Augustus

CHAPTER FOUR

I. Letters: Strabo of Amasia to Nicolaus of Damascus, from Rome (43 B.C.)

My dear Nicolaus, I send you greetings, as does our old friend and tutor, Tyrannion. I send you greetings from Rome, where I arrived only last week, after a long and most wearying journey -from Alexandria, by way of Corinth; by sail and by oar; by cart, wagon, and horseback; and sometimes even on foot, staggering beneath the weight of my books. One looks at maps, and does not truly apprehend the extent and variety of the world. It is a new sort of education, the gaining of which does not require a master. Indeed, if one travels enough, the pupil may become the master; our Tyrannion, so learned in all things, has been at some pains to question me about what I have seen during my travels.

I am staying with Tyrannion in one of a little group of cottages on a hill overlooking the city. It is a sort of colony, I suppose; several established teachers (one does not call them philosophers in Rome, where philosophy is somewhat suspect) live here, and a few younger scholars who, like myself, have been invited to live and study with their former masters.

I was surprised when Tyrannion brought me here, so far away from the city; and I was even more surprised when he explained the reason. It seems that the public library in Rome is worse than useless; an incredibly small collection, often badly copied, and as many books in this dreadful Latin tongue as in our own Greek! But Tyrannion assures me that whatever texts I may need are available, though in private collections. One of his friends, who lives here with us, is that Athenodorus of Tarsus of whom we heard so much at Alexandria; he has, Tyrannion assures me, access to the best private collections in the city, to which we wandering scholars always are welcome.

Of this Athenodorus I must say a few words. He is a most impressive man. He is only a few years older than Tyrannion- perhaps in his middle fifties-but he gives one the impression that he has the wisdom of all the ages somehow within his power. He is aloof and hard, but not unkind; he speaks seldom, and never engages in those playful debates with which the rest of us amuse ourselves; and we seem to follow him, though he does not lead. It is said that he has powerful friends, though he never drops a name; and his personage is such that we hardly dare to discuss such matters, even out of his presence. Yet for all his power in the world and of the mind, there is a sadness within him, the source of which I cannot discover. I have resolved to talk to him, despite my trepidation, and to learn what I may.

Indeed, you will be getting these letters through his auspices; he has access to the diplomatic pouch that goes weekly to Damascus, and he has let me know that he will have these letters included.

Thus, my dear Nicolaus, begins my adventure in the world. According to my promise, I shall write you regularly, sharing whatever new learning I get. I regret that you could not come with me, and I hope that the family affairs that keep you in Damascus soon are solved, and that you can join me in this strange new world.

You must think me a bad friend and a worse philosopher; I am not the former, but I may be on my way to becoming the latter. I had resolved to write you every week-and it is nearly a month since I have put pen to paper.

But this is the most extraordinary of cities, and it threatens to engulf even the strongest of minds. Days tumble after each other in a frenzy such as neither of us could have imagined during our quiet years of study together in the calm of Alexandria. I wonder if, in the balm and somnolence of your beloved Damascus, you can even conceive the quality that I am trying to convey to you.

With some frequency I am struck by the suspicion (perhaps it is only a feeling) that we are too complacent in our Greek pride of history and language, and that we too easily assume a superiority to the "barbarians" of the West who are pleased to call themselves our masters. (I am, you see, becoming somewhat less the philosopher and somewhat more the man of the world.) Our provinces have their charm and culture, no doubt; but there is a kind of vitality here in Rome that a year ago I could not have been persuaded was even remotely attractive. A year ago, I had only heard of Rome; now I have seen it; and at this moment I am not sure that I will ever return to the East, or to my native Pontus.

Imagine, if you will, a city which occupies perhaps half the area of that Alexandria where we studied as boys-and then think ofthat same city containing within its precincts more than twice the number of people that crowded Alexandria. That is the Rome that I live in now-a city of nearly a million people, I have been told. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. They come here from all over the world-black men from the burning sands of Africa, pale blonds from the frozen north, and every shade between. And such a polyglot of tongues! Yet everyone speaks a little Latin or a little Greek, so that no one need feel a stranger.

And how they crowd themselves together, these Romans. Beyond the walls of the city lies some of the most beautiful countryside that you can imagine; yet the people huddle together here like fish trapped in a net and struggle through narrow, winding little streets that run senselessly, mile after mile, through the city. During the daylight hours, these streets-all of them-are literally choked with people; and the noise and stench are incredible. A few months before his death, the great Julius Caesar decreed that only in the dark hours between dusk and dawn might wagons and carts and beasts of burden be allowed in the city; one wonders what it must have been like before that decree, when horses and oxen and goods-wagons of all descriptions mingled with the people on these impossible streets.

