“If only you will look on high,” the old statesman tells Scipio, “and contemplate this eternal home and resting place, you will no longer bother with the gossip of the common herd or put your trust in human reward for your exploits. Nor will any man’s reputation endure very long, for what men say dies with them and is blotted out with the forgetfulness of posterity.”
All that will remain of us is what is written down.
aedile an elected official, four of whom were chosen annually to serve a one-year term, responsible for the running of the city of Rome: law and order, public buildings, business regulations, etc.
auspices supernatural signs, especially flights of birds and lightningflashes, interpreted by the augurs; if ruled unfavourable no public business could be transacted
Carcer Rome’s prison, situated on the boundary of the Forum and the Capitol, between the Temple of Concord and the Senate house
century the unit in which the Roman people cast their votes on the Field of Mars at election time for consul and praetor; the system was weighted to favour the wealthier classes of society
chief priest see pontifex maximus
comitium the circular area in the Forum, approximately 300 feet across, bounded by the Senate house and the rostra, traditionally the place where laws were voted on by the people, and where many of the courts had their tribunals
consul the senior magistrate of the Roman Republic, two of whom were elected annually, usually in July, to assume office in the following January, taking it in turns to preside over the Senate each month
curule chair a backless chair with low arms, often made of ivory, possessed by a magistrate with imperium, particularly consuls and praetors
dictator a magistrate given absolute power by the Senate over civil and military affairs, usually in a time of national emergency
equestrian order the second most senior order in Roman society after the Senate, the “Order of Knights” had its own officials and privileges, and was entitled to one-third of the places on a jury; often its members were richer than members of the Senate, but declined to pursue a public career
Gaul divided into two provinces: Nearer Gaul, extending from the River Rubicon in northern Italy to the Alps, and Further Gaul, the lands beyond the Alps roughly corresponding to the modern French regions of Provence and Languedoc
haruspices the religious officials who inspected the entrails after a sacrifice in order to determine whether the omens were good or bad
imperator the title granted to a military commander on active service by his soldiers after a victory; it was necessary to be hailed imperator in order to qualify for a triumph
imperium the power to command, granted by the state to an individual, usually a consul, praetor or provincial governor
legate a deputy or delegate
legion the largest formation in the Roman army, at full strength consisting of approximately 5,000 men
lictor an attendant who carried the fasces—a bundle of birch rods tied together with a strip of red leather—that symbolised a magistrate’s imperium; consuls were accompanied by twelve lictors, who served as their bodyguards, praetors by six; the senior lictor, who stood closest to the magistrate, was known as the proximate lictor
manumission the emancipation of a slave
Order of Knights see equestrian order
pontifex maximus the chief priest of the Roman state religion, the head of the fifteen-member College of Priests, entitled to an official residence on the Via Sacra
praetor the second most senior magistrate in the Roman Republic, eight of whom were elected annually, usually in July, to take office the following January, and who drew lots to determine which of the various courts—treason, embezzlement, corruption, serious crime, etc.—they would preside over; see also urban praetor
prosecutions as there was no public prosecution system in the Roman Republic, all criminal charges, from embezzlement to treason and murder, had to be brought by private individuals
public assemblies the supreme authority and legislature of the Roman people was the people themselves, whether constituted by tribe (the comitia tributa, which voted on laws, declared war and peace, and elected the tribunes) or by century (the comitia centuriata, which elected the senior magistrates)
quaestor a junior magistrate, twenty of whom were elected each year, and who thereby gained the right of entry to the Senate; it was necessary for a candidate for the quaestorship to be over thirty and to show wealth of one million sesterces
rostra a long, curved platform in the Forum, about twelve feet high, surmounted by heroic statues, from which the Roman people were addressed by magistrates and advocates; its name derived from the beaks (rostra) of captured enemy warships set into its sides
Senate not the legislative assembly of the Roman Republic—laws could only be passed by the people in a tribal assembly—but something closer to its executive, with 600 members who could raise matters of state and order the consul to take action or to draft laws to be placed before the people; once elected via the quaestorship (see quaestor) a man would normally remain a senator for life, unless removed by the censors for immorality or bankruptcy, hence the average age was high (senate derived from senex = old)
tribes the Roman people were divided into thirty-five tribes for the purposes of voting on legislation and to elect the tribunes; unlike the system of voting by century, the votes of rich and poor when cast in a tribe had equal weight
tribune a representative of the ordinary citizens—the plebeians—ten of whom were elected annually each summer and took office in December, with the power to propose and veto legislation, and to summon assemblies of the people; it was forbidden for anyone other than a plebeian to hold the office
triumph an elaborate public celebration of homecoming, granted by the Senate to honour a victorious general, to qualify for which it was necessary for him to retain his military imperium—and as it was forbidden to enter Rome whilst still possessing military authority, generals wishing to triumph had to wait outside the city until the Senate granted them a triumph
urban praetor the head of the justice system, senior of all the praetors, third in rank in the republic after the two consuls
My greatest debt over the twelve years it has taken to write this novel and its two predecessors is to the Loeb edition of Cicero’s collected speeches, letters and writings, published by Harvard University Press. I have been obliged to edit and compress Cicero’s words, but wherever possible I have tried to let his voice come through. Loeb has been my Bible.
