Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

The Senate met again five days into June, this time with a quorum present. To the astonishment of Lucius Piso, Philippus and the few on the front benches, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus Senior sat there among them. Sulla's greatest friend and political ally, Vatia Senior had been retired from public life for so long that most had quite forgotten his existence; his Roman house was occupied by his son, Caesar's friend at present returning from governing Asia Province, while Vatia Senior contemplated the beauties of Nature, Art and Literature in his villa at Cumae. Once the prayers were said and the auspices taken, Vatia Senior rose to his feet, the sign that he wished to speak. As the most senior and august among the consulars, it was his entitlement to do so. "Later," said Antony curtly, to a chorus of gasps. Dolabella turned his head to glare ferociously at Antony. "I hold the fasces in June, Marcus Antonius, therefore this is my meeting! Publius Vatia Senior, it is an honor to welcome you back to the House. Please speak." "Thank you, Publius Dolabella," Vatia Senior said, voice a little thready, but quite audible. "When do you mean to discuss provinces for the praetors?" "Not today," Antony answered before Dolabella could. "Perhaps we should discuss them, Marcus Antonius," Dolabella said stiffly, determined not to be overridden. "I said, not today! It is postponed," snarled Antony. "Then I ask that you give special consideration to two of the praetors," said Vatia Senior. "Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Though I cannot condone their taking the law into their own hands to kill Caesar Dictator, I am concerned for their welfare. While ever they remain in Italy, their lives are threatened. Therefore I move that Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius be voted provinces at once, no matter how long the other praetors must wait. I further move that Marcus Brutus be awarded the province of Macedonia, since Marcus Antonius has relinquished it, and that Gaius Cassius be awarded the province of Cilicia, together with Cyprus, Crete and Cyrenaica." Vatia Senior stopped, but didn't sit; an imperfect silence fell, disturbed by ominous mutters from the top tiers, where Caesar's appointees had no love for Caesar's assassins. Gaius, the praetor Antonius, rose to his feet, looking angry. "Honored consuls, da-de-da the rest," he shouted impudently, "I agree with the consular Vatia Senior, in that it is high time we saw the backs of Brutus and Cassius! While ever they remain in Italy, they represent a threat to government. Since this House voted them an amnesty, they can't be tried for treason, but I refuse to see them given provinces while innocent men like me are told we must wait! I say, give them quaestor's duties! Give them commissions to buy in grain for Rome and Italy. Brutus can go to Asia Minor, Cassius to Sicily. Quaestor's duties are all that they deserve!" A debate followed that showed Vatia Senior how unpopular his cause was; if he needed further proof, he received it when the House voted to give Brutus and Cassius grain commissions in Asia Minor and Sicily. Then, to rub it in, Antony and his minions poked fun at him, mocked his age and his old-fashioned ideas. So as soon as the meeting was over, he went back to his villa in Campania. Once home, he asked his servants to fill his bath. Then Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus Senior stretched out in the water with a sigh of bliss, opened the veins of both wrists with a lancet, and drifted into the warm, infinitely welcome arms of death.

"Oh, how can I bear such a homecoming?" Vatia Junior asked Aulus Hirtius. "Caesar murdered, my father suicided " He broke down again, wept bitterly. " and Rome in the clutches of Marcus Antonius," Hirtius said grimly. "I wish I could see a way out, Vatia, but I can't. No one can stand against Antonius, he's capable of anything from blatant illegality to summary execution without trial. And he has the legions on his side." "He's buying the legions," said Junia, very glad to see her husband home. "I could kill my brother Brutus for setting all of this in motion, but Porcia pulls his strings." Vatia wiped his eyes, blew his nose. "Will Antonius and his tame Senate let you be consul next year, Hirtius?" he asked. "He says so. I'm careful not to thrust my face under his nose too often it's wiser to stay invisible. Pansa thinks the same. That's why we don't attend many meetings." "So there's no one with the clout to oppose him?" "Absolutely no one. Antonius is running wild."

4

And thus it did seem to Rome's and Italy's leading men of business and politics during that dreadful spring and summer after the Ides of March. Brutus and Cassius wandered from place to place around the Campanian coast, Porcia fastened to Brutus as by a rivet. On the one occasion when they found themselves in the same villa as Servilia and Tertulla, the five of them bickered constantly. News had come of the grain commissions, which mortally offended them how dare Antony palm them off with duties befitting mere quaestors? Cicero, calling on them, found Servilia convinced that she still possessed enough power in the Senate to have the decision reversed, Cassius in the mood for war, Brutus utterly despondent, Porcia carping and nagging as usual, and Tertulla in the depths of despair because she had lost her baby. He went away shattered. It's a shipwreck. They don't know what to do, they can't see a way out, they exist from day to day waiting for some axe or other to fall. The whole of Italy is foundering because malign children are running it and we less malign children have no defenses against their kind of chaos. We have become the tools of professional soldiers and the ruthless brute of a man who controls them. Was this what the Liberators envisioned when they conspired to eliminate Caesar? No, of course not. They could see no further than eliminating Caesar they genuinely thought that once he was gone, everything would go back to normal. Never understanding that they themselves would have to take the tiller of the ship of state. And in not taking it, they have let it run on the rocks. A shipwreck. Rome is done for.

