and the happy days they had spent there as father and daughter before her marriage had taken her away to the Provinces. Terentia, his wife, wrote rarely and his son Marcus’ missives tended to be brief, cursive affairs as what he lacked in elegance of expression he made up for in his military and political skill, and so his correspondence was mainly concerned with those matters.
“I hope you don’t mind me joining you, Cicero,” Brutus called, shaking him from his depressed but peaceful reverie as he crested the hill and came to join Cicero at its low summit. Cicero did not turn to greet him, except when he came to stand beside him and joined him in his contemplation of the ocean. “Ahenobarbus was about to attempt another of his lessons on martial tactics, and the only options for escape were to follow you or begin another interminable letter to my wife.”
“As though we have nothing better to do than idle away the hours writing letters to our families,” Cicero complained peevishly, surveying the camp and picking out the figure of Quintus, still reclining in the shade and tossing knives for entertainment. “Even Pompey’s charming son is becoming impatient of all these interminable delays! Little wonder Caesar believes himself capable of victory, when the best men of Rome are sitting idle while Pompey Magnus dips his toes in the Mare Nostrum.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brutus replied with a smile. “Better to write to our wives now than have our heads conveyed to them later in baskets, unannounced.”
Cicero gave a resigned, mirthless laugh. “My head - perhaps.”
“Quintus would cut it off himself if he knew we were standing here in contemplation of defeat,” Brutus agreed. He raised a hand to his eyes and gazed out over the sea to the horizon. “You’re lucky I know better than to take this melancholy mood of yours seriously.”
“You may take it very seriously indeed, for I am heartily sick of keeping company with these soldiers and their hapless commanders. Pompey - still troubled by the thought of springing an attack against a former friend! What little advantage we might have pressed after the victory at Dyrrhachium has already been lost, and still we suffer this ridiculous prevarication.”
“It’s difficult to keep up with you, Cicero. You’ve expressed your distaste for open battle often enough - you’ve certainly bored Pompey with it - and all of a sudden you’re clamouring for a confrontation.”
“Oh, I thank Fortuna daily they need me here to maintain the veneer of senatorial respectability,” Cicero replied snidely. “But we are all rats on a sinking ship - and if I cannot take my leave of politics altogether, I’m no longer sure I would rather wait here in this hornet’s nest than throw myself headlong into Caesar’s cruel embrace.”
Brutus neglected to hold him to account for the use of the mixed metaphor and they stood for a little while in silence. How long ago seemed the discussions over the division of the Provinces in the inevitable event of Pompey’s victory. In the weeks since, while Pompey had refused all Cato’s pleas to fight and men had begun to turn to Caesar in small but noticeable numbers, Cicero’s hopes for Rome had begun to dwindle, beset by reservations he had communicated privately to Brutus, which Brutus had kept secret and nurtured with his own misgivings until the two of them had found themselves in the unenviable position of being the only two realists left in the entirety of Pompey’s army. Once the harvest could be collected, Pompey’s strategy of starving Caesar into submission would be rendered futile, and open battle - in which the senatorial legions could no longer be certain of victory - would be unavoidable.
“A letter came three days ago from my brother-in-law,” Brutus said eventually, causing Cicero to glance at him speculatively, wondering how two men once as close as Brutus and his sister’s husband, Cassius Longinus, could have become such distant acquaintances that their first communication in years should come in the midst of civil war. “His ships in Sicilia continue to be a thorn in Caesar’s side; Pompey was the most animated I have seen him in days when we discussed it.”
“Ships are very well, but if Cassius must make bedfellows of the Pontians in order to have any impact on Caesar’s supplies, it won’t sit happily with the senate.”
“Perhaps you ought to do as Cato says,” Brutus ventured, then. “Return to Rome and marshal the senate in support of Pompey.”
Cicero snorted. “If I were to return to Rome, I would marshal the senate in support of itself.”
“And will you?”
