Augustus

V

A BOY WITH A NAME

44 B.C.

The city stood on an extended hill overlooking the river Aous, where the remains of its ancient perimeter walls can still be seen. Today the marble columns of the council chamber, and a street with a central stone pavement on an extended hill overlooking the Aous, are evidence that the place thrived in antiquity. In spring, this part of the site is smothered in wildflowers. Not far away are the foundations of a public bath and a large stoa, or roofed colonnade. A small theater, or odeon, with seats for six hundred, has had its steps restored and is used for modern concerts. A larger theater, seating 7,500, is in a poor state of repair.

The small acropolis at the far end of the city, where a few olive trees grow, gives a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape; originally it housed a temple, probably dedicated to Apollo or his sister, Artemis.

Apollonia, although little remembered today, was what Cicero called a “great and important city.” Founded in the seventh century B.C., for many years it was a place of no very great significance, because it gave access only to the turbulent tribes of Illyria and Macedonia. Italians traveling to Greece or the Middle East found it easier and safer to make their way by sea from Brundisium.

However, Rome needed a fast and reliable connection between Italy and its new provinces, especially for the safe and speedy movement of armies. So in 130 B.C. the Via Egnatia was built. This highway, linked by a loop road to Dyrrachium and Apollonia, transformed the strategic importance of the two ports. It ran along a river into high uplands, skirted two mountain lakes, and descended to a plain near Thessalonica on the seacoast. It then followed the littoral to the small town of Philippi and on to the Hellespont (the Dardanelles).

In late 45 B.C., the eighteen-year-old Gaius Octavius settled into lodgings at Apollonia. He was accompanied by Agrippa and another early friend, Quintus Salvidienus Rufus, who was older than Agrippa and, like him, not of noble blood; also, perhaps, by Maecenas. Little is known of Salvidienus’ origins, but he may have been an officer of Caesar’s. Perhaps Octavius got to know and like him in Spain; in any event, he was one of the small group of intimates on whom he depended.

The young men exercised with squadrons of cavalry. By virtue of his kinship with the dictator, Octavius was of high status, and senior officers used to call on him. He gave everyone a warm welcome and was popular both in the city and in army circles. He was given good reports by his instructors.

Apollonia housed a well-known school for public speaking (or rhetoric), comparable with those at Athens and Rhodes. Octavius studied there, and read Greek and Roman literature. He wanted to become proficient in Greek as well as Latin, and he was an assiduous student. As well as literature, he studied elocution. He brought with him a tutor from Rome, Apollodorus of Pergamum, one of the most celebrated teachers of the day, although a very old man.

The month of March, 44 B.C., would soon be over. The legions were in a high state of readiness. Julius Caesar was expected any day now, and would soon lead them against Parthia.

Then, one afternoon, a messenger arrived with an urgent letter for Octavius, just as he and his companions were going into dinner. A freedman of Octavius’ mother, the man was in a state of high excitement and dismay. No wonder, for Atia had terrible news to tell. Writing on March 15, 44 B.C., she reported that Julius Caesar had been assassinated at Rome before midday by Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and others. She asked Octavius to return to her as she had no idea what would happen next. According to Nicolaus, she wrote: “You must show yourself a man now and consider what you ought to do, and implement your plans as fortune and opportunity allow.”

The freedman confirmed the contents of the letter, saying that a large number of people had taken part in the murder, and they intended to hunt down and massacre all Caesar’s relatives.

In no time, rumors spread through Apollonia that some catastrophe had taken place, although no one was entirely sure what. After sunset, a delegation of distinguished Apollonians, carrying torches and followed by numerous curious bystanders, presented themselves at Octavius’ front door. They asked, as his well-wishers, what news had come. To avoid setting off a panic, Octavius decided to answer only the leaders of the group, who with some difficulty persuaded the rest to disperse and then, having learned what had happened, eventually departed as well.

Sitting in lamplight, he and his small circle of inexperienced friends spent the rest of the night talking and talking. What was to be done? One line of thought was that they ought to join the army outside the city. Octavius should persuade its commander, Marcus Acilius Glabrio, to let him lead the troops to Rome, where they would take revenge on his great-uncle’s murderers. The soldiers had loved Caesar and would loathe his killers. Their sympathy would increase when they met his young, now defenseless relative.

