Imperium

I wish I could recall what it was that Cicero spoke about that night after dinner, but I fear I am the living proof of Demosthenes’s cynical assertion that content counts for nothing beside delivery. I stood discreetly out of sight, among the shadows, and all I can picture now are the moths whirling like flakes of ash around the torches, the wash of stars above the courtyard, and the enraptured faces of the young men, flushed in the firelight, turned toward Cicero. But I do remember Molon’s words afterwards, when his protege, with a final bow of his head toward the imaginary jury, sat down. After a long silence, he got to his feet and said, in a hoarse voice: “ Cicero, I congratulate you and I am amazed at you. It is Greece and her fate that I am sorry for. The only glory that was left to us was the supremacy of our eloquence, and now you have taken that as well. Go back,” he said, and gestured with those three outstretched fingers, across the lamp-lit terrace to the dark and distant sea, “go back, my boy, and conquer Rome .”
VERY WELL, THEN. Easy enough to say. But how do you do this? How do you “conquer Rome ” with no weapon other than your voice?
The first step is obvious: you must become a senator.
To gain entry to the Senate at that time it was necessary to be at least thirty-one years old and a millionaire. To be exact, assets of one million sesterces had to be shown to the authorities simply to qualify to be a candidate at the annual elections in July, when twenty new senators were elected to replace those who had died in the previous year or had become too poor to keep their seats. But where was Cicero to get a million? His father certainly did not have that kind of money: the family estate was small and heavily mortgaged. He faced, therefore, the three traditional options. But making it would take too long, and stealing it would be too risky. Accordingly, soon after our return from Rhodes, he married it. Terentia was seventeen, boyishly flat-chested, with a head of short, tight, black curls. Her half sister was a vestal virgin, proof of her family’s social status. More important, she was the owner of two slum apartment blocks in Rome, some woodlands in the suburbs, and a farm; total value: one and a quarter million. (Ah, Terentia: plain, grand, and rich-what a piece of work you were! I saw her only a few months ago, being carried on an open litter along the coastal road to Naples, screeching at her bearers to make a better speed: white-haired and walnut-skinned but otherwise quite unchanged.)
So Cicero, in due course, became a senator-in fact, he topped the poll, being generally now regarded as the second-best advocate in Rome, after Hortensius-and then was sent off for the obligatory year of government service, in his case to the province of Sicily, before being allowed to take his seat. His official title was quaestor, the most junior of the magistracies. Wives were not permitted to accompany their husbands on these tours of duty, so Terentia-I am sure to his deep relief-stayed at home. But I went with him, for by this time I had become a kind of extension of himself, to be used unthinkingly, like an extra hand or a foot. Part of the reason for my indispensability was that I had devised a method of taking down his words as fast as he could utter them. From small beginnings-I can modestly claim to be the man who invented the ampersand-my system eventually swelled to a handbook of some four thousand symbols. I found, for example, that Cicero was fond of repeating certain phrases, and these I learned to reduce to a line, or even a few dots-thus proving what most people already know, that politicians essentially say the same thing over and over again. He dictated to me from his bath and his couch, from inside swaying carriages and on country walks. He never ran short of words, and I never ran short of symbols to catch and hold them forever as they flew through the air. We were made for each other.
But to return to Sicily. Do not be alarmed: I shall not describe our work in any detail. Like so much of politics, it was dreary even while it was happening, without revisiting it sixty-odd years later. What was memorable, and significant, was the journey home. Cicero purposely delayed this by a month, from March to April, to ensure he passed through Puteoli during the Senate recess, at exactly the moment when all the smart political set would be on the Bay of Naples, enjoying the mineral baths. I was ordered to hire the finest twelve-oared rowing boat I could find, so that he could enter the harbor in style, wearing for the first time the purple-edged toga of a senator of the Roman republic.
For Cicero had convinced himself that he had been such a great success in Sicily, he must be the center of all attention back in Rome. In a hundred stifling market squares, in the shade of a thousand dusty, wasp-infested Sicilian plane trees, he had dispensed Rome ’s justice, impartially and with dignity. He had purchased a record amount of grain to feed the electors back in the capital, and had dispatched it at a record cheap price. His speeches at government ceremonies had been masterpieces of tact. He had even feigned interest in the conversation of the locals. He knew he had done well, and in a stream of official reports to the Senate he boasted of his achievements. I must confess that occasionally I toned these down before I gave them to the official messenger, and tried to hint to him that perhaps Sicily was not entirely the center of the world. He took no notice.
I can see him now, standing in the prow, straining his eyes at Puteoli’s quayside, as we returned to Italy. What was he expecting? I wonder. A band to pipe him ashore? A consular deputation to present him with a laurel wreath? There was a crowd, all right, but it was not for him. Hortensius, who already had his eye on the consulship, was holding a banquet on several brightly colored pleasure craft moored nearby, and guests were waiting to be ferried out to the party. Cicero stepped ashore-ignored. He looked about him, puzzled, and at that moment a few of the revelers, noticing his freshly gleaming senatorial rig, came hurrying toward him. He squared his shoulders in pleasurable anticipation.
“Senator,” called one, “what’s the news from Rome?”
Cicero somehow managed to maintain his smile. “I have not come from Rome, my good fellow. I am returning from my province.”
A red-haired man, no doubt already drunk, said, “Ooooh! My good fellow! He’s returning from his province…”
There was a snort of laughter, barely suppressed.
“What is so funny about that?” interrupted a third, eager to smooth things over. “Don’t you know? He has been in Africa.”
Cicero ’s smile was now heroic. “ Sicily, actually.”
There may have been more in this vein. I cannot remember. People began drifting away once they realized there was no city gossip to be had, and very soon Hortensius came along and ushered his remaining guests toward their boats. Cicero he nodded to, civilly enough, but pointedly did not invite to join him. We were left alone.
A trivial incident, you might think, and yet Cicero himself used to say that this was the instant at which his ambition hardened within him to rock. He had been humiliated-humiliated by his own vanity-and given brutal evidence of his smallness in the world. He stood there for a long time, watching Hortensius and his friends partying across the water, listening to the merry flutes, and when he turned away, he had changed. I do not exaggerate. I saw it in his eyes. Very well, his expression seemed to say, you fools can frolic; I shall work.
“This experience, gentlemen, I am inclined to think was more valuable to me than if I had been hailed with salvos of applause. I ceased henceforth from considering what the world was likely to hear about me: from that day I took care that I should be seen personally every day. I lived in the public eye. I frequented the Forum. Neither my doorkeeper nor sleep prevented anyone from getting in to see me. Not even when I had nothing to do did I do nothing, and consequently absolute leisure was a thing I never knew.”