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The Shah and the Ayatollah Iranian Mythology and
Islamic Revolution 1st Edition Fereydoun Hoveyda Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Fereydoun Hoveyda
ISBN(s): 9780275978587, 0275978583
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.26 MB
Year: 2003
Language: english
 THE SHAH AND
THE AYATOLLAH:
Iranian Mythology and
Islamic Revolution

Fereydoun Hoveyda

PRAEGER
The Shah and the Ayatollah
 THE SHAH AND
THE AYATOLLAH
Iranian Mythology and
Islamic Revolution

Fereydoun Hoveyda

A National Committee on American Foreign Policy Study

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoveyda, Fereydoun.
The Shah and the Ayatollah : Iranian mythology and Islamic Revolution /
Fereydoun Hoveyda.
p. cm.
“A National committee of American Foreign Policy study.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–275–97858–3 (alk. paper)
1. Iran—Politics and government—1941–1979. 2. Iran—Politics and
government—1979–1997. 3. Mythology, Iranian. 4. Islam and politics—Iran.
I. Title
DS318 .H675 2003
955.05⬘3—dc21 2002029763
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2003 by Fereydoun Hoveyda
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002029763
ISBN: 0–275–97858–3
First published in 2003
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Acknowledgment
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission from Mage Pub-
lishers Inc. to reprint excerpts from Dick Davis’ Father and Sons. Washington, DC,
2000.
Contents

Preface vii
1. The Shah and the Ayatollah 1
2. The Enduring Mythology of Persia 31
3. The Unwritten Constitution and the “Hidden
Imam” 65
4. Tradition vs. Modernization 91

Notes 107
Bibliography 117
Name Index 121
Subject Index 123
Preface

As far back as I remember, I was always steeped in Iranian

mythology. I was three years old, in Damascus. My mother and
the servants who had been brought from Iran would tell me the
deeds and fates of our legendary kings and heroes. To them these
fearless champions had really existed and were part of our his-
tory. Hence my surprise when in grade two in the French Lycée of
Beirut (I was six years old) I noticed that our teacher did not
mention them in his version of Iran’s history. To my query she
answered: “Oh that! It’s mythology!” At home my nanny
shrugged her shoulders: “Your teacher is an ignorant! Don’t listen
to her!” Years passed on and we schoolkids became acquainted
with Greek mythology and other legends. But I discovered that
they were not told at home to European kids and at any rate their
legends were very different from ours. For one thing, they re-
ferred to multiple gods who were not always morally right like
our Wise Lord who continuously fought against Ahriman, the
evil spirit.
 viii Preface

Thus the difference between Iran and the rest of the world struck
and intrigued me since my early years. But, as it happens, I forgot
about it after I entered secondary school. It was much later that my
childhood memories popped back in my mind. While reading
Freud in the late 1940s, I felt somehow at odds with his theories
about the Oedipus complex. I remembered our story of the super-
man Rostam, inadvertently killing his son Sohrab. I then started a
study of other mythologies. I certainly do not pretend to be an ex-
pert, but in the course of my readings and research I have gathered
enough data to convince myself of the active role these legends of
the remotest past play in the present lives of people.1 In the case of
Iran, this is even more apparent as we have preserved, almost in-
tact, the whole body of our mythology despite all the invasions and
occupations to which we have been subjected over the centuries
and millennia. Our legends are being continually told to kids and
recounted publicly to children as well as adults. I remember a 1995
lecture given by Professor K.D. Irani, an American Parsi, to the City
College’s Faculty Colloquium on World Humanities. Although his
subject matter concerned the influence of Indian epics on early
Sanskrit drama, he explained how old legends were still kept alive
by public storytellers who traveled to the remotest villages. He also
told us about one of his childhood experiences in Bombay: he was
ten years old when Iranian artists staged in the Opera House some
of the old stories concerning Zoroaster and legendary kings such as
Jamshid and Kaykhosrow.2 Their recitations accompanied by
music moved the audience to the point of weeping! Such public
performances were also very common in Iran before the Islamic
revolution. On the transmission of ancient mythology to kids,
André Malraux reports a conversation with Nehru in which the
first Indian prime minister told him, “Even ill-lettered women
 Preface ix

know our national epics and recount them to kids as bedtime sto-
ries.”3
The part played by mothers (or nannies) in the transmission of
old legends has been acknowledged by many specialists and re-
searchers. Thus, Professor Carlo Ginzburg during his research
came across the trial of a sixteenth-century shepherd of a village
north of Venice, who claimed that on certain nights, armed with
fennel sticks, he and his fellow villagers battled with the devil’s
witches for the fertility of their farmlands. He told an American
interviewer: “The case was reminiscent of a fairy tale and I imme-
diately reacted to it. It was like the Sicilian fable my mother read to
me as a child. Those fairy tales molded my mind and emotions.”4
At any rate, I have found many points in the events that led to
the fall of Muhammad Reza Shah and the ascent of Ayatollah
Khomeini that can be explained only by the impact of old mythol-
ogy on Iranians’ mind-sets.5 I have tried to develop them in the
present book in the hope that my narrative will trigger further
studies.
chapter one

The Shah and the Ayatollah

Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was in a way the outcome of a long

struggle between two men: Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1963, following rioting pro-
voked by the latter, the Shah won what can be considered as the
first round: he arrested his nemesis and later on exiled him. Six-
teen years later the ayatollah triumphed in the second round and
returned to Iran after the flight of his enemy.
Each of them represented (at least partially) one of the basic
and contradictory trends that had agitated the nation since the
early years of the twentieth century: secularist modernization on
the one hand and religious orthodoxy and traditionalism on the
other. Their individual personalities and the “archetypes” with
which they identified had a great bearing on the turn of events,
especially because Iran is a country where the patriarchal struc-
ture of society remained solid and active. Therefore a quick look
at their biographies might shed light on some of the unexplained
 2 Chapter One

aspects of Iran’s turmoils and predicaments during the last de-

cades of the twentieth century. At any rate, as in a wrestling
match, let us start by briefly introducing the combatants.

KHOMEINI’S TRAJECTORY
The name of the ayatollah means: native of Khomein, a small
rural town in the province of Esfahan which did not attract mul-
lahs, who are generally interested in more lush and materially prof-
itable places. The local landowner could not find a religious man
who would help him keep his farmers in check. While on pilgrim-
age in Najaf (holy Shiite city in Iraq) he met Ruhollah’s grandfa-
ther, a rather indigent cleric whose ancestors had migrated to India
from Neyshapour (a northeastern Iranian town). The landowner,
impressed by the mullah’s title of seyed (descendant of the
Prophet), lured him with the offer of a house and some land. The
family left India and settled in Khomein, where Ruhollah was
born, around 1901.
In those days Iran was in a state of great chaos and turbulence.
Russian influence extended to the North and British influence to
the south of the country. Tribal chieftains and feudal khans
(landowners) swayed power in their domains. Brigands infested
roads and trails, cutting almost all contacts between the provinces
and the capital city of Tehran where the absolutist Qajar kings
ruled. In 1905, a motley group composed of young modernists, in-
tellectuals, aristocrats, landowners, high-ranking clerics, and some
bazaar merchants took advantage of the weakening of central au-
thority in order to impose a parliamentary constitutional regime
on the Shah.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 3

The traditionalists reacted almost immediately against this im-

port to Muslim Iran of institutions created by the Western infidels.
The most vocal among them, Hojat-ol-Islam Nouri, author of sev-
eral books and pamphlets about djinns and other demons, invited
the Iranians to revolt against the modernists. “Wake up,” he re-
peated in his sermons, “Islam is in danger! What we need is not a
parliament and a constitution, but an Islamic government.” His
criticism of high-ranking mullahs favoring the constitutional re-
form provoked the ire of top clerics who accused him of heresy and
sent him to an Islamic tribunal. He was condemned to death for
“warring against God” (Today’s Iranian Islamic courts accuse mod-
ernists of the same “crime”!). Hojat-ol-Islam Nouri was eventually
hanged in a public place with the enthusiastic approval of the
crowds. Fearing a similar fate, fundamentalist mullahs fled from
the capital and hid in the provinces where they opened Koranic
schools. (Ruhollah Khomeini became a pupil in one such school.)
Ruhollah’s father died shortly after his birth in a brawl with the
intendants of the local feudal landowner. His destitute and preg-
nant widow put the infant in the care of her sister who had mar-
ried a wealthy merchant. In the household of his aunt, the boy
learned the importance of vengeance, a character trait that would
undergird his long fight against the Shah. One of the biographies
spread after the 1979 revolution insisted on the fact that he was
brought up by his aunt and uncle because of the parallel with
Prophet Muhammad’s life. Indeed, the latter became an orphan at
an early age and lived with his aunt and uncle!1 But at the time of
his birth people dubbed Khomeini as badghadam (bird of ill-
omen), because of the coincidence of his birth with the tragic
death of his father.2 As a result, the villagers avoided him and when
 4 Chapter One

they couldn’t, recited Koranic verses or other incantations in order

to exorcise demons and ward off dangers.3
Abandoned by his real mother, shunned by the people, the child
focused his love on his aunt who used to say on all occasions that
Islam could not flourish by sermons and speeches alone, but only
through an all-out jihad (holy war) against its adversaries. When
he reached the age of five, his uncle sent him to a Koranic school.
Ruhollah was 15 when his mother and aunt passed away. As he
had finished his Koranic school, nothing retained him anymore in
his birthplace. He left Khomein for the nearest city, Arak, where a
disciple of the dissident Hojat-ol-Islam Nouri taught theology.
Khomeini, who already entertained the ambition of climbing the
clerical ladder to its top, enrolled in this school and probably heard
there for the first time about the establishment of an Islamic gov-
ernment. After a short stay in Arak, moved by ambition, he left for
the holy city of Qum where many great scholars resided and di-
rected the most prestigious Shiite seminars. In the meantime,
World War I had prompted the Russians, the British, and, later on,
the Turks to occupy parts of the country. Travelling became almost
impossible and the young Khomeini bided his time and studied
theology.

