Augustus

VI

FROM VICTORY, DEFEAT

44–43 B.C.

Beneath Antony’s easygoing, affable manner lay a harsh and unforgiving nature. Furious at the men’s attitude, in his speech he blamed them for not bringing Octavian’s secret agitators to him; if they would not help him, he would find them himself. He ended, nonetheless, by offering each soldier present a small donative, or bonus, of four hundred sesterces.

The soldiers laughed at this cheapskating, and when he lost his temper they became rowdy and began to disperse. This was looking like mutiny, so Antony obtained from his officers the names of those soldiers who were known for being disruptive, and had some of them (chosen by lot) beaten to death in his and Fulvia’s presence. It was said that blood was spattered on his wife’s face. “You will learn to obey orders,” he told the rest.

Meanwhile, in the consul’s absence, Octavian set off to Campania to visit new colonies of Julius Caesar’s veterans (a colony was a settlement specially founded to house demobilized soldiers), as well as two legions, the VII and the VIII. Ostensibly he was going to sell some of his father’s property, but his real purpose (which he kept even from his mother, lest she try to stop him) was to raise a private army from the dead dictator’s loyal legionaries.

The attempt met with success. The legionaries and veterans at colonies near the city of Capua were faced with an offer they could not refuse: an immediate grant of two thousand sesterces to every soldier (more than twice his annual pay), with a promise of additional largesse later. This generosity compared well with Antony’s parsimony. Soon an army of more than three thousand men had been mustered.

But what now to do with it? One senses a mood of unusual overexcitement. Octavian wanted to confront Antony, although his soldiers were much keener on catching and killing Caesar’s assassins. He decided to risk all and march on Rome, hoping for the backing of the Senate and leading personages. He pestered Cicero with a stream of letters asking for advice and practical support. For his part Cicero suspected that the political class would be uncooperative. He said of Octavian: “He is very much a boy.”

He was right to be skeptical. The Senate was conspicuous by its absence when Octavian arrived with his troops and illegally occupied the Forum. Meanwhile, Antony was making his way toward the capital with the Macedonian legions. Octavian’s men had not joined up to fight their comrades, much less a lawfully elected consul, and many of them melted away. The bold throw of the dice had failed; the inexperienced leader led his remaining forces to the comparative safety of the hill town of Arretium. He must have been thoroughly depressed, and anxious for the future.

Fortunately for Octavian, matters went no better for Antony. Back in Rome he called a meeting of the Senate on November 24. His intention was to denounce Octavian, but the session never took place. According to Cicero, not an impartial witness, he attended “a blowout in a public house” and was too drunk to address the Senate. If this is so, Antony may have been drowning his sorrows, for he had just received the appalling news that one of the Macedonian legions, the Martian, had declared for Octavian. He rushed off to talk with them; they not only refused him admittance to the town near Rome where they had billeted themselves, but also shot at him from the walls.

A few days later news came of another defection, this time of the IVth Legion. Despite the failed march on Rome, Octavian was winning the battle for the soldiers’ hearts and minds. He held the great advantage of being Caesar’s heir and carrying his name. His generous bonuses reinforced his legitimacy. Hoping that activity would stanch the hemorrhage of loyalty, Antony immediately marched north to expel the assassin Decimus Brutus from his province of Cisalpine Gaul.

It would be wrong to overinterpret these events. Antony had certainly been humiliated, but he was down, not out. By contrast, Octavian lacked both military experience and imperium, constitutional authority; he could see that he was in a corner, and had to devise a way out of it.

The career of Marcus Tullius Cicero had been a brilliant failure. A new man, he had risen to the consulship in 63 solely by virtue of his abilities as an administrator and (above all) as a public speaker. Following his exposure of Catilina’s conspiracy, he had been hailed as “father of the country” (pater patriae).

Justifiably proud of his achievement, Cicero could not stop telling everyone about it, even writing a bombastic epic about the rebirth of Rome during his year as consul.

This was not merely vanity. In the aristocratic cockpit that was Roman politics, Cicero could not boast a long line of noble ancestors, as his colleagues and competitors constantly did, and so had little choice but to bore on about his own astonishing career.

