He is sleeping.
Another hour has gone by. We talked. I am no stranger to deathbeds. To those in pain one talks about themselves; to those of clear mind one praises the world that they are quitting. There is no dignity in leaving a despicable world and the dying are often fearful lest life was not worth the efforts it had cost them. I am never short of subjects to praise.
During this last hour I have paid an old debt. Many times during the ten years of my campaigns I was visited by a recurrent waking dream. I have walked to and fro before my tent at night improvising a speech. I imagined that I had collected before me an audience of chosen men and women, particularly the young, to whom I wished to communicate all that I owed – boy and man, soldier and administrator, lover, father, son, sufferer and rejoicer – to Sophocles. Once before I died I wished to empty my heart – so promptly refilled – of that thanks and praise.
Oh, yes, he was a man and that was a man’s work. An old question is answered. It is not that the Gods refused to help him, though it is certain They gave him no help. That is not Their way. If They were not hidden he would not so have peered to find Them. I too have journeyed through the highest Alps when I could not see a foot before me, but never with his composure. It was enough for him to live as though the Alps were there.
And now Catullus, too, is dead.
L
Caesar to Cytheris.
[November 1.]
You may well imagine, gracious lady, that one in my position hesitates to submit requests to those for whom he holds the highest regard, lest the request seem to carry a weight that he does not intend to put upon it. Assume that I am in no other situation than that when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance and when you first aroused an admiration which has only increased with the passing of time.
My wife has been learning the responses which fall to her in certain ceremonies which will take place in December. I have been permitted to instruct her in these, but only to that limited extent which their secrecy admits. Could I request you to accord a few hours to instructing her in the delivery of these responses and in the deportment consonant with their solemnity?
As the Queen of Egypt is to be present at a portion of the ceremonial I should be particularly gratified if she were permitted to share whatever hours of instruction you felt able to give my wife.
It was with great happiness that I learned by accident a few days ago that you were a cherished friend of Lucius Mamilius Turrinus and that you occasionally visited him on the Island of Capri. It is his wish that as little reference be made to him as possible and even these lines confer upon this letter a character of secrecy. My happiness is not only that you enjoy his friendship and he yours, but that through you (and I hope, madam, through me) his genius may – if I may use the expression – operate in the world, even though we are not permitted to use his name. It would be remarkable enough that any man should have passed through the desperate situation that he did and be enduring its consequences and yet remain unshaken in soul; but that this should have befallen him who was already superior to all men in wisdom as he was superior to them in those attributes of soul which we call beauty is a subject of wonder, the limits of which I have never reached. The Island of Capri is surrounded for me by an air which I can only call awe. That I am not the sole reflector of that genius is not only a happiness to me, but a relief. Many things remain unspoken between my friend and myself. Among them is the regulation that I receive no letters from him and that I may visit him but once a year. I am occasionally saddened by these restrictions, but with the passing of time I come to see that they too are marked by that almost other-worldly wisdom that he never fails to impart.
Since we are talking of great men, I enclose transcripts of the last verses written by Gaius Valerius Catullus who died five nights ago.
LI
The Queen of Egypt: Memorandum for her Secretary of State.
[November 6.]
The Queen of Egypt has received with satisfaction the information you have submitted to her. Her commendation has particular reference to your reports of October 29 and November 3, together with their attached documents.
The Queen has taken notice of your appraisal of the centers of discontent.
[Here follow Cleopatra’s comments on twelve individuals or groups from among whom attempts to overturn the state or assassinate the Dictator might be expected. The potential conspirators do not include the Cascas, Cassius, or Brutus. Material from this section is reflected in our Book Four.]
In addition, the Queen calls your attention to the following matters:
1. The reports from Source 14 [Abra] are worthless. Her simplicity is feigned. It should not be difficult to increase their value by threats of exposure and by other pressures.
2. Are you convinced that you have explored all the significance of the Dictator’s disappearance during my reception on the 27th? His attendance at the sickbed of a scurrilous versifier does not appear to afford a sufficient explanation.
3. Every effort should be made to place an agent in the household of Marc Antony. The evidence you have collected of his disloyalty to the Dictator in [46] is herewith returned. It should be deposited among the documents which you are safeguarding against any possible theft or confiscation. I am retaining the other material you found in his home.
4. The dressmaker Mopsa. Obtain for me as soon as possible a complete account of her life, parentage, associates, and so on. Also a schedule of her engagements during this month. She is coming to me on the 17th to make my robe for the Ceremonies of the Good Goddess.
5. Your work for this week is to be an intensive study of the situation of the Lady Clodia Pulcher and her brother. What interpretations are being made of her retirement to the country? When is she returning to the City? The report of Sosigenes [the Egyptian astronomer] was unsatisfactory. I wish you to instruct him in what to observe.
I agree with you that Clodius Pulcher is attempting to seduce the Dictator’s wife. I wish you to follow this with the closest attention. There is little doubt that communications are passing between them through Source 14. Report to me any suggestions you have for taking advantage of this situation.