It was an unexpectant question, as though Brutus already knew the answer. Cicero smiled at him, “No, I fear my horizons have lately become distressingly restricted.”
Brutus smiled in return and nodded. “Come, we had better be getting back.”
They started down the side of the hill and made their way slowly through the camp, past the quartermasters and their new, empty granaries.
*
a.d. vi Id. Sext.
The battle for the Pharsalian plain had been fought and lost and Pompey’s legions were in chaotic retreat - chased down and slaughtered, or scattered and making their way to the sea in hope of passage to the East. Pompey himself, having announced his intention to make for Egypt, had gone south with his wife and children. The camp was being broken haphazardly by what few soldiers remained, or sacked by the local Greeks, who had no preference for Pompey or Caesar, only hoping that the end of the civil war would bring about the alleviation of their taxes.
Night had fallen steadily, and as yet Caesar had made no move on the camp. Cato and Metellus had left shortly before sunset for the coast to begin their journey to Africa, leaving Cicero and Brutus the only senators remaining in a camp overrun by scavengers and slaves. Brutus seemed not to care whether they gave themselves up to Caesar immediately or waited for him to find them, but despite his bravado of previous weeks Cicero had no desire to throw himself on Caesar’s mercy just yet and held some notion that if Caesar did decide to seek them out for retribution, it would not be until at least the next morning. He preferred to wait, and to enjoy the last hours of his freedom.
“He will have sent Antony a little way south, in pursuit of Pompey,” he told Brutus, as they reclined beneath a tree in the twilight, “and the rest of his men east to finish off the legions.” His mouth twitched with the beginnings of a grim smile. “For now, he is leaving what is left of us here to cook in our juices. He is giving us the opportunity to surrender.”
They were cushioned on a carpet of fallen needles beneath a pine tree, sprawled in a manner utterly unbefitting esteemed members of the senate. Before them was the last of three fat jugs of wine which Cicero’s slaves had found amongst the debris of the quartermaster’s stores.
“I wonder what Caesar will do with the republic,” Cicero said bitterly, “once he has declared himself its king.”
Brutus took a long swig of wine and let his head rest against the tree trunk, eyes half-closed in drunken exhaustion. “No more about the republic tonight, Cicero, please.”
“We are sitting in the dirt beneath a tree, drunk as slaves, approaching the hour of our ignominious surrender,” Cicero murmured. “What else is there to talk about?”
Brutus said nothing. His mother would look on him with disgust if she saw him now, and with good reason. “Caesar will count us as slaves come the morning, not subjects.”
Cicero laughed and raised the wine to his lips. “Sometimes, Brutus, you make for extremely depressing company.”
“Given our situation, you seem entirely too cheerful.”
They sank into silence broken only by the crackle of the fire, as Cicero thought for the thousandth time that evening how terrible it was that someone so young as Brutus should discover so early in life what it was to abandon one’s principles.
“I’m sorry to have led us here,” he said, eventually. “Cato and I, we are old men. I have learned to endure ignominy and exile, but you - you are far too young to have to bear this kind of disgrace.”
Brutus smiled crookedly and shut his eyes, tired of looking at nothing but the canopy of pines and the darkening sky. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you count yourself with Cato in anything.”
“Long may it be the last.” Brutus laughed; a low, warm, welcome sound which set Cicero at ease for the first time since Pompey’s ignominious departure for the coast. “What a sight we’ll make when we ride into Caesar’s camp,” he said, glancing sideways at Brutus, whose face was thrown by the fire into a sharp relief of light and shadows.
“Do I look that dreadful?” Brutus asked, even with his smile fading at the thought of their impending encounter with Caesar.
Cicero considered him carefully. A layer of dirt gave his skin a swarthy look, while his hair was tousled and his tunic stained and ripped. Only the aquiline planes of his face betrayed his noble heritage - otherwise, Cicero might have mistaken him for a slave. The thought made desire stir within him at the same time as prompting him to remember Tiro, safe in Butrint and awaiting his return. Brutus was beautiful in a way which Tiro had never had any hope of being, and some quality of Brutus’ languid, long-legged sprawl in the firelight made Cicero yearn to possess him. He knew it was impossible to contemplate, however pleasant the contemplation might be.
