account for. The stories he has spread about you! It's shameful. An old man like myself can stand slander; it must always hurt the young.' Such optimism, such naivety, in one who had seen so much!
TWO
By late summer Antony had hardly advanced in his aim to dominate the State. In August Cicero returned from the seaside, invigorated by the benign climate and other delights of the Bay of Naples, and attacked Antony in the Senate. I did not of course hear the speech. My brother-in-law Gaius Marcellus told me it had been 'the usual thing, wind, wind, wind'. For all that, it goaded Antony. He had been thinking himself into the role of proconsul; it irritated him to have the old man remind everyone of his patchy history and moral insufficiency. The Senate may indeed have emptied during Cicero's speech ('the younger men call him the dinner-gong, you know,' Marcellus said), but the speech was copied out and went round the forum. It made an impression People saw Antony could not be trusted. They sought a man they could rely on. Cicero was too old, the consuls Pansa and Hirtius too obscure, the self-styled Liberators could never hope to overcome the antipathy of Caesar's legions: the way was opening before me.
Antony blundered. Early in September Agrippa came to me, sweating with agitation. 'We're done for,' he said. 'We'd better pack our bags.' 'What is it?' I said.
I sat down and called on Agrippa to do likewise. This is invariably the wisest and most effective response to signs of incipient panic. Either sit down yourself, or tell others to do so, or both. Why, I once quelled a mutinous cohort by snapping out the order to sit down. You can have no idea till you see it how effective such a command can be. A crowd on its feet feels its corporate strength. Make them sit down and you restore their sense of being individuals. You make them conscious of themselves. 'Antony has sent a letter to the Pontifex Maximus.' 'Much good may that do him. Lepidus is nothing but a bag of wind.'
'You don't understand. He's published the letter, and he accuses you of plotting his murder. He requests your arrest and immediate trial.' I rang the bell for a slave.
'Find Maecenas and ask him to come here. And bring some wine. You look as if you could do with a drink, Grippa,' I said.
'Well,' I said to Maecenas when he appeared. 'Have we planned many murders lately?' 'Not many.' 'Not even the consul's?' 'Not that I know of. I hope you didn't disturb me from a very interesting couch just to play the fool. What is this?' 'Tell him, Grippa.'
'No,' Agrippa said, afraid now of being laughed at, 'you tell him.' 'But this is wonderful,' Maecenas said. 'I don't regret my postponed couch at all. It's the first point he's really lost to us.' 'Precisely. How do we exploit it?' 'Laughter.' 'My own opinion, but it shows he is taking us seriously.' I went to my desk and wrote for a few minutes. 'How about this?' I said, and read the following to them:
'Friends, Romans, Countrymen: you will all remember that less than six months ago, the Consul Mark Antony prefaced his eulogy of my murdered father with these very words. In that noble and moving speech which his secretaries provided for him, he praised my father's noble generosity and with a nice irony exposed the dishonour of his murderers. Well and good, my friends; my gratitude for that speech is still warm. Irony, however, is a corrupting habit, not unlike wine in its operation. Drunkards begin by drinking with the same discrimination as the ordinary man who likes a glass of wine. But, whereas the ordinary man is moderately enlivened and improved with wine, which he has prudently mixed with water, drunkards are enflamed by it, and their judgement quite destroyed. So with the habit of irony. It can possess a man. I can only assume that this has happened to our noble and honourable consul. (It must be irony, for it could not be wine, could it?)
'Why do I say this, you ask? Well, there has come to my knowledge a story said to be related by the consul. It appears that he is accusing me of plotting his own murder.
'The charge is so preposterous that I do not intend to offer a defence. I shall not insult the consul's momentary aberration by pretending to take it seriously. Had such a charge been offered by any other man, I would have supposed him drunk. The consul of course cannot have been in his cups. No man, guiding the affairs of the Republic in this terrible year, would be so rash and irresponsible as to fall into intoxication. We all know the consul's devotion to duty and the sobriety of his judgement. I can therefore only assume that he has fallen victim to the habit of irony, and that the accusation is an elaborate private joke. My only complaint is that it is an unfriendly one. Not everyone will see it, for not everyone shares the consul's delicious sense of fun.