BIRTH OF A FUTURE KING

On October 26, 1919, in a very modest Tehran house, a few
months before Khomeini’s move to Qum at age 19, Muhammad
Reza, who would become his target and victim some thirty years
later, came into the world. His father, Reza Khan Mirpanj, was the
colonel of the cossack regiment created by the Russian counselors
of the Qajar shahs.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 5

As in the case of Khomeini, Reza Khan’s father had died a cou-

ple of months after his birth, but details about his family and child-
hood are lacking. Later on, after his accession to the throne,
Muhammad Reza vaguely pretended that his great-grandfather
was a general by the name of Murad Ali Khan who had partici-
pated in the siege of Herat, Afghanistan, and his grandfather a
colonel in the Qajar army.4 This contention belies his mother’s dec-
larations to a French magazine.5 At any rate, what is certain is that
Reza Khan joined the cossacks as an illiterate footsoldier around
the age of 14 and managed to learn reading and writing and to
reach the rank of colonel in his mid-forties.
Muhammad Reza’s childhood was a happy one but lacked any
aristocratic touch. It rather resembled that of many lower-middle-
class kids. But things rapidly changed, and people attributed the
sudden quirk of fortune of Reza Khan to the boy’s birth. They
dubbed him khoshghadam (bird of good omen). Indeed, a year
after his birth his father became the commander of the cossack
brigade and later minister of war in the cabinet of seyed Zia-o-Din
Tabatabai, after the 1921 coup d’etat. The Shah Ahmad Qajar be-
stowed nobility on the family by giving Reza Khan the title of Sar-
dar Sepah (marshal of the army) and his wife that of Taj-ol-Molouk
(crown of kings).
The clergy did not approve of the new prime minister: a seyed
(descendant of the Prophet) should not don a European frock
coat and talk of modernizing the country! But, like bazaar mer-
chants and the majority of the public, they backed Reza Khan
who appeared as a strong man capable of restoring order and se-
curity and stemming the danger of the Bolshevik revolution
which loomed in the northern provinces (a communist repub-
lic had even been proclaimed in Guilan by Mirza Kutchik Khan
 6 Chapter One

who boasted of close relations with Lenin). Three months after

the coup, Reza Khan replaced Prime Minister seyed Zia-o-Din
who resigned and fled to English-ruled Palestine. A couple of
years later, Reza Khan convinced Ahmad Shah to travel to Eu-
rope and thus became practically the sole ruler of the nation. His
vision was to depose the Qajar Shah and proclaim a republic as
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey. But the clergy,
afraid of Ataturk’s secularist regime, persuaded him to abandon
his idea and instead become Shah. Consumed by ambition, Reza
Khan did not hesitate to follow their suggestion.6
As a result, by age six, Muhammad Reza became crown prince of
Iran. Obviously his life underwent a complete transformation as in
a fairy tale! He quit the modest family home for the royal palace
where he wallowed in luxury, but he could never forget his humble
origins. Most probably this basic contradiction was instrumental
in developing megalomania in his character—but let’s not antici-
pate.

APPRENTICESHIP OF A MULLAH
Upon his arrival in Qum, the young Khomeini discretely in-
spected the seminars and sized up the teachers. He was looking for
a materially and spiritually well-off master. High-ranking clerics
usually receive substantial donations, according to Koranic rules,
from wealthy believers. These “Islamic taxes” allow them to provide
for their families and the students they enroll in their seminars.
After a few days of search and reflection, he felt attracted to Sheikh
Abdulkarim Haeri, who kept a modest lifestyle despite his great
renown and his high income. Khomeini presented himself to the
illustrious faghih and was accepted. Right from the start he tried to
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 7

emulate the ascetic manners of the old cleric and rapidly won his
confidence through extreme deference and performance of prac-
tical services. In less than a few months he became indispensable to
his master.
In those days (early 1920s), many Caucasus Shiites running
away from the Bolshevik revolution flocked to Qum. They told at
length about the savage persecution of Muslims at the hands of the
communists. They contended that Lenin and his underlings acted
at the behest of Zionists who wanted to establish a world Jewish
government and eradicate Islam. Their stories profoundly im-
pressed the young Khomeini and reminded him of his aunt’s views
concerning the necessity of fighting infidels. Anti-Semitism started
to creep into his mind, and many years later the rumors heard in
his youth appeared almost word for word in one of his major
works. In Kashfol-Asrar (Unveiling of the Mysteries) one can find,
among other affirmations, the following sentence: “The Jews and
their backers have in mind to destroy Islam and establish a world
Jewish government.”
At the same time, many rumors were circulating in Qum about
Tehran’s coup d’etat and seyed Zia-o-Din’s premiership. As much
as the religious establishment of the holy city despised the seyed
who had betrayed his forebears and the Prophet, they hoped that
the new war minister Reza Khan would restore order and combat
the communists and their allies. The city heavily felt the toll of dis-
order and absence of security: the activity of bandits on roads and
trails had dangerously diminished commerce and the number of
pilgrims, which represented the main source of its inhabitants’ in-
come. Reza Khan, the strong man of the cabinet, was deemed a sav-
ior! But the sympathy towards him did not last long because as soon
as he acceded to the throne he heralded a nationalistic program
 8 Chapter One

highlighting Iran’s pre-Islamic civilization and achievements. The

clerics construed this as a new conspiracy against Islam concocted
by Westerners and Jews. In order to gain the attention and sympa-
thy of Qum’s religious dignitaries, the young Khomeini composed
a pamphlet in which he wrote that before Islam, Iran suffered from
ignorance and the cruelty of its rulers. He added, “There is nothing
worth glorification in the pre-Islamic past of the country.”7
In his theological studies he was attracted by the life of the 12
Imams, direct descendants of the Prophet. He was particularly im-
pressed by their patience and by their contempt for worldly riches.
They had valiantly resisted the continuous persecutions of their
Sunnite enemies and kept intact their faith and the secret knowl-
edge bestowed on them by their fathers. Having himself suffered
during his childhood because of the tragic death of his father, he
started a process of identification with the Saint Imams and other
heroes of Shiite Islam. He used to ponder on the similitudes with
his own life he could find in their biographies and dreamed of for-
midable actions against the enemies of the Shiite faith.
The young seminarist was appalled by the decrees issued by the
new Shah such as the following: wearing European costumes, ban-
ning the chador (women’s veil), imposing the military draft, and
secularizing education and justice (previously in the hands of the
clergy). To his fellow students he proposed to fight against the cen-
tral government. But his master, Sheikh Abdulkarim Haeri, op-
posed the use of violence and favored restraint and prudence.
“Let’s wait and see,” he used to repeat to his pupils and followers.
Khomeini learned to restrain his impulses and to bide his time.
This experience would serve him later to withstand crises and mis-
fortunes without giving up his determination and pugnacity.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 9

While Reza Shah was accelerating the pace of his reforms,

Khomeini had to return to Arak for the interment of the father of
one of his closest friends. He found out there that the police, in
their eagerness to obey the Shah’s orders, pushed things so far as to
force mullahs in large cities to shave their beards and abandon
their turbans. He decided to remain in Arak until the zeal of law
enforcement officers would subside. But days passed and absence
from Qum could delay his ascension of the clerical ladder. Super-
stitious as all Iranians, he consulted a dervish known for his knowl-
edge of the occult and his divinatory powers. The old man assured
him that no immediate danger menaced him and that he would die
at a very old age in Qum. The young Ruhollah returned to Qum
travelling by night in order to hide his mullah’s garb and avoid law
enforcers.

THE MAKING OF A SHAH

Since the coronation of his father as Shahinshah (king of kings)
who adopted the family name Pahlavi,8 Muhammad Reza’s life be-
came a continuing dream. The title of crown prince swelled his ego.
A bevy of servants were at his beck and call. High-ranking officers
and ministers bowed to him, though he was a child. People truckled
before him. At age eleven, he was made honorary colonel of a cavalry
regiment! Nevertheless, his happiness was far from complete. He
dreaded his father, whose fits and even mere frowns petrified every-
body, including the members of his own family.
Reza Khan did not change his lifestyle and wonts. He remained
the frugal soldier he had always been. He continued to don his mil-
itary uniform and slept on a mattress laid on the floor. He wanted
to make out of his son a strong leader like himself, but Muhammad
 10 Chapter One

Reza was rather weak if not cowardly. He disliked the military

school to which he was sent. Moreover, in his eagerness to keep
him on the right track, his father never missed an occasion to com-
ment, often brutally, on his conduct. These continuous cutting re-
marks profoundly wounded the young boy. As in the case of
Khomeini, contradictory character traits developed in Muham-
mad Reza’s mind since early childhood. But he could not control
them in adulthood like his nemesis. Indeed, in moments of crisis,
he was struck by indecision and weakness, both in family affairs
and official matters.
In 1931, Reza Shah sent the crown prince to a select Swiss sec-
ondary school for super rich and aristocrat kids. This experience
marked the future monarch.9 In his spare time he would reflect on
great Iranian kings such as Cyrus and Darius. In a long interview
published as a book, he pretended that Western democracies im-
pressed him. One can doubt this contention as he affirmed, “(In)
my years in Europe . . . I grasped the spirit of democracy, discipline,
freedom and realized that discipline without democracy is author-
itarianism and that democracy without discipline is anarchy.”10
In fact, as is the case for many other Iranians, the first contact
with a highly advanced Europe and the comparison with the me-
dieval backwardness of his homeland induced a feeling of shame in
the future king. Though approving the reforms started by his fa-
ther, he had a much larger vision of modernization. His concep-
tion, as exemplified in the 1960s, went beyond change of costume
and building of railways. But four years in Switzerland could not
transform his character. Not only did the basic contradiction men-
tioned earlier not subside, but another one was added to it: be-
tween scientific rationalism learned in Europe and the traditional
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 11

beliefs which had been implanted in his mind by his mother and
the servants. Indeed, despite accusations by Khomeini and his fol-
lowers, Muhammad Reza was a religious man to the point of su-
perstition. He did not practice the rituals, but venerated the Imams
who, he claimed, visited him in his dreams. He was convinced that
they had saved him in his childhood and twice from attempts on
his life.11
Upon his return from Europe in 1936, Muhammad Reza entered
the military academy and became a lieutenant in 1938. He then ac-
companied his father on his inspection tours. On one of these
trips, his father said that he wanted to improve the state’s bureau-
cracy to such a perfect degree that should he die the next day, the
entire administration would operate automatically from day to day
without any need of supervision from the top. Muhammad Reza
was offended and thought to himself, “What does he mean? Does
he think that if he were gone, I should not be able to take over and
continue his work?” His father’s remark troubled the young prince,
but he lacked the courage to tell him so to his face.12

