answer.'
'The answer is that popular politics, the politics of the elections, the politics that determine the magistracies, the politics that choose the men who must guide the destinies of Rome, have become a sham.'
'A lie,' he smiled. 'A game which the most honest among noblemen finds himself compelled to play most cynically.'
He sipped his wine, then, doing something which I had never seen done before, took a deep purple grape from the dish on the stone ledge beside his couch, and peeled it delicately with the nail of his forefinger.
'My dearest Mouse,' he said. 'There is nothing to be done. Which is why men of intelligence like you and me — yes, and my uncle most of all — are driven to action, in an attempt to persuade ourselves that something worthwhile may yet be done. On the other hand, look across the garden, at my stepfather. He is drunk now, though it is early afternoon. He will stay drunk. Why not? He is rich. He has no part to play, not because he considers any part unworthy of his abilities, which by the way he grossly exaggerates, but because he considers his abilities unworthy of any task that might present itself to him. Somebody said to me the other day that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Do you know what my friend Maecenas replied? 'Not so,' he said, 'a cynic knows the value of everything and knows it is not worth the price demanded.''
I was displeased to hear him quote Maecenas, but could not dissent from the judgment.
And yet, Artixes, I find myself here, your father's hostage, your father's prisoner, and let me be honest, your father's destined victim, since none will pay the price he might demand for my release.
Where stands cynicism there?
Chapter 13
But there was one other subject about which Caesar would talk as autumn turned to winter. This was his proposed campaign against Parthia. Now, let me admit that in other circumstances these plans would ha ve been justifiable. The Parthi ans were insolent and aggressive. Their victory over Marcus Crassus at Carrhae had given them a contempt for Rome. They threatened the security of the eastern frontier of our Empire. There was also the question of Armenia, that kingdom which, protruding south, must be dominated either by Rome or by Parthia.
Yet these were not the real reasons why Caesar was determined to embark on this enterprise which exceeded in audacity all that even he had ever attempted. Nor was it the case that he was persuaded by Cleopatra, whom he had now installed in a palace on — if I remember rightly — the Esquiline, and whom he visited nightly for an hour before supper, sometimes indeed remaining there for the meal, and even for hours afterwards. It was true that as an Easterner she was eager to see Parthia humbled, and she admitted to me herself that she had a further reason.
'I have realised, Mouse, my poor Mouse,' she said in that tone which would have sounded caressing to any man who did not retain the echoes of Clodia's speech in his memory, 'that here in this dull, conventional Rome, which is so boring — why did nobody ever warn me how boring Rome is? — here I can be nothing but Caesar's plaything — his piece of foreign skirt, as some rogue said the other day — a piece of insolence for which I am glad to say he was soundly whipped. But in the East, in Parthia, Caesar and Cleopa tra may reign as Sun and Moon — we shall be beyond compare. Do you wonder that I urge the campaign upon him? Besides, Mouse, he needs little urging. Caesar is one of those men who must ever journey further and into more dangerous territory to fulfil his Destiny. And…' she smiled like a kitten just developing into a cat '… it has been borne in on me that Cleopatra is part of that Destiny. We are yoked together. How he can tolerate that dreary Calpurnia is a mystery. I suppose it's part of the great boringness of Rome.'
No doubt her urging played a part. No doubt she scarcely needed to urge.
For the truth was that Caesar was indeed bored. That marvellous sagacity, that balance, that sense of the possible, seemed to me to be fleeing from him, as the god fled from Hercules. Caesar, who had once said to me, pinching the lobe of my ear, 'Always remember there are two rules of politics, Mouse. First, that politics is the art of the possible; second, that what is possible may be enlarged by the manner in which the dice fall,' now looked on Rome and its politics with loathing.
'What have I achieved, Mouse? I have gained great glory. We have won glory and successes such as only Alexander may have exceeded. I dominate Rome as no man has since Sulla. Sulla! You know how I have ever loathed and despised him; and yet here I am, after so many battles, so many campaigns, no more, it seems, than another Sulla. Mouse, I am fifty-six. This is no way for Caesar to end, arranging who shall be consul this year and the next, which nonentity shall hold which praetorship, who should be fobbed off with this and who with that. Have I proved myself the favourite of the gods, I who am the descendant of Venus, only to find myself compelled to listen to lectures from Cicero, however carefully couched in respectful, even timid, language? Do I care which noble faction seeks that office, and which the other? Do I even care for the plaudits of the mob which any man of intelligence, sensibility and genius must despise?
'No, Mouse, what shall it profit me to spend my declining years adjusting this, repairing that, meting out laws which Caesar himself despises to a stinking multitude that worship him while he gives them shows and Triumphs, and would as soon revile him if Fortune fled from him?
'Mouse, Caesar, as you who m I have loved almost as my own son know only too thoroughly, cannot rest content with such dull matters, such petty business. What have we known? Clanging fights, where a man renews himself, burning towns, where a man sees his glory godlike shine, sinking ships, where our enemies are delivered to the gods that rule the sea, praying hands, to whom it is in our power to respond with life or death? And you would have me surrender such knowledge for
… the administration of a corrupt and stinking polity?
'Mouse, consider Parthia, that all but boundless empire across wastes of sand, those sands where Marcus Crassus — my equal for a few months in power, my superior in wealth, my inferior in all else — those sands where Marcus Crassus so ignobly perished. I have heard that there still remain Roman legionaries from his army, taken in that terrible battle, and ever since held in captivity. Would it not be a glorious action to restore them to their homes and families, to bring them back to the tutelage of their familial gods?
'And Parthia, Mouse, is the heir of Persia which Alexander conquered. When I was in Egypt they asked me if I wished to visit Alexander's tomb, to gaze on the embalmed countenance of the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. But Caesar would not, Caesar refused, and all wondered. Some whispered even, 'Caesar is ashamed that he has not yet matched Alexander.' None dared say this to Caesar, but I could not fail to be aware of how the whispers ran. And in my heart I knew they spoke truth. I felt in my bosom a keen jealousy of Alexander who all his life had been free from the petty constraints of political necessities that have bound me; and I knew in my heart that till I had equalled his achievement, I could not gaze upon him…'
'But Caesar,' I tried to say, 'think of Gaul, consider Pharsalus..' He brushed my intervention aside.
'And so, Parthia, to subdue that empire as Alexander subdued the majesty of Darius. And then… to follow my star still… wherever it shall lead me… to India perhaps where Alexander himself was stopped, or, a still grander scheme presents itself to me, a campaign which would be seen by all as a new wonder of the world… to traverse the Hyrcanian wastes, and march on the north side of the Caspian Sea to where the frosty Caucasus proudly challenge the heavens themselves, the Caucasus where Prometheus was held, victim of his unparalleled audacity. Then to carry war into Scythia, that unknown land of terrible barbarians, to march up the Danube into the dark forests of Germany, and so reach the Rhine from this new and strange direction. After which, I would again be received in Gaul as a godlike redeemer. I would have drawn the new boundary of the Roman Empire and extended its limits to the ocean on every side…
'Would this not be a fit culmination to Caesar's career? And why not? I cannot rest here in this stew of corruption. Caesar is a man unbound, who will not consent to be confined…'
I cannot swear, now and in my present distress, that these were Caesar's precise words. Furthermore I have condensed into one oration the gist of innumerable conversations we had on these matters at that time. But I remember three things which, at different moments, came to my mind, though I did not choose to utter any of them to him.
The first was, with what difficulty he had advanced a few paltry miles into the mist-shrouded island of Britain.
