Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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СКАЧАТЬ and set sail for Africa with the remnant of the Pompeian army. He had guessed, correctly, that Pompey would seek refuge in Egypt. In Libya he learnt that he was right, and that in Egypt the great man had been murdered. He also heard that another Pompeian army, commanded by Scipio (a sadly inferior descendant of the Scipio who defeated Hannibal), was in Numidia and had the backing of the Numidian King, Juba. Cato, who was proving himself a resourceful and efficient commander, led his troops on an arduous march across the Sahara to join them. When they met Cato, as scrupulous as ever in his observance of proper form, ceded overall command to Scipio – technically his superior – despite the fact that everyone, including Scipio himself, recognized that Cato would have been the better leader.

      It took Caesar nearly two years to follow him into Numidia. The new ruler of Rome had business to attend to and battles to fight in Asia Minor, Egypt and back in Italy. Meanwhile, Cato and his fellow Pompeians marched into the Phoenician port-city of Utica and made it their base.

      Enclosed on one side by the desert and on the other by the sea, Utica was an isolated place. Under occupation by Cato and his colleagues, its political nature was complicated and volatile. There were some three hundred Roman citizens of no particular allegiance living there, most of them moneylenders or merchants. These people would no doubt be ready to adapt to whatever political situation they found themselves in. But there were also a number of Roman senators who had left Italy with Pompey and come with Cato from Dyrrachium. There was good reason to suppose that should they fall into Caesar’s hands they would all be killed for their obstinate opposition. The African people of Utica were thought to favour Caesar. Scipio and Juba both wished to protect themselves and their followers against possible treachery by slaughtering the entire native population. Cato dissuaded them from this atrocity and took upon himself the responsibility of keeping the city secure, and its diverse inhabitants safe from each other. To do so he employed harsh measures. He forced all the indigenous young men of Utica to give up their arms and interned them in concentration camps outside the city walls. The rest of the population – women, children, and old men – were allowed to remain inside, living uneasily alongside the Roman occupiers while the latter fortified the city and stocked it with grain.

      It was a tense and unhappy situation. The commanders bickered. Scipio accused Cato of cowardice. Cato, so observers believed, came profoundly to regret having handed over the command to a man he trusted neither to act competently in battle nor to be wise after it. Yet fractious and deeply divided as the Pompeian force at Utica was, it seemed to contemporary observers and later Roman historians to have a tragic grandeur. To those who rejected Caesar’s rule – whether still fighting for the scattered Pompeian resistance abroad or living resentfully under the new regime – the Senate Cato established in Utica was the one true Senate, and Utica itself, because Cato was there, the one true Rome. Cut off with his fugitive army in what to a Roman was the back of beyond, he loomed up in the Romans’ collective imagination, doomed but resolute, superbly alone, calmly awaiting Caesar’s arrival and his own surely inevitable defeat and death with what Seneca called ‘the unflinching steadiness of a hero who did not totter when the whole state was in ruins’.

      At last Caesar, who in the previous year had visited the supposed site of Achilles’ tomb, making a show, as Alexander had done, of his claim to be a successor to that paragon of warriors, finally turned his attention to the man whose claim to Achilles-like integrity was generally and annoyingly perceived to be so much stronger than his own. He landed in Africa. Cato stayed in Utica to safeguard the supplies and keep the road to the sea open while Scipio led out the army. On 6 April 46 BC, at Thapsus, the Pompeians were crushingly defeated, many of them trampled to death by their own stampeding elephants, and the majority of them were slaughtered.

      The news reached Utica late at night, brought by a messenger who had been three days on the road. At once the Romans in the city panicked. There were tumultuous scenes in the unlit streets as people dashed from their houses, shouting in terror, only to run back again, unsure where to seek safety. They had no troops to defend them. They were horribly aware of the men of Utica, penned into the prison camp outside the city and no doubt exulting in the news of their oppressors’ defeat, and of those men’s relatives all around them. They were crazy with fear, and they had good cause to be. Only one man remained calm. Once more, as he had so often done in the Roman Forum, Cato made use of his stentorian voice and his powers of self-assertion to still and quieten a frenzied crowd.

      Striding through the darkened streets, shouting out in his harsh voice, he arrested the stampede. As soon as it was light, he summoned all the Romans present in Utica to assemble before the Temple of Jupiter. He made his appearance among them with characteristic sangfroid, apparently immersed in a book (it was in fact an inventory of the food supplies and weaponry stockpiled in the city). He spoke serenely, asking them to make up their minds whether they wished to fight or surrender to Caesar. He would not despise them, he said, if they chose the latter course; but if they decided to fight – and here his tone became more fervent – their reward would be a happy life, or a most glorious death. The immediate effect of his oratory was impressive. ‘The majority, in view of his fearlessness, nobility and generosity, almost forgot their present troubles in the conviction that he alone was an invincible leader and superior to every fortune.’

      All too soon, though, the mood of exaltation passed. Someone suggested that all those present should be required to free their slaves, thereby providing the city with a defence force. Cato, correct as ever even in this desperate moment, refused to infringe private property rights by making such an action compulsory, but asked those who would give up their slaves of their own free will to do so. The Roman merchants – slave-owners all and probably slave-traders too, for whom business counted for more than politics – began to see the advantages of surrender. The situation was terrifyingly precarious. The merchants began talking about overpowering and interning their fellow Romans, the senators, before handing them over as a peace offering to the victorious Caesar.

      A troop of horsemen, survivors from Scipio’s defeated army, appeared out of the desert like the answer to a prayer. At last Cato had the manpower of which he was in such urgent need. Leaving the Roman merchants in the city, he hurried out, accompanied by the senators, to welcome the newcomers and enlist their help in defending the city. But the soldiers had already endured a traumatic battle: they were demoralized and exhausted. Nothing could persuade them to make a stand against Caesar, who was now, pehaps, only hours away. There were angry scenes, both in the city, where the merchants were working themselves into a state of self-justifying indignation against anyone who might suggest they should risk opposing Caesar, and outside, where the senators and their families, now doubly threatened, wept and wailed. Eventually, the horsemen issued their ultimatum. They would stay and help defend Utica against Caesar, but only on condition that they might first slaughter all the Uticans. Cato refused. They began to ride away, taking with them any remaining hope of survival, let alone of saving the Republic. Cato went after them. For once showing emotion, he wept as he grasped at their horses’ bridles in a futile attempt to drag them back. For all his passion, the most he could get them to agree to was that they would guard the landward gates for one day while the senators made their escape by sea. Cato accepted.

      They took up their positions. The Roman merchants meanwhile announced their intention of surrendering forthwith. They were not Cato, they said, ‘and could not carry the large thoughts of Cato’. Petty as most mortals, they had resolved to take the safest and probably most profitable course. They offered to intercede with Caesar for Cato. He told them to do no such thing. ‘Prayer belonged to the conquered and the craving of grace to those who had done wrong.’ It was Caesar who was defeated: since he had made war on his own country his guilt was exposed for all to see. He, Cato, was the true victor. It was as though he was already leaving this world – mundane definitions of success and failure no longer held any validity for him. Simply to be right was to prevail.

      Throughout the last hours of his life he was fiercely active. His one outburst of СКАЧАТЬ