KHOMEINI ON HIS OWN

In contrast to the future Shah, the future Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini did not dread any father. His had died at his birth, and
his religious mentor, Sheikh Abdulkarim Haeri, was a soft-spoken
moderate man. This circumstance explains the unusual determi-
nation and combativity of Khomeini in face of the “father of the
nation,” the Shah.
In the early 1930s, the campaign against the clergy abated as
Reza Shah became interested in buying large chunks of land from
 12 Chapter One

the feudal landowners at discount prices fixed by himself! Khome-

ini took advantage of this new situation in order to accomplish the
pilgrimage to the tomb of Imam Reza, one of the 12 Shiite saints
buried in Mashad. On his way back, he stopped in Tehran where he
married a seyedeh (feminine of seyed in the Arabic language) from
a wealthy family. Upon his return to Qum, his old master, whose
health was declining, entrusted him with the teaching at his semi-
nar. The sudden promotion of Khomeini triggered criticism on the
part of some of the other high-ranking clerics. Usually, theology
teachers were chosen among middle-aged proven mullahs. The
boost to Ruhollah’s hubris was such that, at the death of his master,
he tried to replace him, but higher religious authorities rejected
him and he was forced to look for another master. Nevertheless, he
was allowed to bear the title of hojat-ol-Islam (middle-rank cleric,
before becoming ayatollah).
In 1935, a group of mullahs opposed to Reza Shah’s reforms
took refuge in the sanctuary of Imam Reza in Mashad, but the po-
lice hesitated to enter the sacred place. Some of the law enforcers,
fearing the ire of the interred Imam, even joined the mullahs. In-
furiated by this bout of disobedience, Reza Shah ordered the army
to arrest the insurgents. The walls around the sanctuary were de-
molished by cannon balls and the mullahs surrendered. This inci-
dent, exaggerated through rumors, provoked a definite breaking-off
between the Shah and the clergy. An earthquake north of Mashad
was construed by the public as a celestial sign of disapproval of the
Shah’s action. The majority of city dwellers defended the mullahs
in private but did not dare express any open criticism of the Shah.
The masses, especially in the countryside, were not ready to follow
the clergy: they hoped that modernization would improve their
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 13

lot. Besides, Reza Shah’s nationalism appealed to the educated

classes.
Back in Qum, Khomeini prospered. Because of his seyed’s black
turban he easily found followers among devout and superstitious
people who believed that by offering a descendant of the Prophet
the Koranic “donation tax,” they would gain Allah’s mercy and in-
dulgence in the hereafter and a place in paradise. At the same time,
the future ayatollah entered the realm of business by founding with
his brother a bus line between Arak and Qum.
At age 40, Khomeini appeared as a stern and rigorous priest,
pursuing relentlessly, though patiently, his fixed goals. He did not
show any sign of emotion even in the most strained situation. Was
this coldness in his nature or only the effect of shrewd acting? It is
difficult to say. But the fact remains that when, after some fifteen
years of exile, he stepped down from the plane bringing him back
to Iran and a journalist asked him what he felt, he answered,
“Nothing.”13 As Amir Taheri noted in his book about the ayatollah,
attachment to a country constituted a sin for him: one should only
love God and obey Him.14
In 1937, Khomeini accomplished the prescribed pilgrimage to
Mecca. On his way back, he stopped in Najaf, the Shiite holy city
in Iraq where he met Navab Safavi, a charismatic young fanatic
who advocated the murder of the so-called enemies of Islam.
Safavi was in contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and would
later create a terrorist group of his own in Iran. In those days, Ger-
man Nazis were active in the region and were helping an anticolo-
nialist Iraqi movement led by Rashid Ali Queylani. Khomeini’s stay
in Najaf fortified him in his determination to fight against Reza
Shah’s anti-Islamic reforms. When in 1941 the Allies occupied Iran
 14 Chapter One

and forced the monarch to abdicate, Khomeini convinced a num-

ber of mullahs to accompany him to Tehran in order to oppose the
continuation of the Pahlavi dynasty, but he did not find support in
the capital city and returned to Qum. There he published, in 1942,
the first version of Kahf-ol-Asrar.15 In this booklet, Khomeini con-
demned those who criticized Islam and among them especially
Ahmad Kasravi, a secularist historian and polemist whose books
and articles were spreading among educated people. Navab Safavi
took this condemnation by a high-ranking cleric such as Kho-
meini as tantamount to an authorization to kill the writer. He
therefore ordered his underlings in the terrorist group he had set
up under the name of Fedayin-e-Islam (martyrs of Islam) to pro-
ceed. Kasravi was stabbed to death in 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s
the Fedayin killed two prime ministers: Razmara and Mansour.

BITTER VICTORY
Let us now turn to the Shah. The abdication of his father and his
forced exile to South Africa by the British provoked contradictory
feelings in the mind of Muhammad Reza, who had just been sworn
in as the new Shah of Iran on September 16, 1941. He had been
longing for that moment to prove his capability conducting the af-
fairs of the state. But now that he had ascended the throne and was
liberated from the tutelage and the constant remarks of Reza Shah,
he did not feel completely happy. He could not forget the humili-
ating circumstances of his ascension to kingship. Many people were
criticizing if not insulting the deposed leader; his exiled enemies
were coming back; the political prisoners were freed; the feudal
landowners were claiming back their confiscated lands; and the
mullahs once again operated in the open.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 15

On the other hand, the young monarch was in a way liberated.

The eagle eye of his father was not fixed on him anymore. He
could at last divorce king Farouk’s sister who had been imposed as
his wife by his father in 1939. He could hobnob with whomever he
desired. In short, for the first time in his life, he was on his own. At
the same time, he could not forget that the Allies had humiliated
his father and many Iranians had joined in slighting him. That is
probably why he postponed his own coronation for a quarter of a
century: he did not want to give his father’s enemies an opportu-
nity for more attacks and derogatory remarks about the deposed
sovereign. In 1967, the events of 1941 were forgotten and his
White Revolution was beginning to bear fruit: he was not crowned
as the son of Reza Shah but for his own achievements. It is also
probably for the same reason that, in 1971, he organized the
Persepolis celebration of the 2500th year of Iranian monarchy. He
still could not get rid of the guilt he felt toward his defunct father,
so, in 1976, he ordered the organization of numerous ceremonies
in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the
Pahlavi dynasty by Reza Shah. He was not aware that all these ex-
cesses, triggered by his personal problems, would in the end ruin
his own kingship!
Indeed, Khomeini did not fail to criticize the foolish expenses
of these continuous celebrations and attacked Muhammad Reza
Shah as a squanderer of national riches. In the wake of the 1971
Persepolis extravaganza, he called on mullahs and all Iranian
people to revolt against the Shah whom he accused of betraying
Islam. The “cult of personality” instituted by Muhammad Reza
Shah profoundly irritated not only the clergy but also the intel-
lectuals and many members of the political class. But let us not
anticipate.
 16 Chapter One

From 1941 to 1946 Iran was occupied by the British, the Rus-
sians, and the Americans. The Allies indirectly interfered in Iranian
internal affairs not only for achieving their war goals, but also their
own national interests. In the North, the Russians favored leftist
movements while in the South the British manipulated the clergy
because it was a good shield against Soviet expansionism. With the
fall of Reza Shah, the communists had emerged from clandestin-
ity and created the powerful and well-organized Tudeh party, to
the dismay of the traditionalists and wealthy people. The Shah, al-
though he inherited the antimullah feelings of his father, accepted
the contention that religion could counterbalance leftists and he
started a policy of rapprochement with high-ranking religious
leaders. During Reza Shah’s reign most of them had migrated to
Najaf. The only high authority remaining in Iran at that time was
Ayatollah Boroujerdi. The Shah’s envoys convinced the latter to re-
side in Qum in order to restore the central holy city as the main
venue of Shiite indoctrination. While Ayatollah Boroujerdi was in
Tehran for a short stay, the Shah himself visited him in his resi-
dence. This gesture marked the reconciliation of the crown with
the religious leadership.
In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph
Stalin met in Tehran for coordinating the conduct of the war. Stalin
alone paid a courtesy visit to the Shah, head of the host country.
The Shah had to go to the Soviet Embassy where the conference
was held in order to meet with the two other leaders. Touchy, like
all Iranians, Muhammad Reza resented the attitude of the Western
leaders. He attributed it to a deliberate act on the part of the Amer-
icans and British to belittle him. In fact, Roosevelt was a crippled
man and besides, the security forces had discovered a plot against
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 17

him and Churchill. Whatever the reason, the wound to Muham-

mad Reza’s pride would never completely heal.

KHOMEINI VISITS THE SHAH

In any case, the move of Ayatollah Boroujerdi to Qum restored
the importance of the holy city as a major center of Shiite theol-
ogy. Khomeini, who had longed for years to attach himself to a
higher religious authority to speed his climb up the clergy’s lad-
der, leaped at the opportunity. He would spend days and nights in
the ayatollah’s waiting room, ready to perform any service from
humble household chores to secretarial duties. As days passed he
somehow became an indispensable aide to the prelate. At this
juncture the secular writer and polemist Ahmad Kasravi, as previ-
ously indicated, was slain by a member of Navab Safavi’s Fedayin-
e-Islam terrorist group. The murderer was condemned to death.
Khomeini, who had indirectly called for this crime in his Kahf-ol-
Asrar, convinced his master to send him with a delegation of cler-
ics to the Shah in order to obtain clemency for the assassin. There
are no records of the meeting with the young Shah, who re-
sponded favorably to Ayatollah Boroujerdi’s request. Apparently
the monarch did not pay particular attention to Khomeini, who
resented this indifference on the part of “Reza Khan’s son” (as he
and some other clerics used to call Muhammad Reza Shah from
time to time).
Khomeini met a second time with the Shah at the behest of Ay-
atollah Boroujerdi, who needed funds in order to repair Saint Fa-
tima’s mausoleum in Qum. Again the Shah agreed to the
ayatollah’s demand without showing any interest in the members
 18 Chapter One

or the head of the delegation. Khomeini construed this inattention

as a sign of personal disdain and conceived anger against the
monarch. But, aware of the good relations between his master and
the sovereign, he hid his feelings and did not mention the Shah’s
attitude in his report to the ayatollah.
In the late 1940s, Ayatollah Kashani, who had been sent into
exile by the Allies because of his Nazi connections, came back to
Qum. His rank in the clergy was much lower than that of Ayatol-
lah Boroujerdi, but his views about the necessity of an Islamic
government coincided with those of Khomeini. The two clerics
met often and developed a close working relationship. This dis-
pleased Boroujerdi and prompted him to keep aloof from his
cumbersome aide. When Dr. Mossadegh became prime minister
in 1951 and pushed for the nationalization of the British-led oil
company, Boroujerdi intimated to the mullahs not to interfere in
political matters; nevertheless, Khomeini secretly helped Kashani,
who was elected as member of parliament and, through slick ma-
neuvering, became president of the legislative body! (as Hojat-ol-
Islam Rafsanjani would some thirty years later!) But with the
leaning of Mossadegh’s National Front toward republicanism and
the growth of the communist Tudeh party and its infiltration into
the ranks of the army, Kashani was panic-stricken and soon aban-
doned the old prime minister and compromised with the Shah.
In 1953, after the overthrow of Mossadegh’s government, both
Boroujerdi and Kashani supported the witch hunt against the
communists who had infiltrated the army and the bureaucracy.
Khomeini found himself almost totally isolated. Yet he had al-
ready gained some renown as theology teacher in the Fayzieh sem-
inar set up by Ayatollah Boroujerdi upon his return to Qum.
Many mullah students flocked around Khomeini, and moreover,
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 19

he had been able to gather a circle of followers such as Montazeri,

Motaheri, Bahonar, Khalkhali, and Beheshti, whose names would
rise in the 1979 Islamic revolution. His entourage called him aya-
tollah, though he was only a hojat-ol-Islam, and they advised him
to nominate representatives in major cities, like other important
clerics. His students published his courses in the form of question-
answer books.
In the meantime, Boroujerdi’s health was failing and his peers
were discretely considering the problem of his successor. Khome-
ini had acted as his quasi secretary for many years and considered
himself in good stead. But in order to become a grand ayatollah he
had to entertain, like his ailing master, some normal if not close re-
lations with the Shah and the central government. Despite his op-
position to the Pahlavi dynasty, he ceased his attacks overnight.16
It is even said that he sent messages to the royal court in order to
compensate for his reputation as a radical (which could hurt his
ambitions).
When the Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi passed away, the Shah, as
was customary, sent condolence cables to top clerics. Khomeini’s
name was not included, although the theology teacher, now in his
late fifties, considered himself a high-ranking clergyman. He took
the omission as a personal insult and resumed his attacks against the
monarch. In fact, the sovereign and his aides were unaware of the
existence of this small hyper-ambitious and spiteful ayatollah. His
sudden emergence a few years later took almost everybody by sur-
prise: nobody in political circles had even heard his name! Be this
as it may, Khomeini’s self-esteem was terribly wounded, like the
Shah’s in the case where Roosevelt and Churchill did not call on
him in 1943. This brings me to a remark which I consider essen-
tial to the understanding of the 1978–79 events: despite all the
 20 Chapter One

differences in their upbringing and personal character, Khomeini

and the Shah were animated by a common psychological pattern.
One can say that the omission of a condolence message and the
narcissistic character of Khomeini in the mid-1950s put the fat in
the fire and triggered a chain of events that proved fatal to the
monarchy.

