Caesar bowed to the chair and took his place on the front bench opposite Cicero. He nodded politely across the aisle to my master and settled down to listen to Cato. But for once the great didact was lost for words. Having no further motivation to talk, he sat down abruptly, and the following month Caesar was elected consul by a unanimous vote of all the centuries – the first candidate to achieve this feat since Cicero.
XVI
The whole of Rome now waited to see what Caesar would do. 'The only thing we can expect,' said Cicero, 'is that it will be unexpected.' And so it was. It took five months, but when Caesar made his move it was masterly.
One day towards the end of the year, in December, shortly before Caesar was due to be sworn in, Cicero received a visit from the eminent Spaniard Lucius Cornelius Balbus.
This remarkable creature was then forty years old. Born in Gades of Phoenician extraction, he was a trader, and very rich. His complexion was dark, his hair and beard as black as jet, his teeth and the whites of his eyes as bright as polished ivory. He had a very quick way of talking, and he laughed a lot, throwing back his small neat head in delight, so that the most boring men in Rome all fancied themselves great wits after a short time in his company. He had a particular gift for attaching himself to powerful figures – first to Pompey, under whom he served in Spain, and who arranged to make him a Roman citizen, and then to Caesar, who picked him up in Gades when he was governor, appointed him his chief engineer during his conquest of Lusitania, and then brought him back to Rome to run his errands. Balbus knew everyone, even if at first they did not know him, and he bustled in to see Cicero on that December morning with his hands held wide as if he were meeting his closest friend.
'My dear Cicero,' he said in his thickly accented Latin, 'how are you? You look as well as I have ever seen you – and I have never seen you looking anything other than well!'
'Then I suppose I am very much the same as ever.' Cicero gestured to Balbus to take a seat. 'And how is Caesar?'
'He is marvellous,' replied Balbus, 'completely marvellous. He asks me to give you his very warmest regards, and his absolute assurance that he is your greatest and most sincere friend in the world.'
'Time for us to start counting our spoons, then, Tiro,' said Cicero, and Balbus clapped his hands and pulled up his knees and literally rocked with laughter.
'Well, that is very funny – “count the spoons” indeed! I shall tell him you said that, and he will be most amused. The spoons!' He wiped his eyes and recovered his breath. 'Oh dear! But seriously, Cicero, when Caesar offers his friendship to a man, it is not an empty thing. He takes the view that deeds, not words, are what count in this world.'
Cicero had a mountain of legal documents to read. 'Balbus,' he said wearily, 'you have obviously come here to say something – so would you kindly just say it?'
'Of course. You are busy, I can see that. Forgive me.' He pressed his hand to his heart. 'Caesar wishes me to tell you that he and Pompey have reached an agreement. They intend to settle this question of land reform once and for all.'
Cicero gave me a quick look: it was exactly as he had predicted. To Balbus he said: 'On what terms is this to be settled?'
'The public lands in Campania will be divided between Pompey's demobbed legionaries and those among the Roman poor who wish to farm. The whole scheme will be administered by a commission of twenty. Caesar hopes very much to have your support.'
Cicero laughed in disbelief. 'But this is almost precisely the bill he tried to bring in at the start of my consulship and which I opposed!'
'There will be one great difference,' said Balbus with a grin. 'This is between us, please. Yes?' His eyebrows danced in delight. He ran his small pink tongue over the edges of his large white teeth. 'The official commission will be of twenty, but there will be an inner commission of just five magistrates who will take all the decisions. Caesar would be most honoured – most honoured indeed – if you would agree to join it.'
That caught Cicero off his guard. 'Would he indeed? And who would be the other four?'
'Apart from yourself, there would be Caesar, Pompey, one other still to be decided, and' – Balbus paused for effect, like a conjuror about to produce an exotic bird from an empty basket – 'and Crassus.'
Up to that point, Cicero had been treating the Spaniard with a kind of friendly disdain – as a joke figure: one of those self-important go-betweens who often crop up in politics. Now he gazed at him in wonder. ' Crassus? ' he repeated. 'But Crassus can barely abide to be in the same city as Pompey. How is he going to sit beside him on a committee of five?'
'Crassus is a dear friend of Caesar. And also Pompey is a dear friend of Caesar. So Caesar played the marriage-broker, in the interests of the state.'
'The interests of themselves more like! It will never work.'
'It most certainly will work. The three have met and agreed it. And against such an alliance, nothing else in Rome will stand.'
'If it has already been agreed, why am I needed?'
'As Father of the Nation, you have a unique authority.'
'So I am to be brought in at the last moment to provide a covering of respectability?'
'Not at all, not at all. You would be a full partner, absolutely. Caesar authorises me to say that no major decision in the running of the empire would be made without consulting you first.'
'So this inner commission would, in effect, act as the executive government of the state?'
'Precisely.'
'And how long would it exist?'
'I am sorry?'
'When will it dissolve?'
'It will never dissolve. It will be permanent.'
'But this is outrageous! There is no precedent in our history for such a body. It would be the first step on the road to a dictatorship!'
'My dear Cicero, really!'
'Our annual elections would become meaningless. The consuls would be puppets, the senate might as well not exist. This inner group would control the allocation of all land and taxes-'
'It would bring stability-'
'It would be a kleptocracy!'
'Are you actually rejecting Caesar's offer?'
'Tell your master I appreciate his consideration and I have no desire to be anything other than his friend, but this is not something I can countenance.'
'Well,' said Balbus, plainly shocked, 'he will be disappointed – indeed he will be sorrowful – and so will Pompey and Crassus. Obviously they would like your assurance that you will not oppose them.'
'I am sure they would!'
'Yes, they would. They desire no unpleasantness. But if opposition is offered, you must understand, it will have to be met.'
With great effort, Cicero controlled his temper. 'You can tell them I have struggled for more than a year on Pompey's behalf to secure a fair settlement for his veterans – in the teeth, I might add, of strenuous opposition from Crassus. You can tell them I won't go back on that. But I want no part of any secret deal to establish a government by cabal. It would make a mockery of everything I have ever stood for in my public life. You can see yourself out, I think.'
After Balbus had gone, Cicero sat silent in his library as I tiptoed around him arranging his correspondence into piles. 'Imagine,' he said eventually, 'sending that Mediterranean carpet salesman to offer me a fifth share of the republic at a knockdown price! Our Caesar fancies himself to be a great gentleman, but really he is the most awful vulgar crook.'
'There may be trouble,' I warned.