Thus the ordinary Roman who lives in the city proper must never have any sleep. For the noise of the day becomes the din of the night, as drovers curse their horses and oxen, and the great wooden carts groan and clatter over the cobblestones.

No one ventures out alone after dark, except those tradespeople who must and the very rich who can afford a bodyguard; even on moonlit nights the streets are pitch dark, since the rickety tenements are built so high that it is impossible for even a vagrant ray of moonlight to find its way down into the streets. And the streets are filled with the desperate poor who would rob you and cut your throat for the clothes you wear and the little silver you might carry with you.

Yet those who live in these towering ramshackle buildings are little safer than those who would wander the streets at night; for they live in constant danger of fire. At night, in the safety of my hillside cottage, I can see in the distance the fires break out like flowers blooming in the darkness, and hear the distant shouts of fear or agony. There are fire brigades, to be sure; but they are uniformly corrupt and too few to accomplish much good.

And yet in the center of this chaos, this city, there is, as if it were another world, the great Forum. It is like the fora that we have seen in the provincial cities, but much grander-great columns of marble support the official buildings; there are dozens of statues, and as many temples to their borrowed Roman gods; and many more smaller buildings that house the various offices of government. There is a good deal of open space, and somehow the noise and stench and smoke from the surrounding city seem not to penetrate here at all. Here people walk in sunlight in open space, converse easily, exchange rumors, and read the news posted at the various rostra around the Senate House. I come here to the Forum nearly every day, and feel that I am at the center of the world.

I begin to understand this Roman disdain for philosophy. Their world is an immediate one-of cause and consequence, of rumor and fact, of advantage and deprivation. Even I, who have devoted my life to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, can have some sympathy for the state of the world which has occasioned this disdain. They look at learning as if it were a means to an end; at truth as if it were only a thing to be used. Even their gods serve the state, rather than the other way around.

Here is a copy of a poem found this morning on every gate of importance that leads into the city. I shall not attempt a translation; I transcribe it in its Latin: Stop, traveler, before you enter this farmhouse, and look to yourself. There is a boy lives here with the name of a man. You will dine with him at your peril. Oh, he'll ask you, never fear; he asks everyone. Last month his father died; now the boy carouses on the stinking wine of his freedom and lets the livestock run wild beyond the broken fences-except for one, the farrow of a pet pig he has taken into his household. Do you have a daughter?

Look to her, also. This boy once had a taste for girls lovely as she. He may change again.

I offer a gloss, in the manner of our old teachers. The "boy with the name of a man" is, of course, Gaius Octavius Caesar; the "father" who gave him the name is Julius Caesar; the "farrow" is one Clodia, daughter of the "pig" (that is the nickname given her by enemies), Fulvia, wife of Marcus Antonius, with whom Octavius alternately battles and reconciles. The "girl" alluded to in the last line is one Servilia, daughter of an ex-consul to whom Octavius was engaged, before (as it is said) under pressure from his own and Antonius's troops, he accepted a marriage agreement with Antonius's stepdaughter. There is, of course, more form than substance to the contract; the girl, I understand, is only thirteen years old. But it apparently has placated those forces that want to see Octavius and Antonius on amicable terms. The poem itself, no doubt, has other local allusions that I do not understand; it was almost certainly commissioned by one of the senatorial party who does not want a conciliation of Octavius and Antonius; it is a vulgar thing… But it does have something of a ring to it, does it not?

I am forever surprised. The name of Octavius Caesar is on everyone's lips. He is in Rome; he is out of Rome. He is the savior of the nation; he will destroy it. He will punish the murderers of Julius Caesar; he will reward them. Whatever the truth, this mysterious youth has captured the imagination of Rome; and I, myself, have not been immune.

So, knowing that our Athenodorus has long lived in and around Rome, I took the occasion yesterday evening, after we had dined, to ask him a few questions. (Gradually, he has unbent toward me, and now we may exchange as many as half a dozen words at a time.)

I asked him what manner of man this was, this Octavius Caesar, as he calls himself. And I showed him a copy of the poem that I sent you earlier.

Athenodorus looked at it, his thin, hooked nose almost touching the paper, his thin cheeks drawn inward, his thin lips pursed. Then he handed it back to me, with the same gesture that he has when he returns a paper I have given him for his emendations.

"The meter is uncertain," he said. "The matter is trivial."

I have learned patience with Athenodorus. Again, I questioned him about this Octavius.

"He is a man like any other," he said. "He will become what he will become, out of the force of his person and the accident of his fate."

I asked Athenodorus if he had ever seen this youth, or talked to him. Athenodorus frowned and growled:

"I was his teacher. I was with him at Apollonia when his uncle was killed and he took the path that has led him where he is today."

For a moment I thought that Athenodorus was speaking in metaphor; and then I saw his eyes and knew he was speaking the truth. I stammered: "You-you know him?"