KHOMEINI MEDITATES
Having lost the battle of Boroujerdi’s succession, Khomeini hid
his disappointment through accomplishment of supplementary de-
votions. He would retreat from time to time into extended periods
of meditation. He would remain sometimes forty days in his private
reception room, refusing to see visitors and even members of his
own family. Montazeri (who was designated after the revolution as
his successor before being dismissed and confined to house arrest),
was the only person authorized to cross his door and that for very
short spells. Nobody can say what was going on at that time in the
ayatollah’s head. Did he really meditate? That is possible as he had
flirted with mysticism in his youth. Did he think about plans to
overthrow the Shah? This is also possible. In fact, he apparently
imitated the Prophet and the Saint Imams who used to accom-
plish retreats during which “heaven would open its gates to them.”
Did Khomeini really believe that he could communicate with Allah
and His angels? Did he really expect a visit from archangel Gabriel?
At any rate, after the revolution his devotees pretended that dur-
ing these retreats the archangel visited him as he had done with the
Prophet some 1,400 years earlier; they contended that the
archangel entrusted him with the divine mission of establishing an
Islamic government first in Iran and then in the rest of the world.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 21

Khomeini himself neither confirmed nor denied these affirmations;

however, he often presented his actions as commanded by the
Almighty. He considered himself if not the reincarnation of the
Hidden Imam, at least his so-to-say licensed representative on
earth.
After this period of meditation, he started to speak without am-
biguity about the direct reign of the clergy at all levels of the state.
In his campaign against the Shah, he used the themes of xenopho-
bia and anti-Semitism, which corresponded to dormant feelings in
the minds of the masses. His language itself tended toward over-
simplification: he used popular dialect and images more often than
not.
For some years, Khomeini stayed on guard, teaching his ideas to
his students while inviting them to remain extremely prudent. He
left the direction of the opposition against the Shah to the follow-
ers of the overthrown Dr. Mossadegh, and to other secular and lib-
eral elements. It became evident much later that he was only
shrewdly biding his time! He was waiting for the right moment to
unleash his mullahs and throw them in the battlefield in order to
seize all the threads of power! In the meantime, he confined him-
self to the problems of the religious sphere, developing his slogan
of “Islam in danger” and accusing the Shah of sliding towards a re-
vival of Zoroastrianism. He invited Iranian Muslims to mourn
rather than celebrate on the occasion of the Iranian new year, the
Nowrouz inherited from the pre-Islamic period, on the grounds
that this was a profane non-Muslim festival, almost a pagan prac-
tice. But he was preaching in the wilderness and his appeals rarely
went farther than Qum.
The Shah, on the other hand, under pressure by the Kennedy ad-
ministration started a series of basic reforms and was preoccupied
 22 Chapter One

only by the leftists and Mossadegh’s National Front. He sincerely

thought that he had muzzled the mullahs once and for all. Thus, in
1976, he contended in an interview that the mullahs did not repre-
sent a threat as they “had lost the monopoly on education they en-
joyed in the past.” “I have some enemies: the communists, the
Islamic Marxists and the like.”17 This illusion of the Shah served the
purposes of Khomeini as the mullahs enjoyed relative freedom of
action: the secret police concentrated its attention on the Mujahid-
dins (Islamic Marxists), the National Front, and the liberal elements
of the intelligentsia.
This situation suited Khomeini fine since he was left almost to-
tally free to pursue his hidden agenda. He was teaching his ideas
to the young mullahs and multiplying the number of his devo-
tees. He, as well as his minions, kept a low profile; nevertheless,
the land reform forced him to break his apparent silence. The
clergy opposed the reform, because it would cut their profits
from the revenues of vast estates bequeathed by rich people to a
kind of charitable foundation managed by the clergy (owghaf).
Boroujerdi, despite his good relations with the Shah’s govern-
ment, had opposed a previous land reform proposal that was
modest and extremely limited in scope compared to the one
voted on in 1963. In March of that year, Khomeini all of a sudden
unlimbered his guns and called the believers to protest against
the land reform and other measures. Demonstrations and
counter-demonstrations in the streets of Qum resulted in some
casualties. Despite all the efforts of his followers, Khomeini’s ap-
peal failed to mobilize the masses, however, it infuriated the
Shah, whose authoritarian disposition had already taken shape.
The monarch performed a pilgrimage to Qum where he delivered
an acerbic speech against the mullahs whom he dubbed as “black”
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 23

reactionaries (the communists being in his vocabulary the “red”

reactionaries). Almost immediately Khomeini paid him back in
his own coin: in his Faizieh seminar, he compared the Shah to the
Ummayad usurpers who had assassinated the Prophet’s grand-
child Hussein in the Kerbela desert (seventh century) and ac-
cused the sovereign of connivance with Israel. The ayatollah
concluded his diatribe with the slogan “Islam is in danger.”
Upon his return to Tehran, the Shah ordered Khomeini’s arrest.
After a few weeks in prison, he was confined in a villa under house
arrest. Finally, the monarch allowed him to return to Qum and
even resume his teaching. In the Iranian context, the Shah’s le-
niency was interpreted as a sign of weakness by the public and of
stark defeat by Khomeini’s followers. At any rate, with his medieval
mind-set and his belief in his own rightness and the protection of
Allah and the Saint Imams, Khomeini did not consider himself de-
feated. On the contrary, he was convinced that the Shah had
yielded! In his way of thinking, the whole episode was nothing but
a trial imposed on him by the Almighty in order to evaluate his
ability to represent the 12th (Hidden) Imam on earth. He took ad-
vantage of the respite to instruct his inner circle on the necessity
of starting preparations for the final confrontation with the ene-
mies of Islam in general and the Shah in particular. His followers
resuscitated the Fedayin-e-Islam under a new and less aggressive
appellation, the Hojatich society, which today devotes most of its
energy to converting Bahais.
In 1964, Khomeini faced two supplementary tests. First, two of
his followers who had organized demonstrations in Tehran were
condemned to death and executed. Second, his diatribes did not
succeed in provoking new public protests against the reforms.
Changing tactics, he called on believers to assemble in Qum’s
 24 Chapter One

streets to hear his message. He spoke to them from his house

through a number of microphones suspended on the electric line
poles. The gist of his statement was that the United States and Is-
rael were conspiring with the Shah in order to erase Islam; only the
mullahs and their leaders could, with the help of believers, thwart
this satanic scheme. After that, Khomeini invited the other ayatol-
lahs to join him in denouncing the reforms as anti-Islamic. They
agreed, but their opposition was expressed in very moderate terms.
The Shah reacted by ordering Khomeini’s exile instead of letting
him be condemned to death by a military tribunal for fomenting
sedition. Again, the Shah appeared weak, but the masses were not
in the mood to follow the appeal of a low-ranking ayatollah.
Khomeini, after a short stay in Turkey, went to Najaf where he en-
joyed more freedom of action because of Iraq’s enmity toward
Iran.
Thus ended the first round of the fight between the Shah and
Khomeini. The former considered himself victorious while the lat-
ter did not admit defeat.

DREAMS OF GRANDEUR
By the mid-1960s, the Shah seemed to succeed in all his under-
takings: he had just gotten rid of Khomeini, his internal and most
dangerous nemesis; the Soviet Union ceased to attack him and
opted for a good neighborly policy; his reform programs were
bearing their first fruits; many educated people who had been re-
luctant to cooperate with the reform programs were now in the
government or the development agencies; the liberal opposition
was losing steam; and the clergy was calming down.
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 25

But the Shah’s character underwent a gradual change between

1965 and 1975. Hubris seized him and he came to consider himself
superior to everybody inside and outside the country. He ceased
listening to his aides. His dreams of grandeur overbalanced his
sense of reality. The oil boom of the 1970s accentuated these neg-
ative traits and megalomania overtook him completely. Very
quickly his arrogance became limitless. He used to stay long hours
alone in his office refusing to see anybody, woolgathering about the
future. He would come out of these solitary thinking bouts with
extravagant new programs that nobody dared to question. He had
identified himself with his father, about whom he had once told an
interviewer: “Not only the state officials but I myself held him in
such high respect that none of us would ever dream of discussing
with him in the sense of a give-and-take argument. I could only ex-
press my views and drop hints; any discussion was out of the ques-
tion.”18 And he explained in these words his conception of
kingship: “A king in Iran represents the people. . . . He is the teacher,
the master, the father, he is everything.”19
He renamed the White Revolution: Revolution of the Shah and
the People. And he emerged from one of his solitary meditations
with the idea of The Great Civilization, a book which was published
a year before the Islamic revolution. He developed in it his dream
of transforming Iran into “one of the five great industrial powers of
the world” before the end of the twentieth century. He ordered that
the book become the “Bible” of the one party he created at the end
of 1976 to replace all other tolerated political groups. “Monarchy,”
he asserted, “is the powerful underpin of the Great Civilization and
at the same time the guardian of all its values and moral and ma-
terial achievements.”20
 26 Chapter One