But the cautious Octavius felt that he was too inexperienced to carry off a bold action of this kind. Too much was uncertain, too little known. He would wait for further news.

Soon another letter from Atia and Octavius’ stepfather arrived. They advised him not to get overexcited or overconfident yet, but to bear in mind what Caesar, who had eliminated all his enemies, suffered at the hands of his closest friends. He should, at least temporarily, take the less dangerous course of acting like a private citizen. The letter repeated Atia’s earlier advice to return to Rome quickly and quietly.

This must have struck Octavius as rather odd. Why should Atia and Philippus suppose that their mild-mannered and totally inexperienced son should be considering bold measures? It was too soon for them to have heard back from Octavius about any proposal to invade Italy, even if he had decided to discuss it with them. There is only one plausible answer to the puzzle: his family were aware that Caesar’s closest supporters—his personal friends and his kitchen cabinet of aides and advisers—were talking about Octavius at Rome, and were planning a political role for him of some sort. One or more of them must have written to him, telling him of the bitter gloom into which the dictator’s inner circle of professionals had been plunged, and of their determination somehow or another to fight back. They knew or guessed that the now leaderless army was enraged, but impotent; and that the city mob, after a day or two of stunned silence, bitterly missed the one politician on whom they could depend to protect their interests. What had happened was not a revolution, but a coup from above.

Since Octavius’ departure from Rome a few months previously, letters and correspondents must have made him aware that the atmosphere had steadily deteriorated even before the assassination. Now dispatches gave him the details of how his great-uncle had died.

The dictator’s position was simultaneously impermeably strong and invisibly very weak. Romans were enormously proud of the Republic formed after the expulsion of the kings in the sixth century B.C. The bien-pensant ruling class expected Caesar, having won his civil war and being in complete control of Rome and its empire, to reinstall Rome’s traditional constitution.

But many were beginning to suspect that Caesar had no intention of doing this. His critics believed that, with an insatiable desire for total power, he was set on establishing a monarchy; they decided that the time for talking had passed. A conspiracy was formed, led by former enemies in the civil war, leading members of the regime, and even close friends.

Caesar himself almost certainly did not aim at kingship. However, he realized that his reconciliation policy had failed. The gap between him and Romans of the old school was unbridgeable and, seeing no point in disguising his power, in February of 44 B.C. he had himself declared dictator for life. For the plotters, this was the clinching proof of their worst fears. The tyrant had to be struck down before he left for the east.

The dictator was due to quit Rome on March 18 to join his legions in Greece. He was to meet the Senate for a final time before his departure three days earlier, on the Ides of March. (The Roman month lasted either twenty-nine or thirty-one days; “Ides” was the name for the thirteenth or the fifteenth, depending on the month’s length.) The meeting with the Senate took place in Pompey’s theater on the Campus Martius. Caesar did not arrive until about eleven o’clock in the morning. He was not in the best of form; there had been a storm the night before, and both he and his wife, Calpurnia, had slept badly. She said she had had a dream portending disaster.

Caesar entered the meeting hall and took his seat at one end, on his special chair between the seats of the two consuls. One of these was Antony, but he was delayed in the anteroom by a conspirator. In spite of his closeness to Caesar, he knew that the assassination was being planned; he had treacherously kept the information to himself. Before the session opened, a large number of senators pressed around the dictator presenting various pleas. They were all members of the plot.

One of them grabbed the dictator’s purple toga to stop him from getting up or using his hands. “Why, this is violence!” he shouted. Someone stabbed him from behind, but he managed to struggle to his feet and turn round to grab his assailant’s hand. Men pressed around Caesar in a tight scrum as each tried to stab him; in the process, a number of the assassins accidentally cut one another.

The wounded victim twisted from side to side, bellowing like a wild animal. He was amazed to see in the throng Marcus Junius Brutus, the son of his favorite mistress, Servilia, and a man of whom he had grown very fond. After Brutus had delivered his blow, Caesar saw that further struggle was pointless. He wound himself in his toga so that he would be decently covered, and fell neatly at the base of the statue of Pompey the Great. He was later found to have received twenty-three wounds, of which only one had been fatal.

Within a day or so, Octavius decided to follow his parents’ advice that he should set sail for Italy. He had become a well-lived figure in Apollonia and many of its citizens came to his house begging him to stay. He would be safe with them in a dangerous world. When he insisted on leaving, a large crowd escorted him to the quay.

