Caesar (17 page)

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.

I have heard Caesar talk of the corruption of Republican institutions and of the corruption of feeling which this breeds. I do not dispute that this has happened, though I would lay the blame principally on men like Caesar himself. Yes, and on Pompey too; I do not deny that. When these two, and Marcus Crassus came together at Lucca, they engaged themselves in a criminal conspiracy against the Free State.

If I adhered to Pompey rather than Caesar, it was not because I had greater respect for him. It was simply because I considered him less dangerous. He was weak where Caesar was strong. He was indecisive where Caesar was determined. I never thought the Republic safe in Pompey's hands, but I knew that his dominance was less secure than a victorious Caesar's would prove to be.

You may argue that Caesar plans many beneficial reforms. My respect for Caesar is sufficiently strong to deter me from offering contradiction. Instead I offer this warning: the means by which a reform is effected may negate any benefit which in other circumstances that reform would bring.

If you can believe in your heart that Caesar intends to restore the Republic and retire into private life, then my fears may be unfounded, and my course of action may have been misguided.

But can you believe that?

And, even if you could, can you believe that a Republic restored by Caesar's hand and as a result of Caesar's methods, could possess any vitality?

I accept that I am heading for failure. So be it. I shall fight my cause honourably to the death. And I shall die convinced that posterity will judge me more favourably than Caesar's friends may do. I address this letter to you, however, because there is one friend of Caesar's whose good opinion I still value and seek, and because I hope that it may give you occasion to reflect on the dangers for Rome of the path which you have chosen to follow. You will understand, my dear Decimus Brutus, that I do not question your virtue. I do not doubt that you have adhered to Caesar for the best and most selfless of motives. I ask only that you should consider anew where Caesar is heading, that you should consider the implications for Rome, the Empire, the institutions of the Republic, the great noble families that have made that Republic and finally for liberty itself, which no good man surrenders save with his life, of Caesar's dominance.

Caesar, you may still say, can be trusted. Very well; so be it again. But Caesar will have successors. Will it be possible to trust them in like manner?

Caesar may continue to show outward respect for the institutions of the Republic, even while he subverts them. Consuls may still be elected, even though Caesar may fix the elections and though the consuls will be powerless. But in time the office of consul will become a merely decorative honour. Power will rest with the dictator, who should more properly be termed, in the Greek fashion, the tyrant. Free speech will wither, for it cannot nourish when the government is in the hands of a single person. Orientals will hasten to designate the tyrant a god. Even the Senate will cravenly follow suit. Caesar may accept divine honours with the scepticism proper to a Roman nobleman. His successors will come to think of themselves as gods, with the power of gods, the liberty of gods.

That is the future which Caesar is constructing. When the day comes on which a Roman nobleman thinks it proper to prostrate himself before the tyrant, as Orientals do before the despots to whom they are utterly subjugated, that will be the result of Caesar's victory.

I urge you to think on these matters, dear Decimus, and draw back before you become an agent in the destruction of the liberty that depends on the survival of the Republic.

I am as ever your friend and equal, Labienus, now equal in honour, but one who in the future I envisage, which I shall not survive to experience, would find himself your equal only in dishonour and servitude.

This was a dangerous letter to receive. I was incensed that he should have thought to send it to me. Fortunately, minute enquiries revealed that he had taken the precaution of having it secretly delivered. It was probable, therefore, that it had not been intercepted and copied for Caesar's eyes. Nevertheless I took care to observe him closely when we next met and for some months after, to see whether his manner to me had changed or whether he was regarding me with some suspicion.

Naturally, too, I rejected Labienus' arguments. They were an attempt at putting a brave face on his desertion. Few men can resist seeking public reasons to justify their private behaviour. Labienus had realised that he had made the wrong choice. He had been betrayed by his own ambition. Therefore he now pretended to me, even perhaps to himself, that he had joined himself to Pompey not because he thought Pompey would win, but rather because he recognised his cause as being morally and politically to be preferred. That was nonsense, of course.

Of course it was nonsense. I assured myself time and again that it was nonsense. Only I found myself returning to his letter, extracting it from its place of concealment, and brooding on its message.

Why, I was even tempted to show it to young Octavius. That, of course, was in the weeks of my infatuation with the boy. Prudence restrained me. I might dote on the youth, but my judgment was not so far destr
oyed as to make me suppose that
he could be trusted not to reveal the existence of this compromising letter to Caesar.

Often since, I have told myself that if I had not found something in the letter from the first, I would have burned it straightaway.