Although he could be tedious and long-winded, the orator was also famous as a wit; Julius Caesar made a point of collecting his bons mots. On one occasion, an ambassador from Laodicea in Cilicia (the southeastern coast of modern Turkey) told him that he would be asking Caesar for freedom for his city. Cicero replied: “If you are successful, put in a word for us at Rome too.”

His politics were moderate and conservative. A resolute civilian in a militaristic society where politicians doubled as generals, he promoted the rule of law. In his eyes, the Roman constitution was unimprovable, and he opposed risky radicals like Julius Caesar, though admiring his prose style and enjoying his company. He was dismayed by Caesar’s rise to power. The republican values for which he had campaigned all his life had been overthrown, and he was obliged to retire from active politics.

Cicero was too much of a gossip for the freedom fighters to trust him to hold his tongue, and so he was not let into the conspiracy against Caesar. However, he applauded the event. His only regret was that Mark Antony, whom he had long distrusted and disliked, had not been put to death as well as his master. “The Ides of March was a fine deed, but half done,” he commented ruefully.

Now in his sixty-third year, Cicero watched with dismay the unspooling of events during the spring and summer of 44. When he saw Antony shift position and come out against the Senate, he returned to frontline politics and delivered the first of a series of great oratorical attacks on Antony, which were soon nicknamed the Philippics after the speeches the Athenian orator Demosthenes made against Philip, king of Macedon in the fourth century B.C. Cicero soon dominated the Senate and became so influential that he was, in effect, the unofficial ruler of Rome.

At a meeting of the Senate on December 20, Cicero delivered his third Philippic, in which, to universal surprise, he went out of his way to shower Octavian with praise. He told the house:

Gaius Caesar is a young man, or almost a boy, but one of incredible and, so to speak, godlike intelligence and courage…. He recruited a very powerful force of invincible veterans and lavished his inheritance—no, lavished is not the right word, he invested it in the survival of the Republic.

There was no hesitation now to address Octavian as Caesar; even more remarkably, the great constitutionalist was complimenting a private citizen on his creation of a completely unauthorized army.

Addressing the Senate on January 1, 43 B.C., he returned to the theme of Octavian, “this heaven-sent youth.” Cicero put forward and carried a motion that Octavian be made a propraetor (a post usually held by a man who had already served as a praetor) and a member of the Senate.

The orator went on to claim that he had a unique insight into Octavian’s motives. “I promise, I undertake, I solemnly engage, that Gaius Caesar will always be such a citizen as he is today, and as we should especially wish and pray he should be.” In a word, he guaranteed the young man’s good behavior as a sincere supporter of the restored Republic.

What was going on? The dictator’s heir, who had sworn vengeance on his adoptive father’s murderers, is revealed as entering into an alliance with a man who rejoiced at the Ides of March.

It must have cost Octavian and his advisers, the financiers and political agents who had once worked for Julius Caesar and were now devoted to his adopted son’s cause, a great deal emotionally to discard their deepest ideals and join forces with republicans. But the discarding was only apparent; they were acting from necessity, not conviction.

Octavian’s position, after his failed coup in November, was perilously weak. How long, he must have asked himself, would his demoralized veterans stay with him? Mark Antony had already briskly outmaneuvered Decimus Brutus and bottled him up in the old Roman colony of Mutina (today’s Modena) in northern Italy. The new consuls, backed by the Senate, were raising legions with a view to relieving Decimus and putting an end to Antony’s ambitions.

From Cicero’s point of view, Octavian would reinforce the Senate’s new military strength by placing himself and his army at the Senate’s disposal, and thus would hasten the day when Antony could be challenged and eliminated. This was important, for dispatches from Decimus Brutus suggested that he was hanging on at Mutina only with difficulty. In the longer run, Cicero and his followers feared that at some stage Octavian would reconcile with Antony. The new entente made that a less likely prospect.

As for Octavian, he was no longer outside the law, for at one leap he had acquired a senior constitutional position. Above all, he had bought time. His soldiers will have been mystified, even perturbed, by the volte-face, but could see the advantage of their army being legitimized.