Athenodorus almost smiled. "I dined with him last week."

But he would not speak more of him, nor answer my questions; he seemed to think them unimportant. He said only that his former student could have become a good scholar, had he chosen to do so.

So I am even more nearly at the center of the world than I imagined.

I have attended a funeral.

Atia, the mother of Octavius Caesar, is dead. A herald came through the streets, announcing that the services would be held the next morning in the Forum. So I have at last set eyes upon that man whose person now is the most powerful in Rome, and hence (I suppose) in the world.

I got to the Forum early, so that I would have a good place to see, and waited at the rostrum where Octavius Caesar was to deliver the oration. By the fifth hour of the morning, the Forum was nearly filled.

And then the procession came-the ushers with their flaming torches, the oboists and the buglers and the clarionists playing the slow march, the bier with the body propped upon it, the mourners-and behind the procession, walking alone, a slight figure, whom I took at first to be a youth, since his toga was bordered with purple; it did not occur to me that he might be a senator. But it soon became clear that it was Octavius himself, for the crowd stirred as he passed, trying to get a better view of him. The bearers set the bier before the rostrum, the chief mourners seated themselves on little chairs in front, and Octavius Caesar walked slowly to the bier and looked for a moment at the body of his mother. Then he mounted the rostrum and looked at the people-a thousand, or more-who had gathered for the occasion.

I was standing very close-not more than fifteen yards away. He seemed very pale, very still, almost as if he himself were the corpse. Only his eyes were alive-they are a most startling blue. The crowd became very quiet; from the distance, I could hear the faint careless rumble of the city that went its way like a dumb beast.

Then he began to speak. He spoke very quietly, but in a voice so clear and distinct that he could be heard by everyone who had gathered.

I send you his words; the scribes with their tablets were there, and the next day copies of the oration were in every bookstall in the city.

He said: "Rome will not again see you, Atia, you who were Rome. It is a loss that only the example of your virtue makes endurable, which tells us that our grief, if held too deeply and too long, offends the very purpose of your living.

"You were a faithful wife to the father of my blood, that Gaius Octavius who was praetor and governor of Macedonia, and whose untimely death intervened between his person and the consulship of Rome. You were a stern and loving mother to your daughter, Octavia, who weeps now before your bier, and to your son, who stands before you for the last time and speaks these poor words. You were the dutiful and proper niece ofthat man who gave at last to your son the father of whom he had been cheated by fate, that Julius Caesar who was villainously murdered within earshot of this very spot where you so nobly lie.

"Of an honored Roman name, you had in full degree those old virtues of the earth which have nurtured and sustained our nation throughout its history. You spun and wove the cloth that furnished your household its clothing; your servants were as your own children; you honored the gods of your house and of your city. Through your gentleness you had no enemy but time, who takes you now.

"Oh Rome, look upon the one who lies here now, and see the best of your nature and your heritage. Soon we shall take these remains beyond the city walls, and there the funeral pyre will consume the receptacle of all that Atia was. But I charge you, citizens, do not let her virtues be entombed with her ashes. Rather let that virtue become your Roman lives, so that, though Atia's person be but ash, yet the better part of her will live on, entombed in the living souls of all Romans who come after her.

"Atia, may the spirits of the dead keep your rest."

A long silence stayed upon the crowd. Octavius stood for a moment on the rostrum. Then he descended, and they bore the body outside the Forum, and beyond the city walls.

I cannot bring myself to believe what I have seen, or to give credence to what I have heard. In this chaos, there is no official news; nothing is posted on the walls of the Senate House; one cannot even be sure that there is a Senate any more. Octavius Caesar has joined with Antonius and Lepidus in what amounts to a military dictatorship; and the enemies of Julius Caesar are proscribed. More than a hundred senators-senators-have been executed, their property and wealth confiscated; and many times that number of wealthy Roman citizens, often of noble name, are either murdered or fled from the city, their property and wealth in the hands of the triumvirs. Merciless. Among those proscribed: Paullus, the blood brother of Lepidus. Lucius Caesar, the uncle of Antonius. And even the famous Cicero is on the published list. These three, and others, I imagine, have fled the city, and may escape with their lives.

The bloodiest of the work seems to be in the hands of Antonius's soldiers. With my own eyes I have seen the headless bodies of Roman senators littering the very Forum which a week ago was their chief glory; and I have heard, from the safety of my hill, the screams of the rich who have waited too long to flee Rome and their riches. All except the poor, those with moderate wealth, and the friends of Caesar, walk in apprehension of what the morrow might bring, whether their names have been posted or not.

It is said that Octavius Caesar sits in his home and will not show his face nor view the dead bodies of his former colleagues. It is also said that it is Octavius himself who insists that the proscriptions be carried out ruthlessly, at once, and to the letter. One does not know what one may with safety believe.

