The Dictator by Robert Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

“He writes of himself with wonderful detachment.”
    “He does. That’s because he doesn’t want to sound boastful. It’s important to strike the right note.”
    I asked if I might be allowed to copy some of it, and show it to Cicero. “He misses the regular news from Rome. What reaches us is sparse, and late.”

    “Of course—it’s all public information. And I’ll make sure you get in to see Caesar. You’ll find he’s in a tremendously good mood.”
    He left me alone and I settled to work.
    Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, it was plain from the Commentaries that Caesar had enjoyed an astonishing run of military successes. His original mission had been to halt the migration of the Helvetii and four other tribes who were trekking westwards across Gaul to the Atlantic in search of new territory. He had followed their immense column, which consisted both of fighting men and of the elderly and women and children, with a new army he had mostly raised himself of five legions. Finally he had lured them into battle at Bibracte. As a guarantee to his new legions that neither he nor his officers would abandon them if things went wrong, he had all their horses sent far away to the rear. They fought on foot with the infantry, and in the event Caesar, by his own account, did not merely halt the Helvetii—he slaughtered them. Afterwards a list giving the total strength of the migration had been discovered in the enemy’s abandoned camp:

    Of these, according to Caesar, the total number who returned alive to their former homeland was 110,000.
    Then—and this was what no one else surely would have dreamed of attempting—he had force-marched his weary legions back across Gaul to confront 120,000 Germans who had taken advantage of the Helvetii’s migration to cross into Roman-controlled territory. There had been another terrific battle, lasting seven hours, in which young Crassus had commanded the cavalry, and by the end of it the Germans had been entirely annihilated. Hardly any had been left alive to flee back across the Rhine, which for the first time became the natural frontier of the Roman Empire. Thus, if Caesar’s account was to be believed, almost one third of a million people had either died or disappeared in the space of a single summer. To round off the year, he had left his legions in their new winter camp, a full one hundred miles north of the old border of Further Gaul.

    By the time I had finished my copying it was beginning to get dark, but the villa was still noisy with activity—soldiers and civilians wanting an appointment with the governor, messengers rushing in and out. As I could no longer see to write, I put away my tablet and stylus and sat in the gloom. I wondered what Cicero would have made of it all had he been in Rome. To have condemned the victories would have seemed unpatriotic; at the same time, such sweeping cleansing of populations and adjustments to the frontier, without the authorisation of the Senate, were illegal. I also pondered what Publius Crassus had said: that Caesar feared Cicero’s presence in Rome lest he be “recalled before his work here is complete.” What did “complete” mean in this context? The phrase seemed ominous.
    My reverie was interrupted by the arrival of a young officer, barely more than thirty, with tight blond curls and an improbably immaculate uniform, who introduced himself as Caesar’s aide-de-camp, Aulus Hirtius. He said that he understood I had a letter for the governor from Cicero, and that if I would be so kind as to give it to him, he would see that he received it. I replied that I was under firm instructions to give it to Caesar personally. He said that was impossible. I said that in that case I would follow the governor from town to town until such time as I got the chance to speak to him. Hirtius scowled at me and tapped his neatly shod foot, then went away again. An hour passed before he reappeared and curtly asked me to follow