VII
THE FOLLOWING YEAR during the Senate recess Cicero set off as usual with his family for Cumae in order to continue work on his political book; and I, as usual, went with him. It was not long before my fiftieth birthday.
For most of my life I had enjoyed good health. But when, to break the journey, we reached the cold mountain heights of Arpinum, I started to shiver, and the next morning I could barely move my limbs. When I tried to continue with the others I fainted and had to be carried to bed. Cicero could not have been kinder. He postponed his departure in the hope I would recover. But my fever worsened and I was told afterwards he spent long hours at my bedside. In the end he had to leave me behind, along with instructions to the household slaves that I should receive exactly the same care they would give to him. From Cumae two days later he wrote to say that he was sending me his Greek doctor, Andricus, and also a cook: If you care for me, see that you get well and join us when you are thoroughly strong again. Goodbye.
Andricus purged and bled me. The cook produced delicious meals that I was too ill to eat. Cicero wrote constantly.
You cannot imagine how anxious I feel about your health. If you relieve my mind on this score, I shall relieve yours of every worry. I should write more if I thought you could read with any pleasure. Put your clever brain, which I value so highly, to the job of preserving yourself for us both.
After about a week, the fever eased. By then it was too late to travel to Cumae. Cicero wrote telling me to join him instead at Formiae, on his way back to Rome.
Let me find you there, my dear Tiro, well and strong. My (our) literary brainchildren have been drooping their heads missing you. Atticus is staying with me, enjoying himself in cheerful mood. He wanted to hear my compositions but I told him that in your absence my tongue of authorship is tied completely. You must get ready to restore your services to my Muses. My promise will be performed on the appointed day. Now mind you get thoroughly well. I shall be with you soon. Goodbye.
I shall relieve your mind of every worry … My promise will be performed on the appointed day … I read the letters over and over, trying to make sense of those two phrases. I deduced that he must have said something to me when I was delirious, but I had no recollection of what it was.
As arranged, I arrived at the villa in Formiae on the afternoon of my fiftieth birthday, the twenty-eighth day of April. It was cold and blustery, not at all propitious, with rain gusting off the sea. I still felt frail. The effort of hurrying into the house so as not to be soaked left me dizzy. The place appeared deserted and I wondered if I had misunderstood my instructions. I went from room to room, calling out, until I heard a young boy’s stifled laughter coming from the triclinium. I pulled back the curtain and discovered the whole dining room crammed full of people trying to stay silent: Cicero, Terentia, Tullia, Marcus, young Quintus Cicero, all the household staff, and (even more bizarrely) the praetor Caius Marcellus with his lictors – that same noble Marcellus whose wife Caesar had tried to bestow on Pompey, and who had a villa nearby. At the sight of my astonished face they all started laughing, then Cicero took me by the hand and led me into the centre of the room while the others made space for us. I felt my knees weaken.
Marcellus said, ‘Who wishes this day to free this slave?’
Cicero replied, ‘I do.’
‘You are the legal owner?’
‘I am.’
‘Upon what grounds is he to be freed?’
‘He has shown great loyalty and given exemplary service to our family ever since he was born into the condition of slavery, and to me in particular, and also to the Roman state. His character is sound and he is worthy of his freedom.’
Marcellus nodded. ‘You may proceed.’
The lictor briefly touched his rod of office to my head. Cicero stepped in front of me, grasped my shoulders and recited the simple legal formula: ‘This man is to be free.’ He had tears in his eyes; so had I. Gently he turned me round until I had my back to him, and then he let me go, as a father might release a child to take its first steps.