Neither side had any illusions about its sincerity; there was a good deal of playacting. Octavian used to call Cicero father, and was much too discreet to betray his real motives. The gossipy Cicero, on the other hand, could not keep his mouth shut. He joked about Octavian: “Laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum.” That is, the boy must be “praised, honoured—and raised up.” But tollendum was a pun, with the second meaning of “must be removed.” Someone was kind enough to pass the witticism to Octavian, who was unamused and almost certainly unsurprised.

In February, Octavian marched off to join forces with the new consul Hirtius, while the other consul, Pansa, stayed behind to recruit four new legions. The young propraetor probably commanded about two legions. In the last few months, he had had to learn fast the duties of a military commander. He had never witnessed a battle and had had little time for the military training that upper-class Romans were expected to undertake in their teens.

The legion, the standard army unit, was usually led by the commanding general’s deputy, a legatus, or legate. The legate also had at his disposal a number of military tribunes, staff officers recruited from upper-class families (unlike the civilian tribunes of the people).

Officially, a legion had a strength of between four thousand and six thousand men, although in practice it could be smaller (this was almost certainly the case with Octavian at Arretium). It was divided into ten cohorts, which were in turn subdivided into six centuries commanded by centurions; these junior officers were a legion’s backbone. The first cohort always stood in the front row at the right end of the line (the most honorable position) and was sometimes larger than the others.

Men signed up for at least six years’ service. Each legionary carried on his back a large quantity of equipment, weighing at least sixty-five pounds. This included sixteen days’ worth of rations, a cooking pot, tools for digging, two stakes for the camp palisade, two javelins to throw in battle, clothes, and any personal possessions. On the march, Roman soldiers resembled not the smart upright legionaries of Hollywood movies, but beasts of burden.

A soldier’s armor consisted of a bronze helmet, a cuirass of leather or metal, an oblong or oval shield made of sheets of wood covered by oxhide, a pilum or javelin (the head was designed to break off, so that it could not be thrown back), and a short, two-edged thrusting sword, the gladius. In Julius Caesar’s day, a legionary was paid nine hundred sesterces a year—not a princely wage, but frequently supplemented by a share of the booty won in victorious campaigns.

Discipline was severe, ranging from food rationing and pay deductions to public floggings and execution for desertion. The worst penalty, for mutiny or collective cowardice before the enemy by a group of troops (usually a cohort), was decimation. One in ten men was chosen at random and the remainder clubbed them to death. This brutal punishment could be effective, but, as when Antony had applied it at Brundisium, was more likely to impose sullen and temporary obedience than to restore morale.

More constructively, much attention was paid to fostering an esprit de corps. Every century carried its standard (a pole with insignia or emblems at its top), and a legion was represented by a silver eagle, carried by the aquilifer, a special standard-bearer in a lionskin headdress. These standards embodied a collective pride and honor, and the loss of a legionary eagle was an irretrievable disgrace. In the confusion of battle the standard helped to orient soldiers by showing them where their military unit was.

Today hand-to-hand fighting is relatively rare, but, after a preliminary phase of javelin throwing and sometimes archery, it was how battles were won and lost in the ancient world. It is hard to imagine the noise, crush, smells, blood, and terror of an ancient battle. Even then, it was recognized as being a particularly demanding experience. A line of soldiers at close quarters to the enemy would fight for only about fifteen minutes; the line would then retire and have its place taken by soldiers in the rear. The dead and wounded were dragged back and replaced by fresh men.

Octavian reached Hirtius north of Arretium, and their legions moved on in the direction of Mutina. Their aim was to break the siege and relieve the proconsul, Decimus Brutus, now dangerously short of provisions.

Despite this progress on the military front, Octavian was in a gloomy frame of mind. First and foremost, a propraetor was junior to a consul, and when he and Hirtius met he was clearly the subordinate officer: Hirtius divided command of the army between them, but insisted on having control of the two Macedonian legions. Octavian bit his lip and complied.