More and more he referred in his speeches and interviews to the

Aryan ancestors of Persians. Thus, to cite only one instance, he de-
clared in 1977 to an Indian journalist, “Iran never lost its ethos. De-
spite setbacks, reverses, even national calamities, the legacy of
Cyrus, this flaming Aryan torch of ours, has been kept alight and
passed on through our history, from generation to generation,
linking the past to the present and insuring the future.”21 In 1971,
he had already celebrated in a grandiose pageant the 2500th an-
niversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus. In this
regard, he told the Indian journalist, “Our White Revolution not
only has its source but finds many parallels in the enlightened rule
of Cyrus the Great. The Persepolis celebrations signified the
reawakening of national pride in our rich heritage, coupled with
the confidence of achievements deriving from our recent successes.
This provided our people with the stimulus to identify themselves
with their ancient land and its traditional monarchy.”22 On the
Persepolis extravaganza, he affirmed, “Time, world and history
then seemed to meet in Persepolis.”
With the sudden tripling of oil prices and the multiplication of
development programs, corruption swelled in the higher strata of
society and especially among the members of the royal family, but
the Shah was weak in his relations with his sisters and brothers and
let them get into all sorts of shaky and scandalous business. Lost in
his dreams of grandeur, he failed to understand the mounting con-
cept of human rights and the expanding role of nongovernmental
organizations such as Amnesty International. He also failed to ap-
preciate the causes and effects of the late 1960s student revolt in
Europe and the United States and its influence on Iranian students
both inside and outside Iran. He underestimated the urban guer-
rilla and terrorist movements that were developing not only in
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 27

Iran, but also in the region and elsewhere. Finally, he seemed to ig-
nore the consequences of détente of the cold war, which had
brought him the American government’s unconditional support.
The Carter administration that entered the White House in 1977
considered him as a rather cumbersome ally and looked forward to
a change in Iran’s political system.23

THE VINDICTIVE AYATOLLAH

During all that period, Khomeini was organizing his forces. His
disciples as well as his former students, on the pretext of pilgrim-
ages to holy Shiite sites in Iraq, visited him regularly and brought
back to Iran his instructions to his followers. Obviously the Iranian
secret police could not watch him in Iraq as closely as in Qum.
Khomeini’s entourage took advantage of this situation to establish
close contacts with the leaders of the large Shiite community in
southern Lebanon. A former student of Khomeini, Moussa Sadr,
had established himself as a top religious and political guide there.
In Lebanon, Khomeini’s envoys met with some Iranian dissidents
who had joined the ranks of the PLO (such as Chamran and Ghot-
bzadeh). Through them, they met with Arafat and his top aides,
who agreed to train Iranians in their guerrilla camps.
In the meantime, leftists exiled in Europe had helped the Iranian
students, whose numbers were rapidly swelling, to form a united
front against the Shah, known as the Confederation of Iranian Stu-
dents. Khomeini ordered Muslim students to actively cooperate
with them. In the United States as well as in other Western coun-
tries, the Confederation alerted local student organizations, leftist
and liberal political parties, and the media about repression in
Iran. Amnesty International became particularly active. Writing
 28 Chapter One

clubs also protested against the Shah’s regime. It was said at the
time that communists and big oil companies were funding the
Confederation. At any rate, the students seemed to enjoy impor-
tant financial resources. The Confederation organized demonstra-
tions everywhere in Europe and America against the Shah and his
ministers who travelled outside the country. Intellectuals wrote
pamphlets which were distributed everywhere. By 1977, the
protests against the Iranian regime had become a constant and
vocal annoyance for the Shah. The Muslim students were gaining
high positions in the Confederation. The Mujahiddins, who called
themselves Muslim Marxists, failed to mobilize the peasants and
workers. Unsuccessful in the countryside, they transformed them-
selves into urban guerrillas and terrorist groups. They assassinated
a number of American military advisers. In all these antiregime ac-
tivities, the mullahs kept a low profile until the last stages of the
overthrow of the regime, letting the secular dissidents occupy the
forestage.
Like the Shah in Tehran, Khomeini, in Najaf, seemed removed
from the realities of the world. He spent days in meditative re-
treat, refusing to see even his family and his closest aides. He
dreamed about the particulars of his Islamic state. He thought
about the ways and means to establish in Iran the kind of Islamic
government the Prophet ran in the seventh century in Medina
and Ali ran in Kufa in the eighth century. But what he called the
true Islam resembled more what had overtaken the Muslim
world in the twelfth century when almost at the same time and
everywhere fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran had be-
come the core of the religion.24 Contrary to the Shah’s, Khome-
ini’s lifestyle had not changed. One can even say that it had
become more ascetic than before! Opposed to the ostentation
 The Shah and the Ayatollah 29

and luxuries of the Imperial Court in Tehran, the ayatollah con-

ducted a simple, almost destitute mode of existence. But as a
French proverb says, “les extrêmes se touchent” (extremes con-
nect). Khomeini’s so-called true Islamic government, as events
were going to prove, was as fanciful and chimerical as the Shah’s
Great Civilization! Moreover, by considering himself as a descen-
dant of the Prophet (seyed) and the representative of the 12th
Imam (Hidden Imam), Khomeini was not so far from the Shah
who, with the 1971 Persepolis festivities, had linked himself to
Cyrus and the Achaemenian dynasty!
In any case, there is no dearth of common traits between the
two men who nurtured profound hatred for each other. They had
grandiose dreams of restoration: Khomeini wanted to recreate the
Prophet and Ali’s rules, the Shah, to reestablish Cyrus’s empire;
they both were obstinate and spiteful; they harbored extremely
simplistic views about the problems of their country and the
world; they believed in conspiracy theories; they did not admit
contradiction; they thought they knew everything better than
anybody else; they believed they were guided by God; they were
inclined toward dictatorship. Khomeini once proclaimed: “From
the religious standpoint I am entitled to act as I do. . . . When I be-
held the magnitude of the revolutionary movement, I saw God’s
intervention in it. . . . It couldn’t be the making of men. . . .”25 The
Shah for his part affirmed: “Without Divine blessing, my revo-
lution would have not been possible. Without God’s support, I
would have been a man like any other.”26 Once in power, Khome-
ini showed as much intolerance as his predecessor and exerted an
even stricter authoritarianism and more cruel repression. Of the
Marxists, the ayatollah said, “They are like children and know
nothing about Iranian society.”27 The Shah said, “These persons
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Was it not just, after all, that a man who had lived by adventures
should perish as an adventurer? He was not a consummate
politician, whatever Cicero may assert; he failed to be that, because
he lacked conviction and a genuine devotion. The instability of his
feelings, the inconsistency of his conduct, that sort of scepticism that
he affected for all convictions were not less hurtful to his talents than
to his character. If he had known how to put greater unity into his
life, if he had early attached himself to some honourable party, his
capacities, finding employment worthy of them, would have attained
their perfection. He might have no doubt failed, but to die at
Pharsalia or Philippi is still considered an honour by posterity. On
the contrary, as he changed his opinions as often as his interests or
caprices, as he served by turns the most opposite parties without
belief in the justice of any, he was never anything but an immature
orator and a hap-hazard politician, and he died on the high-road like
a common malefactor. However, notwithstanding his faults, history
has some difficulty in judging him harshly. The ancient writers never
speak of him without a secret liking. The brilliancy that surrounded
his youth, the charms of his mind, the elegance which he knew how
to preserve in his worst disorders, a sort of daring frankness which
prevented him seeking honourable pretexts for dishonourable
actions, his clear judgment of political situations, his knowledge of
men, his fertility of resource, his strength of resolution, his boldness
in daring all and in constantly risking his life; these many brilliant
qualities though mingled with so many great defects have disarmed
the most severe judges. The sage Quintilian himself, little fitted as he
was to understand that passionate nature, dared not be severe upon
him. After having praised the graces of his mind and his incisive
eloquence, he contented himself with saying, by way of moral: “He
was a man who deserved to have had a juster sense of conduct and a
longer life, dignus vir cui mens melior et vita longior
contigisset!”[234]
At the time that Caelius died, that elegant youth of which he was
the model, and which the verses of Catullus and the letters of Cicero
have helped us to know, had already partly disappeared. There
remained scarcely any of those young men who had shone in the
fêtes of Baiae and who had been applauded in the Forum. Catullus
died first, at the very moment when his talents were being ripened by
age, and were becoming more serious and more elevated. His friend
Calvus was soon to follow him, carried off at thirty-five, no doubt by
the fatigues of public life. Curio had been killed by Pompey’s soldiers,
as Caelius was by Caesar’s. Dolabella survived, but only for a short
time, and he also was to perish in a tragic manner. It was a
revolutionary generation which the revolution mowed down, for it is
true, according to the celebrated saying, that in all times as in all
countries revolution devours her own children.
 CAESAR AND CICERO

I
CICERO AND THE CAMP OF CAESAR IN GAUL
Cicero was not wrong when he said one day to Caesar: “After our
time, there will be great debates about you, as there have been
among ourselves.”[235] It is certain that he is that historical personage
whom men still discuss with most heat. None has excited more
sympathy or roused more animosity, and it must be admitted that
there seems to be something in him to justify both the one and the
other. He cannot be admired or blamed without some reservations,
and he always attracts on some side those whom he repels on
another. The very people who hate him the most, and who cannot
pardon him the political revolution that he accomplished, are forced
into a secret admiration for him when they think of his victories, or
read his writings.
The more complex and disputable his character, the more
necessary it is, in order to form a just idea of him, to interrogate
those who were in a position to know him. Although Cicero was
almost all his life separated from Caesar by grave disagreements,
twice he had occasion to maintain a close intercourse with him:
during the Gallic war he was his political ally and his assiduous
correspondent; after Pharsalia he became his friend again, and acted
as intermediary between the conqueror and those he had condemned
to exile. Let us inquire what he says of him at these two periods of his
life when he saw him most closely, and let us collect from his
correspondence, through which we become so well acquainted with
the eminent men of that time, the information it contains about him
who was the greatest of all.
 I.

