Augustus

XII

EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST

35–34 B.C.

Everywhere the land was covered by thick and tangled forests and there were few tilled fields. Occasional small clearings could be found where spelt and millet, the staple grains of the population, were grown. Here and there hills were crowned with fortress towns, to which people could retreat in time of war. The inhabitants were poor, but, according to Dio, were “considered to be the bravest of all men about whom we have knowledge.”

Roman legions marched into Illyricum for the first time in 229 B.C. Rome declared the region a province but never completely bent the untamed tribes to its will. In 35 B.C., despite Antony’s successes against the Parthini, Octavian in his new role as bringer of peace decided that the time had come to restore order. Italy would thank him for yet another contribution to its security.

His motives, however, were not straightforward. He needed a war for his own purposes. First, he wanted an excuse to retain most of his legions, in case he might require them in some future confrontation with Antony. The army in the east had to be matched by one in the west if the two triumvirs were to be seen as equal in authority.

More important, though, Octavian knew that he had a difficulty with his public image. While winning great respect for bravery during the Sicilian war, everyone knew that the man behind the victory was Agrippa. Public opinion had not quite forgotten Octavian’s invisibility at Philippi. To match Antony, who was bruised by his failure in Parthia but still preeminent, he had to score an undoubted military success, for which he was seen to be wholly responsible.

Octavian had a liking for complicated offensives, using armies and fleets to attain simultaneous but different objectives. The plan in the final campaign against Sextus Pompeius had involved three fleets and two armies; for Illyricum, he again decided on a three-pronged approach. We say “Octavian,” for the impression was studiously given that he was personally in charge and made all the key decisions. However, it is known that Agrippa was present during the Illyricum campaign and, just as he played a key role in Sicily, we can perhaps detect his guiding hand.

The fleet was brought around from southern Italy and given the task of eliminating the pirates who operated out of Illyrian harbors. At the same time, two armies congregated at the Italian frontier with Illyricum. One force, commanded by Octavian’s legates (or deputies), was to strike in a northeasterly direction, toward the tribes of Pannonia. The remaining legions, led by their young commander in chief, would strike southeast down the valley of the river Colapis (today’s Kupa).

The first aim was to reduce the Iapudes, a fierce tribe not far from the coast. The campaign started well and a few strongholds surrendered. Then the going grew harder. The terrain the legions marched through often consisted of precipitous hills and deep ravines along which torrents rushed. At the tribal capital, Metulum (perhaps the modern hill of ViniÄica near Munjava), the resistance of the Iapudes stiffened.

Octavian had a large mound built against the town wall, which would allow his soldiers to storm the place. The Iapudes used tunneling devices captured from the Romans in an earlier campaign to undermine it. They set fire to Roman siege engines, including the large catapults that bombarded Metulum with missiles and battered the wall.

Two more mounds were raised and four wooden gangways installed to enable the Romans to gain access from them to the wall and storm the town, but the Iapudes cut away the supports. Gangway after gangway collapsed, until only one was left. The legionaries hesitated and stood still.

At this crisis in the assault, Octavian ran down from a temporary wooden tower from which he had been directing operations and snatched the shield from a soldier who was hesitating to make the crossing. Accompanied by the inevitable Agrippa and his bodyguard, he strode over the gangway. The men followed. Unfortunately, too many soldiers clambered onto the gangway at the same time and it collapsed.

Octavian was wounded and one leg and both arms were badly crushed. However, he survived and was protected by troops on the wall who had already made the crossing. More gangways were quickly run out and soldiers poured across. The defenders’ morale failed and the town fell.

This was a display of conspicuous bravery. In classical times generals were expected to risk their lives alongside their men, although they were closely surrounded by friends and followers and, being needed to control the battle, were seldom in the front line. Leading an assault on a besieged city was an exceptionally dangerous enterprise and only the most audacious commanders, such as Alexander the Great, took such risks.

