The Cicero You Never Knew

Name me a great Roman.

Julius Caesar.

Good.  Name me another one.

Um.  Some gladiator—no, I know: Pontius Pilate.

And Cicero?  Do you know what one scholar says about him?
“The influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature and ideas greatly exceeds that of any other prose writer in any language.” (Michael Grant)

But is that true?  He was just some orator, wasn’t he?

He is quoted (or was) in most of the controversies on law, politics, religion, education, literature, and philosophy that there ever were.

What do they quote?

His speeches such as Against Verres (an attack on misgovernment), the Philippics (an attack on tyranny). But even more, his essays like On Duties, On Old Age, and On the Nature of the Gods.
All the great thinkers and writers of Europe studied and imitated those for more than a thousand years. St. Augustine, St. Isidore, Thomas of Aquinas.

Yes, but now…

And then on a spring morning in 1345 Petrarch rediscovered his letters. And started the Renaissance.
“The Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.” (Zielinski)

What the devil was so great about his letters?

“We may search history until quite modern times without finding either a personality so intimately known to us as Cicero or a period so vividly real as the years that led up to the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC,” says L.P. Wilkinson in his translation of Cicero’s letters. “Both of these facts are due to the survival of nearly eight hundred of Cicero’s letters, together with more than a hundred written to him by others.”

But why didn’t somebody ever tell us about him?

Until the twentieth century high-school and college students all knew him. They called him Tully. They read  Contra Catalinam and On Old Age in Latin class and On Duties (“Tully’s Duties”) in philosophy.
In our time Cicero was thrown out  with the rest of classical studies.

But that was right, wasn’t it?  That’s all so far back. Those old subjects are of little relevance anymore. Philosophical speculation seems like just a word game.
In any case, I don’t want someone to tell me what my duties are.  I want to be free.

Then you might read Tully to see how best to do that.

How to be free?

Exactly. That was the biggest concern of his life. He lived through a civil war and couldn’t decide what to do—exactly the same dilemma people have had all through our last century in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, and many still have today.  The one between inefficient freedom and efficient dictatorship.  Cicero finally stood up to the tyrant and got himself killed for it, knowing that might happen.

You might also read his letters.  There’s nothing like them.  They shocked old Petrarch when he found them; they turned him off. They show such flagrant short-comings and were so different from the saintly Cicero legend.  “THIS was the real Cicero?  But we thought he was perfect?”

See The Cicero You Never Knew 2 and meet one of the most fascinating men who ever lived. He was so vain he was funny; a brilliant wise-cracker but he never knew when to shut up; a hero who was a scaredy-cat; Rome’s greatest orator but he sometimes got so nervous he shook when he had to speak.  He was so effective a speaker that he could spellbind great audiences, win hopeless cases, and bring tough men like Julius Caesar to tears.

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Cervantes Leaves His Pretty Wife and Looks for a Job

A few days after his wedding Cervantes must already have suspected that he had made a mistake.

Monument to Cervantes' wife in Esquivias, Toledo, Spain

His wife was pretty and passably wealthy but he couldn’t stand her little town. How was he going to spend the rest of his life on a farm? He had wasted his youth first marching around Italy and then playing cards in an old Turkish bath in Algiers while he was a prisoner of the pirates. Would he waste the next best years being a country gentleman, hunting partridges and rabbits and husbanding vineyards?

Cervantes' wife's farmhouse in Esquivias, Spain

(See Cervantes’ House Restored)

Every chance he got he left the farm and went to Madrid to see old friends, including maybe his lover La Franca and their daughter.
But it seemed like it was always time to return to the damned farm.

Wasn’t he glad to see his young wife? No one knows. Perhaps he really loved her, perhaps he had only married her for her money. However that was, after nineteen months he pulled out of Esquivias.
“I’m going down to Seville to look for a job,” he told Catalina.

He had a good friend there, a former comic actor named Tomás. Tomás had decided that making monkey shines on a stage was never going to bring him much money so he left Madrid and went home to Seville, where he ran an inn now. It wasn’t just any inn—it was probably the most luxurious one in Seville. The best people in town stopped in there—nobles, rich empresarios, high government officials. “Come on down south and stay at my place,” Tomás had written to Cervantes. “Good jobs are dealt out here at my tables over drinks. I can introduce you to some very important people. Probably in less than a week you will nail something.” Cervantes had grown up in Seville and loved the booming city. It was the biggest, the busiest city in Spain at the time. “Save me a room,” he wrote Tomás. “I’m coming.”

He stayed at Tomás’s inn for two weeks. What kind of talk did he hear? Spain had just beaten the Portuguese in a decisive naval battle and everyone was euphoric—cocky. “That’s one enemy down,” said the men at the inn. “Now let’s go get those damned English.” They had heard about the execution of the Catholic Queen Mary Stuart and wanted revenge on the Protestants. “And we’re getting sick and tired of those English pirates, who have been getting away with murder for decades. It’s time to hang the whole lot—right boys?” And they would raise glasses of wine and vow to undo the English. King Philip saw that the whole country was in a mood of revenge and heroism and he decided to take advantage of it. “How many ships do you think we can assemble?” he asked the Duke of Alba. “The time is right to win back England for the Church.” For the Crown too.

One day while the inn was crowded with customers Tomás called Cervantes over. “See those two men by the window? The fat one is Antonio de Guevara. The King has just appointed him Head Comissary for a great Armada. That other fellow is Diego de Valdivia, Guevara’s adjutant. I’m going to introduce you to them. They are looking for commissaries to collect provisions for the fleet. The money is very good.”