It is difficult for me to describe the joy of becoming free. Quintus expressed it best when he wrote to me from Gaul: I could not be more delighted, my dear Tiro, believe me. Before you were our slave but now you are our friend. Outwardly, nothing much changed. I continued to live under Cicero’s roof and to perform the same duties. But in my heart I was a different man. I exchanged my tunic for a toga – a cumbersome garment that I wore without ease or comfort, but with intense pride. And for the first time I began to make plans of my own. I started to compile a comprehensive dictionary of all the symbols and abbreviations used in my shorthand system, together with instructions on how to use it. I drew up a scheme for a book on Latin grammar. I also went back through my boxes of notes whenever I had a spare hour and copied down particularly amusing or clever quotations thrown out by Cicero over the years. He greatly approved of the idea of a book of his wit and wisdom. Often after a particularly fine remark he would stop and say, ‘Note that down, Tiro – that’s one for your compendium.’ Gradually it became understood between us that if I outlived him, I would write his biography.
I asked him once why he had waited so long to set me free, and why he had decided to do it at that moment. He answered, ‘Well, you know I can be a selfish man, and I rely on you entirely. I thought to myself, “If I free him, what’s to stop him going off and transferring his allegiance to Caesar or Crassus or someone? They’d certainly pay him plenty for all he knows about me.” Then when you fell ill in Arpinum I realised how unjust it would be if you died in servitude, and so I made my pledge to you, even though you were too feverish to understand it. If ever there was a man who deserved the nobility of freedom, it is you, dear Tiro. Besides,’ he added with a wink, ‘nowadays I have no secrets worth selling.’
Love him though I did, I nevertheless wanted to end my days under my own roof. I had some savings and now was paid a salary; I dreamed of buying a smallholding near Cumae where I could keep a few goats and chickens and grow my own vines and olives. But I feared loneliness. I suppose I could have gone down to the slave market and bought myself a companion, but the idea repulsed me. I knew with whom I wanted to share this dream of a future life: Agathe, the Greek slave girl whom I had met in the household of Lucullus and whose freedom I had asked Atticus to purchase on my behalf before I went into exile with Cicero. Atticus confirmed he had done as I asked and that she had been manumitted. But although I made enquiries as to what had happened to her, and always kept an eye out whenever I walked through Rome, she had vanished into the teeming multitudes of Italy.
I did not have long to enjoy my freedom in tranquillity. My modest plans, like everyone else’s, were about to be mocked by the immensity of events. As Plautus has it:
Whatever the mind may hope for
The future is in the hands of the gods.
A few weeks after my liberation, in the month that was then named Quintilis but that we are now required to call July, I was hurrying along the Via Sacra, trying not to trip over my new toga, when I saw a crowd gathered ahead. They were deathly still – not at all animated as they usually were when news of one of Caesar’s victories was posted on the white board. I thought immediately that he must have suffered a terrible defeat. I joined the back of the throng and asked the man in front of me what was happening. Irritated, he glanced over his shoulder and muttered in a distracted voice, ‘Crassus has been killed.’
I stayed just long enough to pick up the few details that were available. Then I hastened back to tell Cicero. He was working in his study. I gasped out the news and he quickly stood up, as if such grave information should not be acknowledged sitting down.
‘How did it happen?’
‘In battle, it’s reported – in the desert, near a town in Mesopotamia named Carrhae.’
‘And his army?’
‘Defeated – wiped out.’
Cicero stared at me for a few moments. Then he shouted to one slave to
bring his shoes and another to arrange a litter. I asked him where he was going. ‘To see Pompey, of course – come too.’
It was a sign of Pompey’s pre-eminence that whenever there was a major crisis in the state, it was to his house that people always flocked – be it the ordinary citizens, who that day crowded the surrounding streets in silent, watchful multitudes; or the senior senators, who even now were arriving in their litters and being ushered by Pompey’s attendants into his inner sanctum. As luck would have it, both the elected consuls, Calvinus and Messalla, were under indictment for bribery and had been unable to take up office. Present instead was the informal leadership of the Senate, including senior ex-consuls such as Cotta, Hortensius and the elder Curio, and prominent younger men like Ahenobarbus, Scipio Nasica and M. Aemilius Lepidus. Pompey took command of the meeting. No one knew the eastern empire better than he: after all, much of it he had conquered. He announced that a dispatch had just been received from Crassus’s legate, G. Cassius Longinus, who had managed to escape from enemy territory and get back into Syria, and that if everyone was in agreement he would now read it out.
Cassius was a cold, austere man – ‘pale and thin’, as Caesar later complained – not given to boastfulness or lying, so his words were heard with all the greater respect. According to him, the Parthian king, Orodes II, had sent an envoy to Crassus on the eve of the invasion to say that he was willing to take pity on him as an old man and allow him to return in peace to Rome. But Crassus had boastfully replied that he would give his answer in the Parthian capital, Seleucia, at which the envoy had burst out laughing and pointed to the palm of his upturned hand, saying, ‘Hair will grow here, Crassus, before you set eyes on Seleucia!’
The Roman force of seven legions, plus eight thousand cavalry and archers, had bridged the Euphrates at Zeugma in a thunderstorm – itself a bad omen – and at one point during the traditional offerings to placate the gods, Crassus had dropped the entrails of the sacrificial animal into the sand. Although he had tried to make a joke of it – ‘That’s what comes of being an old man, lads, but I can grip my sword tightly enough!’ – the soldiers groaned, remembering the curses that had accompanied their departure from Rome. Already, wrote Cassius, they sensed that they were doomed.
From the Euphrates [he continued] we advanced ever deeper into the desert, with insufficient supplies of water and no clear sense of a route or objective. The land is trackless, flat, with no living tree to offer shade. After wading for fifty miles with full packs through soft sand in desert storms during which hundreds of our men succumbed to thirst and heat, we reached a river called the Balissus. Here for the first time our scouts sighted elements of the enemy’s forces on the opposite bank. On the orders of M. Crassus we crossed the river at noon and set off in pursuit. But by now the enemy had entirely disappeared again. We marched for several more hours until we were in the midst of a wilderness. Suddenly from all around us we heard the beating of kettle drums. At that moment, as if springing out of the sand, arose in every direction an immense horde of mounted archers. The silken banners of the Parthian commander, Sillaces, were visible behind.
Against the advice of more experienced officers, M. Crassus ordered the army to be drawn up in a single large square, twelve cohorts across. Our archers were then sent forward to engage the enemy. However, they were soon obliged to retreat in the face of the Parthians’ vastly superior forces and speed of manoeuvre. Their arrows spread much slaughter through our packed ranks. Nor did death come easily or quickly. In the convulsion and agony of their pain, our men would writhe as the arrows struck them; they would snap them off in their wounds and then lacerate their flesh by trying to tear out the barbed arrowheads that had pierced through their veins and muscles. Many died in this way, and even the survivors were in no state to fight. Their hands were pinioned to their shields and their feet nailed through to the ground so that they were incapable of either running away or defending themselves. Any hopes that this murderous rain would exhaust itself were dashed by the sight of fresh supplies of arrows appearing on the battlefield on heavily laden camel trains.
Apprehending the danger that the army would soon be entirely wiped out, P. Crassus applied to his father for permission to take his cavalry, together with some infantry and archers, and pierce the encircling line. M. Crassus endorsed the plan. This breakout force of some six thousand men moved forwards and the Parthians quickly withdrew. But although Publius had been expressly ordered not to pursue the enemy, he disobeyed these instructions. His men advanced out of sight of the main army, whereupon the Parthians reappeared behind them. Rapidly surrounded, Publius withdrew his men to a narrow ridge, where they presented an easy target. Once again the enemy’s archers did their murderous work. Perceiving the situation to be hopeless and fearing capture, Publius bade his men farewell and told them to look after their own safety. Then, since he was unable to use his hand, which had been pierced through with an arrow, he presented his side to his shield-bearer and ordered him to run him through with his sword. Most of his officers followed his example and put themselves to death.
Once they had overrun the Roman position, the Parthians cut off the head of Publius and mounted it on a spear. They then carried it back to the main Roman army and rode up and down our lines, taunting M. Crassus to come and look upon his son. Seeing what had happened, he addressed our men as follows: ‘Romans, this grief is a private thing of my own. But in you, who are safe and sound, abide the great fortune and the glory of Rome. And now, if you feel any pity for me, who have lost the best son that any father has ever had, show it in the fury with which you face the enemy.’