I must first recall the events which led Cicero to desert the
aristocratic party to which he had been attached since his consulship,
in order to serve the triumvirs, and how the courageous friend of
Hortensius and of Cato became so subservient to Pompey and
Caesar. It is not an honourable period in his life, and his most
convinced admirers say as little about it as possible. However, there
is some interest, perhaps even some profit, in pausing upon it for a
moment.
Cicero’s return from the exile to which he had been condemned
after his consulship by the efforts of Clodius, was a veritable
triumph. Brundusium, where he disembarked, celebrated his arrival
by public rejoicings. All the citizens of the free towns that bordered
the Appian Way, waited for him on the road, and the heads of
families with their wives and children came from all the
neighbouring farms to see him pass. At Rome, he was received by an
immense multitude crowded on the public squares, or ranged on the
steps of the temples. “It seemed,” said he, “that all the city was drawn
from its foundations to come and salute its liberator.”[236] At his
brother’s house, where he was going to live, he found the most
eminent members of the senate awaiting him, and at the same time
congratulatory addresses from all the popular societies of the city. It
is probable that some who had signed these, had voted with the same
eagerness the preceding year for the law that exiled him, and that
many clapped their hands on his return who had applauded his
departure; but the people have occasionally these strange and
generous impulses. It sometimes happens that they break away by a
sudden bound from the malice, distrust, and narrowness of party
spirit, and, at the very moment when passions seem most inflamed
and divisions most clearly marked, they unite all at once to render
homage to some great genius or to some great character, which, we
know not how, has compelled their recognition. Usually, this
gratitude and admiration last but a short time; but, should they
endure only a day, they do eternal honour to him who has been their
object, and the glory they leave behind is sufficient to illumine a
whole life. Therefore we must pardon Cicero for having spoken so
often and with so much effusiveness of this glorious day. A little
pride was here both legitimate and natural. How could a soul so
sensitive to popular applause have resisted the intoxication of a
triumphal return? “I do not feel as though I were simply returning
from exile,” said he, “I appear to myself to be mounting to
heaven.”[237]
But he was not long in descending again to earth. Whatever he
may have thought at first, he soon recognized that this city which
welcomed him with so much rejoicing was not changed, and that he
found it much the same as when he left it. Anarchy had reigned there
for three years, an anarchy such as we have difficulty in imagining,
notwithstanding all the examples that our own revolutions have
given us. Since the triumvirs had let loose the rabble in order to seize
upon the government of the republic, it had become entirely master.
A daring tribune, a deserter from the aristocracy, and one who bore
the most illustrious name in Rome, Clodius, had taken upon himself
to lead it, and as far as possible, to discipline it. He had displayed in
this difficult work many talents and much audacity, and had
succeeded well enough to deserve to become the terror of honest
people. When we speak of the Roman mob, we must not forget that it
was much more frightful than our own, and was recruited from more
formidable elements. Whatever just dismay the populace that
emerges all at once from the lowest quarters of our manufacturing
cities, on a day of riot, may cause us, let us remember that at Rome,
this inferior social stratum descended still lower. Below the
vagabond strangers and the starving workmen, the ordinary tools of
revolutions, there was all that crowd of freedmen demoralized by
slavery, to whom liberty had given but one more means for evil-
doing; there were those gladiators, trained to fight beast or man, who
made light of the death of others or themselves; there were, still
lower, those fugitive slaves, who were indeed the worst of all classes,
who, after having robbed or murdered at home, and lived by pillage
on the road, came from all Italy to take refuge and disappear in the
obscurity of the slums of Rome, an unclean and terrible multitude of
men without family, without country, who, outlawed by the general
sentiment of society, had nothing to respect as they had nothing to
lose. It was among these that Clodius recruited his bands.
Enlistments were made in open day, in one of the most frequented
spots in Rome, near the Aurelian steps. The new soldiers were then
organized in decuries and centuries, under energetic leaders. They
assembled by districts in secret societies, where they went to receive
the password, and had their centre and arsenal at the temple of
Castor. When the day arrived, and a popular manifestation was
wanted, the tribunes ordered the shops to be closed; then, the
artisans were thrown on the public streets, and all the army of the
secret societies marched together towards the Forum. There they
met, not the honest folks, who, feeling themselves the weaker party,
stayed at home, but the gladiators and herdsmen whom the senate
had fetched to defend them from the wilds of Picenum or Gaul, and
then the battle commenced. “Imagine London,” says M. Mommsen,
“with the slave population of New Orleans, the police of
Constantinople, and the industrial condition of modern Rome, and
think of the political state of Paris in 1848: you will have some idea of
republican Rome in its last days.”
No law was any longer respected, no citizen, no magistrate was
secure from violence. One day the fasces of a consul were broken, the
next a tribune was left for dead. The senate itself, led away by these
examples, had at last lost that quality which Romans lost the last, its
dignity. In that assembly of kings, as a Greek had called it, they
debated with revolting coarseness. Cicero surprised no one when he
gave his adversaries the names of swine, filth, rotten flesh.
Sometimes the discussions became so heated that the noise reached
that excited crowd that filled the porticoes near the curia, which then
took part in them, with so much violence that the terrified senators
hastened to fly.[238] We can easily understand that it was much worse
in the Forum. Cicero relates that, when they were tired of insulting,
they spat in each other’s faces.[239] When a man wished to address the
people, he had to take the rostrum by storm, and he risked his life in
trying to keep his place there. The tribunes had found a new way of
obtaining unanimity of votes for the laws that they proposed:
namely, to beat and drive away all who took it into their heads not to
agree with them. But contests were nowhere more violent than on
the Campus Martius on election days. Men were driven to regret the
time when they trafficked publicly in the votes of the electors. Now,
they did not even take the trouble to buy public offices; they found it
more convenient to seize them by force. Each party went before
daylight to the Campus Martius. Collisions took place on the roads
leading to it. Each party hastened to arrive before its adversaries, or,
if these were already established there, attacked them in order to
dislodge them: naturally the appointments belonged to those who
remained masters of the place. In the midst of all these armed bands
there was no security for any one. Men were obliged to fortify
themselves in their houses for fear of being surprised. They could
only go out with a train of gladiators and slaves. To go from one
quarter of the city to another, they took as many precautions as if
they had to traverse a desert country, and they met at the turning of a
street with the same fear they would have had at the corner of a
wood. In the midst of Rome there were real battles and regular
sieges. It was an ordinary manœuvre to set fire to the houses of their
enemies at the risk of burning down a whole quarter, and, towards
the end, no election or popular assembly took place without
bloodshed. “The Tiber,” says Cicero, speaking of one of these
combats, “was full of the corpses of the citizens, the public sewers
were choked with them, and they were obliged to mop up with
sponges the blood that streamed from the Forum.”[240]
Such were the obscure convulsions in which the Roman republic
perished, and the shameful disorders that sapped its remaining
strength. Cicero well knew that bloody anarchy and the dangers he
was about to run, and had therefore resolved, before re-entering
Rome, to be prudent, so as not to run the risk of having to leave it
again. His was not one of those minds that misfortune strengthens,
and that feel a kind of pleasure in struggling against ill-fortune. Exile
had discouraged him. During the long weariness of his sojourn in
Thessaly, he had made a sad review of the past. He had reproached
himself for his occasional courage and independence, for his
boldness in combating the powerful, and for the mistake he had
made in joining himself too closely to the party which he had judged
the best, but which was evidently the weakest, as though to act thus
had been a crime. He came back thoroughly resolved to entangle
himself as little as possible with any one, to disarm his enemies by
concession, and to keep on good terms with everybody. This was the
course he followed on his arrival, and his first speeches are
masterpieces of policy. It is plain that he still leans towards the
aristocracy which had taken an active part in his restoration, and to
praise it he has noble expressions of patriotism and gratitude; but
already he commences to flatter Caesar, and he calls Pompey “the
most virtuous, the wisest, the greatest of the men of his age or of any
age.”[241] At the same time, he tells us himself, he took good heed not
to appear in the senate when irritating questions were to be
discussed, and was very careful to escape from the Forum as soon as
the debate became too heated. “No more violent remedies,” he
replied to those who tried to urge him to some brilliant action; “I
must put myself on diet.”[242]
However, he soon perceived that this adroit reserve was not
sufficient to ward off all danger. While he was rebuilding his house
on the Palatine, which had been destroyed after his departure, the
bands of Clodius threw themselves on the workmen and dispersed
them, and, emboldened by this success, set fire to the house of his
brother Quintus, which was close by. A few days later, as he was
walking on the Via Sacra, he heard all at once a great noise, and on
turning round saw sticks raised and naked swords. It was the same
men who came to attack him. He had great difficulty in escaping into
the vestibule of a friendly house while his slaves fought bravely
before the door to give him time to escape. Cato would not have been
moved by this violence; Cicero must have been very much
frightened; above all it taught him that his system of prudent reserve
did not sufficiently assure his safety. It was, in fact, probable that no
party would expose itself to defend him as long as he had only
compliments to give it, and as he could not stand alone and without
support in the midst of all these armed factions, it was really
necessary that, in order to find the support he needed, he should
consent to attach himself more closely to one of them.
But which should he choose? This was a grave question in which
his interests were at variance with his sympathies. All his
inclinations were evidently for the aristocracy. He had closely
attached himself to it about the time of his consulship, and since that
time he had professed to serve it, and it was for it that he had just
braved the anger of the people and exposed himself to exile. But this
very exile had taught him how the most honourable course was also
the least safe. At the last moment, the senate had not found better
means of saving him than to make useless decrees, to put on
mourning, and go and throw themselves at the feet of the consuls.
Cicero thought that this was not enough. Seeing himself so ill-
defended, he had suspected that people who did not take his
interests in hand more resolutely were not very sorry for his
misfortunes; and perhaps he was not wrong. The Roman aristocracy,
whatever he had done for it, could not forget he was a “new” man.
The Claudii, the Cornelii, the Manlii, always looked with a certain
displeasure on this insignificant townsman of Arpinum, whom the
popular vote had made their equal. Still they might have pardoned
his good fortune if he had borne it with more modesty; but we know
his vanity; though it was only ridiculous, the aristocracy, whom it
offended, thought it criminal. They could not tolerate the legitimate
pride with which he constantly recalled that he was only a parvenu.
They thought it strange that, when attacked by insolence, he dared to
reply by raillery; and quite recently they had shown themselves
scandalized that he had forgotten himself so far as to buy the villa of
Catulus at Tusculum, and to go and live on the Palatine in the house
of Crassus. Cicero, with his usual shrewdness, very clearly discerned
all these sentiments of the aristocracy, and even exaggerated them.
Since his return from exile he had yet other grievances against them.
They had taken much trouble to get him recalled; but had not
foreseen the splendour of his return, and it did not seem that they
were very well pleased with it. “Those who have clipped my wings,”
said Cicero, “are sorry to see them grow again.”[243] From this
moment his good friends in the senate would do nothing more for
him. He had found his finances much embarrassed, his house on the