Octavius had discovered that the legions he had met in Greece were on his side; on his way to Rome he intended to test opinion among the troops who had been waiting at Brundisium to accompany Caesar across the Adriatic. Having no idea what their reception would be, the small band of friends made landfall a little way from Brundisium, near a small town off the main road called Lupiae (today’s Lecce, in Puglia), to which they walked. There they met people who had been in Rome when Caesar had been buried. This had been a sensational occasion.

The dead dictator had lain in state in the Forum, where Mark Antony, who had briefly gone into hiding, gave a eulogy. The mob, infuriated by the assassination, went berserk. They burned down the Senate House and looted the shopping arcades on either side of the Forum, dragging out anything combustible and building an enormous makeshift pyre. Caesar was cremated on the spot.

The conspirators, or liberatores (freedom fighters) as they liked to call themselves, had had no other agenda apart from their act of violence. They supposed that once Caesar had been eliminated, the Republic would automatically come back into being. Peace, order, and constitutional government would resume without any further intervention on their part. This was a disastrous error in judgment, as Brutus and his friends now realized. They hurriedly left the city, where they were no longer safe, and dispersed to their country estates.

Hearing what had happened at the funeral and remembering his great-uncle and his affection for him, Octavius burst into tears.

The young man now received an even more extraordinary piece of news. Unbeknownst to him, Caesar had written a new will during the brief Italian holiday on his return from Spain in 45 B.C., and had lodged it with the Vestal Virgins (who ran a safe deposit service for important confidential documents). Three days after Caesar’s death, his father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, read out the testament at the house of the consul Mark Antony, on the Palatine Hill.

Caesar named as his chief heirs his sisters’ two male grandchildren, one of whom was Octavius, and a nephew, Quintus Pedius. After certain legacies had been deducted, including an expensive commitment to give three hundred sesterces to every Roman citizen (there could be as many as 300,000 beneficiaries), two of the inheritors each received an eighth of the residue—and Octavius received the remaining three quarters. Added to the personal fortune we must presume he inherited from his father, this would make him a very rich man.

The Roman people received another gift: Caesar’s garden estate across the Tiber, presently occupied by Cleopatra, who was busy packing her bags for a rapid exit to Egypt.

At the end of the document came the greatest surprise. Caesar adopted Octavius as his son (although it was unusual to make such an arrangement from beyond the grave, it was possible, requiring only that a special law be passed, a lex curiata). The adoption was a personal, not a political, act. However, Caesar was handing Octavius a priceless weapon: his name and his clientela, all those hundreds of thousands of soldiers and citizens who were in his debt. As he must have known, he was giving the boy an opportunity to enter politics at the top if he wished to do so—and if he had sufficient talent.

The troops at Brundisium came out to meet Octavius on the news of his approach. They greeted him enthusiastically as Caesar’s son. Much relieved, he conducted a sacrifice and made the crucial decision to accept his inheritance. More letters from Atia and Philippus awaited him. His mother repeated her request that he come home as soon as possible; his designation as Caesar’s son had placed him in grave danger. Meanwhile, the fence-sitting Philippus strongly advised him to take no steps to secure Caesar’s bequest, and to keep his own name. If he wanted to live safely, he should steer clear of politics. Philippus could foresee the political strife in which his family would be implicated if the boy was to assume his dangerous inheritance.

All his life, Octavius had been risk-averse; now he acted without hesitation. He rejected his stepfather’s advice, and wrote to him saying so. According to Nicolaus, he insisted that he “already had his eyes on great things and was full of confidence.” He would accept the legacy, avenge his “father”’s death, and succeed to Caesar’s power. This was an uncompromising statement of his political aims.

Although it would be some months before the legal formalities of adoption could be put into effect, Gaius Octavius styled himself from now on as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The change from Octavius to Octavianus signaled a transfer from one family to another, but contained a reminder of his original kin; he soon dropped it and insisted on being addressed as Caesar. This was a message to his enemies that if one Caesar was destroyed another would immediately arise to fill his place. (To avoid confusion, I follow the convention of calling him Octavian, an anglicized version of the name he himself rejected.)

