Caesar Read Free Page A

speaks tolerable Latin, if there was any news. I deduced the worst from his silence. But it may be he is only ignorant. After all, why should he be acquainted with affairs of State?
    Yes, I confess. I am apprehensive. I do not fear death. No Roman nobleman does. I should like only to be certain that I may die in a manner worthy of my ancestors. It is my fear that this will not be permitted me. A knife in the dark is more likely; then my head sent to my enemies as token of a good deed. That was Pompey's fate. Caesar pretended to be disgusted; inwardly he was relieved. He wouldn't have known what to do with Pompey, who had not been a suitable subject for his famous clemency.
    I run ahead of myself, here where I am held still.
    Caesar's charm, Caesar's famous charm. He had a habit of putting his arm round you, and taking the lobe of your ear between his thumb and forefinger, and playing with it while he confided, or seemed to confide, his secrets to you. I wouldn't have tolerated this from any other man. When Caesar held me thus, I felt a thrill of pleasure. Does that admission demean me?
    My perplexity is all the greater, because unlike Antony and Curio, I had no certainty of victory.
    When Caesar retired that night, Antony stretched himself on the couch and called for the slaves to bring another flagon of wine.
    He smiled at me.
    "You'll stay and drink? You'll share this gaudy night, won't you?"
    "The General suggested we should retire early. There's a war to be fought," I said, taking the next couch and reaching for the wine.
    "There will be no fighting, not for a long time," Antony said. "It's a picnic, a holiday excursion." "How can you be so sure?"
    The smile that charmed and seduced men and women, that smile I so envied, spread across his face. There were always moments when Antony seemed like the god Apollo.
    "They'll run like hares," he said. "You forget," he added, "I've just come from Rome. I know the calibre of our enemies. Nothing but wind. You heard I had to disguise myself as a slave? That meant that for a couple of days I congregated with slaves. Slaves talk among themselves in a way their masters never credit. Did you know that?"
    He poured more wine, and waved the slaves who were in attendance away.
    "Do you know what they said? They said that the Optimates - you know that's what Cicero calls the collection of elderly boobies arrayed against us? They said they were shit-scared. I could believe it."
    "Pompey?" I said.
    "Pompey is finished. He may have been a great man once. Now . . ." he turned his thumb down. "You've been in Gaul. Have you seen Pompey lately?"
    "I was in Rome last winter. I saw him being carried in a litter through the Forum."
    "In a litter . . . The Great One is now a great lump of lard. He never knew much, except - I grant this - how to draw up an army. But in politics he was always a baby. He's been outmanoeuvred by Caesar's enemies, who were his enemies not so long ago, most of his life in fact. They've imprisoned him, and all he has left is his reputation. Reputation. I don't give a fiddler's fart for reputation. No, dear boy, the campaign before us will be like nothing you have seen in Gaul. They fight there. This time it will be a battle of flowers. And words. You can count on Cicero for words. What do you suppose the women are like in this town?"
    So I accompanied Antony to a brothel, and went drunk and sated to bed as the sun rose. That was how I began the great Italian campaign.
    CHAPTER 2
    I t is not my intention to describe our campaign in Italy or the civil war that followed. For one thing, I do not know how much time I shall have to write this memoir; for another, I have too painful memories of the later wars so disastrously completed. Completed, that is, as far as I am concerned.
    Some will see my detention here as justice. Ironic, or poetic, justice perhaps. How do I see it?
    Well, let me say this. Caesar boasted of his clemency. He confined it to Roman citizens. He forgot