In acknowledgement of the diligence and skill you have shown in the difficult tasks laid before you, it is with pleasure that I assign to you and to your descendants forever the Oasis of Sesseben, together with its revenues and imposts, limited only by the regulations laid down under the 44th and 47th edicts of my reign [limitations imposed on the levies which regional officials and landowners may assess against farmers, and limitation on the charge f o r the watering of camels at springs and waterways.]
LII
Pompeia to Clodia.
[November 12.]
I miss you all the time, dearest Mousie. Nobody can understand why you have to go off into the country now when so much is going on in the city. I asked my husband what interest you could possibly take in mathematics and he said that you were very good at such things and that you knew all about the stars and what they did.
I give you ten guesses about who comes to our house all the time, at least every other day, and we have the most unusual times. Cleopatra! And not only Cleopatra, but Cytheris, the actress. And my husband arranged it all. Isn’t that strange?
First Cytheris came to teach me you-know-what. Then Cleopatra started coming to learn some of that, too. At the end of the lesson the Queen asks Cytheris to recite, and oh, such things, my blood runs cold. Cassandra going mad and Medea planning to murder her babies, and everybody dying. And then my husband comes home early and its jabber, jabber, jabber about Greek plays. And he gets up and he’s Agamemnon and Cytheris is Clytemnestra and Cleopatra is Cassandra and Octavius and I have to be chorus, and then we all have supper. Oh, my dear Claudilla, you should be here because I have no one to laugh with; they are all so serious about these things. For me it is very very funny when my husband starts roaring and when Cleopatra goes mad.
Really, I rather like
the Queen. Of course, she’s not like you and me. I used to think she was quite ugly but sometimes she is almost beautiful. But, really, I am not the least bit jealous. My husband doesn’t behave to her any differently than he behaves to Aunt Julia.
Yesterday, the Queen of Egypt asked my husband when you were coming back. She said that she hoped you would come back soon, as you are her instructress for the rites. My husband said he did not know what your plans were, but that he assumed you would be back by December first.
Dearest, I saw your brother, the younger one I mean; he came up to me on his horse while I was on the road to Lake Nemi. He looks so like you that I am always astonished. People say that he is a bad man, and even you say so, but I know he is not. You must not take that attitude to him, Claudilla, dear. Anyone would be bad, if you told them all the time that they were bad.
From this letter you must think that I am very happy, but I am not. I almost never go out of the house and no one I wish to see ever comes into it. I went to the Queen of Egypt’s once; I went to pay a confinement call on Porcia, Brutus’s wife. Sometimes I just sit and wish I were dead. What I think is that if one doesn’t live when one’s young, when do you live? I adore my husband and he adores me, but I like people and he doesn’t.
I’ve just heard that my call on Porcia was simply wasted; word has just come that she’s had a miscarriage, so I needn’t have gone at all.
LIII
Cytheris to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus, on the Island of Capri.
[November 25.]
The air of Rome, my dear friend, is uneasy and fretful; its tongues are growing sharp and satirical, without laughter; one hears stories daily of behavior and crimes that are not so much passionate as erratic and illogical. For a time I thought that this malaise lay only within myself, but now all are remarking it. Our Master is busier than ever; edicts fall about us daily. Regulations are laid down for usury and every man must clean the street in front of his door; a great map of the world has been set into the pavement before the law courts, picked out in golden eagles which denote the location of new cities. Young husbands stand before it, stroking their chins, trying to decide whether they shall set up a new home in ice and sleet or under a burning sun.
I was about to accept your invitation to come to Capri at once, when this Master requested that I come to his house to instruct his wife and his royal guest in the ceremonial that will be required of them in early December. We have had eight sessions, frequently concluded by readings from the tradegies in which we all take part, including Caesar himself. I find myself moving in a tragedy within a tragedy.
I am coming to understand that mystery, Caesar’s marriage. I see that it is not based on any morbid inclination toward very young girls, as so many sneering tongues have held. Caesar is a teacher; it is a sort of fury in him. He can only love where he can instruct; the return he asks is progress and enlightenment. Of these young girls he asks only what Pygmalion asked of marble. I gather that he has been three times rewarded – by Cornelia, by his daughter, and by the Queen of Egypt; and many times resisted. The resistance he is now meeting is enormous and crushing. Pompeia is not an unintelligent girl, but his method toward her is so unintelligent that he is frightening and starving whatever intelligence she has. Love as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it achieves its harmony as seldom as does love by the senses. Frustrated, it creates even greater havoc, for like all love it is a madness. On the one hand he loves her as a delicate growing thing and as a woman (and Caesar’s glance resting on a woman is like no other man’s), and on the other hand he loves her for the potentiality she may possess to be an Aurelia, a Julia Marcia. In his mind Rome is a woman; he married Pompeia to shape her into one more of those living statues of the great Roman matron.