'And I deny it only because I should not like it to be thought by my father's friends that my feelings towards one of his lieutenants were anything but warm. Of course I don't blame the consul, especially as it occurs to me that he may have taken seriously a jest propounded by his wife Fulvia. And we all know who her first husband was, what standards of public spirit and private honour he always displayed, with what delighted wit Fulvia and he concocted similar accusations, what a practised hand she is, and how wisely and firmly she guides the consul. 'That,' I said, 'ought to do for him.'
'Beautiful.' Maecenas leapt up and embraced me. 'You've caught him hip and thigh. They'll laugh at this all over Italy. The only thing is, my dear, you may have over-estimated the intelligence of the public. You can go broke doing that, as any theatre manager will tell you. Let me just tinker with the last bit… da-da-da-di… how about this now? Start from where you bring in Fulvia, and go on: 'and we all know that Fulvia used to be married to the ex- noble Clodius, whose religious zeal was such that he even dressed up as a woman to attend the sacred Festival of the Good Goddess; whose devotion to truth caused him to testify in a thousand law-courts; whose love of the Republic was so strong that he became a plebeian in order to qualify for election as a tribune; and whose sense of the ridiculous was so acute that he caused himself to be adopted by a man young enough to be his own son. No wonder therefore that Fulvia is a practised hand' – I like that expression, your own is it? Never heard it before – 'at concocting such accusations. Of course, not being the consul and so not having perfect knowledge of matters of which I am completely ignorant, I cannot say definitely that this accusation is Fulvia's work. And I am alas too young to have any personal memory of her first husband. But from what I have heard of him, there is a whiff of Clodius here. A whiff of petticoats too. And anyway we all know how wisely and firmly Fulvia guides – I shall not say, governs -and advises the honourable consul.' You've got to spell it out, lay it on the line, my dear. But I reckon that'll laugh 'em out of court.'
'Lovely,' I said, 'just one more refinement. I think this might be the occasion for one of my diplomatic stutters. So: 'We all know Fulvia used to be married to the ignoble – I am so sorry, I mean ex-noble – Clodius'. What about that?'
'Oh you're both very clever,' Agrippa said. 'It's a pity you can't ever be serious.'
'There's nothing,' I said, 'more serious than the right sort of joke in politics.' 'Well, I may be very thick, but I don't understand.'
He was very thick of course, but I soothed him. I couldn't let my Agrippa go off in that bear-mood.
He was in good company. Cicero didn't understand either. He had believed Antony's accusation and only regretted that I had 'lacked the confidence or capacity to execute such a worthy intention'. He was baffled by my response. I suppose it was too modern for him. He found the levity inappropriate. All the same, he couldn't resist chuckling over our broadside at Fulvia. There was no one he had hated more than Clodius, and he extended his hatred to Fulvia: 'a terrible woman, a harpy, a Stymphalian bird, mad for power'. His judgement was sound enough there.
As for me, I suddenly needed Cicero more than ever. Antony's credit was pricked by my riposte, which also stung him into action. He began to collect soldiers fast. At Suessa that autumn he purged his own army, then marched to Brindisium and secured three legions, the II, the IV and the Martian, which were returning from the East; his speed forestalled my own agents. On the way back north he picked up Julius' favourite legion, the Lark. He was ready now to march determinedly against Decimus Brutus in Mutina with a formidable force. Despite what I had achieved he was very close to being master of Italy, all in a few weeks. I needed to build up my credit with the traditional Republicans who feared and loathed Antony. So I wrote, passionately, to Cicero, and begged him to advise me, and to save the Republic as he had done in his youth.
How far did I fool him? We were in a sense bound together. I needed Cicero who alone could reconcile the traditionalists to me; but he needed my sword and the command I had over Julius' veterans. There are marriages like our relationship, things founded on common interest and reciprocated distrust. I could not forget his gibe: that