“You look every inch Caesar’s equal,” he lied, running a hand over his own stubbled jaw and looking down at his dusty attire. “I, no doubt, look only fit to clean his boots.”
“Never,” Brutus declared and reached to refill his cup.
Cicero reached for his own and realised too late that his hands were trembling; the cup tumbled from his grasp and would have rolled in the dirt had Brutus not caught it with a deftness of touch belied by the way his words had begun to slur.
“Careful, Cicero,” he chided gently, “or I’ll think you’re more anxious than you profess to be.”
Cicero looked at his face a second time, half lit by firelight, and felt unmanned by the unexpected beauty of it. Brutus’ expression hovered somewhere between misery and a beatific sort of peacefulness, and he said nothing as he handed back the wine cup, only folded his hand absent-mindedly around Cicero’s and gazed distractedly into the fire.
“You know,” he said, a moment later, apropos of nothing, while Cicero’s fingers curled against his palm, “I’m more grateful than I can say for your company here.”
“Really,” Cicero replied, amused. He thought of Brutus’ frequent impatience with him for his cynicism and his argumentative nature in the face of Cato’s pig-headedness. “Well, then I’m glad of your company, too.”
Brutus raised the hand in his own to his lips and brushed a lingering kiss across the knuckles, then let it go and reached again for the wine. He lifted the jar and peered into its depths, before letting out a soft, huffing sigh.
“We appear to have exhausted the wine,” he reported.
“That may be no ill coincidence,” Cicero murmured, taking the empty jar from him and placing it safely on the ground.
“Shall we face Caesar with our armour on and what’s left of our men behind us?” Brutus asked, his words running together tiredly as he scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand, “or are we going to slink into his camp like dogs?”
“Unarmed, I think,” Cicero answered, glancing sideways at him, concerned, “but we must take the men.”
“Of course.”
Brutus began staring into the fire so intently that Cicero wondered for a moment what he saw there; wine and despair were enough to make any man far from home think of Rome, or of their mothers, neither of which could hold any particular comfort for Brutus now.
“I think I shall take myself off to find somewhere to sleep,” the younger man said dully, after some minutes of silence, and hauled himself inelegantly to his feet. He extended a hand and fixed Cicero with a solicitous, expectant look. “I wonder if you’d like to join me, Cicero?”
Cicero glanced up at him - he was waiting for a response, and Cicero understood full well what was being offered. It was a long moment before he shook his head and turned away. “No - thank you. I’ll stay by the fire a while longer.”
Brutus hesitated, but nodded and left without another word. Cicero sat beside the fire mere minutes more, before finding his own unsteady way towards his tent.
*
The next morning they rode unarmed into Caesar’s camp, ashen faced and wearing clothes grimy with smoke. Brutus was depressed and silent, and Cicero’s attempts at conversation met with no sign that Brutus had even heard him, let alone prompting any response. By the time Caesar’s camp came into view, Cicero himself had sunk into such a grim mood that he could contemplate little else but the fate that awaited them. He glowered at the sentry posted at the approach to the encampment and bristled at the man’s impertinence when they were challenged.
“Halt, in the name of Rome!”
“Calls himself Rome now, does he?” he offered as an aside to Brutus. “Shameless.”
“Who are you, what’s your purpose?”
“We are Rome, boy,” Cicero told him witheringly, though the words left an unpleasant taste even as they formed and were spat out, “what’s left of it, come to surrender to your chief."
***
Continue: Chapter 1
***
Fandom: Rome (BBC/HBO)
Rating: R
Words: 3,775 / c. 50,000
Pairing: Brutus/Cicero, Brutus/Cassius
Disclaimer: Rome property Bruno Heller / BBC / HBO, etc.
