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

On the fourth day of Sextilis, Antony had a reply from Brutus and Cassius, addressed to him privately. He had expected profuse apologies, but he didn't get them. Instead, Brutus and Cassius stubbornly maintained that they were legal praetors, could legally issue any edicts they wanted to issue, and could not be accused of anything other than consistently working for peace, harmony and liberty. Antony's threats, they said, held no terrors for them. Hadn't their own conduct proved that their liberty was more precious to them than any friendship with Marcus Antonius? They ended with a Parthian shot: "We would remind you that it is not the length of Caesar's life that is the issue, but rather, the briefness of his reign." What had happened to his luck? wondered Antony, feeling more and more that events were conspiring against him. Octavian had publicly forced him into a corner which had informed him that his control of the legions wasn't as complete as he had thought; and two praetors were busy telling him that it lay in their power to end his career in the same way they had ended Caesar's. Or so he took that defiant letter, chewing his lips and fuming. The briefness of a reign, eh? Well, he could deal with Decimus in Italian Gaul, but he couldn't deal with a war on two fronts, one with Decimus in the far north and another with Brutus and Cassius south in Samnite Italy, always ready to have another go at Rome. Octavian could have told him why he had lost his luck, but of course it never occurred to Antony to enquire of his most gnatlike enemy. He had lost it on that first occasion when he had been rude to Octavian. The god Caesar hadn't liked it. Time then, Antony decided, to concede enough to Brutus and Cassius to be rid of them so that he could concentrate on Decimus Brutus. So he convened the Senate the day after he received their letter and had the Senate award them a province each. Brutus was to govern Crete, and Cassius to govern Cyrenaica. Neither place possessed a single legion. They wanted provinces? Well, now they had provinces. Goodbye, Brutus and Cassius.

