Cicero, Caesar – Titans at odds

“Dictator” by Robert Harris (Alfred A. Knopf, 376 pages, $26.95)

“Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum”

(“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”)

– Cicero

He was considered to be the greatest orator of the Roman Republic. A lawyer, a philosopher, prolific writer and a political operative of the highest order, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE to 43 BCE) would challenge the powers of Rome and later face an ignominious death at the hands of Mark Antony’s soldiers for his writings and his defense of the rule of Roman law.

The story of Cicero is known in part through his private secretary, a slave named Tiro, who, according to historians, published Cicero’s works that were later lost. Other books of Cicero or parts of them on rhetoric and philosophy as well as more than 50 of his speeches and 900 letters by him and to him have survived the centuries. His influence on language and literature continued for generations, and his letters, rediscovered by Plutarch in the 14th century, helped birth the Renaissance.

Adroitly weaving fact with fiction, Robert Harris introduces a conflicted Cicero who faces a series of political crises in this the last in a trilogy of gripping, historical novels. Harris recounts the final 15 years of this political man of letters who lived in one of the most tumultuous eras in history. As with his previous novel “Imperium” (2011), Harris tells the story through the eyes of Tiro, who faithfully and lovingly served Cicero and watched the cataclysmic events of the empire unfold.

Harris, who began the trilogy in 2007 with “Conspirata,” opens this novel with Cicero and Tiro fleeing from Rome in 58 BCE. Exiled by the devious and arrogant tribune Clodius and his followers – a clever maneuver orchestrated by Caesar to remove Cicero from Rome so he could move his forces into Gaul without opposition – Cicero begins to understand the political craftiness of Caesar. He of all people discerns the political winds of change more quickly and accurately than others around him as civil war engulfs the Roman Republic.

With his political skills finely honed and taking advantage of situations as they arise, Cicero navigates around the scheming of Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony and Octavian, each of whom at times vies for domination of the Roman Empire, as well as around the wheeling and dealing of consuls and tribunes who seek to sway public opinion in their own quest for power and influence. In the end, Cicero’s belief that Octavian would honor a promise to protect him in his declining years would be his undoing.

What elevates the book from a mere retelling of history is Cicero’s struggle to do right when wrongs were often the only choice and to seek common ground among disparate politicians even though dictatorship would be the inevitable outcome. In that political maelstrom, we discover Cicero to be a father deeply devoted to his daughter, a husband stuck in a loveless marriage, and an admired statesman, once given the honorific title Pater Patriae (“Father of the Nation”), slandered and defamed by those who could not countenance his popularity with the people. How he copes, maneuvers and avoids catastrophe – until finally captured, run through by a sword, with his head and hands severed and returned to Rome for public display – is the thread that weaves throughout.

Not that Cicero is depicted without fault. His willingness as president of the Senate to have five notable citizens executed without a trial, in response to a conspiracy to overthrow the republic, would trouble him throughout his life. He often exaggerated the virtues of his friends and inflated the faults of his enemies. Political missteps, as true then as today, would plague him and contribute to his ultimate demise.

In many respects, Cicero’s life serves as a reminder that political slander and dirty tricks have not been relegated to the past but remain clearly on display today. As Cicero would – and did – say: “Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.”

If Harris can be criticized at all it would be for the book’s title, which might unfairly and inaccurately suggest that “Dictator” refers to Cicero rather than to Caesar and those who followed him seeking singular rule. Harris’s use of one-word book titles, it seems, limits his choices. That aside, he has crafted a powerful story that may enliven and encourage the reading of the works of Cicero. And that, no doubt, would please Marcus Tullius Cicero, to wit:

Shortly before his death, Cicero instructs Tiro to collect all his letters and writings and preserve them, clearly farsighted about his place in history and the legacy he would leave: “Let future generations mock me for my follies and pretensions however much they like – the important thing is that they will have to read me, and in that will lie my victory.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 3:21 PM with the headline "Cicero, Caesar – Titans at odds."