Octavian was not a man for acting in hot blood or on the spur of the moment, and his action was out of character. One wonders whether he and his advisers were looking in advance for an appropriate opportunity to offer a bravura exhibition of valor. It is noteworthy that he was well guarded at all times during the incident. Also, the seriousness of his injuries may have been exaggerated, for there is no record of a pause in the army’s onward march to allow time for them to heal.

In any event, the propaganda value of this event was substantial, and public opinion was impressed. The contemporary historian Livy remarked that Octavian’s “beauty of person [was] enhanced by blood and his dignitas by the danger in which he found himself.”

Throughout 35 B.C., Octavian kept as close an eye as practicable on Mark Antony’s activities, or lack of them, in the east. His worst fear was that Antony, who had not been in the capital since 39 B.C. and had time on his hands, might take it into his head to visit Rome. There he would be able to overshadow Octavian, who was becoming used to regarding the city as his exclusive patch. Worse yet, once Antony came back to Italy it is hard to see how Octavian could in practice prevent him from raising troops.

But Antony did not come. It may be that his presence was needed to prepare for a renewal of the Parthian war, even if a new expedition was to be postponed to 34 B.C. The more likely cause, though, was his increasingly strong relationship with Cleopatra. The triumvir and the queen were now a settled couple. It has been suggested that they married in 36, at the time of Antony’s territorial allocations; however, although a ceremony of some sort is reported, this seems unlikely, for both Romans and Greeks strongly disapproved of bigamy and (as we have seen) Romans did not recognize foreign marriages. Perhaps what was intended as a mystical partnership between the New Isis and the New Dionysus was maliciously misinterpreted in Rome as an earthly union. In 35, the queen gave birth to her fourth child, and her third by Antony, a boy called Ptolemy Philadelphus.

As he settled down to an indefinite reign as the de facto monarch of the east, amid the uncompetitive luxuries of Alexandria, Antony must have thought of Rome with annoyance and distaste. He could do without the scratchy tetchiness of triumviral politics. His supporters in the capital were perfectly capable of looking after his interests without him having to go there in person.

But was that all there was to be said about Antony’s continuing absence? Perhaps something more sinister was at work than his characteristic idleness. Information was coming in that the eastern portion of Rome’s empire was rearming. Antony commanded twenty-five legions, although after the Parthian disaster some were very weak in numbers. He had recently recruited five more, making a grand total of thirty legions.

All this could well have an obvious and innocent explanation—namely, that before he renewed the Parthian war Antony had to make good his losses, especially given that Octavian was continuing to withhold the Italian legions he had long promised. However, Antony was also investing heavily in warships. Tellingly, he issued a series of coins, each with the number of one of his legions and backed by a warship. What could he need a vast armada for, if not to invade the western empire?

However, if that was the idea, its execution would not be immediate, for the Parthian aftermath was attracting all Antony’s attention. In the spring of 34 B.C., the Romans stormed into Armenia. The king, who had betrayed Antony during the failed invasion, quickly caved in. He and his two younger sons were taken prisoner, probably lured into a meeting and kidnapped. Here at last was a success—too easily won to make much of, one would have thought, but a success all the same. Armenia was turned into a Roman province and the country was opened up to trade and economic exploitation.

Dispatches were sent to Rome, but the mood there had altered since 36 B.C. and the insincere festivities that marked the Parthian “victory” of that year. Octavian (sensing that pretense was no longer appropriate or necessary), the Senate, and the people of Rome honored Antony’s genuine achievement in Armenia with a studied and stony silence. After all, Crassus’ standards were still in Parthian hands and, indeed, had been joined by some of Antony’s.

Back in Alexandria, though, it was time to celebrate.

Having dealt with the Iapudes, Octavian marched east to fight the Pannonian tribes in the interior beyond Illyricum. It is not entirely clear what they had done to deserve his attention. Dio has his own bleak take on the triumvir’s motives: “He had no complaint against them [the Pannonians], not having been wronged by them in any way, but he wanted to give his soldiers practice and to support them at the expense of an alien people.”