Is this the Rome that I thought I was beginning to know, after these crowded months? Have I understood these people at all? Athenodorus will not discuss the matter with me; Tyrannion shakes his head sadly.

Perhaps I am less the man and more the youth than I had believed.

Cicero did not escape.

Yesterday, on a cool, bright December afternoon, wandering among the bookstalls in the shop area behind the Forum (it is safe to be on the streets now), I heard a great commotion; and against my better judgment, out ofthat curiosity that will someday lead me either to fame or death, I made my way inside the Forum gates. A great crush of people was milling around the rostrum near the Senate House.

"It's Cicero," someone said, and the name went like a whispering sigh among the people. "Cicero…"

Not knowing what to expect, but dreading what I would see, I pushed my way through the crowd.

There on the Senate rostrum, placed neatly between two severed hands, was the withered and shrunken head of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Someone said that it had been placed there by order of Antonius himself.

It was the same rostrum from which, only three weeks before, Octavius Caesar had spoken so gently of his mother, who had died. Now another death sat upon it; and I could not help, at that moment, being somehow pleased that the mother had died before she had been made witness to what her son had wrought.

II. Letter: Marcus Junius Brutus to Octavius Caesar, from Smyrna (42 B. c.)

I cannot believe that you truly apprehend the gravity of your position. I know that you bear me no love, and I would be foolish if I pretended that I bore you much more; I do not write you out of regard for your person, but out of regard for our nation. I cannot write to Antonius, for he is a madman; I cannot write to Lepidus, for he is a fool. I hope that I may be heard by you, who are neither.

I know that it is through your influence that Cassius and I have been declared outlaws and condemned to exile; but let neither of us believe that such a condemnation has more permanent force of law than can be sustained by a flustered and demoralized Senate. Let neither of us pretend that such an edict has any kind of permanence or validity. Let us speak practically.

All of Syria, all of Macedonia, all of Epirus, all of Greece, all of Asia are ours. All of the East is against you, and the power and wealth of the East is not inconsiderable. We control absolutely the eastern Mediterranean; therefore you can expect no aid from your late uncle's Egyptian mistress, who might otherwise furnish wealth and manpower to your cause. And though I bear him no love, I know that the pirate, Sextus Pompeius, is nipping at your heels from the west. Thus I do not fear for myself or my forces the war that now seems imminent.

But I do fear for Rome, and for the future of the state. The proscriptions that you and your friends have instituted in Rome bear witness to that fear, to which my personal grief must be subordinate.

So let us forget proscriptions and assassinations; if you can forgive me the death of Caesar, perhaps I can forgive you the death of Cicero. We cannot be friends to each other; neither of us needs that. But perhaps we can be friends to Rome.

I implore you, do not march with Marcus Antonius. Another battle between Romans would, I fear, destroy what little virtue remains in our state. And Antonius will not march without you.

If you do not march, I assure you that you will have my respect and my thanks; and your future will be assured. If we cannot work together out of friendship to each other, yet we may work together for the good of Rome.

But let me hasten to add this. If you reject this offer of amity, I shall resist with all my strength; and you will be destroyed. I say this with sadness; but I say it.

III. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)

And after the triumvirate was formed and the Roman enemies of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus were put down, there yet remained in the West the forces of the pirate Sextus Pompeius, and in the East the exiled murderers of the divine Julius, that Brutus and Cassius who threatened the safety and order of Rome. True to his oath, Caesar Augustus resolved to punish the murderers of his father and restore order to the state, and deferred the matter of Sextus Pompeius to another time, taking only those actions against Pompeius that were necessary for the safety of the moment.

My energies at this time were devoted to enrolling and equipping in Italy those legions that were to lay siege to Brutus and Cassius in the East, and to organizing the lines of supply that would allow us to do battle on that distant soil. Antonius was to send eight legions to Amphipolis, on the Aegean coast of Macedonia, to harass the troops of Brutus and Cassius, so that they might not find an advantage of terrain in which to fight. But Antonius delayed the departure of his legions, so that they were forced to find an inferior position on the low ground west of Philippi, where the army of Brutus rested in security. It became necessary for Antonius to send other legions in support of those in Macedonia, but the fleets of Brutus and Cassius hovered around the harbor at Brindisi; so Augustus commanded me to insure safe passage for Antonius. And with the ships and legions that I had raised in Italy, we drove through the navy of Marcus Junius Brutus and landed twelve legions of troops upon the Macedonian shore at Dyrrachium.

But at Dyrrachium, Augustus fell gravely ill, and we would have waited in fear of his life; but he bade us continue, knowing that all would be lost if we delayed our attack upon the armies of the outlaws. And eight of our legions marched across the country to join the beleaguered advance troops of Marcus Antonius at Amphipolis.