The two sets of games in the new month of Julius, first those of Apollo, then those dedicated to Caesar's victories, diverted and amused the people, who poured into Rome from as far afield as Bruttium, the toe, and Italian Gaul, the rump atop the leg. It was high summer, very dry and hot time for a month of holiday. Rome's population almost doubled. Brutus, the absentee celebrant of the ludi Apollinares, had staked his all on a performance of the Tereus, a play by the Latin author Accius. Though the common people preferred the chariot races that opened and closed the seven days of the games, and in between thronged to the big theaters staging Atellan mimes and the musically rich farces of Plautus and Terence, Brutus was convinced that the Tereus would serve as a meter to tell him what the common people thought about the assassination of Caesar. The play was replete with tyrannicide and the reasons behind it a tragedy of epic proportions. Therefore it didn't appeal in the least to the common people, who didn't go to see it a fact that Brutus's ignorance of the common people rendered him incapable of grasping. The audience was an elite one, stuffed with literati like Varro and Lucius Piso, and the play was received with almost hysterical approval. After this news was relayed to Brutus, he went around for days convinced that he was vindicated, that the common people condoned Caesar's assassination, that soon a full reinstatement would come for the Liberators. Whereas the truth was that the production of the Tereus was a brilliant one, the acting superb, and the play itself so rarely staged that it came as a welcome change to dramatically jaded elite palates. Octavian, the celebrant of the ludi Victoriae Caesaris, had implanted no gauges to monitor popular response to his games, but was gifted with one by Fortuna herself. His games ran for eleven days, and were somewhat different in structure from the other games Rome saw fairly regularly throughout the warmer months. The first seven days were devoted to pageants and scenes, with the opening day's pageant, a re-enactment of Alesia, situated in the Circus Maximus a cast of thousands, mock battles galore, an exciting and novel display organized and directed by Maecenas, who demonstrated a rare talent for this sort of activity. To the principal funder of the games went the honor of giving the signal that they should begin, and Octavian, standing in the box, seemed to the enormous crowd to be a reincarnation of Caesar; much to Antony's annoyance, Octavian was cheered for a full quarter of an hour. Though this was immensely satisfying, Octavian well knew that it was not an indication that Rome belonged to him; it was an indication that Rome had belonged to Caesar. That was what upset Antony. Then, about an hour before sunset on the opening day, just as Vercingetorix sat cross-legged at Caesar's feet, a huge comet appeared in the northern skies above the Capitol. At first no one noticed it, then a few fingers pointed at the stella critina, and suddenly the whole two hundred thousand jammed into the Circus were on their feet, screaming wildly. "Caesar! The star is Caesar! Caesar is a god!" The next day's pageants and scenes, like the five more after them, were relegated to smaller venues around the city, but every day the comet rose about an hour before sunset, and shone through most of the night with eerie brilliance. Its head was as big as the moon, its tail swept behind it in two shimmering trails right across the northern heavens. And during the wild-beast hunts, the horse races, the chariot races and the other magnificent spectacles held in the Circus Maximus for the last four days of the games, the long-haired star personifying Caesar continued to shine. The very moment the games were over, it disappeared. Octavian had acted quickly. By the second day of the games, Caesar's statues throughout the city bore gilded stars on their foreheads. Thanks to Caesar's star, Octavian had won more than he lost, for Antony himself had forbidden the display of Caesar's golden chair and wreath in the parade, and Caesar's ivory statue was not carried in the procession of the gods. On the second day of the games, Antony had delivered a stirring speech to the audience in Pompey's theater, vigorously defending the Liberators and playing down Caesar's importance. But with that uncanny comet shining, all Antony's counter-measures went for nothing. To those who offered him comments or asked him questions, Octavian replied that the star must indicate Caesar's godhead; otherwise, why did it appear on the first day of his victory games and vanish the moment those games were over? Unanswerable in any other way. Inarguable. Even Antony could not contradict such unimpeachable evidence, while Dolabella chewed his nails down to the quick and thanked his primal instincts for not destroying Caesar's altar and column. Though he didn't re-erect them. Inside himself, Octavian looked at Caesar's star differently. Naturally it endowed Caesar's heir with some of Caesar's godly mystery; if Caesar were a god, then he was the son of a god. He saw that reflected in many eyes as he deliberately walked around Rome's less salubrious neighborhoods. This child of Palatine exclusivity had been quick to understand that to remain exclusive was no way to inspire love in the ordinary people. Nor would it have occurred to him that to stage a play full of droning terror and high-flown dialogue would tell him anything about the people who lived in Rome's less salubrious neighborhoods. No, he walked and talked, told those he met that he wished to learn about his father, Caesar please tell me your story! And many of the people he met were Caesar's veterans, in Rome for the two sets of games. They really liked him, deemed him humble, grateful, very ready to listen to anything they had to say. More important, Octavian discovered that Antony's public rudeness to him over the course of the games had been noticed, was strongly condemned. A core of invulnerable security was forming in him, for Octavian knew perfectly well what Caesar's star really meant. It was a message to him from Caesar that his destiny was to rule the world. His desire to rule the world had always seemed to be there, but so tenuous, so manifestly impossible that he had called it a daydream, a fantasy. But from the moment the long-haired star had appeared, he knew otherwise. The sense of destiny had suddenly become certainty. Caesar meant him to rule the world. Caesar had passed to him the task to heal Rome, enhance her empire, endow her with unimaginable power. Under his care, under his aegis. I am the man. I will rule the world. I have time to be patient, time to learn, time to rectify the mistakes I must surely make, time to grind opposition down, time to deal with everyone from the Liberators to Marcus Antonius. Caesar made me heir not just to money and estates, but to his clients and adherents, his power, his destiny, his godhead. And by Sol Indiges, by Tellus, and by Liber Pater, I will not disappoint him. I will be a worthy son. I will be Caesar.