Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest

Author:Kathryn Tempest [Tempest, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, History, Ancient, Rome
ISBN: 9780300180091
Google: 98Q3DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0300180098
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:37:19.049000+00:00

Terror at Rome

For the remaining months of Cicero’s life, we must make do without any speeches or letters from his hands. It makes little difference; by then Cicero had lost all influence over events at Rome. For no sooner had the consuls Caesar and Pedius entered office than they revoked the hostis decrees against Mark Antony and Lepidus, thus opening the way for a reconciliation and union of Caesarians. And, when it happened, the result was as bad as Cicero had predicted when, back in April 43, he had asked Brutus: ‘Are we taking thought for men who, if they are the victors, will wipe us out without a trace?’111 For that was indeed their plan. On 27 November, Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus made their move. They formalised their alliance with a law – the lex Titia – which granted each man the imperium of a consul for five years. Henceforth they were triumvirs in a union of power: three dictators instead of one. But their expressed purpose ‘to restore the res publica’ was, in reality, a thinly veiled ploy to wreak further revenge on Caesar’s assassins. And just like that, the amnesty hammered out in the days following the Ides of March was broken.

What is more, unlike Octavian’s lex Pedia, which while legally condemning the assassins confined its remit only to them, under the lex Titia the punishment was extended to include anyone who had shown support for them in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination. And this time, the procedure was not judicial. The three men drew up a proscription list of all their enemies and offered rewards for their heads; in all, some 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians were said to have been named. But many more than that suffered as the triumvirs went on their quest for revenge. No one – not even their own family and friends – was safe in their person, possessions or loved ones, as the three men aimed to enrich their reserves and instil terror across Rome.112 The effect this had on Brutus and Cassius in the east was momentous, as we shall soon see. Meanwhile, back in Rome, carnage ensued, and the world reacted with horror.

Tales of the terrors of the proscriptions survive vividly in our later historians: a testament to the instinct of survivors to record their traumas and losses for future generations.113 Appian devotes an unparalleled amount of space to the sufferings of the men, women and children, the slaves and freedmen caught up in these extraordinary times – just a small sample of the tales of danger and survival he found among his sources. Chief among them is the death of Cicero – one of the first to be hunted down and killed in December 43 BC; Antony saw to that. Resolved at first to flee, and then to die on home soil, Cicero finally faced death head on.

The story goes that, as he was being carried on a litter through the woodland leading from his villa to the coast, Cicero heard his assassins approaching and ordered his slaves to stop.

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