John Williams - Augustus

XII. Consular Order to Gaius Sentius Tavus, Military Commander of Macedonia at Apollonia, with Letter (August, 44 B. c.)

By authority of Marcus Antonius, Consul to the Senate of Rome, Governor of Macedonia, Pontifex of the Lupercalian College, and Commander in Chief of the Macedonian Legions, Gaius Sentius Tavus is hereby ordered to command the chief officers of the Macedonian Legions to mobilize their forces in preparation for a crossing to Brindisi, to make this crossing at the earliest moment in his power, and to hold the legions in that place against the arrival of their supreme commander.

Sentius: this is important. He spent part of last year at Apollonia. He may have made friends with some of the officers. Investigate this most carefully. If there are those who seem inclined toward him, transfer them out of the legion at once, or get rid of them in some other way. But get rid of them.

XIII. A libel: Distributed to the Macedonian legions, at Brindisi (44 B.C.)

To the followers of the murdered Caesar:

Do you march against Decimus Brutus Albinus in Gaul, or against the son of Caesar in Rome?

Ask Marcus Antonius.

Are you mobilized to destroy the enemies of your dead leader, or to protect his assassins?

Ask Marcus Antonius.

Where is the will of the dead Caesar which bequeathed to every citizen of Rome three hundred pieces of silver coin?

Ask Marcus Antonius.

The murderers and conspirators against Caesar are free by an act of the Senate sanctioned by Marcus Antonius.

The murderer Gaius Cassius Longinus has been given the governorship of Syria by Marcus Antonius.

The murderer Marcus Junius Brutus has been given the governorship of Crete by Marcus Antonius.

Where are the friends of the murdered Caesar among his enemies?

The son of Caesar calls to you.

XIV. Order of Execution, at Brindisi (44 B. c.)

To: Gaius Sentius Ta vus, Military Commander of Macedonia From: Marcus Antonius, Commander in Chief of the Legions Subject: Treasonable actions in the Legions IV and Martian

The following officers will be presented at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief of the Legions, at the hour of dawn on the twelfth day of November.

P. Lucius

Cn. Servius

Sex. Portius

M. Flavius

C. Titius

A. Marius

At that hour on that day, these men shall suffer execution by beheading. In addition, there will be selected by lot fifteen soldiers from each of the twenty cohorts of the IV and Martian, who shall be executed with their officers in the same manner.

All the officers and men of all the Macedonian Legions are commanded to be present and witness this execution.

XV. The Acts of Caesar Augustus (A.D. 14)

At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the Republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction.

I. Letter: Gaius Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B. c.)

My dear old friend, these letters that you require of me-I could not have suspected how they would take me back to the days that are gone, and through what a strange tangle of emotions I must go on that journey! Now in these uneventful years of my retirement, as my time on earth draws to an end, the days seem to hasten with unseemly speed; and only the past is real, so that I go there as if I were reborn, as Pythagoras says we are, into another time and another body.

So many things whirl around in my head-the disorder of those days! Can I make sense of them, even to you, who know more of the history of our world than any mortal? I comfort myself with the certainty that you will make sense of what I tell you, even if I cannot.

Marcus Antonius went to Brindisi to meet the Macedonian legions that he had called up, and we knew that we must act. We had no money: Octavius had stripped his fortune and sold much of his property to discharge Julius's bequests to the people. We had no authority: according to the law, not for ten years would Octavius be eligible to become even a member of the Senate, and of course Antonius had blocked every special privilege that the Senate would have given him. We had no power: only a few hundred of the veterans of Caesar's army in Rome had unequivocally declared for us. We had a name, and the force of our determination.

So Octavius and Agrippa went immediately to the south, to the Campanian coastal farms where Caesar had settled many of his veterans. We knew what Antonius was offering recruits as an enlistment bounty; we offered five times that amount. We offered money that we did not have; it was a desperate gamble, but it was a necessary one. I remained in Rome and composed letters for distribution among the Macedonian legions that were nominally under Antonius's command. We had had promises from them earlier, and had reason to believe that some would defect to us, if the circumstances were right. As you know, the letters had their effect-though it was not precisely what we had anticipated.

For Antonius then made the first of his many serious blunders. Because of some wavering on the part of two of the legions -the Macedonian IV and the Martian, I believe-he had some three hundred officers and men put to death. More than the letters, I am sure, this action worked to our advantage. During the march to Rome, these two legions simply diverged to Alba Longa, and sent word to Octavius that they would cast their fortunes with his. It was not the cruelty of Antonius's act that outraged them, I think; soldiers are used to cruelty and death. But they could not trust themselves to a man who would act so rashly and unnecessarily.

In the meantime, Octavius and Agrippa had had a small success in raising the beginnings of an army to meet the Antonian threat. Some three thousand men with arms (though we let it be thought that it was double that number) assigned themselves to his command; and the same number without arms pledged themselves to our future. With a sizable portion of this three thousand, Octavius marched toward Rome, leaving Agrippa in command of the rest and charging him to march with them toward Arezzo (the place of my birth, as you will remember), and to raise whatever other troops he could on the way. It was a pitiful force to range against the power of our enemies; but it was more than we had had in the beginning.

Octavius encamped the army a few miles outside of Rome and entered the city with only a small body of men to guard his person, and offered his services to the Senate and the people against Antonius; it was known that Antonius was marching toward Rome, and no one could be sure of his purpose. But in their division and impotence, the Senate refused; and in their confusion and fear, the people did not speak as one. As a result, most of the army that we had raised at so much cost to ourselves dispersed, and we were left with fewer than a thousand men at Rome, and a few hundred more who marched (futilely, we thought) with Agrippa toward Arezzo.

Octavius had sworn to himself, to his friends, and to the people that he would have vengeance upon the murderers of his father. And now Antonius was marching through Rome on his way to Gaul-to punish (he said) Decimus Albinus, one of the conspirators. But we knew (and Rome feared) his real purpose, which was to gain for himself the Gallic legions under Decimus's command. With those legions, he would be invincible; and the world would lie like an unguarded treasure house before his plundering ambition. We simply faced the death of the Rome for which Caesar had given his life.

Do you see the position we were in? We had to prevent the punishment of one of those very criminals we had ourselves sworn to punish. And it became clear to us that, unexpectedly, another end had discovered us-an end larger than revenge and larger than our own ambitions. The world and our task enlarged themselves before us, and we felt that we peered into a bottomless chasm.