Events in Roman History: 49-46 BCE for Cicero and Caesar

If Cicero thought Caesar would return to Italy and deal with his 'case' immediately after Pharsalus in August 48 BCE, he was sorely mistaken. Caesar had "Pompey and the Pompeians" on his mind. In addition, after becoming, ahem, entwined with Cleopatra in Egypt at the end of 48-beginning of 47 BCE, he decided to stay in Egypt for a while. But then, as always, dutied called, and Caesar had to high-tail it off to the remote parts of interior Asia Minor, where the King Pharnaces II, King of Pontus and son of the Roman enemy Mithridates VI, was rattling sabers. Pharnaces was able to do so because Pompey had drawn away a lot of the garrisons guarding the Roman Eastern flank in collecting troops for the battle of Pharsalus in August 48 BCE. Now, with these troops "cleared out," Pharnaces saw it was his time to revolt. In fact he had, ever since Pharsalus, been taking over large swaths of territory formerly held by his father, which the Romans had taken a generation before.

Caesar, flush from a pair of victories at Pharsalus and Egypt, left Egypt in early Spring of 47 BCE, crossed through Judea and Syria and headed up to Asia Minor. A detailed account is here. Suffice it to say that late in May 47 Caesar arrived in the little town of Zela, modern Zile (Turkey), a city on the Pontus/Cappadocia border. Oops, I see that from reading various sources that we have two calendars at work here. According to the ancient Roman calendar, the battle took place on August 2, 47 BCE while according to our calendar it would have been May 21. Someday I will have to clarify calendars, but not right here or now.

In any case, Pharnaces at first asked for clemency, for Caesar's reputation had already preceded him, but he was unwiling to accede to Caesar's stipulations for surrender. Thus, a very difficult battle ensued, with Caesar emerging victorious. The site of the battle was significant, since 20 years earlier his father Mithridates had defeated a Roman army there. After the Zela battle, Caesar headed back to Rome, with perhaps his most famous aphorism on his lips: Veni, vidi, vici-- "I came, I saw, I conquered."

More Quickly Now

Caesar had sent a lieutenant to Rome to execute his wishes, but things weren't going well, and he knew he would have to return. He stopped first at Rome in August 47 to deal with a threatened revolt of legions in Campania, and then he decided to stop at Brundisium, where he met with Cicero either late in Sept. or early Oct. 47. Cicero was in the most vulnerable position of his life. One word from Caesar could have ended his life. But Caesar, perhaps aware of the need to build his reputation and rule in the Rome and environs, decided to welcome Cicero graciously. Every biography of Cicero has an account like the following:

"At length in September 47 Caesar landed at Tarentum in southern Italy and came by land to Brindisi (Brundisium) to take the Great South Road, the Appian Way, to Rome. Cicero believed he must go to greet the conqueror. Plutarch tells the story. When Caesar saw him coming, he dismounted from his horse and went forward to meet him. They embraced and then walked for some distance without attendants, in friendly conversation," (quoted in H.J. Haskell, This Was Cicero, 248).

You wonder what was exchanged between the two. Imagining these meetings is the stuff of historical fiction, movies and romance.

Caesar then went to Rome, with Cicero following, though Cicero wouldn't be able to make much headway in Caesar's government. Why? Well, Caesar still had the Pompeians on his mind, and just as soon as he seemed to get a few things under control in Rome, duty called elsewhere. So, late in 47 Caesar set off for Hadramentum on the N African coast, to deal with the Pompeians. He won a victory at Thapsus in April 46 and then returned to Rome to a four-fold triumph in July 46. These triumphs were to be celebrated over foreign foes, however, and so they commemorated Caesar's victories in Gaul and Egypt and over Pharnaces and King Juba of Numidia, who fought with the Pompeians at Thapsus.

But Cicero couldn't wait forever for Caesar to throw him some new tasks. When Caesar headed out late in 46 BCE for what turned out to be the last decisive battle against the Pompeians, at Munda (Spain) in March 45 BC, Cicero had retreated to his villa at Tusculum, where he produced, in rapid-fire succession, some of his most significant philosophical works of his lifetime. I think that it gradually dawned on Cicero as he was waiting for Caesar to begin to build a government in Rome after Zela that it might be a better use of his time simply to withdraw and begin to write.

Conclusion

In fact, other things were happening in Cicero's life by the end of 46 BCE. He had divorced his wife of 30 years (more about that in the next essay--relating to the letters); he had a significant quarrel with Quintus, his brother after Pharsalus, which led Quintus to try to undermine Cicero with Caesar (which didn't work), and finally, he hit rock bottom in connection with his beloved daughter Tullia. Cicero had gone to his Tusculum home late in Nov. 46, to meet his daughter. She had finally divorced Dolabella, her third husband. But life got worse.

In the words of a florid, early 20th century biographer:

To the great, tender, emotional nature that had sounded all the depths and shallows of human pleasure and pain, the new year 45 BC was to bring a crowning sorry in the death of the idolized Tullia, who gave birth to a son of Dolabella at Rome in January. So soon as she had gained sufficient strength she was removed to the Tusculan country-seat in the Alban Hills, where Cicero closed her eyes about February 15. As the awful solitude of his grief was disturbed by the unsympathetic Publilia (a rich woman he had married after divorcing his wife), he sent her away it seems without any formal divorce. ...At such a moment he naturally took refuge with Atticus at Rome; and, after a brief sojourn, he went to Astura by the sea, where he could be alone with the waves.., Hannis Taylor: Cicero: A Sketch of His Life and Works (1912), 252.

It is a quotation like this that brings us back to "reality." There is such an allure sometimes just to tell the stories of "big" and "little" events that happened which had a profound effect on the history of Western civilization. But, when you strip away some of the haloes (or pitchforks) or the semi-divine status we bestow on figures from the past, you see them as humans, with real familes and struggles, with the kinds of sadnesses and disappointments that rack us today, two millennia later. Now we can understand how Cicero wanted completely to "retreat" after the death of Tullia in February 45 BCE. Indeed, he would pour his heart into his writing--putting out such a variety and depth of books in the next two years that you know he must have been afflicted with hypergraphia. But the reality of a loss of a beloved daughter prepares us now for the next few essays--which got me started on Cicero in the first place--on his letters. Let's turn to those now.

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