A/N: find notes, a glossary, trivia, etc. HERE.
Summary: Marcus Tullius Cicero and Marcus Junius Brutus both played their part in the destruction of the Roman Republic. While one vacillated on the fringes of power, the other was persuaded to figurehead the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar. With a supporting cast of friends, relatives, eunuchs and conspirators, this is the (somewhat) true story of how it happened.
Prologue // 1: Good Omens // 2: On a Knife’s Edge // 3: The Die Is Cast // 4: Liberators // 5: Born Again // 6: Power and Freedom // 6a: Two Letters on the Subject of Antony // 7: The Bravery of a Nervous Man // 8: A Debt of Nature
________________
NB re: dates - dates given throughout are in the calendar of Numa (pre-45 BC) and the Julian calendar (45 BC and later). Rather than give the number of years ab urbe condita (since the founding of Rome), which I find completely bewildering, I’ve used the modern Western convention of counting years B.C. and A.D.
Therefore a.d. iv Id. Quint. 48 = ante diem iv Ides Quintilis 48 = c. 11th July 48 BC. None of this is crucial to reading and following the story but, you know, FYI.
________________
Prologue
Nil igitur fieri de nilo posse putandam es servire quando opus est rebus. -
One cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
Lucretius, De rerum natura, I 206
a.d. iv Id. Quint. 48
It was midsummer on the Pharsalian plain. The stench of rotten horseflesh was rising higher with every moment under the midday sun, with the result that it was unbearable to sit outside and even worse to recline in the stultifying heat of the tents, without the merest breeze to provide relief from the heavy humidity.
“Oh, for a world without armies,” muttered Cicero, tugging testily at the collar of his tunic, still uncomfortable in breastplate and cuirass despite the months they had spent in Greece with Pompey’s legions. “This is no way for a civilised man to dress.”
“What would you have, Cicero, for the sake of your comfort?” Ahenobarbus was reclining inelegantly at the opposite side of the table; he had been affected badly by the sun and was permanently red-faced, giving him the appearance of being extremely angry even as he levered himself onto his elbow to peer at Cicero with amused curiosity. “A republic built on rhetoric, entirely without an army? How do you propose we keep our Provinces?”
“I would see the republic as the republic once was. In the time of Africanus the army was no bad thing - these days it is simply the play thing of powerful men. Let the senate rule the army and not the other way around!”
Brutus looked up from his contemplation of one of the small, sour apples which seemed in such sudden abundance, which he had been passing from hand to hand in listless agitation. “How often must we argue over this, Cicero? A general will always be popular with his men; that is the nature of a long campaign. They create veterans with loyalty only to their leaders, not to the republic. Caesar spent years in Gaul; it’s little wonder he has the Thirteenth with him, and the best of the Fifth.”
“Yes, well, one wonders whether all this might have been avoided had we reigned in Caesar’s ambition a little earlier.”
“Ah, but we could never have done it,” Ahenobarbus concluded, spitting out a plum stone. “He was winning - therefore he was allowed to continue.”
Cicero frowned and said nothing, a sure sign that he had lost the argument; it was one that had been played out countless times in the months since the departure of the senate from Rome.
Outside in the sun, Pompey’s son Quintus was throwing his dagger at something hidden in the shadow of the cypress trees, and when Brutus craned his neck he saw that it was the body of a dog - one of Quintus’ own hunting pack which he had brought with him to Greece and which had kept the camp awake at night with their howling and barking. An emaciated and wretched animal, it lay where it had fallen through neglect and want of water, chained to a tree and forgotten by its master, at least until he had found this purpose for it. Each time the knife struck and stuck in its flesh, Quintus beckoned to his slave, who removed the knife and returned it, only for Quintus to throw again - it was a lazy game for Pompey’s spoiled, indolent son. Brutus frowned in disgust and returned his attention to the conversation.