Here was the first great challenge of Octavian’s life, a once-and-for-all turning point, and he met it with calm decisiveness. We do not have enough information about his childhood and adolescence to speak definitively, but certain early experiences may have contributed to the formation of his firm and careful character and equipped him for a dangerous future.

Octavian was in effect an only child (his sisters were much older than he). This, when combined with poor health and a very protective mother, will have given him a sense of being set apart. He was “different” or special in two other, contradictory respects. On the one hand, he was a boy from the provinces, not a member of the handful of great and ancient clans that governed Rome. It is telling that his best friends were not young nobiles; Agrippa’s background was Italian and obscure, and, while Maecenas boasted an exotic Etruscan origin, his family remained aloof from public life and was content with equestrian status.

On the other hand, Octavian trumped his aristocratic contemporaries by having privileged access to the patrician conqueror of the Republic. He was, in real life, the outsider-insider of fairy tale and childish fantasy—a shepherd’s son who turns out to be of royal blood; like Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus.

Nicolaus, who gives the fullest account of Octavian’s early years, portrays an adolescent still treated as a child, then pitchforked into adult life under the tutelage of his remarkable great-uncle. Suddenly he found himself at the gorgeous, exhilarating power center of the Roman world. The relationship with Caesar became the most important one in his life.

When confronted with such opportunity, many boys would have lost their heads. Not Octavian. As an intermediary between Caesar and multitudes of suppliants, he took care not to irritate his great-uncle with untimely requests, he was discreet and totally loyal, and he behaved in a modest and friendly manner with petitioners.

Octavian may have had an innately cautious cast of mind; but if environmental factors helped to shape him, this was the kind of behavior one would expect to find in an intelligent boy whose circumstances and upbringing fostered self-containment.

Octavian now proceeded to Capua and Rome along the Via Appia. He attracted large crowds, especially of demobilized veterans who were grief-stricken by the Ides of March and wanted the killers brought to justice.

Before entering Rome, Octavian called in at his parents’ seaside villa at Puteoli (now Pozzuoli), which happened to be next to a house belonging to Cicero. He needed to come to an understanding with his family, who were worried by the direction he was taking. The suspicious old orator noted that the young man’s “followers call him Caesar, but Philippus does not, and neither do I.”

This was the first chance for Octavian to meet Caesar’s disconsolate aides and advisers. Mostly equites or freedmen, who could not aspire to political careers of their own, they had no political constituency and with their employer’s death had lost their purchase on power. Octavian had a long conversation with Lucius Cornelius Balbus, a multimillionaire from Spain, who had run Caesar’s secretariat and been his leading fixer. There are no records of their discussions, but we can surmise that Balbus and his colleagues wanted to make a cool assessment of the teenage heir, and then to lay a plan of campaign. We can be sure that, from the outset, these Caesarians had every intention of demolishing the restored Republic and taking revenge on the conspirators. However, they would have to wait and see whether the young man was capable of heading a new autocracy.

For the present, they were in a weak position; it would be wise to conceal their intentions. Octavian held no official position and was simply a private citizen. Many senators, even though they had been appointed by the dictator, were inclined to accept his removal as a fait accompli. Once the emotion of the assassination and its aftermath had died down, even moderate Caesarians, like the next year’s consuls, Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, believed that almost anything was better than a renewed civil war.

Mark Antony took the same line. As consul he controlled the levers of power, was popular with the troops, and saw himself as the dead dictator’s political heir. He might have been expected to pursue the assassins and their republican supporters. In fact, his silent foreknowledge of the conspiracy suggests that he was not without sympathy with them, and he preferred to negotiate a compromise in which he agreed to an amnesty for Brutus and the other liberatores in return for the Senate’s agreement not to overturn any of the dead dictator’s legislation and executive decisions.

A long-term strategy for the Caesarians was not feasible; what was needed was a series of improvised tactics that made the most of any opportunity that presented itself. Consistency was irrelevant. The first tasks were to detach Antony from the Senate, discredit him in any way possible, and then replace him with Octavian as the leader of the Caesarian faction.

The weather had been terrible since the Ides of March. For much of 44, there was continuous gloom and a persistent rusty dry fog, and the sun was often invisible. This was probably the consequence of a major eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily; today’s scientists have identified acid snow from the period in the ice cores of Greenland. Years later, the poet Virgil recalled this time as one of “wars that grow in the dark like cancer.”