He was also irritated by the continuing efforts on the part of certain senators and the consuls to negotiate a settlement with Antony. He needed a war with a victorious outcome, for if Antony and the republican faction were reconciled, he would once again be isolated. That said, he did not want Antony destroyed: he could envision a time when the two men might need to combine against the Senate and Brutus and Cassius. The Senate had recently awarded the province of Syria to the tyrannicide Cassius. It was looking very much as though there was a conscious plan to build up the republican party and ruin the Caesarians. Appian summed up Octavian’s feelings: “He reflected on the way they [the Senate] had treated him like a boy, offering a statue [equestrian, in the Forum] and a front row at the theatre and calling him Propraetor, but in fact taking his army away from him.”

Octavian’s blood baptism was approaching. Mark Antony was encamped just outside Mutina, around which he had constructed a rampart. In the first week or so of April, news filtered north that the consul Pansa would soon (and at last) be arriving with four newly recruited legions, marching up from Bononia (today’s Bologna) to Mutina. It occurred to Antony that it would be a good idea to attack these raw, barely trained soldiers on the road, before they joined Hirtius and Octavian.

It simultaneously occurred to Hirtius that that was exactly what Antony might do. So, under cover of night, the consul sent the Martian legion (one of those that had defected from Antony) and Octavian’s Praetorian Guard, an elite body of about five hundred men, to reinforce Pansa.

The next day, Antony laid an ambush for Pansa’s army, sending in some cavalry and hiding two legions in a roadside village, Forum Gallorum, and nearby marshland. The Martian legion and the Praetorians could not be held in check and rushed at the horsemen. They noticed some movement in the rushes and here and there the glinting of a helmet; suddenly they were confronted by Antony’s main force.

A grim, speechless, waterlogged combat ensued, lasting for some hours. Pansa was wounded by a javelin in his side and taken back to Bononia, and Antony pushed the consul’s forces back to their camp. Meanwhile, Hirtius again engaged in some quick thinking, and came up with two more legions on the double to intercept the victors.

It was already late in the evening. Antony’s men, expecting no trouble, were singing songs of triumph and marching in no sort of order. To their horror, a fresh and disciplined army emerged from the twilight. They were cut to pieces, although Hirtius steered clear of the marshes and had to call off the fighting at nightfall. Those who had escaped death or serious injury made their way back to Antony’s camp. Out of victory had come catastrophe.

Wide areas of bog were clogged with dead or dying men who had tried to find safety there from the enemy. It is evidence of the care Antony took for his soldiers that he sent his cavalry during the night to hunt around and rescue as many of them as possible. According to Appian, “they put the survivors on their horses, changing places with some and lifting others up beside them, or they made them hold the tail and encouraged them to run along with them.”

Meanwhile, what of Octavian? He did not accompany his Praetorians, who were wiped out, nor the Martian legion, bloody but unbowed. According to Dio, he stayed behind to defend the camp, a useful if inglorious duty. Years later, Antony accused Octavian of running away from the battle of Forum Gallorum: “He did not reappear until the next day, having lost both his horse and his purple general’s cloak.”

The truth cannot be recovered, but it is clear that, at the very least, the inexperienced commander failed to distinguish himself. The fault would have to be quickly rectified: a noble Roman was expected to be as busy on the battlefield as in the Forum. The legions had loved his adoptive father at least in part for his intrepid generalship.

Decimus Brutus, beleaguered in Mutina, was in urgent need of rescue, and on April 21 Hirtius led his troops to the back of the town to make an entry. Antony felt obliged to respond, by sending out first his cavalry and then legions from other, more distant camps, which took some time to arrive.

On this occasion Octavian steeled himself to fight in the thick of the fray. Hirtius rode into Antony’s camp and was struck down and killed fighting around the commander’s tent. Octavian burst in and took up the body, like a Homeric hero dragging his friend out of the mêlée. He held the camp for a short while, but was then forced out. No matter, for the day was his. According to Suetonius: “Though bleeding and wounded, he took an eagle from the hands of a dying aquilifer and bore it back upon his shoulder to the camp.”

Antony had been comprehensively defeated, and the seize raised. After a pause for thought, he withdrew with the remnants of his army across the Alps to Gallia Comata (“Long-haired Gaul”). His men endured terrible hardship on the journey. In a fine display of leadership, Antony shared their sufferings, drinking foul water and eating wild fruit and roots.

Octavian visited Pansa, who was seriously ill and died some days later. Pansa’s Greek doctor, Glyco, was suspected of poisoning his wound, presumably in Octavian’s interest. Another story had it that Octavian had personally struck Hirtius down in the fighting in Antony’s camp. The accusation concerning Hirtius is almost certainly malicious gossip: a battlefield is not a private place and one would have expected eyewitness accounts of a consul being murdered.

Doubtless, Pansa’s injury was a flesh wound from which he would have been expected to recover; that he did not suggests an insuperable infection, a common enough occurrence in the days before antibiotics. In May, having heard the rumor, Marcus Brutus spoke up for Glyco, who was being kept in custody: “It is quite incredible. Pansa’s death hit nobody harder. Besides, he is a well-conducted, decent fellow, who would not be likely to be driven to crime even by self-interest.”

What was certain, though, is that sheer good luck—the untimely elimination of both Hirtius and Pansa—had placed Octavian in an extraordinarily powerful position. For the time being, though, he decided to take no precipitate action. When the Senate ordered that the dead consuls’ armies should be handed over to Decimus Brutus, he refused and took command of them himself, with the result that he now controlled eight legions, loyal to him rather than the Republic. He explained, with some plausibility, that the established legions would refuse to fight under the command of one of Julius Caesar’s assassins.

He would not cooperate with Decimus Brutus, either, and told a delegation from the proconsul, “Nature forbids me either to set eyes on or talk to Decimus. Let him seek his own safety.” Decimus strongly, and rightly, suspected that Caesar’s heir was looking for an opportunity to take revenge on him.

Octavian also refused to chase Antony. When an officer of the former consul was captured at Mutina, Octavian treated him respectfully before setting him free and sending him on to join his general in Gaul. The officer asked what his policy was toward Antony. Octavian replied dryly: “I have given plenty of hints to people who have their wits about them. Any more would still not be enough for the stupid.”

When Rome learned of the relief of Mutina, there was unalloyed delight. It seemed that what Cicero called “this abominable war” was over. The Senate was so excited by Antony’s defeat that they completely misread the consequences of the consuls’ deaths. Decimus was awarded a triumph. A promised bounty for the soldiers was reduced from the (extremely generous) twenty thousand sesterces to ten thousand, and a commission was appointed to distribute the money directly to the soldiers (rather than routing it, as was the custom, through their general). Both Octavian, who was not even offered a place on the commission, and his men were infuriated, and their discontent was communicated to Rome.

Meanwhile reports began to filter south of an astonishing transformation in Antony’s fortunes. After his crossing of the Alps and arrival in Gaul, he made contact with three provincial governors. They were Marcus Aemilius Lepidus of Narbonese Gaul (today’s southern France) and Hither (northern) Spain, who commanded seven legions; Lucius Munatius Plancus of Long-haired Gaul (central and northern France); and Gaius Asinius Pollio of Farther (southern) Spain. Antony won them over to his cause and found himself the commander once more of a large army. The misery of Mutina could be forgotten.

Decimus Brutus had struggled after Antony with his bedraggled legions, but was now trapped. Antony renewed was too strong for him, and if he retraced his steps to Italy, he would find Octavian waiting to destroy him. His men saw the position was hopeless; they deserted. With a handful of supporters, Decimus tried to escape to Macedonia and Marcus Brutus, but fell into the hands of a Gallic chieftain, who killed him on Antony’s orders.

Caesar’s heir was now ready to pounce. Both consulships were vacant, and the disorganized and increasingly uneasy senators had no obvious and willing candidates. Octavian knew that the time for caution was past and he was more than ready to submit a claim. Obviously he was far too young, for according to the constitutional rules a consul had to be at least forty-two years old. However, it could be countered that in times of emergency men in their twenties had occasionally been elected—Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, for example, had been about twenty-nine when he won the command to defeat Hannibal in the third century B.C. Closer to the present day, Pompey the Great became a leading figure in Roman politics at the age of twenty-three and won proconsular authority when he was thirty.

In July a deputation of four hundred centurions arrived in Rome to lay proposals before the Senate. They wanted the soldiers’ promised bounty paid in full, and for their commander they required, rather than requested, the consulship. With extraordinary short-sightedness, the Senate refused.

As soon as this news reached him, Octavian, who was waiting in Cisalpine Gaul, called a soldiers’ assembly. They told him to lead them at once to Rome and they would elect him consul themselves. Octavian marched them off the parade ground—eight legions, cavalry, and auxiliaries—and took the road south.

As he neared the city, he became worried about the safety of his mother, Atia, and sister, Octavia. They clearly had great value as hostages, and with help from Caesarians in the city they went into hiding. There being no consuls, the praetors were in charge of Rome’s defense, but their men would not fight.

Determined to put on a show of constitutional propriety, the young candidate for the consulship waited twenty-four hours before entering Rome. On October 19, ostensibly without the slightest evidence of external threat, the people elected Octavian and the dim and unambitious Quintus Pedius, a nephew of Julius Caesar and one of his heirs, to the supreme governance of the Republic. Pedius had the advantage of being a safe pair of hands and could be guaranteed not to oppose his young colleague’s wishes. On the next day, Octavian made his way through the city to the Forum, surrounded by a precautionary bodyguard. His political opponents came out to meet him along the route, with what Appian called “spineless readiness to serve.”

Much to his relief, the new consul saw Atia and Octavia at the Temple of Vesta, waiting to greet him. They had survived the last few difficult days unscathed. Although she had advised against his accepting Caesar’s will only a short year previously, his mother must have been proud to see him at the pinnacle of power when he was not yet twenty years old. She was lucky to have witnessed this day, for within a few weeks or months she was dead. We do not know what killed her, nor has any account survived of her son’s reaction.

One of Octavian’s first official tasks was to preside over a sacrifice to the immortal gods in the Campus Martius. As he did so, he looked up and saw six vultures. This was a good omen, but an even better one followed: later, while he was haranguing his troops, twelve vultures appeared, as had happened to Romulus at Rome’s foundation in 753 B.C. The livers of the animal victims Octavian slaughtered were found to be doubled up at the lower end—an omen the haruspices unanimously declared to foretell a prosperous and happy future. The supporters of the new regime made the most of this lucky propaganda opportunity.

The message the vultures gave to the world was that Rome was being founded for a second time.

By the summer of 43 B.C., Octavian had made good progress toward fulfilling the three-point program he set out in the letter he wrote Philippus on reaching Italy after the catastrophe of the Ides of March. One, he had accepted the legacy, and the lex curiata confirming his adoption, which Antony had obstructed, was now finally passed. Two, with the consulship, he had “succeeded to [Caesar’s] power,” at least in part, although there was more to do as and when opportunity offered. Three, now at last, he was in a position to “avenge his ‘father’’s death.”

The consul calmed the public by completing the payments that Julius Caesar had bequeathed to citizens, and by settling the bounties promised to the legions. He behaved with pretended gratitude to the Senate, but dared not attend its meetings without a bodyguard.

Then his colleague Pedius won approval for a bill that made Caesar’s killing a crime and outlawed the conspirators. A special court was set up, which sat for one day and found all the accused guilty. Different prosecutors were appointed, at least of the leading conspirators; Agrippa took on the case against Cassius. None of those charged were present and able to defend themselves; indeed, many were governors of provinces. Those who happened to be in Rome quietly disappeared abroad.

This business done, Octavian left the city with his eleven legions, ostensibly to do battle with Antony but in fact to come to terms with him. He proceeded at a leisurely pace up the Adriatic coast. Meanwhile Pedius urged a reluctant Senate to reconcile itself with Antony and Lepidus. The reason for this policy switch was obvious; both they and Octavian were, in their different ways, Caesarian leaders and would soon need to defend themselves against the mighty host that the liberatores were reportedly assembling in the eastern empire. Victory over a legionless Senate had been an easy piece of work. Brutus and Cassius backed by the manpower and wealth of the east were a very different matter.