Our way was hindered by the cavalry of Brutus and Cassius, and we suffered severe losses on our journey, arriving at Amphipolis with our troops weary and demoralized. When it became clear that the armies of Brutus and Cassius were securely entrenched upon the high ground at Philippi, protected on the north by mountains and on the south by a marsh that stretched from the camp to the sea, I resolved to send an urgent message to Caesar Augustus; for our task seemed hopeless to our soldiers, and I knew that their failing spirits must be revived.

And so, though gravely ill, Augustus forced his way across the country to reinforce us, and went among his men on a litter, being too weak to walk; and though his face was that of a corpse, his eyes were fierce and hard, and his voice was strong, so that the men took heart and resolve from his presence.

We determined to strike boldly and at once, for each day of waiting cost us supplies, while Brutus and Cassius had all the lanes of the sea for their support. So while three of the legions of Augustus, under my command, pretended to be intent upon constructing a causeway across the great marsh that protected the enemy's southern flank, thus diverting a large number of Republican troops to attack us, the legions of Marcus Antonius struck boldly and broke through the weakened line of Cassius, and pillaged the camp before Cassius could recover from his surprise. And Cassius, on a slight hill with a few of his officers, looked (it is said) to the north, and there saw the troops of Brutus in what he took to be full flight; knowing that his own army was defeated, and thinking that all was lost, he despaired; and fell upon his sword, ending his life there in the dust and blood at Philippi, taking revenge upon himself, it seemed, for the murder of the divine Julius, two years and seven months before.

What Cassius did not know was that the army of Brutus was not in flight. Divining our plan, and knowing that the army of Augustus was dispersed in its diversionary tactic, he made haste to invest our camp, and overran it, capturing many soldiers and killing many more. Augustus himself, half-conscious in his illness and unable to move, was carried from his tent by his doctor and hidden in the marsh until the battle was over and night fell, and he could be carried stealthily to where the remnants of the army had retreated and had joined with the troops of Marcus Antonius. The doctor swore that he had had a dream telling him to remove the ill Augustus, so that his life might be spared…

IV. Letter: Quintus Homtius Flaccus to His Father, from west of Philippi (42 B. c.)

My dear father, if you receive this letter, you will know that your Horace, a day ago a proud soldier in the army of Marcus Junius Brutus, at this moment, on this cold autumn night, sits in his tent, writing these words by the flickering light of a lantern, in disgrace with himself, if not with his friends. Yet he feels curiously free from the obsession that has gripped him these last several months; and if he is not happy, he is at least beginning to know who he is… Today I was in my first battle; and I must tell you at once that at the first moment of serious danger to myself I dropped my shield and sword, and I ran.

Why I ever embarked upon this venture, I do not know; and surely you are too intelligent to know either. When, out ofthat kindness of yours to which I have grown so used that I sometimes do not think of it, you sent me to study in Athens year before last, I had no thought of engaging myself in anything so foolish as politics. Did I align myself with Brutus and accept a tribuneship in his army in a contemptible effort to rise above my station into the aristocracy? Was Horace ashamed of being the son of a mere freedman? I cannot believe that that is true; even in my youth and arrogance, I have known that you are the best of men, and I could not wish for a more noble and generous and loving father.

It was, I believe, because in my studies I had forgotten the world, and had begun almost to believe that philosophy was true. Liberty. I joined the cause of Brutus for a word; and I do not know what the word means. A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.

I must tell you now that I did not drop my shield and run from the battle out of mere cowardice-though that was no doubt part of it. But when I suddenly saw one of Octavius Caesar's soldiers (or maybe Antonius's, I do not know) advancing toward me with naked steel flashing in his hands and in his eyes, it was as if time suddenly stood still; and I remembered you, and all the hopes you had of my future. I remembered that you had been born a slave, and had managed to buy your freedom; that your labor and your life were early turned to your son, so that he might live in an ease and comfort and security that you never had. And I saw that son uselessly slaughtered on an earth he had no love for, for a cause he did not understand- and I had a sense of what your years might have been with the knowledge of your son's discarded life-and I ran. I ran over bodies of fallen soldiers, and saw their empty eyes staring at the sky which they would never see again; and it did not matter to me whether they were friend or foe. I ran.

If the fates are kind to me, I shall return to you in Italy. I shall fight no more. Tomorrow, I shall post this letter to you and make my preparations. If we are not attacked, I shall be in no danger; if we are, I shall run again. In any event, I shall not linger at this massacre that leads to an end I cannot see.

I do not know who will be victorious-the Party of Caesar or the Party of the Republic. I do not know the future of our country, or my own future. Perhaps I shall have to disappoint you, and become a tax collector like yourself. It is a position, however lowly in your eyes, to which you lend dignity and honor by your presence. I am your son, Horace, and proud to be so.

V. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)

And Brutus withdrew once more to the high ground and entrenchments at Philippi, whence, it became clear, he did not propose to retreat. We knew, perhaps better than Brutus, that each day of waiting cost us dearly, for our supplies were running low; nothing could be transported over the sea controlled by Brutus's navy; behind us were the flat and barren plains of Macedonia, and before us the hostile and barren hills of Greece. Thus we made to be copied sheets of reproaches to the officers of Brutus's army, taunting them with their timidity and cowardice; and at night we shouted challenges across the campfires, so that the soldiers could not even sleep in honor, but dozed fitfully in their shame.

For three weeks Brutus waited, until at last his men, chafing beneath the burden of their inaction, would wait no longer; and Brutus, fearful that his army would be depleted by desertions, ordered his men to descend from the entrenchments that might have saved them, and to attack our camp.

In the late afternoon they came down from the hill like a northern storm; no cries or shouts escaped their lips, and we heard only the clump of hooves and the pad of feet in the dust that came with them like a cloud. I ordered our line to give way before the initial attack; and as the enemy streamed into us, we closed the lines on either side, so that he had to fight on two flanks at once. And we broke the army in two, and each of those parts into two again, so that he could not re-form himself to withstand our attacks. By nightfall, the battle was over; and the stars heard the moans of the wounded, and watched impassively the bodies that did not move.

Brutus escaped with what remained of his legions, and made his way to the wilderness beyond the entrenchments at Philippi, which we had invested. He would have attacked again with what remained of his army, but his officers refused to risk themselves; and in the early dawn, the day after the Ides of November, on a lonely hillock overlooking the carnage of his will and resolve, with a few of his faithful officers, he fell upon his sword; and the army of the Republic was no more.

Thus was the murder of Julius Caesar avenged, and thus did the chaos of treason and faction give way to the years of order and peace, under the Emperor of our state, Gaius Octavius Caesar, now the August.

VI. Letter: Gains Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B. c.)

After Philippi, slowly, with many stops along the way, more dead than alive, he came back to Rome; he had saved Italy from its enemies abroad, and it remained for him to heal the nation that was shattered within.

My dear Livy, I cannot tell you the shock I had upon seeing him for the first time after those many months, when they carried him in secret to his house on the Palatine. I, of course, had remained in Rome during the fighting, according to Octavius's orders, so that I could keep an eye on things and do what I could to prevent Lepidus, either out of conspiracy or incompetence, from wholly disrupting the internal government of Italy.

He was not quite twenty-two years old that winter when he returned from the fighting, but I swear to you he looked double -treble-that age. His face was waxen, and, slight though he always was, he had lost so much weight that his skin sagged upon his bones. He had the strength to speak only in a hoarse whisper. I looked at him, and I despaired of his life.

"Do not let them know," he said, and paused a long time, as if the uttering of that phrase had exhausted him. "Do not let them know of my illness. Neither the people nor Lepidus."

"I will not, my friend," I told him.

The illness had, in fact, begun the year before, during the time of the proscriptions, and had grown steadily worse; and though the physicians who attended him had been paid handsomely and threatened with their livelihood, if not their lives, for any breach of secrecy, rumors of the illness had crept out. The doctors (a dreadful lot, then as now) might as well not have been called in; they were able to do nothing except prescribe noxious herbs and treatments of heat and cold. He was able to eat almost nothing, and upon more than one occasion he had vomited blood. Yet as his body had weakened, it seemed that his will had hardened, so that he drove himself even more fiercely in his illness than he had in his health.

"Antonius," he said in that terrible voice, "will not return yet to Rome. He has gone into the East to gather booty and to strengthen his position. I agreed to it-I would prefer to have him steal from the Asians and the Egyptians than from the Romans:… I believe he expects me to die; and though he hopes for it, I suspect he doesn't want to be in Italy when it happens."

He lay back on his bed, breathing shallowly, his eyes closed. At length he regained his strength, and said:

"Give me the news of the city."

"Rest," I said. "We shall have time when you are stronger."

"The news," he said. "Though my body cannot move, my mind can."

There were bitter things I had to tell him, but I knew that he would not have forgiven me had I sweetened them. I said:

"Lepidus negotiates secretly with the pirate, Sextus Pompeius; he has some notion, I believe, of allying himself with Pompeius against either you or Antonius, whichever proves weaker. I have the evidence; but if we confront him with it, he will swear that he negotiates only to bring peace to Rome… Out of Philippi, Antonius is the hero and you are the coward. Antonius's pig of a wife and his vulture of a brother have spread the stories- while you cowered and quaked in fear in the salt marsh, Antonius bravely punished the enemies of Caesar. Fulvia makes speeches to the soldiers, warning that you will not pay them the bounties that Antonius promised; while Lucius goes about the countryside stirring up the landowner and the farmer with rumors that you will confiscate their properties to settle the veterans. Do you want to hear more?"

