Of the people, by the people and for the people

A perspective from ancient Rome.

Imperium; Robert Harris, Arrow Books, The Random House Group Limited, £3.25

Robert Harris, a former Guardian correspondent, is the master of the historical novel, a much neglected literary genre. Over the years, Harris has brought back to life, for his discerning readership, Hitler, Stalin, and the ruins of Pompeii, introducing through a clever literary sleight of hand many an unexpected twist in each tale. Thus, in Fatherland, Hitler lives on and rules into the 1970s; in Archangel, Stalin is survived by his son, kept in hiding in the forest, for an explosive future introduction to public life. The much acclaimed Pompeii is a brilliant telling of the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the burial of the great city in ashes due to an apathetic and disbelieving populace.

Imperium, another classic historical novel, tells the tale of the master politician “Marcus Cicero” and his rise from relative obscurity to the position of great political influence he eventually occupied in the Roman Empire. Described through the eyes of his faithful slave M Tullius, “Tiro” who it is claimed invented shorthand, Cicero’s life and career in politics also provides brilliant insights into the mind of the politician.

A political path

Political personalities like Cicero and Caesar, not being of noble birth, fascinate us because of the heights they reached, and because they followed a political path, not merely a military one. The Roman Empire described here was the first to establish a political framework. There was a clear hierarchy: councils comprising the aristocracy and tribunals from the grassroots. There was also a political hierarchy of positions that one could aspire to occupy in succession until one achieved the pinnacle, the supreme “Imperium’ of consulship. The “Imperium” was a prize that did not come easily to the common man or “New Men” as they were referred to. Many a political battle had to be fought by Cicero in order to achieve this supreme goal; and hailing as he did from an ordinary family with neither aristocratic leanings; nor significant wealth; nor indeed military might; the only weapon he possessed was his oratorical skill.

How does one conquer Rome with only one’s voice as his asset? Cicero’s training for political life began in the hands of Greek master tutors and is well described here. Molon who trained him to make the public lectures that he became famous for, taught him to memorise his speech by taking an imaginary journey around the speaker’s house. “Place the first point you want to make in the entrance hall, and picture it lying there, the second in the atrium and so on, walking round the house in the way you would naturally tour it, assigning a section of your speech not just to each room, but to every alcove and statue. Make sure each site is well lit, clearly defined and distinctive. Otherwise you will be groping around like a drunk trying to find his bed after a party”.

Cicero’s rise in politics began due to an unusual stroke of luck. Sthenius of Thermae a well known Sicilian businessman, who had been robbed of all his wealth by the Roman Governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, sought his legal counsel. The legal roadblock was that Sicily was a province not seen as being a central part of the Roman Empire and crimes carried out there could not therefore be tried in Rome. Discovering that Verres had prosecuted, convicted and punished by imprisonment or execution, in their absence, many eminent Sicilians who opposed his robbing the province and amassing immense wealth, Cicero did the unexpected. He tabled in the Senate a novel but vague piece of legislation “the prosecution of persons in their absence on capital charges should be prohibited in the provinces” thus forcing a debate on the actions of Gaius Verres as governor of Sicily. When that failed, he took his case to the “lower house”, the Tribunes, winning much public acclaim in the process. His alignment with the commoners in the house of Tribunes, many of whom were supporters of Pompey the Great (then an unaccepted political force) albeit acknowledged military leader of Rome, was a calculated but risky move. He subsequently travelled far and wide within Sicily to personally gather evidence against Verres and garnered considerable public support in the process. His oratory in prosecuting the corrupt governor was masterly: “Here is a human monster of unparalleled greed, impudence and wickedness. If I bring this man to judgement, who can find fault with me for doing this? Tell me, in the name of all that is just and holy, what better service can I do my country at the present time!”

First steps

Thus, with the successful conviction of Verres for crimes committed during his reign as Governor of Sicily, Marcus Cicero took his first steps from relative obscurity to the political centrestage. He made many enemies in the process, not mincing words to condemn Verres and all the aristocrats who defended him. For a great part of his career these very aristocrats who constituted the “Imperium” would see him as an enemy; a “New Man” who dared to challenge their authority and successfully. He did make friends among the tribunals and with Pompey the Great but, as he was to later discover, these friendships were fickle and transient. Cicero’s greatest discovery through this process, however, was the power of public opinion; the opportunities that the garnering of public support would confer on a politician; and the vulnerability of even the established politician and aristocrat to public mood. All these discoveries he would employ in great measure in the glorious political career that was to follow.

Cicero’s career as described here gives us an insight into the mind of the politician. It was said that Marcus Cicero never forgot a name, however small or unimportant the person was and that he would work his supporters during interactions “with a word here, a touch of the elbow there, a favoured glance indicating his recognition of the person even among a throng” — qualities that politicians even today are well advised to develop. Masterful oratory, another of Cicero’s strong attributes, was taken seriously by him. He would stay up all night preparing his speeches: “While the world sleeps, the orator paces around by lamplight, wondering what madness brought him to this occupation in the first place…. usually an hour or two after midnight — there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness and hiding home seem to be the only realistic options. And then, somehow, under the pressure of panic, just as humiliation beckons, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.”

Fickleness in expectation and allegiance is another much criticised political attribute, and this, Cicero had in ample measure. When his favourite nephew and assistant “Lucius” confronts him on his defence of Fonteius, another politician who has been charged with crimes similar to Verres, he responds with characteristic political rhetoric “who are you or I to determine his guilt? It is a matter for the court to decide, not us. Or would you be a tyrant and deny him an advocate?” Indeed, even though this incident leads to the eventual withdrawal of Lucius from Cicero’s team, the loss of his valuable friendship and his eventual death, Cicero refuses to change his mind. After all, nothing defines political friendships greater than their “impermanence”. And when Tiro his slave and stenographer chances upon Cicero preparing to defend Fonteius, having realised that he was guilty as charged, he observes “He was not merely trying as a second-rate advocate might have done, to devise some clever tactic to outwit the prosecution. He was trying to find something he could believe in. That was the core of his genius, both as an advocate and as a statesman”.

Belief in causes

Indeed, this ability to “believe” in the cause one espouses, however antithetical to one’s political affiliations or past actions is the essence of political life even today. Politicians instinctively understand this, which is why they spout conflicting opinions with the greatest of conviction.

According to Cicero “What convinces is conviction. You simply must believe the argument you are advancing, otherwise you are lost. No chain of reasoning no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant will win the case if your audience senses that belief is missing”.

Cicero’s career, as detailed in this novel, is a wonderful example of careers in public life, culminating in his acceptance by the very aristocracy that rejected him. The battles and battlefields he chose constitute the stuff of legends and his oratory on these occasions had few parallels for its sheer brilliance. Indeed, the book is an elegant reminder that the mind of the consummate politician worldwide remains in many ways unchanged, through centuries. Although this book is a work of fiction, it draws upon 29 volumes of Cicero’s collected speeches and letters preserved in Loeb’s Classical Library and published by Harvard University Press. His extraordinary ambition, capacity for hard work, ability to see opportunity in adversity, perseverance, social and emotional intelligence, sagacity, oratorical skill and pragmatism, are well brought out here, and remain even today, the favoured attributes of the consummate politician. Most of all, the book reminds us that in the battlefield of public life, “both the pen and tongue are mightier than the sword”.