“My mood has turned as sour as this wine,” Cicero was saying, casting a contemptuous glance into the depths of his cup. He set it down heavily on the table before him and stood as though to leave, tugging uncomfortably at the collar of his breastplate. “Curse this ridiculous military costume! I am a senator, not a centurion!”
He exited the tent and strode through the trees towards the edge of the camp, wishing to put as much space between himself and the rest of Pompey’s followers as possible. Quintus, still reclining in the shade beneath a broad-branched pine tree, caught his eye as he hurried past and smirked with lazy insolence.
“You’d better not be running off to join Caesar, old man,” he taunted, fingering the blade of the dagger which lay beside him on the arm of his chair.
Cicero bristled at the sly implication rather than fear of the threat and snapped back at him to no avail. “You would do better to remember who you are talking to, boy.”
Quintus laughed and shrugged and had the temerity not to respond. Cicero huffed a sigh of disgust and turned his back.
Brutus watched him go, and looked down at his own cup before setting it on the table. Ahenobarbus was picking his teeth idly and no doubt about to strike up further inane conversation, so Brutus saw little reason to remain where he was and endure another sally on the subject of his relative inexperience in the field of battle. Besides which, no matter how foul his mood, Cicero was better company than the rest of their party put together - increasingly these days his dissenting opinions chimed a chord with Brutus’ own sentiments. They were both weary of the wait for decisive action, both at odds with Cato and his blind insistence on clinging to values which may have been admirable in centuries before, at the time of the wars against Carthage, but now were redundant and sounded nothing more than the rantings of an old man with an increasingly irritating, incessant refrain of Caesar delenda est.
Cicero strode to the edge of the camp, noting with irritation the increasing permanence of the footings for the horaria, the great granaries raised on stilts to allow air to circulate and prevent the grain from spoiling, a sign that the quartermasters at least were preparing for a protracted stay in Pharsalus. The sun was still high, and as he passed the sentries the back of his breastplate chafed at his neck, where it rubbed the already flushed and peeling skin and made him wish, above all things, for the cooler climes of the Palatine and the soft caress of a freshly laundered toga.
The land directly to the north of the camp was open and arid, blown by sand and with only sparse patches of grass covering the hard-baked ground, but it was elevated and blessed by a hot, stinging breeze which, though it did little to relieve the heat of the afternoon, provided some relief from the incessant, torpid stillness of the air around the camp. Cicero pushed himself to walk further, to gain higher ground in search of a little wind, and soon he found himself gazing, short-of-breath, at the Mare Nostrum, which sparkled white and dark blue beyond the trees and the inelegant sprawl of Pompey’s army.
He felt dismayed to be so breathless after the short climb up the hill; as a young man he had prided himself on his stamina, believing as his tutor had taught him that physical endurance was as necessary an ability in an orator as a firm grasp of rhetoric. Tiro, poor Tiro, had trained with him every day, and had counted the steps they took around the palaestra in Greece, and around the Forum in Rome, reliable as a water clock marking time. Each day they had striven to go further, to last longer; he had taken to performing exercises every morning before breakfast, and he had felt strong and alive and ready to face whatever his position as Praetor, and then Consul, could summon to test him. Then had come exile in Cilicia, and his interest in training had waned. In other regards, he found the loss of his youth mattered little, but the fleeting vestiges of his former physique made a mockery of him in his encroaching old age, constant and unforgiving.
He stood and gazed out to sea for some long minutes more in order to regain his breath, and cast his thoughts to Tiro, adrift again and separated from him by ill health and circumstances beyond either of their control. The physical intimacy which he had so cherished in their youth had faded to a distant memory, but the friendship and counsel which Tiro offered in difficult times were things Cicero greatly missed. Letters had arrived, that morning, from Atticus in Butrint, assuring him that Tiro was recovering from his latest fever, and from Tiro himself, complaining of the doctor’s overzealous determination to confine him to his bed. Cicero had scribbled off brief, unsatisfactory notes to them both, imploring them to heed the doctor’s instructions and on no account to return to Rome - or worse, in Tiro’s case, to attempt to join him in Greece.