Cleopatra has disappointed him also. One can only guess how intoxicatingly she must first have filled the requirements of a beloved pupil. She still is. I worship this colossus, but I am an old woman; I am no longer educable. Yet I understand well the eager rapture with which she receives every word that falls from his lips. He discovered, however, that he could teach her nothing essential, for the essence of what he has to teach is moral, is responsibility; and Cleopatra has not the dimmest sense of what is right and wrong. Caesar does not know that he has this passion for teaching; all that has for him the invisibility of things which are self-evident. Hence he is a very bad teacher. He assumes that all men are both teachers and voracious learners; that everyone is vibrant with moral life. Women are more subtle teachers than men.
I shall never cease to be moved by the view we occasionally have of great men trying to make a marriage where no marriage can be, continuing to expend a defeated tenderness on ill-compounded wives. The patience they acquire is a very different thing from the patience that wives exhibit toward husbands; that is in the natural order of things and should no more be singled out for praise than the honesty of the honest. One has seen these insulted husbands finally withdrawing into themselves; they have learned the basic solitude of man as their happier brothers will never know it.
Such a husband is Caesar. His other bride is Rome. To both he is a bad husband, but from an excess of conjugal love.
Let me go on a moment more.
I have only recently come to understand some words that you let fall years ago, that ‘wickedness may be the exploration of one’s liberty’ – have I got that right? – and that ‘it can be the search for a limit that one can respect.’ How stupid I am not to have digested that before, my dear prince; I could have played it into my Medea and into my Clytemnestra. Yes, in the light of that thought, can’t we say that a great deal of what we call ‘wickedness’ is the very principle of virtue exploring the laws of its own nature? Isn’t that what Antigone, my Antigone, our Antigone, meant when she said: [In Sophocles’s play, in reply to Creon’s assertion that her slain ‘good’ brother would not wish her wicked brother to receive an honourable burial] ‘Who can say but that in the underworld his [wicked] deeds may seem to be blameless?’ Yes, there lies the interpretation of Clodia’s disorders and unless Caesar is watchful, Pompeia will journey out in search of a limitation to her curiosities. Nature affords them to our senses: fire burns our fingers and the action of our hearts prevents our running up mountainsides; but only the Gods have put a veto on the adventures of our minds. If They do not choose to intervene, we are condemned to fashion our own laws or to wander in fright through the pathless wastes of our terrifying liberty, seeking even the reassurance of a barred gate, of a forbidding wall. It is a recurrent joke among writers of farces that wives rejoice in being beaten by their husbands. It reflects, however, an eternal truth – that there is a great comfort in knowing that those who love you love you enough to take the responsibility for marking out the permissible. Husbands often err – but in both directions. Caesar is a tyrant – both as husband and as ruler. It is not that, like other tyrants, he is chary of according liberty to others; it is that, loftily free himself, he has lost all touch with the way freedom operates and is developed in others; always mistaken, he accords too little or he accords too much.
LIV
Clodia to her brother.
[From Nettuno.]
[Selections from almost daily letters throughout November.]
Don’t come here, Brainless. I don’t wish to see anyone.
I am completely happy as I am. Cicero is next door, repining and writing those doleful insincerities he calls philosophy. We met several times, but are now reduced to sending each other gifts of fruit or pastry. He could not interest me in philosophy and I could not interest him in mathematics. He’s a very witty man, but for some reason he’s never witty to me. I dry him up.
I do nothing all day and would be very bad company for you. I study numbers and can forget anything else for days at a time. There are properties in the study of infinity that no one has ever dreamed of. I have frightened Sosigenes with them. He says they are dangerous.
&nb
sp; I am very angry with you for appealing to old Eagle-beak to close that play. Any mortification only begins for us from the moment we take any notice of such things. When will you learn that the enjoyment of the malicious is doubled when they learn that we have been wounded by their remarks?
As you say, it is vexatious to be charged with a thousand crimes that one never got around to committing. I certainly left my dear parents as soon as I could, but I never lifted a hand to annoy them. Not only did I not kill my poor husband, but I got down on my knees and begged him not to kill himself with overeating. I have never felt a tremor of passion for you or for Dodo; in fact, I have too often gazed with astonishment at the starved water rats that committed themselves to finding you attractive.
As to this last matter [the death of Catullus?], I don’t wish you ever to mention it again. It is all so complicated; no one else will ever understand it. I don’t wish to hear it mentioned.
The worst of being charged with crimes, however, is that it makes one restless to deserve all that censure. But, of course, only something enormous would do. Something to darken the sun.
Of course, I am angry that people should be saying that he directed me to go into the country. Although it’s utter nonsense, it’s more exasperating than all the other lies put together. But I shall not come into town merely to refute it.
[November 27.]
Come to Nettuno, Publius. I cannot endure this any longer, but I am not yet ready to come into town.
For the sake of heaven, come and don’t bring anyone with you.
The worst about inactivity is that it sets one brooding about the passing of time. And it has set me to remembering, as though I were an old woman. Last night I could not sleep; I got up and burned all my mathematical notebooks; then I threw in all the letters I have received for ten years. Sosigenes danced around like an old moth trying to restrain me.