Regrettably, they paid no heed. On the contrary, this sight more than all the other dreadful things that had happened broke the spirit and paralysed the energies of our forces. The airborne slaughter resumed, and it is a certainty that the entire army would have been annihilated had not night fallen and the Parthians withdrawn, shouting that they would give Crassus the night to grieve for his son and would return to finish us off in the morning.
This provided us with an opportunity. M. Crassus being prostrate with grief and despair, and no longer capable of issuing orders, I took over the direction of our forces, and in silence and under cover of darkness those who could walk made a forced march to the town of Carrhae, leaving behind, amidst the most piteous cries and pleadings, some four thousand wounded who were either massacred or enslaved by the Parthians the following day.
At Carrhae our forces divided. I led five hundred men in the direction of Syria while M. Crassus took the bulk of our surviving army towards the mountains of Armenia. Intelligence reports indicate that outside the fortress of Sinnaca he was confronted by an army led by a subordinate of the Parthian king, who offered a truce. M. Crassus was compelled by his mutinous legionaries to go forward and negotiate, even though he believed it to be a trap. As he went, he turned and spoke these words: ‘I call upon all you Roman officers present to see that I am being forced to go this way. You are eyewitnesses of the shameful and violent treatment that I have received. But if you escape and get home safely, tell them all that Crassus died because he was deceived by the enemy, not because he was handed over to the Parthians by his own countrymen.’
These are his last known words. He was killed along with his legionary commanders. I am informed that afterwards his severed head was delivered personally to the king of the Parthians by Sillaces during a performance of The Bacchae and that it was used as a prop on stage. Afterwards the king caused Crassus’s mouth to be filled with molten gold, remarking: ‘Gorge yourself now with that metal for which in life you were so greedy.’
I await the Senate’s orders.
When Pompey finished reading, there was silence.
Finally Cicero said, ‘How many men have we lost, do we have any idea?’
‘I estimate thirty thousand.’
There was a groan of dismay from the assembled senators. Someone said that if that were true, then it was the worst defeat s
ince Hannibal had wiped out the Senate’s army at Cannae, one hundred and fifty years before.
‘This document,’ said Pompey, waving Cassius’s dispatch, ‘must go no further than this room.’
Cicero said, ‘I agree. Cassius’s frankness is admirable in private, but a less alarming version must be prepared for the people, stressing the bravery of our legionaries and their commanders.’
Scipio, who was Publius’s father-in-law, said, ‘Yes, they all died heroes – that’s what we must tell everyone. That’s what I’m going to tell my daughter, certainly. The poor girl is a widow at nineteen.’
Pompey said, ‘Please give her my condolences.’
Then Hortensius spoke up. The ex-consul was in his sixties and mostly retired, but still listened to with respect. ‘What happens next? Presumably the Parthians won’t leave it at that. Knowing our weakness, they’ll invade Syria in retaliation. We can barely muster a legion in its defence and we have no governor.’
‘I would propose we make Cassius acting governor,’ said Pompey. ‘He’s a hard, unsparing man – exactly what this emergency demands. As for an army – well, he must raise and train a new one locally.’
Ahenobarbus, who never lost an opportunity to undermine Caesar, said, ‘All our best fighting men are in Gaul. Caesar has ten legions – a huge number. Why don’t we order him to send a couple to Syria to fill the breach?’
At the mention of Caesar’s name there was a perceptible stirring of hostility in the room.
‘He recruited those legions,’ pointed out Pompey. ‘I agree they would be more useful in the east. But he regards those men as his own.’
‘Well he needs to be reminded they are not his own. They exist to serve the republic, not him.’
Looking round at the senators all nodding vigorously in agreement, Cicero said afterwards that it was only at that moment that he realised the true significance of Crassus’s death. ‘Because, dear Tiro, what have we learned while writing our Republic? Divide power three ways in a state and tension is balanced; divide it in two and sooner or later one side must seek to dominate the other – it is a natural law. Disgraceful as he was, Crassus at least preserved the equilibrium between Pompey and Caesar. But with him gone, who will do it now?’