A letter had come, too, from Tullia, and even the familiar shape of her handwriting had sprung a well of longing inside him, for Italy, for the farm, and the happy days they had spent there as father and daughter before her marriage had taken her away to the Provinces. Terentia, his wife, wrote rarely and his son Marcus’ missives tended to be brief, cursive affairs as what he lacked in elegance of expression he made up for in his military and political skill, and so his correspondence was mainly concerned with those matters.
“I hope you don’t mind me joining you, Cicero,” Brutus called, shaking him from his depressed but peaceful reverie as he crested the hill and came to join Cicero at its low summit. Cicero did not turn to greet him, except when he came to stand beside him and joined him in his contemplation of the ocean. “Ahenobarbus was about to attempt another of his lessons on martial tactics, and the only options for escape were to follow you or begin another interminable letter to my wife.”
“As though we have nothing better to do than idle away the hours writing letters to our families,” Cicero complained peevishly, surveying the camp and picking out the figure of Quintus, still reclining in the shade and tossing knives for entertainment. “Even Pompey’s charming son is becoming impatient of all these interminable delays! Little wonder Caesar believes himself capable of victory, when the best men of Rome are sitting idle while Pompey Magnus dips his toes in the Mare Nostrum.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brutus replied with a smile. “Better to write to our wives now than have our heads conveyed to them later in baskets, unannounced.”
Cicero gave a resigned, mirthless laugh. “My head - perhaps.”
“Quintus would cut it off himself if he knew we were standing here in contemplation of defeat,” Brutus agreed. He raised a hand to his eyes and gazed out over the sea to the horizon. “You’re lucky I know better than to take this melancholy mood of yours seriously.”
“You may take it very seriously indeed, for I am heartily sick of keeping company with these soldiers and their hapless commanders. Pompey - still troubled by the thought of springing an attack against a former friend! What little advantage we might have pressed after the victory at Dyrrhachium has already been lost, and still we suffer this ridiculous prevarication.”
“It’s difficult to keep up with you, Cicero. You’ve expressed your distaste for open battle often enough - you’ve certainly bored Pompey with it - and all of a sudden you’re clamouring for a confrontation.”
“Oh, I thank Fortuna daily they need me here to maintain the veneer of senatorial respectability,” Cicero replied snidely. “But we are all rats on a sinking ship - and if I cannot take my leave of politics altogether, I’m no longer sure I would rather wait here in this hornet’s nest than throw myself headlong into Caesar’s cruel embrace.”
Brutus neglected to hold him to account for the use of the mixed metaphor and they stood for a little while in silence. How long ago seemed the discussions over the division of the Provinces in the inevitable event of Pompey’s victory. In the weeks since, while Pompey had refused all Cato’s pleas to fight and men had begun to turn to Caesar in small but noticeable numbers, Cicero’s hopes for Rome had begun to dwindle, beset by reservations he had communicated privately to Brutus, which Brutus had kept secret and nurtured with his own misgivings until the two of them had found themselves in the unenviable position of being the only two realists left in the entirety of Pompey’s army. Once the harvest could be collected, Pompey’s strategy of starving Caesar into submission would be rendered futile, and open battle - in which the senatorial legions could no longer be certain of victory - would be unavoidable.
“A letter came three days ago from my brother-in-law,” Brutus said eventually, causing Cicero to glance at him speculatively, wondering how two men once as close as Brutus and his sister’s husband, Cassius Longinus, could have become such distant acquaintances that their first communication in years should come in the midst of civil war. “His ships in Sicilia continue to be a thorn in Caesar’s side; Pompey was the most animated I have seen him in days when we discussed it.”
“Ships are very well, but if Cassius must make bedfellows of the Pontians in order to have any impact on Caesar’s supplies, it won’t sit happily with the senate.”