Palatine burnt, his villas at Tusculum and Formiae plundered and
destroyed, and they decided with reluctance to indemnify him for
these losses. What irritated him still more, was that he saw clearly
that they did not share in his anger against Clodius. They showed
themselves cool or remained silent during his violent fits of anger. A
few even, the most adroit, affected to speak only with esteem of this
factious tribune, and did not blush to give him their hand in public.
Whence came their regard for a man who had so little for them? It
was that they hoped to make use of him, and that they secretly
nourished the thought of calling in the mob to the help of the
endangered aristocracy. This alliance, although less usual than that
of the mob with despotism, was not impossible, and the bands of
Clodius, if they could be enlisted, would have permitted the senate to
hold the triumvirs in check. Cicero, who perceived this policy, feared
to become its victim; he bitterly regretted then the services he had
tried to render to the senate, and which had cost him so dear. In
recalling the dangers to which he had exposed himself in order to
defend it, the obstinate and unsuccessful struggles that he had
maintained for four years, the ruin of his political position and the
disasters of his private fortune, he said with sorrow: “I see clearly
now that I have been only a fool (scio me asinum germanum
fuisse”).[244]
It only remained for him then to turn to the triumvirs. This was
the advice given to him by his friend the prudent Atticus, and his
brother Quintus, whom the burning of his house had rendered
cautious contrary to his habit; this was the resolution he was himself
tempted to take every time he ran some fresh danger. Nevertheless,
he had some trouble in making up his mind. The triumvirs had been
heretofore his most cruel enemies. Without speaking of Crassus, in
whom he detected an accomplice of Catiline, he well knew that it was
Caesar who had let Clodius loose against him, and he could not
forget that Pompey, who had sworn to defend him, had lately
abandoned him to the vengeance of his two friends; but he had no
choice of alliances, and since he dared no longer trust the aristocratic
party, he was forced to put himself under the protection of others. He
had then to resign himself to his fate. He authorized his brother to
pledge him to Caesar and Pompey, and prepared himself to serve
their ambition. His first act, after his return, had been to demand for
Pompey one of those extraordinary powers of which he was so
greedy: by his exertions Pompey had been entrusted for six years
with the victualling of Rome, and on this occasion he had been
invested with an almost unlimited authority. A short time after,
although the public treasury was exhausted, he had a sum of money
granted to Caesar for the payment of his legions, and permission to
have ten lieutenants under his orders. When the aristocracy, who
understood with what design Caesar was carrying out the conquest of
Gaul, wished to prevent him continuing it, it was again Cicero who
demanded and obtained for him permission to finish his work. It was
thus that the old enemy of the triumvirs became their usual defender
before the senate. The support that he consented to give was not
useless to them. His great name and his eloquence drew towards him
the moderate men of all parties, those whose opinion was wavering
and their convictions undecided; those, above all, who, wearied with
a too tempestuous liberty, sought everywhere a firm hand that might
give them repose; and these, joined to the personal friends of Caesar
and Pompey, to the tools that the rich Crassus had made by bribery,
and to the ambitious men of all sorts who foresaw the advent of the
monarchy and wished to be the first to salute it, formed in the senate
a majority of which Cicero was the head and the orator, and which
rendered to the triumvirs the important service of giving a legal
sanction to that power which they had gained by violence and
exercised illegally.
Cicero had at length obtained repose. His enemies feared him,
Clodius dared no longer risk attacking him, his familiarity with the
new masters was envied, and yet this skilful conduct, which gained
for him the thanks of the triumvirs and the congratulations of
Atticus, did not fail at times to disturb him. It was in vain for him to
say to himself that “his life had regained its splendour,” he did not
feel less remorse in serving men whose ambition he knew, and whom
he knew to be dangerous to the liberty of his country. In the midst of
the efforts that he made to satisfy them, he had sudden awakenings
of patriotism which made him blush. His private correspondence
bears everywhere the trace of the alternations of mood through
which he passed. One day he wrote to Atticus in a light and resolute
tone: “Let us give up honour, justice, and fine sentiments.... Since
those who can do nothing will not love me, let us try to make
ourselves loved by those who can do everything.”[245] But shame
seized him the next day, and he could not avoid saying to his friend:
“Is anything sadder than our life, mine above all? If I speak
according to my convictions I pass for a madman; if I listen to my
interests, I am accused of being a slave; if I am silent, they say I am
afraid.”[246] Even in his public speeches, notwithstanding the
restraint he puts on himself, we can feel his secret dissatisfaction. It
seems to me that we discover it above all in that extraordinary tone
of bitterness and violence which was then habitual to him. Never,
perhaps, did he pronounce more passionate invectives. Now this
excess of violence towards others often comes from a mind ill at ease.
What made his eloquence so bitter at this time was that uneasy
feeling which a man has who is in the wrong path and has not the
courage to leave it. He did not forgive his old friends their raillery
and his new ones their demands; he reproached himself secretly for
his base concessions; he had a spite against others and against
himself, and Vatinius or Piso suffered for all the rest. In this
condition of mind he could not be a safe friend for anybody. It
happened sometimes that he suddenly turned on his new friends,
and gave blows so much the more disagreeable that they were not
expected. Sometimes he diverted himself by attacking their best
friends, to show others and prove to himself that he had not entirely
lost his liberty. People had been very much surprised to hear him, in
a speech in which he defended Caesar’s interests, praise to excess
Bibulus, whom Caesar detested. One day even he seemed quite ready
to return to those whom he had called honest men before he
abandoned them. It seemed to him a good opportunity to break with
his new party in a formal manner. The friendship of the triumvirs
had become very cool. Pompey was not pleased with the success of
that Gallic war which threatened to make his own victories forgotten.
Cicero, who heard him speak without restraint against his rival,
thought he might without danger give some satisfaction to his
irritated conscience, and wished by a brilliant stroke to deserve the
pardon of his old friends. Taking advantage of some difficulty that
was raised in regard to the carrying out of Caesar’s agrarian law, he
formally announced that on the Ides of May he would speak on the
sale of the Campanian lands which by this law were distributed
among the people. The effect of his declaration was very great. The
allies of the triumvirs were as much offended as they were surprised,
and the aristocratic party hastened to welcome with transports of joy
the return of the eloquent deserter, but in a few days everything
turned against him. At the very moment when he decided on this
brilliant stroke, the alliance between the triumvirs that was thought
to be broken, was renewed at Lucca, and, amid a concourse of their
flatterers, they once more divided the world between them. Cicero,
then, was about to find himself again alone and without support in
the presence of an angry and all-powerful enemy who threatened to
deliver him up again to the vengeance of Clodius. Atticus scolded;
Quintus, who had pledged himself for his brother, complained
roughly that his promises were being broken. Pompey, although he
had secretly encouraged the defection, affected to be more angry
than anybody. The unhappy Cicero, attacked on all sides, and
trembling at the passions which he had raised, hastened to submit,
and promised everything that was required. Thus this attempt at
independence only made his slavery heavier.
From this moment he seems to have resolutely accepted his new
position, from a feeling that he could not change it. He resigned
himself to heap more and more exaggerated praises on the vain
Pompey, who never had enough. He consented to become the agent
of Caesar with Oppius and Balbus, and to supervise the public
buildings he was constructing. He went further, and was willing at
the request of his powerful protectors to give his hand to men whom
he regarded as his greatest enemies. This was not a small sacrifice for
a man who had such strong aversions; but from the time that he
joined their party so decidedly, he was obliged to accept their
friendship as he defended their plans. They began to take steps to
reconcile him to Crassus. This was a great matter which was not done
in a day, for when it was thought that their old enmity was appeased,
it broke out all at once in a discussion in the senate, and Cicero
abused his new ally with a violence that surprised himself. “I thought
my hatred exhausted,” said he naïvely, “and did not imagine any
remained in my heart.”[247] He was then asked to undertake the
defence of Vatinius; he consented with a pretty good grace, although
he had pronounced a furious invective against him the year before.
The advocates in Rome were accustomed to these sudden changes,
and Cicero had done the same thing more than once. When Gabinius
returned from Egypt, after having restored King Ptolemy against the
formal command of the senate, Cicero, who could not abide him,
thinking it a good opportunity to ruin him, prepared to attack him;
but Pompey came to beg him urgently to defend him. He dared not
refuse, changed his part, and submitted to speak in favour of a man
whom he detested and a cause which he considered bad. He had at
least the consolation of losing his case, and although he was always
anxious for success, it is probable that this failure did not give him
much pain.
But he well understood that so much deference and submission, all
these notorious self-contradictions to which he was forced, would
end by rousing public opinion against him. Therefore, about this
time, he decided to write an important letter to his friend Lentulus,
one of the chiefs of the aristocracy, which he probably intended to be
circulated, and in which he explains his conduct.[248] In this letter,
after having related the facts in his own way and sufficiently abused
those whom he had abandoned, a convenient and common mode of
anticipating their complaints and making them responsible for the
mischief he was about to do them, he ventures to present, with
singular candour, a sort of apology for his political instability. The
reasons he gives to justify it are not always very good; but we must
believe that better cannot be found, since they have not ceased to be
used. Under the pretence that Plato has somewhere said, “one must
not do violence to one’s country any more than to one’s father,”
Cicero lays it down as a principle, that a politician ought not to
persist in wishing for what his fellow-citizens do not wish, nor lose
his pains in attempting useless opposition. Circumstances change,
one must change with them, and suit oneself to the wind that blows,
so as not to go to pieces on the rocks. Besides, is that really to
change? Cannot one in the main wish for the same thing and serve
one’s country under different banners? A man is not fickle for
defending, according to circumstances, opinions that seem
contradictory if by opposite routes he marches to the same goal, and
do we not know “that we must often shift the sails when we wish to
arrive in port”? These are only the general maxims which an
inventive politician can make up to hide his weaknesses, and there is
no need to discuss them. The best way to defend Cicero is to
remember in what a time he lived, and how little fitted he was for
that time. This elegant literary man, this skilful artist, this friend of
the arts of peace, had been placed, by a caprice of fate, in one of the
most stormy and troubled periods of history. What could a man of
leisure and study do among those deadly struggles where force was
master, a man who had no arms but his words, and who always
dreamed of the pleasures of peaceful times and the pacific laurels of
eloquence? A more manly soul than his would have been needed to
make head against these assaults. Events stronger than himself
confounded his designs every instant and played with his hesitating
will. On his entry into public life he had taken for his motto, leisure
and honour, otium cum dignitate; but these two things are not easy
to unite in revolutionary times, and almost always one of the two is
lost when we are too anxious to preserve the other. Resolute
characters, who know this well, make their choice between them at
once, and, according as one is a Cato or an Atticus, one decides from
the very first day either for leisure or for honour. The undecided, like
Cicero, pass from one to the other, according to circumstances, and
thus jeopardize both. We have arrived at one of those painful
moments in his life when he sacrifices honour to leisure; let us not be
too severe upon him, and let us remember that, later, he sacrificed
not only his leisure, but even his life, to save his honour.
 II.