There is something in that, but it may also have occurred to Octavian and his military planners that control of the coastal strip of Illyricum would not of itself secure Rome’s dominance; permanent mastery demanded a defensible frontier. The obvious candidate was the river Danube, which bordered the far or northeastern end of Pannonia. Eventually, this meant that Pannonia would have to become a Roman province. However, that was a long-term aspiration; for now, Octavian probably wanted to spy out the land and estimate how difficult a permanent conquest might be.

The legions were making for the Pannonian fortress of Siscia, at the confluence of the Colapis and Savus (Save) rivers. Octavian hoped a display of force would suffice to elicit surrender. However, the infuriated tribesmen harassed the Romans mercilessly. In response, Octavian burned the villages and crops he came across and took all the booty that could be found.

On two sides, the Colapis and Savus made Siscia nearly impregnable, but on the third there was a gap between the rivers that was fortified with a palisade and a ditch. The Romans attacked simultaneously by water and on land. The defenders learned that the Romans had successfully brought over a number of tribes to their side; the news made them lose heart and they quickly negotiated a surrender. Meanwhile the Roman fleet had defeated the Adriatic pirates and killed or enslaved coastal tribes.

As the campaigning season of 35 drew to a close, Octavian was able to congratulate himself on a successful year. He left a garrison of more than two legions to hold Siscia, and returned to Rome to spend the winter on civilian business.

To have defeated some barbarian tribes was good, but hardly glamorous. He decided to stage an invasion of the island of Britannia (following up his adoptive father’s brief forays ten years earlier). It lay on the edge of the known world and its remoteness exerted a great fascination on the Roman mind; the conquest would be a coup.

Then, before the winter of 35–34 was over, a rumor filtered back to Rome that the garrison at Siscia had come under attack, so Octavian abandoned his plans and dutifully returned to Illyricum. Discovering that the tribal forces had been fought off, he traveled down to the south of the province, where he joined Agrippa and devoted the campaigning season to a major onslaught on one of Illyricum’s largest tribes, the Dalmatae. It was hard slogging in an inhospitable rocky landscape. Octavian was struck in the knee by a sling stone and laid up for several days.

Once recovered, he returned to Rome late in the autumn to ready himself for his second consulship, to begin on January 1, 33.

Shortly after his return to Egypt in 34 B.C., Antony staged an event that looked at first glance very like a triumphal procession. He rode into the city on a chariot, preceded by his Armenian prisoners of war, and made his way to a central square where the queen sat in splendor awaiting him. Banquets followed, accompanied by distributions of money and food.

When Octavian learned of this, he unscrupulously used it as a means of criticizing Antony. It was unheard-of and offensive for a Roman general to hold a triumph anywhere except in Rome. Evidence was building up that, in some way, Antony was going native—cutting loose from his romanitas, his Romanness, and behaving more and more like a grand Hellenistic monarch.

In fact, Antony seems to have been staging an exotic eastern spectacle, not mimicking a triumph. Rather than dressing as a Roman general, he presented himself as a human version of Dionysus. His head was bound with an ivy wreath, his body was enveloped in a robe of saffron and gold; he held the thyrsus (a fennel stalk topped with a pinecone or vine or ivy leaves, which Dionysus’ followers carried) and wore buskins (the raised boots used by actors in plays staged at the festival of Dionysus in Athens). He was reported as riding in the “Bacchic chariot”; this was traditionally drawn by big cats, such as leopards or panthers. By identifying himself with an appropriate divinity, Antony was merely continuing his policy of establishing a public persona that would appeal to the inhabitants of the eastern provinces.