“Perhaps you ought to do as Cato says,” Brutus ventured, then. “Return to Rome and marshal the senate in support of Pompey.”
Cicero snorted. “If I were to return to Rome, I would marshal the senate in support of itself.”
“And will you?”
It was an unexpectant question, as though Brutus already knew the answer. Cicero smiled at him, “No, I fear my horizons have lately become distressingly restricted.”
Brutus smiled in return and nodded. “Come, we had better be getting back.”
They started down the side of the hill and made their way slowly through the camp, past the quartermasters and their new, empty granaries.
*
a.d. vi Id. Sext.
The battle for the Pharsalian plain had been fought and lost and Pompey’s legions were in chaotic retreat - chased down and slaughtered, or scattered and making their way to the sea in hope of passage to the East. Pompey himself, having announced his intention to make for Egypt, had gone south with his wife and children. The camp was being broken haphazardly by what few soldiers remained, or sacked by the local Greeks, who had no preference for Pompey or Caesar, only hoping that the end of the civil war would bring about the alleviation of their taxes.
Night had fallen steadily, and as yet Caesar had made no move on the camp. Cato and Metellus had left shortly before sunset for the coast to begin their journey to Africa, leaving Cicero and Brutus the only senators remaining in a camp overrun by scavengers and slaves. Brutus seemed not to care whether they gave themselves up to Caesar immediately or waited for him to find them, but despite his bravado of previous weeks Cicero had no desire to throw himself on Caesar’s mercy just yet and held some notion that if Caesar did decide to seek them out for retribution, it would not be until at least the next morning. He preferred to wait, and to enjoy the last hours of his freedom.
“He will have sent Antony a little way south, in pursuit of Pompey,” he told Brutus, as they reclined beneath a tree in the twilight, “and the rest of his men east to finish off the legions.” His mouth twitched with the beginnings of a grim smile. “For now, he is leaving what is left of us here to cook in our juices. He is giving us the opportunity to surrender.”
They were cushioned on a carpet of fallen needles beneath a pine tree, sprawled in a manner utterly unbefitting esteemed members of the senate. Before them was the last of three fat jugs of wine which Cicero’s slaves had found amongst the debris of the quartermaster’s stores.
“I wonder what Caesar will do with the republic,” Cicero said bitterly, “once he has declared himself its king.”
Brutus took a long swig of wine and let his head rest against the tree trunk, eyes half-closed in drunken exhaustion. “No more about the republic tonight, Cicero, please.”
“We are sitting in the dirt beneath a tree, drunk as slaves, approaching the hour of our ignominious surrender,” Cicero murmured. “What else is there to talk about?”
Brutus said nothing. His mother would look on him with disgust if she saw him now, and with good reason. “Caesar will count us as slaves come the morning, not subjects.”
Cicero laughed and raised the wine to his lips. “Sometimes, Brutus, you make for extremely depressing company.”
“Given our situation, you seem entirely too cheerful.”
They sank into silence broken only by the crackle of the fire, as Cicero thought for the thousandth time that evening how terrible it was that someone so young as Brutus should discover so early in life what it was to abandon one’s principles.
“I’m sorry to have led us here,” he said, eventually. “Cato and I, we are old men. I have learned to endure ignominy and exile, but you - you are far too young to have to bear this kind of disgrace.”
Brutus smiled crookedly and shut his eyes, tired of looking at nothing but the canopy of pines and the darkening sky. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you count yourself with Cato in anything.”
“Long may it be the last.” Brutus laughed; a low, warm, welcome sound which set Cicero at ease for the first time since Pompey’s ignominious departure for the coast. “What a sight we’ll make when we ride into Caesar’s camp,” he said, glancing sideways at Brutus, whose face was thrown by the fire into a sharp relief of light and shadows.
“Do I look that dreadful?” Brutus asked, even with his smile fading at the thought of their impending encounter with Caesar.
