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

When Octavian learned that Antony had changed his mind about driving for Rome through Campania and turned to follow his first three legions up the Adriatic coast to Italian Gaul and Decimus Brutus, he decided to march on Rome. Though everyone from his stepfather, Philippus, to his epistolary adviser, Cicero, deemed him a feckless youth without any comprehension of reality, Octavian was well aware how perilous was this alternative. It was not undertaken with any illusions, nor was he sure what its outcome would be. But long hours of thought had convinced him that the one fatal mistake was to do nothing. If he remained in Campania while Mark Antony drove north on the wrong side of the Apennines, both the legions and Rome would conclude that Caesar's heir was a talker rather than a doer. His model was always Caesar, and Caesar dared everything. The last thing Octavian wanted was a battle, for he knew he didn't have the manpower or the skill to defeat a seasoned campaigner like Mark Antony. However, if he moved on Rome, he was telling Antony that he was still very much a player in the game, that he was a force to be reckoned with. No army lying in wait to oppose him, he marched up the Via Latina, took the diverticulum that led around the outside of the Servian Walls to the Campus Martius, set up a camp there, put his five thousand men into it, then led two cohorts into Rome and peacefully occupied the Forum Romanum. There he was greeted by the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, who welcomed this new patrician on behalf of the Plebs and invited him to mount the rostra, speak to the very thin crowd. "No Senate?" he asked Cannutius. Cannutius sneered. "Fled, Caesar, every last one of them, including all the consulars and senior magistrates." "So I cannot appeal for a legal deposition of Antonius." "They're too afraid of him to do it." After a word to Maecenas to send out his agents and try to drum up a decent audience, Octavian went to his house and changed into his toga and high-soled boots, then returned to the Forum to find about a thousand hardened Forum frequenters assembled. He climbed on to the rostra and proceeded to give a speech that came as a gratifying surprise to the audience; it was lyrical, precise, structured, delivered with every rhetorical gesture and device perfect and a treat to listen to. He began by praising Caesar, whose exploits he lauded for what they were done for the greater glory of Rome, ever and always for the greater glory of Rome. "For what is Rome's greatest man, if he is not the glory of Rome herself? Until the day he was murdered he remained Rome's most faithful servant the bringer of riches, the enhancer of empire, the living personification of Rome!" After the hysterical cheers died down, he went on to discuss the Liberators and demanded justice for Caesar, struck down by a paltry group of little men obsessed with their perquisites of office and their First Class privileges, not with the greater glory of Rome. Proving himself as good an actor and impersonator as Cicero, he went through them one by one, starting with Brutus and miming his cowardly behavior at Pharsalus; talked of the ingratitude of Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, who owed all that they were to Caesar; imitated Minucius Basilus in the throes of torturing a slave; told how he himself had seen the amputated head of Gnaeus Pompeius after Caesennius Lento had done that deed. Not one of the twenty-three assassins escaped his merciless derision, his razor wit. After which he asked the crowd why Marcus Antonius, who was Caesar's close cousin, had been so compassionate, so tolerant of the Liberators? Hadn't he, Caesar Filius, seen Marcus Antonius huddled with Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus in Narbo, where the plot was hatched? Wasn't it true that Marcus Antonius again had huddled with Gaius Trebonius outside the Curia Pompeia while the rest went inside and used their daggers on Caesar? Hadn't Antonius murdered hundreds of unarmed Roman citizens in the Forum? Hadn't Antonius accused him, Caesar Filius, of attempted murder without a shred of proof? Hadn't Antonius thrown Roman citizens from the Tarpeian Rock without trial? Hadn't Antonius abused his office by selling everything from the Roman citizenship to tax exemptions? "But I have bored you for long enough," he concluded. "All I have left to say is that I am Caesar! That I intend to win for myself the public standing and legal offices that my beloved father won! My beloved father, who is now a god! If you do not believe me, look now to the spot where Caesar was burned and see that Publius Dolabella admitted Caesar's godhead by re-erecting his altar and column! Caesar's star in the heavens said everything! Caesar is Divus Julius, and I am his son! I am Divi Filius, and I will live up to everything that the name Caesar embodies!" Drawing a long breath, he turned amid the cheering and walked from the rostra to Caesar's altar and column, there to pull a fold of toga over his head and stand praying to his father. It was a memorable performance, one that the troops he had brought into the city never forgot, and were assiduous in spreading to every soldier they came into contact with in later times. That was the tenth day of November. Two days later, word came that Mark Antony was fast approaching Rome on the Via Valeria with the Legio Alauda, which he put into camp at Tibur, not far away. Hearing that all Antony had was one legion, Octavian's men started hoping for battle. That was not to be. Octavian went to the Campus Martius, explained that he refused to fight fellow Romans, pulled stakes and marched his troops north on the Via Cassia. At Arretium, the home of Gaius Maecenas, who belonged to its ruling family, he went to earth among friends and waited to see what Mark Antony would do.