One of the results of the new policy of Cicero was to give him an
opportunity of becoming well acquainted with Caesar. Not that they
had been hitherto strangers to one another. The taste of both for
letters and the similar nature of their studies, had united them in
their youth, and from these early relations, which men never forget,
there had remained some natural sympathy and good-will. But as in
later life they had attached themselves to opposite parties,
circumstances had separated them. In the Forum, and in the senate,
they had acquired the habit of always being of opposite opinions, and
naturally their friendship had suffered from the vivacity of their
dissensions. Yet Cicero tells us that, even when they were most
excited against each other, Caesar could never hate him.[249]
Politics had separated them, politics reunited them. When Cicero
turned towards the party of the triumvirs their intimate relations
recommenced; but this time their position was different, and their
connection could no longer have the same character. The old school-
fellow of Cicero had become his protector. It was no longer a mutual
inclination or common studies, it was interest and necessity that
united them, and their new ties were formed by a sort of reciprocal
agreement in which one of the two gave his talents and a little of his
honour, that the other might guarantee him repose. These are not
very favourable circumstances, it must be admitted, to produce a
sincere friendship. However, when we read Cicero’s private
correspondence, in which he speaks unreservedly, we cannot doubt
but that he found many charms in these relations with Caesar which
seemed to him at first to be so difficult. Probably this was because he
compared them with those which he had at the same time to keep up
with Pompey. Caesar at least was affable and polite. Although he had
the gravest affairs on his hands, he found time to think of his friends
and to joke with them. Victorious as he was, he allowed them to write
to him “familiarly and without subserviency.”[250] He answered with
amiable letters, “full of politeness, kind attentions and charm,”[251]
which delighted Cicero. Pompey, on the contrary, seemed to take a
pleasure in wounding him by his lofty airs. This pompous and vain
man, whom the adoration of the Orientals had spoilt, and who could
not avoid assuming the deportment of a conqueror merely in going
from his house at Alba to Rome, affected an imperious and haughty
tone which alienated everybody. His dissimulation was still more
displeasing than his insolence. He had a sort of dislike of
communicating his projects to others; he hid them even from his
most devoted friends, who wished to know them in order to support
them. Cicero complains more than once that he could never discover
what he wanted; it even happened that he was completely deceived
as to his real intentions and made him angry, thinking he was doing
him a service. This obstinate dissimulation passed, no doubt, for
profound policy in the eyes of the multitude; but the more skilful had
no difficulty in discerning its motive. If he did not express his
opinion to anybody, it was because most frequently he had no
opinion, and, as it very commonly happens, silence with him only
served to cover the fact. He went at random, without fixed principles
or settled system, and never looked beyond present circumstances.
Events always took him by surprise, and he showed clearly that he
was no more capable of directing them than of foreseeing them. His
ambition itself, which was his dominant passion, had no precise
views or decided aims. Whatever dignities were offered to satisfy it, it
was plainly seen that he always desired something else; this was
perceived without his saying it, for he tried very awkwardly to hide it.
His ordinary stratagem was to pretend indifference, and he wished to
be forced to accept what he most ardently desired. We can well
understand that this pretence when too often repeated deceived
nobody. Upon the whole, as he had successively attacked and
defended all parties, and after having often appeared to desire an
almost royal authority, had not endeavoured to destroy the republic
when he had the power to do so, it is impossible for us to discover
now what plan he had conceived, or even if he had conceived any
distinct plan at all.
It is not so with Caesar. He knew the object of his ambition, and
saw distinctly what he wished to do. His plans were settled even
before he entered public life;[252] in his youth he had formed the
design to become master. The spectacle of the revolutions on which
he had looked had given rise to the thought; the confidence that he
had in his own capacity, and in the inferiority of his enemies, gave
him strength to undertake it, and a sort of superstitious belief in his
destiny, not uncommon in men who attempt these great adventures,
assured him in advance of success. Therefore he marched resolutely
towards his end, without showing undue haste to attain it, but
without ever losing sight of it. To know exactly what one wants is not
a common quality, above all in those troubled times in which good
and evil are mingled, and yet success only comes to those who
possess it. What, above all, gave Caesar his superiority was, that in
the midst of those irresolute politicians who had only uncertain
projects, hesitating convictions, and occasional ambitions, he alone
had a deliberate ambition and a settled design. One could not
approach him without coming under the influence of that tranquil
and powerful will, which had a clear idea of its projects, the
consciousness of its own strength, and the confidence of victory.
Cicero felt it like the rest, notwithstanding his prejudices. In
presence of such consistency and firmness he could not avoid
making unfavourable comparisons with the perturbation and
inconsistency of his old friend. “I am of your opinion about Pompey,
he hinted to his brother, or rather you are of mine, for I have sung
the praises of Caesar for a long time.”[253] In fact, it was sufficient to
approach a man of real genius to recognize the emptiness of this
semblance of a great man, whose easy successes and air of inflated
majesty had imposed so long upon the admiration of fools.
We must not, however, suppose that Caesar was one of those
stubborn men who will not give way to circumstances, and never
consent to alter anything in the plans they have once conceived. No
one, on the contrary, knew how to bend to necessity better than he.
His aim remained the same, but he did not hesitate to take the most
diverse means to attain it, when it was necessary. One of these
important modifications took place in his policy, precisely at the
period with which we are occupied. What distinguishes Caesar from
the men with whom he is usually compared, Alexander and
Napoleon, has been well stated by M. Mommsen, namely, that
originally he was a statesman rather than a general. He did not, like
them, come from the camp, and he had as yet merely passed through
it when, by force of circumstances and almost in spite of himself, he
became a conqueror. All his youth was passed in Rome in the turmoil
of public life, and he only set out for Gaul at an age at which
Alexander was dead and Napoleon vanquished. He had evidently
formed the plan of making himself master without employing arms;
he reckoned upon destroying the republic by a slow and internal
revolution, and by preserving as much as possible, in so illegal an
attempt, the outward form of legality. He saw that the popular party
had more taste for social reforms than for political liberties, and he
thought, with reason, that a democratic monarchy would not be
repugnant to it. By multiplying dissensions, by becoming the secret
accomplice of Catiline and Clodius, he wearied timid republicans of a
too troubled liberty and prepared them to sacrifice it willingly to
repose. He hoped in this way that the republic, shaken by these daily
attacks, which exhausted and tired out its most intrepid defenders,
would at last fall without violence and without noise. But, to our
great surprise, at the moment when this skilfully-planned design
seemed on the point of succeeding, we see Caesar suddenly give it up.
After that consulship in which he had governed alone, reducing his
colleague to inaction and the senate to silence, he withdraws from
Rome for ten years, and goes to attempt the conquest of an unknown
country. What reasons decided him to this unexpected change? We
should like to believe that he felt some disgust for that life of base
intrigues that he led at Rome, and wished to invigorate himself in
labours more worthy of him; but it is much more likely that, after
having seen clearly that the republic would fall of itself, he
understood that he would require an army and military renown to
gain the mastery over Pompey. It was, then, without enthusiasm,
without passion, designedly and on calculation, that he decided to set
out for Gaul. When he took this important resolution, which has
contributed so much to his greatness, he was forty-four.[254] Pascal
thinks it was very late to begin, and that he was too old to interest
himself in the conquest of the world. It is, on the contrary, as it
seems, one of the most admirable efforts of that energetic will that, at
an age when habits are irrevocably fixed, and when a man has
definitely entered on the road he must follow to the end, Caesar
suddenly commenced a new life, and, leaving in a moment the
business of popular agitator that he had followed for twenty-five
years, set himself to govern provinces and lead armies. This
spectacle, indeed, is more surprising now than it was then. It is no
longer the custom to turn oneself into an administrator or a general
at fifty, and these things seem to us to demand a special vocation and
a long apprenticeship; history shows us that it was otherwise at
Rome. Had they not just seen the voluptuous Lucullus, on his way to
command the army of Asia, learn the art of war during the voyage,
and conquer Mithridates on his arrival? As to administration, a rich
Roman learnt it in his own home. Those vast domains, those legions
of slaves that he possessed, the management of an immense fortune
which often surpassed the wealth of several kingdoms of our days,
familiarized him early with the art of government. It was thus that
Caesar, who had as yet only had occasion to practise himself in the
government of provinces and the command of armies during the year
of his praetorship in Spain, had no need of further study to be able to
conquer the Helvetii and to organize the conquered countries, and
that he found himself at the very first attempt an admirable general
and an administrator of genius.
It was at this epoch that his intimate relations with Cicero
recommenced, and they lasted as long as the Gallic war. Cicero often
had occasion to write to him to recommend people who wished to
serve under his command. The ambition of the young men at that
time was to set out for Caesar’s camp. Besides the desire of taking
part in great deeds under such a general, they had also the secret
hope of enriching themselves in those distant countries. We know
with what charms the unknown is usually adorned, and how easy it is
to lend it all the attractions we wish. Gaul was for the imagination of
that time what America was to the sixteenth century. It was supposed
that in those countries that no one had visited there lay immense
treasures, and all who had their fortune to make hastened to Caesar
to have their share of the booty. This eagerness was not displeasing
to him; it bore witness to the fascination his conquests exercised, and
helped his designs, and accordingly he readily invited men to come
to him. He wrote gaily to Cicero, who had begged a commission for
some unknown Roman: “You have recommended M. Offius to me; if
you like I will make him King of Gaul, unless he prefers to be
lieutenant of Lepta. Send me whom you will that I may make him
rich.”[255] Cicero had with him at that moment two persons whom he
loved very much and who had great need of being enriched, the
lawyer Trebatius Testa and his own brother Quintus. It was a good
opportunity, and he sent them both to Caesar.
Trebatius was a young man of much talent and great zeal for study,
who had attached himself to Cicero and did not leave him. He had
early left his poor little town of Ulubrae, situated in the midst of the
Pontine marshes, for Rome,—Ulubrae the deserted, vacuae Ulubrae,
whose inhabitants were called Ulubran frogs. He had studied law,
and, as he had become very learned in it, no doubt he rendered many
services to Cicero, who does not appear ever to have known much of
law, and who found it more convenient to laugh at it than to learn it.
Unfortunately, consultations being gratuitous, lawyers did not make
their fortune at Rome. Accordingly Trebatius was poor, in spite of his
knowledge. Cicero, who liked him unselfishly, consented to deprive
himself of the pleasure and use that he found in his society, and sent
him to Caesar with one of those charming letters of recommendation
that he knew so well how to write, and in which he displayed so
much grace and wit. “I do not ask of you,” he says, “the command of
a legion, or a government for him. I ask for nothing definite. Give
him your friendship, and if afterwards you care to do something for
his fortune and his glory I shall not be displeased. In fact, I abandon
him to you entirely; I give him to you from hand to hand as they say,
and I hope he will find himself well off in those faithful and
victorious hands.”[256] Caesar thanked Cicero for the present that he
had made him, which could not fail to be very valuable to him, “for,”
he wittily remarked, “among the multitude of men who surround me,
there is not one who knows how to prepare a suit.”[257]
Trebatius left Rome reluctantly; Cicero said that he had to turn
him out of doors.[258] The first sight of Gaul, which resembled very
little the France of to-day, was not cheering. He passed wild
countries, among half-subdued and threatening people, and in the
midst of these barbarian surroundings which oppressed his heart, he
always thought of the pleasures of that cultivated city that he had just
left. The letters that he wrote were so disconsolate, that Cicero,
forgetting that he had felt the same regrets during his own exile,
reproached him gently for what he called his foolishness. When he
arrived at the camp his ill-humour was redoubled. Trebatius was not
a warrior, and it is very likely that the Nervii and the Atrebates
frightened him very much. He arrived just at the moment when
Caesar was setting out on the expedition to Britain, and refused, one
knows not on what pretext, to accompany him: perhaps he alleged,
like Dumnorix, that he feared the sea; but, even in remaining in Gaul
there was no want of danger and tedium. Their winter quarters were
not comfortable; they suffered from cold and rain under that
inclement sky. In summer they had to take the field, and his terror
recommenced. Trebatius was always complaining. What added to his
discontent was that he had not found all at once the advantages he
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