I have also made constant use of the great nineteenth-century works of reference edited by William Smith: his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (three volumes) and Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (two volumes); these are now freely available online. The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Volume II, 99 BC—31 BC by T. Robert S. Broughton was also invaluable, as was The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, edited by Richard J. A. Talbert. Again, wherever possible I have followed the facts and descriptions offered in the original sources—Plutarch, Appian, Sallust, Caesar—and I thank all those scholars and translators who have made them accessible and whose words I have used.
Biographies of, and books about, Cicero, which have given me numberless insights and ideas, include Cicero: A Turbulent Life by Anthony Everitt, Cicero: A Portrait by Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero and His Friends by Gaston Bossier, Cicero: The Secrets of His Correspondence by Jérôme Carcopino, Cicero: A Political Biography by David Stockton, Cicero: Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome by Kathryn Tempest, Cicero as Evidence by Andrew Lintott, The Hand of Cicero by Shane Butler, Terentia, Tullia and Publia: The Women of Cicero’s Family by Susan Treggiari, The Cambridge Companion to Cicero edited by Catherine Steel, and—still thoroughly readable and useful—The History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, published in 1741 by Conyers Middleton (1683–1750).
Biographies of Cicero’s contemporaries which I have found particularly useful include Caesar by Christian Meier, Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy, The Death of Caesar by Barry Strauss, Pompey by Robin Seager, Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic by Allen Ward, Marcus Crassus, Millionaire by Frank Adcock, The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher by W. Jeffrey Tatum and Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caesar by Aubrey Burl.
For the general ambience of Rome—its culture, society and political structure—I have drawn on three works by the incomparable Peter Wiseman—New Men in the Roman Senate, Catullus and His World and Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays. To these I must also add The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic by Fergus Millar, which analyses how politics might have operated in Cicero’s Rome. Also valuable were Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic by Elizabeth Rawson, The Constitution of the Roman Republic by Andrew Lintott, The Roman Forum by Michael Grant, Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families by Friedrich Münzer (translated by Thérèse Ridley) and (of course) The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme and Theodore Mommsen’s History of Rome.
For the physical recreation of Republican Rome I relied on the scholarship of A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome by L. Richardson Jr., A Topographical Dictionary of Rome by Samuel Ball Platner, the Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (two volumes) by Ernest Nash and Mapping Augustan Rome, the Journal of Roman Archaeology project directed by Lothar Haselberger.
A special word of thanks should go to Tom Holland whose wonderful Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (2003) first gave me the idea of writing a fictional account of the friendships, rivalries and enmities between Cicero, Caesar, Pompey, Cato, Crassus and the rest.
Dictator is my fourth foray into the ancient world, a series of journeys that began with Pompeii (2003). One of the great pleasures of these years has been meeting scholars of Roman history who have been without exception encouraging, even to the extent of electing me a proud if notably undistinguished President of the Classical Association in 2008. For various offers of encouragement and advice over the years I would like to thank in particular Mary Beard, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Jasper Griffin, Tom Holland, Bob Fowler, Peter Wiseman and Andrea Carandini. I apologise to those I have forgotten, and naturally absolve all those listed above of any responsibility for what I have written.
The two publishers who first commissioned me to write about Cicero were Sue Freestone in London and David Rosenthal in New York. Like the Roman Empire, they have both moved on, but I would like to thank them for their original enthusiasm and continued friendship. Their successors, Jocasta Hamilton and Sonny Mehta, have stepped into the breach and skilfully steered the project to its conclusion. Thanks also to Gail Rebuck and to Susan Sandon, for gallantly staying the course. My agent, Pat Kavanagh, to my great sadness and that of all her authors, did not live to see the work which she represented completed; I hope she would have enjoyed it. My thanks go to my other agents, Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management in New York, and to Nicki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough of ILA in London. The estimable Wolfgang Müller, my German translator, once again acted as an unofficial copy-editor. Joy Terekiev and Cristiana Moroni of Mondadori in Italy have shared the journey literally to Tusculum and Formiae.
Finally—finally—I would like to thank, as always, my wife, Gill, and also our children, Holly, Charlie, Matilda and Sam, half of whose lives have been lived in the shadow of Cicero. Despite this, or perhaps even because of it, Holly took a degree in classics and now knows far more about the ancient world than her old dad, so it is to her that this book is dedicated.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Harris is the author of nine bestselling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost Writer, Conspirata, The Fear Index, and An Officer and a Spy. Several of his books have been adapted to film, most recently The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in the village of Kintbury, England, with his wife, Gill Hornby.
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Robert Harris, Dictator
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