He even smiled a little. "If I must," he said.

"The state is very near to being bankrupt. Of the few taxes that Lepidus can collect, a trickle goes into the treasury; the rest goes to Lepidus himself and, it is said, to Fulvia, who, it is also said, is preparing to raise independent legions, in addition to those that rightfully belong to Antonius. I have no proof of this, but I imagine it is true… So it would seem that you got the lesser bargain in Rome."

"I would prefer the weakness of Rome to all the power of the East," he said, "though I am sure this is not what Antonius had in mind. He expects that if I do not die, I will go under with the problems here. But I will not die, and we will not go under." He raised himself a little. "We have much to do."

And the next day, in his weakness, he arose from his bed, and put his illness aside as if it were of no moment and no account.

We had much to do, he said… My dear Livy, that admirable history of yours-how might it evoke the bustles and delays, the triumphs and defeats, the joys and despairs of the years following Philippi? It cannot do so, and no doubt it should not. But I must not digress, even to praise you; for you will scold me again.

You have asked me to be more particular about the duties I performed for our Emperor, as if I were worthy of a place in your history. You honor me beyond my merits. Yet I am pleased that I am remembered, even in my retirement from public affairs.

The duties that I performed for our Emperor… I must confess that some of them seem to me now ludicrous, though of course they did not seem so then. The marriages, for example. Through the influence and by the edicts of our Emperor, it is now possible for a man of substance and ambition to contract a marriage on grounds that are rational-if "rational" is not too contradictory a word to describe such an odd and (I sometimes think) unnatural relationship. Such was not possible in the days of which I speak-in Rome, at least, and to those of public involvement. One married for advantage and political necessity- as, indeed, I myself did, though my Terentia was on occasion an amusing companion.

I must say, I was rather good at such arrangements-and I must also confess that as it turned out none were advantageous or even necessary. I have always suspected that it was that knowledge which led Octavius, some years later, to institute those not altogether successful marriage laws, rather than the kind of "morality" imputed to them. He has often chided me about my advice in those early days. For it was invariably wrong.

For example: The first marriage I contracted for him was in the very early days, before the formation of the triumvirate. The girl was Servilia, the daughter ofthat P. Servilius Isauricus who, when Cicero opposed Octavius after Mutina, agreed to stand for senior consul with Octavius against Cicero-and the marriage to his daughter was to be our surety that he would be supported by the power of our arms, if that became necessary. As it turned out, Servilius was impotent in his dealings with Cicero and was of no help to us; the marriage never took place.

The second was even more ludicrous than the first. It was to Clodia, daughter of Fulvia and stepdaughter to Marcus Antonius, and it was a part of the compact that formed the triumvirate; the soldiers wanted it, and we saw no reason to deny them their whim, however meaningless it was. The girl was thirteen years old, and as ugly as her mother. Octavius saw her twice, I believe, and she never set foot in his house. As you know, the marriage did nothing to quiet Fulvia or Antonius; they continued their plotting and their treason, so that after Philippi, when Antonius was in the East and Fulvia was openly threatening another civil war against Octavius, we had to make our position clear by effecting a divorce.

It was, however, my responsibility for the third contract which Octavius most nearly resented, I think; it was with Scribonia, and it was accomplished within the year after his divorce from Clodia, during our most desperate months, when it seemed that we would either be crushed by the Antonian uprisings in Italy, or by the encroachment of Sextus Pompeius from the south. In what seems now a too desperate effort at conciliation, I went to Sicily to negotiate with Sextus Pompeius-an impossible task, for Pompeius was an impossible man. He was a bit mad, I think-more like an animal than a human. He was an outlaw, and that in more than the legal sense; he is one of the few men with whom I have had converse who so repelled me that I had difficulty in dealing with him. I know, my dear Livy, that you admired his father; but you never met either of them, and you certainly did not know his son… In any event, I talked to Pompeius, and extracted what I thought was an agreement-and sealed the compact with an arrangement of marriage with that Scribonia, who was the younger sister of Pompeius's father-in-law. Scribonia, Scribonia… She has always seemed to me the epitome of womankind: coldly suspicious, politely ill-tempered, and narrowly selfish. It is a wonder that my friend ever did forgive me for that arrangement. Perhaps it was because from that marriage came the one thing that my friend loves as much as he loves Rome-his daughter, his Julia. He divorced Scribonia on the day of his daughter's birth, and it is a wonder that he ever married again. But he did marry again, and it was an arrangement in which I had no part… As it turned out, the marriage to Scribonia was fraudulent to begin with; for as I was negotiating with Pompeius, he himself was already deep in negotiations with Antonius, and the marriage contract was a mere ruse to lull our suspicions. Such, my dear Livy, was the nature of politics in those days. But I must say (though I would not repeat it to our Emperor), looking back on it all, these affairs did have their humorous side.