Antony's first move was to summon the Senate, intending to have Octavian declared hostis a formal public enemy who was stripped of citizenship, was not entitled to trial, and could be killed on sight. But the meeting never took place; he received horrific news that forced him to leave the city immediately. The Legio Martia had declared for Octavian, had turned off the Adriatic road and was heading for Rome on the Via Valeria, thinking that Octavian was still in Rome. Having acted so precipitately that he had brought no soldiers with him, when Antony met the Legio Martia at Alba Fucentia he was in no condition to punish them as he had in Brundisium. No mean orator, he was obliged instead to try to make the legionaries see reason, talk them out of this mutiny. To no avail. The men apostrophized him as cruel and stingy, said flatly that they would fight for Octavian and no one else. When Antony offered them two thousand sesterces each, they refused to take the money. So he contented himself with informing them that they weren't worth a legionary's pinch of salt and returned to Rome thwarted, while the Legio Martia hied itself off to join Octavian at Arretium. The one thing Antony had learned from the Legio Martia was that none of the soldiers on Octavian's side or on his side would fight each other if he tried to bring on a battle. The little snake who was now openly calling himself Divi Filius could sit in Arretium inviolate. Once back in Rome, Antony proceeded to do something unconstitutional yet again: he summoned the Senate to a night meeting in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol. The Senate was forbidden to conduct a meeting after sundown, but it went ahead anyway. Antony forbade the three tribunes of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, Lucius Cassius and Decimus Carfulenus to attend, and moved once more to have Octavian declared hostis. But before he could call for a division, more horrific news arrived. The Fourth Legion had declared for Octavian too, and with it went his quaestor, Lucius Egnatuleius. For a second time he was unable to outlaw Caesar's heir, and to rub that in, Tiberius Cannutius sent him a message that, in the event of a bill of attainder against Octavian, he would have great pleasure in vetoing it when it came before the Plebs for ratification. So, while the Fourth Legion marched for Octavian in Arretium, Antony's meeting of the Senate ended in discussing petty subjects. Antony praised Lepidus lavishly for reaching an agreement with Sextus Pompeius in Nearer Spain, then took the province of Crete off Brutus and the province of Cyrenaica off Cassius. His own ex-province of Macedonia (now minus most of its fifteen legions) he gave to his praetor brother, Gaius Antonius. Worst of all, Antony didn't have Fulvia to advise him. She had gone into labor while he spoke in the House, and for the first time in a laudably large number of births, she suffered badly. Antony's second son by her was eventually born, leaving Fulvia seriously ill. He decided to call the boy Julius, which was a direct slap at Octavian, as it emphasized the Julian blood in the Antonii. Iullus (or Iulus) was Aeneas's son, the founder of Alba Longa, the Roman people and the Julians. All his self-serving cronies had gone into hiding, abandoning Antony to the counsel of his brothers, no help or consolation. Events had become so complex and unnerving that he just couldn't handle them, especially now that that dog Dolabella had deserted his post to rush off to Syria. In the end Antony decided that the only possible thing to do was to march for Italian Gaul to eject Decimus Brutus, who had replied to his order to quit the province with a curt refusal. That was what Fulvia had always suggested, and she had a habit of being right. Octavian would just have to wait until he had defeated Decimus; it had occurred to him that the moment Decimus was crushed, he would inherit Decimus's legions, who would feel no loyalty to Caesar's heir. Then he'd act! He hadn't had the wisdom or the patience to behave as he ought when Octavian had come on the scene welcome him and get to know him. Instead he had rebuffed the boy, who had turned nineteen on the twenty-third day of September. So now he found himself with an adversary whose quality was as unproven as it was unguessable. The best he could do before he left for Italian Gaul was to issue a series of edicts denouncing Octavian's army as a private one, therefore treasonous, and calling it Spartacist rather than Catilinarian, thus deriding Octavian's thoroughly Roman men as a rabble of slaves. The edicts also contained juicy canards about Octavian's homosexuality, his stepfather's gross gluttony, his mother's unchastity, his sister's reputation as a whore, and his blood father's puerile ineffectuality. Rome read them and laughed in disbelief, but Antony was not present to witness how they were received. He was on his way north.