Cicero considered him carefully. A layer of dirt gave his skin a swarthy look, while his hair was tousled and his tunic stained and ripped. Only the aquiline planes of his face betrayed his noble heritage - otherwise, Cicero might have mistaken him for a slave. The thought made desire stir within him at the same time as prompting him to remember Tiro, safe in Butrint and awaiting his return. Brutus was beautiful in a way which Tiro had never had any hope of being, and some quality of Brutus’ languid, long-legged sprawl in the firelight made Cicero yearn to possess him. He knew it was impossible to contemplate, however pleasant the contemplation might be.
“You look every inch Caesar’s equal,” he lied, running a hand over his own stubbled jaw and looking down at his dusty attire. “I, no doubt, look only fit to clean his boots.”
“Never,” Brutus declared and reached to refill his cup.
Cicero reached for his own and realised too late that his hands were trembling; the cup tumbled from his grasp and would have rolled in the dirt had Brutus not caught it with a deftness of touch belied by the way his words had begun to slur.
“Careful, Cicero,” he chided gently, “or I’ll think you’re more anxious than you profess to be.”
Cicero looked at his face a second time, half lit by firelight, and felt unmanned by the unexpected beauty of it. Brutus’ expression hovered somewhere between misery and a beatific sort of peacefulness, and he said nothing as he handed back the wine cup, only folded his hand absent-mindedly around Cicero’s and gazed distractedly into the fire.
“You know,” he said, a moment later, apropos of nothing, while Cicero’s fingers curled against his palm, “I’m more grateful than I can say for your company here.”
“Really,” Cicero replied, amused. He thought of Brutus’ frequent impatience with him for his cynicism and his argumentative nature in the face of Cato’s pig-headedness. “Well, then I’m glad of your company, too.”
Brutus raised the hand in his own to his lips and brushed a lingering kiss across the knuckles, then let it go and reached again for the wine. He lifted the jar and peered into its depths, before letting out a soft, huffing sigh.
“We appear to have exhausted the wine,” he reported.
“That may be no ill coincidence,” Cicero murmured, taking the empty jar from him and placing it safely on the ground.
“Shall we face Caesar with our armour on and what’s left of our men behind us?” Brutus asked, his words running together tiredly as he scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand, “or are we going to slink into his camp like dogs?”
“Unarmed, I think,” Cicero answered, glancing sideways at him, concerned, “but we must take the men.”
“Of course.”
Brutus began staring into the fire so intently that Cicero wondered for a moment what he saw there; wine and despair were enough to make any man far from home think of Rome, or of their mothers, neither of which could hold any particular comfort for Brutus now.
“I think I shall take myself off to find somewhere to sleep,” the younger man said dully, after some minutes of silence, and hauled himself inelegantly to his feet. He extended a hand and fixed Cicero with a solicitous, expectant look. “I wonder if you’d like to join me, Cicero?”
Cicero glanced up at him - he was waiting for a response, and Cicero understood full well what was being offered. It was a long moment before he shook his head and turned away. “No - thank you. I’ll stay by the fire a while longer.”
Brutus hesitated, but nodded and left without another word. Cicero sat beside the fire mere minutes more, before finding his own unsteady way towards his tent.
*
The next morning they rode unarmed into Caesar’s camp, ashen faced and wearing clothes grimy with smoke. Brutus was depressed and silent, and Cicero’s attempts at conversation met with no sign that Brutus had even heard him, let alone prompting any response. By the time Caesar’s camp came into view, Cicero himself had sunk into such a grim mood that he could contemplate little else but the fate that awaited them. He glowered at the sentry posted at the approach to the encampment and bristled at the man’s impertinence when they were challenged.
“Halt, in the name of Rome!”
“Calls himself Rome now, does he?” he offered as an aside to Brutus. “Shameless.”
“Who are you, what’s your purpose?”
“We are Rome, boy,” Cicero told him witheringly, though the words left an unpleasant taste even as they formed and were spat out, “what’s left of it, come to surrender to your chief."
***
Continue: Chapter 1
***