On the day in early May when Octavian entered Rome, stars could be seen in the daytime around a dim sun, looking like wreaths made from ears of wheat and rings of changing color. This was widely seen as a favorable omen, a prophecy of royalty.

Octavian’s most urgent task was to make his position official. The adoption had to be legally authorized by a lex curiata and he wanted to collect his legacy. He went straight to Antony to ask for the money. He found him in his garden house (hortus) on the edge of the Campus Martius.

After going to ground for some hours on the Ides of March, Antony in his capacity as Caesar’s fellow consul had persuaded Calpurnia to hand over to him all Caesar’s papers. He had also won control of Caesar’s financial resources. It was very likely that he had improperly salted away substantial sums of cash; the word was that, having been forty million sesterces in debt, he had suddenly become solvent.

From Antony’s point of view, the arrival of Caesar’s heir was an annoying distraction. He was an inexperienced teenager, “a boy,” Antony gibed, “who owes everything to his name.” Octavian was kept waiting in an anteroom and was admitted only after a long delay. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then he asked for Caesar’s money so that he could pay his legacies to the people.

Octavian’s request was awkward, and Antony angrily refused it. He said that he had found the state treasury empty and needed funds for the conduct of public business. He also made the technical point that the adoption was not yet official (later, he did his best to delay confirmation).

Octavian was furious, but there was little he could do to change the consul’s mind. However, even without access to Caesar’s estate, Octavian had large sums of money at his disposal. He is reported to have expropriated Caesar’s war chest for the Parthian expedition; while at Brundisium he may also have received, or seized, tax receipts from Asia on their way to the Roman treasury. Octavian decided to trump the consul. He announced that he would pay his adoptive father’s legacies out of his own pocket, even if Antony held back the moneys due. He also put up for sale all Caesar’s properties and estates.

A highly effective campaign of words was launched to discredit the consul further in the public mind. The aim was clever and twofold—first, to smear Antony before the people and the legions and, second, to break Antony’s concordat with the Senate by forcing him into a popularity contest for Caesarian support.

In accordance with a senatorial decree, Octavian planned to display at some games held in mid-May Caesar’s golden chair and a diadem (a white cloth strip worn around the head to denote royalty), which he had been offered and refused a few weeks before his death. The consul lost his temper and forbade it.

Octavian wandered around the city center, with a crowd of followers like a bodyguard, making speeches about the disgraceful treatment he was enduring. “Heap as many insults on me as you like, Antony, but stop plundering Caesar’s property until the citizens have received their legacy. Then you can take all the rest.” Antony was furious and responded with threats.

At this point the consul’s officers intervened and forced a reconciliation. They loved Caesar’s memory and, equally loyal to his trusted friend and his adopted son, refused to fight for either against the other.

Antony was compelled to reassess his situation; although he still saw the “boy” as little more than a nuisance, Octavian had destabilized the situation. In order to stay on terms with his soldiers, Antony abandoned his statesmanlike compromise with the Senate, with which his relations had deteriorated sadly. Cicero, who thought him an unreliable drunkard and a political gambler (aleator, “dice thrower”), suspected his good faith and was stirring up opinion against him among republicans. Antony needed to secure his personal safety and to continue to dominate the political scene in Rome.

When his consulship came to an end in December, he was due to become governor of Macedonia—a little far away if trouble were to threaten him in the capital. So he exchanged the post for a five-year term in Cisalpine Gaul. From that vantage point he could overawe the capital, and if need be intervene directly, as Caesar had done in 49. It did not matter that a governor had been selected who was already in possession of the province. This was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, a distant relative of Marcus Brutus. A onetime follower of Julius Caesar, he had lost confidence in the dictator and taken part in the assassination on the Ides of March. Antony planned to transfer the army in Macedonia to Italy and lead it northward. He would make short work of the interloper.

In an attempt to weaken the republican cause, Antony initiated measures to persuade Brutus and Cassius to get out of Italy. To begin with, they were offered insulting proconsular posts: responsibility for the collection of grain in Sicily and Asia. “Could anything be more humiliating?” complained Cicero. The appointments were later upgraded, to the governorships of the politically and militarily harmless provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica. Brutus settled in Athens to wait on events, and in the meantime he pursued philosophical studies. Cassius eventually went to the east, whence little was heard of him for a while.