For my responsibility in arranging only one marriage have I ever felt any shame; even now, I cannot take it as lightly as I ought to be able to do-though I suppose no great harm was done.

At about the time I was negotiating with Pompeius and arranging the marriage with Scribonia, the barbarian Moors, aroused by Fulvia and Lucius Antonius, rose up against our governor in Outer Spain; our generals in Africa, again at the instigation of Fulvia and Lucius, began to war with each other; Lucius pretended that his life had been threatened, and marched with his (and Fulvia's) legions on Rome. They were repulsed there by our friend Agrippa, and surrounded in the town of Perusia, whose inhabitants (Pompeians and Republicans, mostly) aided them with vigor and enthusiasm. We really didn't know how much a part in all this Marcus Antonius had, though we suspected; therefore we did not dare destroy his brother, for fear that if he were guilty, Marcus Antonius would use this as a pretext to attack us from the east; and that if he were innocent, he would misunderstand our action, and take revenge upon us. We did not punish Lucius, but we showed littie mercy to those who had aided him, putting the most treacherous to death and exiling the less dangerous-though we let the ordinary citizens go free, and even recompensed them for the property we destroyed. Among those exiled (and this, my dear Livy, will appeal to your perhaps overdeveloped sense of irony) was one Tiberius Claudius Nero, who was allowed to make his way to Sicily with his newborn son, Tiberius, and his very young wife, Li via.

During all the months of the turmoil in Italy, we had written often to Antonius, trying to describe the activities of his wife and brother and trying to ascertain his part in the disturbances; and though we received letters from Antonius, none of them replied to those we had sent, as if he had not received them. It was winter, of course, when we wrote most urgently; and few of the sea lanes were open; it is possible that he did not receive them. In any event, the spring and part of the summer passed without clear word from him; and then we got an urgent message from Brindisi that Antonius ‘s fleet was sailing toward the harbor, and that the navy of Pompeius was coming up from the north to join him. And we learned that some months earlier, Fulvia had sailed to Athens to meet her husband.

We did not know what to expect, and yet we had no choice. Weak as we were, with our legions scattered against the various troubles on our borders and in our nation, we marched toward Brindisi, fearful that Antonius had landed and was leading his soldiers to meet us. But we learned that the city of Brindisi had refused to let Antonius through the harbor gates, and so we encamped and awaited what would happen. Had Antonius attacked in full force, we no doubt could not have survived.

But he did not attack, nor did we. Our own soldiers were famished and ill-equipped; the soldiers of Antonius were weary with their travels and wanted only to see their families in Italy. Had either side been foolish enough to press the issue, we probably would have had a mutiny.

And then an agent that we slipped among the Antonian forces returned with some startling news. Antonius and Fulvia had quarreled bitterly at Athens; Antonius had left in a rage; and now Fulvia, suddenly and inexplicably, was dead.

We encouraged some of our trusted soldiers to fraternize with the troops of Antonius; and soon deputations from both sides approached their respective leaders and demanded that Antonius and Octavius once more reconcile their differences, so that not again would Roman be pitted against Roman.

And thus the two leaders met, and another war was averted. Antonius protested that Fulvia and his brother had acted without his authority, and Octavius pointed out that he had taken no revenge on either of them for their actions, out of regard for their relationship to Antonius. A pact was signed; a general amnesty for all previous enemies, of Rome was declared; and a marriage was arranged.

The marriage was negotiated by me; and it was between Antonius and Octavia, the older sister of our Emperor, who had been widowed only a few months ago, and left with her infant son, Marcellus.

My dear Livy, you know my tastes-but I almost believe I could have loved women, had many of them been like Octavia. I admired her then as I do now-she was very gentie and without guile, she was quite beautiful, and she was one of the two women I have ever known who had both an extensive knowledge and deep understanding of philosophy and poetry, the other being Octavius's own daughter, Julia. Octavia was not a plaything, you understand. My old friend Athenodorus used to say that had she been a man, and less intelligent, she could have become a great philosopher.

I was with Octavius when he explained the necessity to his sister-of whom he was very fond, as you know. He could not look her in the eye when he spoke. But Octavia merely smiled at him and said: "If it must be done, my brother, it must be done; I shall try to be a good wife to Antonius and remain a good sister to you."

"It is for Rome," Octavius said.

"It is for us all," his sister said.

It was necessary, I suppose; we hoped that such a marriage might lead us to a lasting peace; we knew that it would give us a few years. But I must say, I still feel that twinge of regret and sorrow; Octavia must have had some rather bad times.

Though, as it turned out, Antonius was a rather intermittent husband. That might have made it more endurable for her. Yet she never spoke harshly of Marcus Antonius, even in later years.