5

Cicero despaired, grew gloomier with every day that passed. This, despite the fact that he and Atticus had finally managed to evict the urban poor from Caesar's colony at Buthrotum. They had applied to Dolabella, who was very happy, after a long talk with Cicero, to take a huge bribe from Atticus that ensured the survival of the leather, tallow and fertilizer empire in Epirus. Atticus had needed some good news, for his wife had come down with the summer paralysis, and was gravely ill. Little Attica mourned because no one would let her see her mother, who had to stay in Rome while Atticus sent his daughter and her servants to isolation in his villa at Pompeii. Money had again become a terrible problem for Cicero, due in large measure to young Marcus, still on his Grand Tour and perpetually writing home for additional funds. Neither of the Quintuses was speaking to him, his brief marriage to Publilia hadn't yielded as much revenue as he had thought thanks to her wretched brother and mother, and Cleopatra's agent in Rome, the Egyptian Ammonius, was refusing to pay the Queen's promissory note. And after he had gone to so much trouble to have all his speeches and dissertations copied on the best paper, complete with marginal illustrations and exquisite script! It had cost him a fortune that her promissory note clearly said she was willing to refund him. Ammonius's grounds for refusing to pay up: that Caesar's death had caused her to decamp before the collected Ciceroniana was delivered! Then here it is, send it to her! was Cicero's reply. Ammonius just raised his brows and retorted that he was sure the Queen, home again safely in Egypt (the rumored shipwreck hadn't happened), had better things to do than read thousands of pages of Latin prating. So here he was with the finest edition of his entire works ever made, and no one willing to buy it! What he wanted to do, he had decided, was to leave Italy, go to Greece, confront young Marcus and then wallow in Athenian culture. His beloved freedman Tiro was working indefatigably toward this end, but where was the money to come from? Terentia, sourer than ever, was busy piling up the sesterces, but when applied to, had answered that at last count he had owned ten fabulous villas from Etruria to Campania, all stuffed with the most enviable art works, so if he was strapped for cash, sell a few villas and statues, don't write asking her to pay for his ridiculous follies! His encounters with Brutus went round and round without ever seeming to go anywhere; Brutus too was thinking of going to Greece. What he absolutely refused to do was to accept a grain-buying commission! Then the silly fellow sailed off with Porcia to the little island of Nesis, not far from the Campanian coast. Whereas Cassius had elected to take up his grain commissionership in Sicily, and was busy assembling a fleet; harvest was nearing. Then Dolabella, delighted at the promptness with which Atticus had paid his bribe, agreed to give Cicero permission to leave Italy how disgraceful, to think that a consular of his standing had to apply for permission to go abroad! Such was Caesar's dictate, which the consuls had not rescinded. Swallowing his ire, Cicero sold a villa in Etruria he never visited; now he had the money to go as well as the permission. What thrust him into actually going was the change in name of the month Quinctilis to the month Julius. When receiving letters dated Julius became utterly intolerable, Cicero hired a ship and sailed from Puteoli, where Cassius's grain fleet was assembling. But nothing was intended to proceed smoothly! Cicero's ship got as far as Vibo, off the coast of Bruttium, and couldn't make further headway because of high, contrary winds. Taking this as a message that he was not destined to leave Italy at this time, Cicero disembarked at the fishing village of Leucoptera, a hideously stinking, awful place. It was always the same; somehow the moment leaving Italy arrived, he couldn't bear to go. His roots were just too deeply implanted in Italian soil. Tired and in need of real hospitality, Cicero turned in at the gates of Cato's old estates in Lucania, expecting to find no one there. The lands had gone to one of Caesar's three ex-centurion crown-winning senators, who hadn't wanted estates so far from his home ground of Umbria, and sold them to an unknown buyer. It was the seventeenth day of Sextilis when Cicero's litter entered the gates; this awful summer was wearing down at last. Once inside, he saw that the lamps dotting the gardens were lit someone was home! Company! A good meal! And there at the door to welcome him was Marcus Brutus. His eyes suddenly brimming with tears, Cicero fell on Brutus's neck and hugged him fervently. Brutus had been reading, for he still had a scroll in his hand, and was very taken aback at the effusion of Cicero's greeting until Cicero explained his odyssey and its pain. Porcia was with her husband, but didn't join them for supper, a relief as far as Cicero was concerned. A very little Porcia went a very long way. "You won't know that the Senate has granted Cassius and me provinces," said Brutus. "I have Crete, Cassius has Cyrenaica. The news came just as Cassius was about to sail, so he decided not to be a grain commissioner, and handed his fleet over to a prefect. He's in Neapolis with Servilia and Tertulla." "Are you pleased?" Cicero asked, warm and content. "Not very, no, but at least we do have provinces." Brutus gave a sigh. "Cassius and I haven't been getting along together lately. He derided my interpretation of the reception of the Tereus, could talk about nothing except young Octavianus, who tried Antonius's temper dreadfully over those victory games in Caesar's honor. And of course the stella critina appeared over the Capitol, so all Rome's teeming hordes are calling Caesar a god, with Octavianus egging them on." "The last time I saw young Octavianus I was startled at the change in him," Cicero contributed, burrowing comfortably into his couch. How wonderful to enjoy a cozy meal with one of the few civilized men in Rome! "Very sprightly very witty very sure of himself. Philippus wasn't at all happy, confided to me that the young fool is becoming hubristic." "Cassius deems him dangerous" was Brutus's comment. "He tried to display Caesar's gold chair and wreath at his games, and when Antonius said no, he stood up to the senior consul as if he were Antonius's equal! Quite unafraid, extremely outspoken." "Octavianus won't last because he can't last." Cicero cleared his throat delicately. "What of the Liberators?" "Despite our being granted provinces, I think the prospects are grim," Brutus said. "Vatia Isauricus is back from Asia and fit to be tied, between Caesar's death and his father's suicide Octavianus is insisting that the Liberators must be punished and Dolabella is everybody's enemy, as well as his own worst enemy." "Then I shall go on to Rome at dawn," said Cicero. True to his word, he was ready to depart at first light, not really pleased that Porcia was there to farewell him too. He knew perfectly well that she despised him, considered him a braggart, a poseur, a man of straw. Well, he considered her a mannish freak who, like every other woman, had formed no opinions that hadn't belonged to a man first in her case, her father. Cato's villa was not pretentious, but it did have some truly magnificent murals. As they stood in the atrium, the increasing light fell upon a wall filled by a tremendous painting of Hector saying farewell to Andromache before going out to fight Achilles. The artist had caught Hector in the act of giving his son, Astyanax, back to his mother, but instead of looking at the child, she was gazing piteously at Hector. "Wonderful!" Cicero cried, drinking in the painting avidly. "Is it?" asked Brutus, staring at it as if he had never seen it until that moment. Cicero began to quote: