Augustus

VII

KILLING FIELDS

43–42 B.C.

Octavian was in the weaker position, for Antony’s forces, which brought together those of three provincial governors, including the former consul Lepidus, could easily have wiped him out. However, he calculated that his onetime enemy recognized that a united front among Caesarians was essential to maximize the chances of defeating Brutus and Cassius. They needed to come to an understanding. Also, the last twelve months had taught all military commanders that Julius Caesar’s veterans would fight against anybody except his heir.

Antony and Octavian brought five thousand men each to positions on opposite sides of the river. Then three hundred soldiers approached the bridges at either bank. Lepidus crossed over to the island; he inspected it for weapons or hidden assassins, then waved an all-clear with his cloak. Octavian and Antony now left their bodyguards and advisers at the bridgeheads and walked to the island, where they sat down with Lepidus in full view of everybody. They met for two days, from dawn to dusk.

There were three items on the agenda: how to legalize their power; how to raise the funds needed to finance the war against Brutus and Cassius; and how to keep the opposition from regaining its strength.

During the weeks following the Ides of March, when Antony was on good terms with the Senate, he had enacted a law abolishing the post of dictator. Now it was reinvented in tripartite form. A Commission of Three for the Ordering of the State was to be established for five years (modern historians call it the Second Triumvirate), with Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus as the commissioners, or triumvirs. They were empowered to make and repeal laws and to nominate officeholders. There was no appeal from their decisions. Octavian would resign the consulship in favor of one of Antony’s generals.

It is a little hard to see what the undistinguished Lepidus, who had given Antony his army a few months previously in Gaul, contributed to the Triumvirate. Of the three men, Antony was by far the most powerful and experienced figure; he was probably responsible for promoting Lepidus, who in the event of any disagreements could be counted on to take his side.

The commissioners immediately nominated the consuls and other officeholders for the coming five years, and they also decided the provincial governorships. Antony was to take Gaul (except for Transalpine Gaul); Lepidus, his old province of Transalpine Gaul and the two Spains; and Octavian, Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily. (Sensibly, the empire east of the Adriatic, now in the hands of Brutus and Cassius, was left undecided.) This distribution showed with embarrassing clarity that Octavian was the junior partner of the three. In due course, all these constitutional arrangements were approved by a people’s assembly in Rome.

A single solution was found for the second and third agenda items: a proscription. Proscription was an official mechanism for liquidating political opponents and amassing large sums of money from their confiscated estates; as already mentioned, it had first been used by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, in 81 B.C.

The negotiators found it easier to agree on the principle of having a proscription than on the actual names of those to die. The choice of victims took a good deal of private haggling. To begin with, Octavian was of two minds about the project; but, Suetonius writes, once the proscription had been decided on, “he carried it out more ruthlessly than either of the others.”

The triumvirs marked down not only their political opponents whom they saw as public enemies (hostes), but also personal foes (inimici). They exchanged relatives and friends with one another. Lepidus abandoned his brother Paullus. Octavian allowed onto the list his onetime guardian, Gaius Toranius, who had been aedile in the year of his blood father’s praetorship. He also deserted Cicero—but only, if we can believe the sources, after resisting Antony, who so much wanted revenge for the Philippics that he let his own uncle be proscribed as payment for the superannuated orator.

Having concluded their island discussions, Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian arrived in Rome and posted the proscription decree on white boards in the Forum. Everyone named in the decree automatically forfeited his citizenship and protection from the law. The list was not final and new victims were added later, as the triumvirs decided. Informers who betrayed a proscribed man to the authorities were rewarded, and any person who killed one was also entitled to keep a share of his wealth. (The remainder went to the state.)

From a modern viewpoint, a proscription is a strange device. With the examples of the French and Russian revolutions before us, we expect the state to undertake mass liquidations if it deems them necessary; but, as has already been pointed out, the Roman state was remarkably nonbureaucratic; with no police force, no tradition of incarcerating offenders, and no professional judiciary, it was simply not equipped to execute large numbers of its citizens. The task had to be privatized.

The triumvirs betrayed signs of unease, of the need not to alienate public opinion. According to Appian, the proscription decree stated: “No one should consider this action unjust, or savage, or excessive, in the light of what happened to Gaius [Caesar] and ourselves.” The triumvirs promised not to punish “any member of the masses,” a guarantee they wisely honored. The decree closed with an assurance that “the names of none of those who receive rewards will be noted in our records.” What was to be done was shameful and it called for concealment.

The proscription brought out the best and worst in human nature. Appian records many terrible stories of those times:

Many people were murdered in all kinds of ways, and decapitated to furnish evidence for the reward. They fled in undignified fashion, and abandoned their former conspicuous dress for strange disguises. Some went down wells, some descended into the filth of the sewers, and others climbed up into smoky rafters or sat in total silence under close-packed roofs. To some, just as terrifying as the executioners were wives or children with whom they were not on good terms, or ex-slaves and slaves, or creditors, or neighbouring landowners who coveted their estates.

One tragic tale may evoke the selfishness and despair of the time. It concerns a teenager, whom we only know as Atilius; he probably belonged to an old noble plebeian family that originated in Campania. His father was dead, and he had inherited a rich estate. He had just celebrated his coming of age at Rome and was proceeding with his friends, as the custom was, to sacrifice in various temples in or around the Forum. Adulthood rendered him liable to legal penalty. Suddenly his name was added to the proscription list displayed on the speakers’ platform, presumably because of his wealth, and when this was noticed all his friends and slaves ran off. The boy went, deserted and alone, to his mother, but she was too frightened to shelter him. After this betrayal, Atilius saw no point in asking anyone else for help; he ran away to the mountains.

Forced by hunger to come down into the plains, he was kidnapped by a bandit who made a living by preying on passing travelers, putting them in chains and forcing them to work for him. Atilius, brought up in luxury, could not endure the hard labor. Still wearing his fetters, he made off to a main road, where he incautiously identified himself to some passing centurions. They killed him there and then, doubtless taking his head back to Rome for their reward.

A funerary inscription dating from the late first century B.C. tells a very different story. It records the speech a grieving husband made at the funeral of his wife after forty years of marriage. We know neither his name nor hers, but she is usually called Turia, the name of a woman who led a similar life and who was once thought, wrongly, to be the same person.

Turia’s husband, an unrepentant republican, was proscribed and went into hiding. He recalled: “You provided abundantly for my needs during my flight and gave me the means for a dignified life-style, when you took all the gold and jewellery you wore and sent it to me.”

A year later, when the need for the proscription had ended, Octavian pardoned Turia’s husband, but Lepidus, then in charge of the city of Rome, refused to acknowledge his colleague’s decision. He seems to have enjoyed the proscription and did not wish it to be over.

Turia presented herself before Lepidus to ask him to recognize the pardon, and prostrated herself before his feet. He did not raise her up (as, according to convention, he should have done), but had her dragged away and beaten. This characteristically unpleasant behavior apparently angered Octavian and, according to Turia’s husband, contributed to his downfall. “That matter was soon to prove harmful to him,” the widower remarked with dry satisfaction.

The cruelty and confusion that the proscription brought about was widespread. As many as three hundred senators were butchered—among them Cicero—and perhaps two thousand equites. The republican opposition in Italy was largely liquidated.

Antony had a streak of savagery in his character and entered fully into the spirit of things (unless the record has been distorted by subsequent propaganda against him). He always inspected the heads of victims, even at table when eating a meal. His wife was equally ferocious.

As for Octavian, while the proscription was in progress some observers found him a good deal too fond of victims’ expensive furniture and their Corinthian bronze figures, objets d’art that were highly prized. According to Suetonius, someone scrawled on the base of a statue of him an insulting poem recalling the old story that his family’s fortune derived from the shameful business of moneylending.

I did not take my father’s line;

His trade was silver coin, but mine

Corinthian bronzes…

The proscription was not as effective as its designers had intended. Much less money was made than had been expected, for too much land and built property came on the market at the same time and prices collapsed. Also, the more respectable felt some qualms about buying the estates of innocent victims.

The triumvirs were at their wits’ end, for they had to find the resources to finance forty-three legions. They produced a new proscription list that merely confiscated property. They even stole the personal savings that people had placed in the sacred care of the Vestal Virgins. Ingenious new taxes were devised to swell their war chest.

All this came as a great shock to the citizens of Rome in Italy, who, thanks to the wealth of empire, had been exempt from personal tax for the last century. With the western provinces exhausted and the east off limits, they found themselves, for the first time, paying for their civil war.

Meanwhile, the republican cause was prospering. A new maritime leader in the west had emerged to complement the land power of Brutus and Cassius in the east. He was Sextus Pompeius, Pompey the Great’s youngest son. Although still a very young man, he had already lived an extraordinary life.

In 48 B.C., with the civil war in full swing, Pompey the Great sent Sextus, then a child of thirteen or so, with his third wife, the young and beautiful Cornelia, to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the north of the Aegean Sea, where they would be safe from the fighting. He joined them there after Pharsalus, and they sailed with him on his final journey.

Sextus witnessed his father’s murder off the coast of Egypt. A small fishing boat set out from the beach, with a Roman soldier in it and a few court officials. The passengers looked too unimpressively workaday for the reception of a great Roman commander, even one fallen on hard times. Pompey’s entourage grew increasingly suspicious and advised him to have their ship rowed back out of range of the shore.

It was too late, for soon the boat had come alongside and the Roman soldier, a certain Lucius Septimius, whom Pompey recognized, saluted him with the title of imperator, commander in chief. Turning to Cornelia and Sextus before leaving the ship, Pompey kissed them and quoted a couple of lines from Sophocles:

Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant’s court

Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.

Cornelia and Sextus were in a frenzy of anxiety, but they relaxed when the little boat neared the beach where what they took to be a welcome party was waiting. However, as Pompey got to his feet before stepping down onto the sand, Septimius struck him with his sword, followed by others in the boat. Pompey pulled his toga over his head and sank down with a groan.

The people on the trireme gave out a great wailing sound when they saw what was happening, a cry so loud that it was heard on the shore. But Cornelia and Sextus knew there was nothing that could be done. Their ship weighed anchor and, with a strong following wind in its sail, ran out to sea.

The shock of what he had seen marked Sextus forever. The greatest personality not simply in the boy’s own life, but in the Roman world (as he will have been told), was dead, not falling honorably on the battlefield but butchered in a squalid ambush. Although the records of Sextus’ doings are scant, enough evidence survives to suggest that he modeled himself on his father. He gave himself an unusual agnomen, Pius, to convey the meaning that he was “loyal to his father’s memory.”

Cornelia went back to Rome, but Sextus made his way to Africa, where he joined his elder brother, Gnaeus. After the defeat at Thapsus and Cato’s suicide, he and his brother fled to Spain, where the Pompeius clan were popular. Gnaeus had little difficulty in raising an army of thirteen legions, in the main recruited from Spanish tribesmen and slaves. As we have seen, that force was largely destroyed at Munda, and Gnaeus was hunted down and killed. Sextus, however, made a getaway and disappeared into Spain’s tribal hinterland. Caesar published a pardon for Sextus and did not pursue him, believing he was too young to be a serious threat.

This was a mistake, for the young man soon gathered new forces. Although only a teenager, he ran a highly effective guerrilla war against the provincial governors whom Caesar appointed. Appian makes it clear that he understood the principles of irregular fighting, a long tradition among Spanish tribesmen: “With his greater mobility [Sextus] made unexpected appearances, disappeared again, harassed his enemies, and ended up taking a number of towns, small and large.”

The Ides of March changed everything. From being an enemy of the state, Sextus, now about eighteen years old, was suddenly in a position to support the republican cause. The Senate appointed him prefect of the fleet and the seacoasts in 43 B.C., whereupon he gathered together all the ships he could find and set sail for Massilia (today’s Marseille).

Sextus’ fortunes soon went into reverse. After the establishment of the Triumvirate, the consul Pedius canceled his appointment as admiral. However, Sextus hung on to his ships and, in a bold stroke, decided not to return to Spain, instead settling in Sicily, where he persuaded the governor to hand over the island. The triumvirs, seeing their danger, added his name to the proscription list (despite the fact that he had nothing whatever to do with Caesar’s assassination).

Sextus was now in an extraordinarily strong position; from his maritime vantage point in Sicily he controlled the grain supply to Rome from Egypt, Africa, and Sicily itself. Many proscribed men flocked to him, as did refugees and escaped slaves from all over Italy. Sextus encouraged this development, as Appian reports: “His small boats and merchant vessels met any who came by sea; his warships patrolled the shores, made signals to help the lost, and picked up anyone they encountered. He came in person to meet the new arrivals.”

A new strategy began to take shape in republican minds: Brutus and Cassius were in charge of the east, and Sextus of the west. Italy and Gaul were isolated. It would only be a matter of time before the dead dictator’s poisonous faction was isolated and crushed.

Octavian had the same idea, but from the opposite standpoint. He sent a squadron to put paid to Sextus, but it was defeated, and Cassius then sent ships and reinforcements to Sextus. For the time being, Octavian did not press the issue.

The mood in Rome was bleak and panicky. On January 1, 42, a religious ceremony of great political importance was conducted. The triumvirs took an oath that Julius Caesar had become a god, all of whose acts were sacred and binding, and made the Senate swear to the same effect. They laid the foundations of a small temple dedicated to Caesar in the Forum, on the spot where his corpse had been cremated by the grieving mob. His birthday was made a public holiday; celebrations were compulsory and senators or senators’ sons who did not take part were liable to a severe fine of one million sesterces.

Julius Caesar’s deification calls for some explanation. In the classical world, the boundary between gods and men was not clear-cut. Heroes in Greek legends, such as Heracles, were thought to be half human and half divine. From the third century B.C., kings in the Middle East regularly arranged for themselves to be “deified” in their lifetimes. Nobody really believed that they were of a different nature from the rest of humanity, but divine status added majesty to their office and created a respectful distance between them and their grateful subjects.

Roman governors were also sometimes awarded divine honors, although these were held to be valid only in the east. The novelty of Caesar’s deification is that it took place in Rome and under the auspices of the state.

As for Octavian, his standing was considerably enhanced, for he could style himself divi filius, the son of a god. His supporters lost no opportunity to publicize his adoptive father’s elevation to the stars.

Since leaving Italy in the summer of 44 B.C., Brutus and Cassius had been doing extremely well. In theory, they should have made their way to their insultingly unimportant provinces: the island of Crete, and Cyrene, on the north coast of Africa next to Egypt. They chose other and more interesting destinations.

Cassius, a competent soldier, traveled at top speed to Syria, where he was well known and liked. Seven legions based there flocked to his standard. Another four in Egypt also joined him.

For a time Brutus played the student at Athens, the nearest thing the ancient world had to a modern university town. He attended lectures given by leading philosophers of the day. However, behind the calm appearance of academic withdrawal, Brutus and his agents were busy making friends and winning over opinion in Macedonia. By the end of 44 he was in control of most of the province; the legions of neighboring Illyricum came over to him as well, and he captured and eventually executed the official incoming governor, Mark Antony’s brother Gaius.

Brutus and the freedom fighters were extremely reluctant to commence hostilities; they issued manifestos in which they declared that, “for the sake of ensuring harmony in the Republic, they were even willing to live in permanent exile, they would furnish no grounds for civil war.” But Octavian’s second march on Rome, the Triumvirate, and, finally, the proscription persuaded them that peace was no longer an option.

At present, the joint power of Antony and Octavian was too great for Brutus. So he turned away and marched eastward to join forces with Cassius, to recruit more men, and to raise money for the legions’ wages. Cassius also wanted to secure their rear by eliminating potential enemies, such as the island of Rhodes with its powerful fleet.

After draining the east of its human and financial resources, the freedom fighters finally felt ready to march against the triumvirs.

Thrace, a largely ungoverned territory to the east of Greece and Macedonia, stretched up to the river Danube and along to the town of Byzantium and the Hellespont. In today’s topography it covered northeastern Greece, southern Bulgaria, and European Turkey. It was hot, mountainous, and heavily forested.

The territory’s inhabitants were fierce and warlike tribes who formed separate little kingdoms. Greek colonists founded city-states on the coastline, exploited the area’s deposits of gold and silver, and recruited Thracian soldiers, but, by and large, they left the Thracians to themselves in their uncultivated hinterland.

These were the lands over which the Romans established a shaky and uneven dominance from the second century onward and made into a province in 46 B.C. Through it they drove the Via Egnatia, the great highway that led from the Adriatic Sea to Byzantium and the provinces of Asia Minor. At the road’s eastern end stood the town of Philippi, named after Philip of Macedon, who had rebuilt it as a strongpoint against the Thracian tribes. Well supplied with springs, it occupied a precipitous ridge, which Philip ringed with walls. Not far west of Philippi was the Hill of Dionysus, with a gold mine called the Refuges. Just over a mile beyond this, and a couple of miles from the town, two hills flanked the road on either side.

Wooded high ground fell away down to the northern edge of the town, while to the south a marsh stretched eight miles or so to the coast. The Via Egnatia skirted the marsh and continued across a mountain pass called the Symbolon, or Junction, to the small port of Neapolis, a rocky headland with a spacious harbor. A few miles out to sea lay the island of Thasos.

Here was the place where the two largest Roman armies that had ever faced each other in battle were to meet. The triumvirs controlled forty-three legions (more than two hundred thousand men if they were up to strength). However, strong forces had to be stationed in the west, especially in northern Italy and Gaul, to prevent unrest. Octavian and Antony deployed twenty-one or twenty-two legions (perhaps a hundred thousand men) and thirteen thousand cavalry for their encounter with Brutus and Cassius. In principle, the two sides were fairly evenly matched, for the freedom fighters led an army of nineteen legions (say, about seventy thousand men) and twenty thousand foreign cavalry including some Parthian mounted archers; but the opposing generals were all aware of the potentially significant fact that many of these men had served under Julius Caesar and probably remembered him with affection.

Militarily, Antony, who had served with Caesar during the Gallic Wars, was by far the ablest soldier of the Triumvirate and, we may assume, was in charge of planning the campaign. His first task was to prevent Brutus and Cassius from taking over Greece and bringing their fleet into the Adriatic before he had had a chance to transport his forces there and establish himself. So he sent across the Adriatic Sea an advance guard, which marched down the Via Egnatia past Philippi and through the Symbolon, until it reached two further passes that provided the only known routes to Asia. But this force was quickly outflanked and compelled to retire.

Brutus and Cassius moved on to Philippi and were delighted by what they found there. The two hills in front of the town on either side of the road, flanked by woods on their right and the marsh on their left, made a very strong defensive position. Here they would stand and wait for the triumvirs.

The two generals built a fortified camp on each hill, connected by a palisade. Their strategy was to deny Antony a set-piece battle. He would have to maintain long supply lines across Greece, and transport from Italy would be halted, or at least harried, by the republican navy, which would blockade the seaways. It would not be long before he and Octavian were short of food. Eventually they would simply have to retreat—but where to, if the escape route by sea to Italy was barred?

A happy portent conveyed a general sense of optimism. Two eagles flew down onto two silver eagles, pecked at them, and then perched on the standards. As they stayed there the decision was taken to feed them regularly. Fortune was smiling on the republican cause.

The triumvirs and their legions slipped through the republican blockade and disembarked at Dyrrachium, where Octavian fell sick and had to be left behind, his army staying with him. According to Agrippa and Maecenas, his boyhood friends, he was suffering from dropsy (a morbid accumulation of fluid in the body) on this occasion. What may be significant is that he tended to be indisposed at times of great personal crisis. An inexperienced military leader, Octavian was approaching a fearsome challenge and it is possible that his illness was psychosomatic in origin.

Antony rushed on toward Philippi and encamped on the plain a mile or so from Brutus and Cassius. Ditches, earthworks, and palisades were built, and wells sunk for drinking water. Antony was in a most unfavorable position, on low-lying land prone to flooding. He judged that by setting up residence contemptuously close to the freedom fighters, he would communicate a powerful impression of self-confidence that might dampen his opponents’ morale; but when an ambush he set for some enemy foragers failed, he and his men began to lose hope of victory.

Octavian’s health did not improve, but when he learned that things were not going well, he immediately set off for Philippi. He was as suspicious of his colleague as of the freedom fighters. As Dio commented:

[Octavian] heard of the situation and feared the outcome in either case—whether Antony, acting alone, should be defeated or should conquer; for in the first case, he felt that Brutus and Cassius would be in a stronger position to oppose him, or in the latter case, Antony certainly would be.

When Octavian arrived, he shared the same camp as Antony and his forces.

For a while, nothing much happened, except for a few sallies and skirmishes. On or about September 30, the two eagles on the freedom fighters’ standards unexpectedly flew off, a discouraging sign for them. On the following day, Antony decided that something had to be done to break the deadlock and force a battle. With typical Caesarian dash, he ordered a detachment of men to cut a way secretly through the marsh, building a causeway by means of which a substantial number of men could out-flank the left of Cassius’ position, cutting the freedom fighters’ supply line down the Via Egnatia to Neapolis. Tall reeds prevented the enemy from seeing what was going on over the ten days needed to complete the work. Then, one night Antony sent a force along the causeway to the dry land on the far side, where the party quickly established fortified outposts.

Cassius was astonished when he realized what had happened. Not to be outdone, he had a fortification wall built through the marsh, which bisected Antony’s causeway and cut off the legionaries in the outposts. Antony responded by leading his army to attack and demolish a palisade that ran between Cassius’ camp and the marsh, for which purpose they carried with them crowbars and ladders. Their mission then was to attack and destroy the camp.

Cassius’ men could hardly believe their eyes, for the maneuver seemed extraordinarily foolhardy. Brutus’ men were ready and armed; they were unable to resist turning to their left and charging Antony’s men as they marched past. Brutus’ army would have endangered itself if it had pressed this attack for too long, because it would have exposed its own side and rear to a possible counterattack by Octavian’s forces. Before this could happen, they changed course and attacked the camp of Antony and Octavian. Sweeping all before them, they captured it.

Antony at last had his battle. Although he understood the difficulties the triumvirs’ soldiers were facing in the plain, it was too risky to lead his troops back down the hill. So he pressed on. The best account of the engagement is written by Appian, but at this point his description goes out of focus. Antony easily and quickly broke through the palisade and stormed Cassius’ camp, which was lightly defended. He led the attack in person, but presumably did so with only a part of his army, the rest of which must have been fighting Cassius’ main force, drawn up (we may suppose) along the line of the palisade to the marsh. The republican legionaries were gradually pushed back, and then lost further heart when they saw their camp being taken and scattered in disorder. The cavalry galloped off in the direction of the sea.

It had been a bizarre day. Both sides had won—and both had lost. Brutus’ men were plundering Octavian’s camp, and Antony’s that of Cassius. As a further complicating factor, there had been little rain and tramping feet had raised great clouds of dust over the battlefield—the “fog of war” avant la lettre. The various victors and vanquished had no idea what had happened to their friends and colleagues. Having looted the camps, soldiers began to go back to find their units. In the gloom they did not know to which army other legionaries belonged. Appian writes that they “returned looking more like porters than soldiers, and even then they did not notice or see each other distinctly.”

This confusion had an unexpected and disastrous consequence. When Cassius had been driven back from his palisade, he retreated quickly with a few followers to the hill on which Philippi stood and from there looked down on the battle. Being nearsighted, he could hardly see the looting of his camp, while the dust prevented any of his entourage from determining how Brutus was doing at the far end of the battlefield.

A large body of cavalry was seen riding toward his position, and Cassius feared that it was the enemy. However, to make sure, he sent one of his staff, a certain Titinius, to reconnoitre. In fact, the horsemen had been sent by Brutus and when they recognized Titinius approaching, they shouted for joy. Some of them leaped off their horses, hugged Titinius, shook him by the hand, sang, and clashed their weapons as a sign of victory.

Cassius jumped to the wrong conclusion, thinking that Titinius had been taken prisoner and that Brutus had been defeated. He withdrew into an empty tent and made his armor-bearer, a freedman called Pindarus, accompany him. While Pindarus, guessing what would be asked of him, hesitated, a messenger ran up to say that Brutus was victorious and was sacking the enemy camp.

“Tell him I wish him total victory,” Cassius replied, according to Appian.

Then turning to Pindarus, he said:

“Hurry up. Why won’t you release me from my disgrace?”

He pulled his cloak over his head and bared his neck for the sword. Later Cassius’ head was found severed from his body. Pindarus, knowing better than to wait around for consequences, had vanished.

Cassius’ death is usually presented as the tragic result of a mistake. But if Appian is correct, he committed suicide after learning that the day had not been entirely lost. It seems that he died of shame. An experienced commander should have parried Antony’s eccentric and foolhardy onslaught. Cassius had not been able to do so; that Brutus, a lesser general, had succeeded when he had failed simply added to the disgrace.

The one commander of whom nothing had been seen or heard was Octavian. How did he pass the day of battle? This is rather hard to say. Still convalescent, he appears to have remained at the camp when the troops were marshaled. After it had been captured, a rumor went around that he had been killed, for the enemy riddled his empty litter with their spears. But he was very much alive; he must have left the camp shortly before it was attacked.

The question arises as to where Octavian went. According to one ancient commentator, he “gave orders that he should be carried into the fray on a litter.” When we recall that his troops were rapidly routed with serious loss, it seems implausible that Octavian would have risked himself in this way. How could he have survived, and why did no one mention such a brave exploit? In fact, at the time, word soon spread that the divi filius had spent three days skulking in the marshes, and even his friends Agrippa and Maecenas did not deny it.

The likeliest scenario is that when it became clear that there was to be a battle, Octavian was advised by his doctor that he was too ill to play an active part, and would be wise to withdraw to a place of safety. Not very admirable behavior, but understandable in a sick young man with little experience of battle. The damaging consequence, though, was that Octavian acquired a reputation for cowardice.

Both sides’ armies were in a bad way. Octavian and Antony’s camp had been thoroughly looted. The weather broke. The autumn rains fell in torrents, flooding everyone’s tents with mud and water, and the temperature dropped below freezing. Antony gradually outflanked Brutus by pressing forward past his southern wing; to avoid encirclement, Brutus extended his own lines with fortifications along the Via Egnatia. However, the triumvirs, short not only of food but of money, could not afford to recompense their men for property lost or destroyed.

Then some terrible news arrived. On the same day as the battle, a great sea fight had taken place in the Adriatic. A republican fleet had encountered a convoy conveying two legions to join the triumviral forces. A few transport ships escaped, but then the wind fell and the remainder drifted about in the calm to be rammed or set on fire with ease. The soldiers were helpless in the face of their destruction. Appian writes:

Some committed suicide when the flames reached them, some jumped aboard the enemy warships, to do or die. Half-burnt ships sailed about for a long time with men on board who were incapacitated by burns or by hunger and thirst. Some men even clung to spars or planks and were washed up on deserted cliffs and beaches.

The disaster was a grim reminder that the republicans controlled the seas. If the triumvirs failed to defeat them by land, they would find it difficult if not impossible to withdraw to Italy; they would be cornered in Greece and would soon run out of supplies. Unsurprisingly, morale among the troops was badly shaken, and Antony and Octavian determined to try to keep the news of the naval catastrophe from Brutus and his men, whom it would excite and reinvigorate.

Although living conditions were not so bad as down in the plain, the situation in Brutus’ camp left much to be desired. The mood among the republicans darkened. Some eastern princes and levies slipped away homeward and a local Thracian leader, who had been a firm ally, changed sides. The soldiers resented being cooped up “like women, inactive and afraid.” Against his better judgment, Brutus decided to take his officers’ advice and give battle.

Late in the afternoon of October 23, he led out his troops and combat commenced. There seems to have been little in the way of maneuver; the two sides simply slugged it out like tired boxers. Octavian’s troops fought bravely, and silence about his whereabouts suggests that their general was sufficiently recovered to lead them. Eventually they began to push the enemy back “as though they were tipping over a very heavy piece of machinery.” Retreat turned to rout. Antony led the pursuit until night fell. Octavian, still weak and doubtless now exhausted, was meant to guard the camp, but he delegated the duty to a deputy.

Brutus retreated into the wooded hills above Philippi with a sizable force, four understrength legions. His plan was to make his way back to his camp when night came, or perhaps escape to the sea, for through his navy he still ruled the waves. However, Antony had ringed his hideaway with guardposts and spent the night under arms on watch opposite him.

Hope was dying and Brutus began to consider suicide. It is hard to escape the impression that the defeated freedom fighter was consciously giving a public performance for the benefit of posterity. He quoted apt tags from the Medea of Euripides, and from another play about Heracles, who when dying said:

O wretched valour, you were but a name,

And yet I worshipped you as real indeed;

But now it seems you were but Fortune’s slave.

During the night it became clear that the four legions were no longer willing to obey orders and were planning surrender. For Brutus, this disloyalty was conclusive. At first light, someone said it was time for everyone to go and make their escape. Brutus jumped up and answered: “Yes, that’s right, but with our hands, not our feet!” He went round them all to bid them goodbye, saying that it was a great joy that not a single friend of his had failed him. He then walked a little distance with two or three companions. Grabbing one of their swords, he held the point to his left nipple and threw himself on it.

Marcus Junius Brutus was a man of contradictory qualities. In his arrogance and ruthlessness, he represented the worst of the old republican elite. Breaking the rule that senators should not engage in trade or moneylending, he practiced usury in the Middle East on a breathtaking scale. He turned coat after Pharsalus, and revealed to Julius Caesar that the fleeing Pompey’s likely destination was Egypt—a betrayal of trust, if ever there was one.

At the same time, Brutus was high-minded, an intellectual who took ideas seriously. He saw the assassination of Caesar as a sacrifice rather than a political act. He was a man with “a singularly gentle nature,” who feared civil war almost (although not quite) as much as tyranny.

Brutus lived long enough to see the dead Cato transcend history and enter legend, and the story of his own end suggests that he understood that the final contribution he could make to his cause was to be a martyr. Here his judgment was perfect. The image of Brutus as a defender of liberty has survived the ages.

After the battle, Octavian behaved extremely badly. This can be attributed in part to the fact that he was still ill. The previous four weeks had been the most testing of his short life and he must have been emotionally as well as physically prostrated. He may also have thought that retribution would be good policy. One way or the other, though, he was in the mood for blood. His conduct betrayed ice-cold anger.

The remaining units of the republican army surrendered. About fourteen thousand regular soldiers negotiated their surrender with the triumvirs in return for a pardon. Although many senior figures had died on the battlefield (among them Cato’s son), there were distinguished prisoners of war to deal with—the last defenders of the demolished Republic. Octavian decided that they should be put to death. He insulted the more distinguished of the captives who came before him for judgment. When one man humbly asked to be given a proper burial, Octavian merely replied: “That’s a matter for the carrion birds to decide.” It was reported that a father and son pleaded for mercy. Octavian determined that one of them would be spared. The decision would be made by casting lots or playing morra (a game in which one contestant thrust out some of his fingers, while his opponent simultaneously shouted the number of fingers thrust out; a correct guess won the round). They refused to play. The father offered his life for his son’s, and was executed. The son then committed suicide. Octavian watched them both die.

The remaining captives were so disgusted by his behavior that while they were being led off in chains they courteously saluted Antony and shouted obscene insults at Octavian.

Antony knew how to win graciously, treating Brutus’ body with respect and laying over it his own general’s scarlet cloak. Octavian was less generous with the remains: he had the head chopped off and sent to Rome to be thrown at the feet of a statue of Julius Caesar.

Philippi, following hard on the heels of the proscription, marked the end of the Republic. Rome’s ancient ruling class was decimated, and surviving nobiles were scattered to all corners of the empire. In theory, the triumvirs’ task was to restore the old order of things, but this was evidently not their intention.

Many ordinary people will have heaved a sigh of relief, for the uncertainties, confusion, bloodshed, and, above all, ruinously high taxes brought about by eight years of civil war appeared to be over.

However, it was unwise to be too optimistic. How Rome was to be governed in the future was altogether unclear; government by three men did not promise stability. Two of them had been enemies and, although allies for now, were still rivals for Julius Caesar’s inheritance, and the love of the people and the legions.

As for Octavian, the coming months and years promised to be difficult. Since the Ides of March he had played his cards with great skill (no doubt advised by the clever men his adoptive father had gathered around him). He had acted unscrupulously, but his lies and killings were always for a carefully planned purpose. He had learned his politics from Caesar, and from the outset he aimed to reestablish an autocracy, not only out of personal ambition but also from a conviction that the Republic was incompetent and needed to be replaced.

But although Octavian had much for which he could congratulate himself, his position was subordinate and insecure. The real victor of Philippi was Mark Antony, whose generalship contrasted shamingly with his own performance on the battlefield. For the time being, Octavian had no choice but to accept his colleague’s predominance; he must seize each opportunity to advance his authority as and when it presented itself.

Antony and Octavian held a magnificent sacrifice for their victory. Then the living left the two hills, the plain, and the marshes of Philippi as soon as possible. The scarred landscape fell silent and the evidence of slaughter slowly disappeared, although to ensure a memory of what had taken place the town was renamed Julia Victrix Philippi (Victorious Philippi of the Julian Clan) and some soldiers settled there.

The unloving triumvirs parted company. Antony stayed in Greece for a while, where he attended games and religious ceremonies, and listened to the discussions of scholars. He soon had enough of that and moved on to Asia Minor, intent on having a good time.

Octavian was carried back to Italy, where his arrival was awaited with fear and loathing. His illness flared up again dangerously on the journey, and he stayed for a while at Brundisium. He was thought unlikely to survive and at one point a rumor circulated that he was actually dead. Some thought his sickness was a charade, that he was delaying his return because he was planning some devilish new scheme for fleecing the citizenry. Despite his reassurances to the contrary, people hid their property or left town.

Followers of Brutus and Cassius, such as Cicero’s son, who were, even now, unwilling to accept defeat, made their way to join Sextus Pompeius in Sicily, or to the two republican admirals, Lucius Staius Murcus and the high-and-mighty nobleman Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. But many survivors shared the view of one of Brutus’ military tribunes, a plump young man called Quintus Horatius Flaccus, whose experience at Philippi gave him a loathing for warfare that lasted his lifetime. Known to us as Horace, he became one of the greatest poets of the age.

Years later he wrote a poem welcoming a friend back to the pleasures of civilian life after long military postings. They had fought together at Philippi, as the poet ruefully recalls. He is amused by his own cowardice and not a little scornful of the valor that kills.

We two once beat a swift retreat together,

Upon Philippi’s field

When I dumped my poor shield,

And courage cracked, and the strong men who frowned

Fiercest were felled, chins to the miry ground….

…In my laurel’s shade

Stretch out the bones that long campaigns have made

Weary. Your wine’s been waiting

For years: no hesitating.