Now that Antony’s position was secure, Octavian was the odd man out in the great political game. He held no official post and controlled no army. If he was not careful he would be finessed into insignificance. In the first place, he had to keep open his lines of communication with the Senate. He spent a lot of energy flattering Cicero, whose suspicions of him were partially alleviated. The elder statesman wrote to a friend on June 10:

Octavian…does not lack intelligence or spirit, and he gave the impression that his attitude towards our heroes [the freedom fighters] were such as we would wish. But how much faith to put in one of his years and heredity and education—that’s a great question…still he is to be encouraged and, if nothing else, kept apart from Antony.

Octavian staged Caesar’s annual Victory Games in July, the month that had been renamed in the dictator’s honor. Determined to make his presence felt at Rome, he spared no expense, and the festival was a splendid affair.

The skies produced another auspicious omen to match that on Octavian’s arrival in Rome. He recalled the occasion in his autobiography:

On the very day of my games a comet was visible for seven days in the northern part of the sky…. The common people believed that this star signified the soul of Caesarreceived among the spirits of the immortal gods, and for this reason the emblem of a star was fixed to the bust of Caesar that we shortly afterwards dedicated in the Forum.

The records of Chinese astronomers show that this comet was not a later invention but almost certainly a contemporary phenomenon—further evidence of the improvisatory skill of Octavian and his advisers.

After more squabbling between Octavian and Antony, another unconvincing reconciliation ensued. The ceremony was staged on the Capitol under the watchful gaze of Caesar’s veterans, who, in a pointed signal to the consul, accompanied the dictator’s heir to his front door.

Octavian did not restrict his efforts to winning the hearts of Rome’s citizens. He sent agents disguised as tradesmen to mingle with the troops that Antony was bringing over from Macedonia and the veterans’ settlements in Italy. They distributed leaflets and sounded out opinion. While Antony was a well-liked and competent leader, the soldiers were put out that he had come to terms with the Senate, even if he was now changing his stance. They had known Octavian in Apollonia and very much liked what they had seen. Dangerously for Antony, they were inclined to regard the young man as Caesar’s political as well as personal heir.

Antony was soon told about the subversion of his soldiers; he unexpectedly announced that Octavian’s aim was not simply to weaken their loyalty, but to arrange his assassination. He claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy among his bodyguard, some of whom he sent away.

Many people believed the story, and for once the young man lost his habitual self-possession. “Mad with anger,” he ran to Antony’s house and shouted at the front door that Antony was the plotter, who wanted to ruin Octavian’s popularity with the people. He swore all kinds of oaths and challenged Antony to bring him to court. When no one appeared, he said in desperation: “I agree to be judged by your friends.” With this he tried to go inside, but was stopped. He hurled abuse at the men at the door and, before going away, claimed that if anything happened to him, his death would be due to Antony’s treachery.

The assassination plot was almost certainly an invention, Antony’s attempt at a publicity coup. As Appian noted:

A few people, who had the ability to think a problem out, were aware that it was in Octavian’s interest for Antony to survive, even if he did Octavian some harm, because Caesar’s assassins were afraid of him; while if he died the assassins, enjoying strong support from the Senate, would embark with less apprehension on every venture.

Octavian’s panic-stricken reaction won around public opinion, although a few skeptics suspected that the two men were colluding in some kind of contrivance against their mutual enemies.

As summer gave way to autumn 44 B.C., matters were coming to a head. It would only be three months before new consuls were in place: Hirtius and Pansa, moderate Caesarians who were profoundly irritated by Antony’s clumsy maneuvering to secure his personal position and were aligning themselves cautiously with republicans. They would be entitled to raise troops; once they had done so, the Senate would be able to defend itself militarily, as it had not been able to do so far.

Out of sight but not out of mind, Brutus and Cassius were playing a waiting game. If possible, they wanted to avoid a new civil war, but, should the Republic be at risk, they, too, would recruit an army, with which to save it from its Caesarian enemies, such as Antony and Octavian.

Since his arrival on the scene, Caesar’s teenaged heir had played his hand with cool skill. Young and inexperienced, he had that most essential of political talents, the ability to take good advice. Ruthless and patient, he would do whatever was necessary to the achievement of his goals. However, he was still without an army and without a role. As Julius Caesar’s adopted son, he was hugely popular with the masses, but had not found a way of translating this into tangible power.