The two nobles told Cervantes exactly what he would have to do. “The King needs wheat and oil to make the sailors’ biscuits. Of course the Crown cannot afford the huge sums necessary to pay for all that. But His Majesty is sure every Spaniard will want to cooperate in the undertaking, which the Almighty has surely ordained.”

“I see,” said Cervantes. “Requisitioning. The grain and oil will be collected by force.”

“Correct,” said the big Guevara. “Our commissaries will collect from each landowner an amount that we have fixed. You will simply go to his residence and present the official writ. Then at the granary you will supervise the actual transferral of the grain and oil to the King’s siloes. The Crown will pay you twelve reales a day.”

“And if the landowner or farmer refuses to open his bins?”

“As His Majesty’s commissary you will have full powers to oblige him to do so. Should the man refuse to cooperate, you will have him imprisoned.”

Cervantes was back on the farm when his offical appointment came through. What did he tell Catalina as he prepared to go south? Neither knew he would spend the next fifteen years collecting taxes in all the towns and villages of Andalucía. “Your mother wanted me to administer your family fortune, right?” he must have said. “Well, within two years I will double it—or my name is Charlie.”

He did and he didn’t. At one time he had thousands of maravedis in his hands but they disappeared mysteriously. “There are really only two ways he could have lost that money,” says a biographer. “Either he made bad investments or he gambled it away.”

Cards in the Spanish deck

“Cervantes must have been quite a card-shark,” says another of his biographers, “after all those years in the army and in the Turkish bath. In his stories he shows familiarity with all the games of the time.”
Perhaps at the gaming table they called him Charlie.

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The Emperor Meets His Natural Son

The Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain)

“Gómez!”
“Sire?”
“Put my leg up.”

The servant stooped down to see that the board holding up the Emperor’s left leg was solid, then cranked it higher. The orthopedic chair was an invention of his doctor’s.
“And throw this damn shawl over my shoulders. It’s chilly this morning.”

That he couldn’t manage such a simple thing himself made the Emperor Charles cross. Gout had begun to ruin him years ago already but he would never get used to being an invalid.
And now an unspeakable sadness hit him when the servant drew back the drapes and he saw the brilliant day outside. I can’t walk in that sun anymore! I will never walk in that sun anymore!

Tranquilo, he told himself. You know what Soto would say: “Resignation, Sire”. Soto was his confessor.
Remember why you came to Yuste. You were going to renounce the world.
Yeah, but who is renouncing who? I don’t FEEL like renouncing the world, damn it!
…It’s not as though you had much choice, old man.

He popped a couple of marzapan horses into his mouth for consolation and swallowed them down after just one bite. His bite was no good because of his protruding Habsburg jaw. Unchewed food caused him endless problems of digestion and also occasional embarrassment during audiences.
“Are they out there?” he asked his servant.

“Senor Quijada and his son arrived early this morning from Cuacos, Sire. They have been waiting in the antechamber for some time now.”

“Send Quijada in alone. Tell the boy we won’t be long. Give him something to play with. Show him that silver ship from Amberes.”

Quijada barged in as soon as the door was open, went right up to the Emperor, and kissed his hand. “Sire.”
“How are you doing, old friend?” Charles asked.

Quijada was his mayordomo and Master of the Horse. He was closer to the Emperor than many of his royal relatives, though Quijada was from peasant stock. They had been together for thirty-odd years, through most of Charles’ wars, in camps as well as palaces, and Quijada had more than once saved the Emperor’s life, shielding him from crossbow bolts and escaping with him from enemy traps. For his service the Emperor had made him a knight and given him an encomienda near Valladolid.

Ruins in García del Campo (Valladolid) of Quijada’s castle

Quijada lived there in a castle with his wife and the boy and had not yet been to Yuste since Charles’ was installed.
“You’re getting too fat, Sire,” he told him now.

Quijada said what he thought and often said it without tact. Charles, who was surrounded by flatterers and pretty-spoken courtesans, liked Quijada for his blunt and truthful ways. He smiled. “I don’t get much exercise anymore. It’s not like our campaigns in Flanders when…”
“Who’s your doctor? Still that idiot Matisio?”
“He’s a great doctor.”
“He’s a coward. Why does he allow you to have all those damned sweetmeats?”
Quijada looked with disgust at Charles’ sweets table. “Gout is cured by closing your mouth, Sire. He knows that or ought to. So do you.”

The Emperor kept smiling. “Try one of these dried figs my daughter sent from Valladolid. Or one of her raisins.” He enjoyed teasing Quijada.
Suddenly he got serious. “What’s the boy like, Quijada?”

“He’s a good one, Sire,” said Quijada. “Quick to learn. Rides like a little elf and you should see him with a sword.
Not bad at books, either, they tell me, though you know I’m no judge there.”

Quijada was the only one in all of Spain who knew that the boy was the Emperor’s natural son by the daughter of a Salzburg comic.
When she had sent word that she was pregnant, Charles had quickly found her a husband and had them married. But after only three years the woman died and Charles gave the boy to the faithful Quijada to raise.
Not even Quijada’s wife knew. She assumed the lad was her husband’s own bastard. But she loved him and set about raising him as a great nobleman as soon as he turned up at the castle. She taught him French and Latin and court manners. Quijada himself saw to it that the boy learned riding and hunting and was skilled with weapons.

His enthusiastic report made the Emperor impatient. He had never met the boy. “Tell him to come in. I guess we’ve kept him waiting too long. Waiting is hard on a child.”
“Let him learn patience, Sire. That is also part of being a man.”
“You stay away for a few minutes, Quijada. I want to meet him alone.”

(Meet the boy in The Emperor Meets His Natural Son II)

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