A few days later, he presided over an even more unusual ceremony, which came to be known as the Donations of Alexandria. It took place in the city’s great Gymnasium, a splendid colonnaded building for athletic training and lectures on philosophy. A silver-gleaming dais with two golden thrones was erected, either in the open air in the palaistra (, “exercise ground”) or in the Gymnasium’s largest covered space, reserved for ball games and called the sphairisterion (). Antony and Cleopatra, who was dressed as the goddess Isis, seated themselves on the thrones. Caesarion, now aged thirteen, was officially Ptolemy XV Caesar and Cleopatra’s co-ruler (for a woman was not allowed to reign alone). He and the queen’s children by Antony sat on lower thrones.

When everyone had arrived and settled into their places, Antony stood up and delivered an address. Cleopatra, he said, had been married to Julius Caesar, and so Ptolemy Caesar was his legitimate son. This preposterous claim was aimed at undermining Octavian’s position. It ignored the existence of Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, and of the Roman avoidance of marriage to foreigners. Perhaps what Antony had in mind was another symbolic or heavenly union between two gods.

He then proceeded to shower Cleopatra and the children with honors and territories. Alexander was to receive Armenia, Media, and all the land to the east as far as India—in other words, the as yet unconquered Parthian empire. Little Ptolemy Philadelphus was to become king of all the Syrian territories already awarded to Cleopatra, and overlord of the client kingdoms of Asia Minor. Cleopatra Selene, Alexander’s twin sister, received Cyrenaica (the eastern half of today’s Libya, abutting Egypt) and the island of Crete. Caesarion was declared king of kings, and Cleopatra (the mother) queen of kings.

At about this time, Antony issued a coin, a silver denarius, which graphically illustrated his partnership with Egypt’s female pharaoh. One side showed Antony’s bare head, and behind it the royal tiara of Armenia, with the message “Antony, after the conquest of Armenia.” Scandalously for Roman currency, which never depicted foreigners, the head of Cleopatra, diademed and with jewels in her hair, was on the other side, accompanied by the prow of a ship. The inscription read: “To Cleopatra, queen of kings and of her sons who are kings.”

What strategy underlay the Donations of Alexandria? Antony has not shared his ideas with posterity, and the literary sources mainly regurgitate the Octavian version. So we can only speculate.

It is important to be clear what Antony was not doing. He was not giving the eastern half of the Roman empire away for good to Cleopatra and her brood of little Ptolemies. This was no abdication. As triumvir and commander of the armies of Rome, Antony remained the ultimate authority, and behind him stood the Senate and people of Rome. What he gave, he could take back.

The Donations were in line with the thinking that underlay Antony’s previous reorganization of the east. That is, it was far easier to allow locals to manage most of the eastern provinces on behalf of Rome, administering justice and raising taxes, than for the imperial authorities to do it. The Romans being unsupported by a permanent civil service, this would save them a world of trouble, as well as helping to solve the problem of rapacious public officials. The empire would be far more stable if its inhabitants did not feel that they were under foreign occupation.

However, unkind commentators, both at the time and later, saw something more alarming. A large part of the east, Antony’s allocated territory as triumvir, was being gathered together into a single monarchy, with Antony as emperor and Cleopatra as empress. Their long-term aim, it was suggested, was to overthrow Rome. Rumor assiduously put it about that the queen’s favorite oath was “so surely as I shall one day give judgement on the Capitol.”

This is implausible. Antony had a conventional mind that could not imagine an end to Roman dominion, and Cleopatra was too much of a realist to wish for more than the reassertion of Egypt as the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, under Roman protection. Most probably, the Donations were a symbolic gesture, a way of settling public opinion in the east and marshaling it behind Antony as Dionysus/Osiris and Cleopatra as Isis/Aphrodite. In fact, few if any practical changes were noticeable on the ground in Syria, or Cappadocia, Pontus, or Galatia. Hordes of Egyptian administrators did not spread through the Middle East, replacing local authorities and Roman officials and tax farmers.

It is hard to disagree with the sentiments that the great twentieth-century Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy attributed to the audience at that glittering ceremony in the Gymnasium.

And the Alexandrians thronged to the festival

Full of enthusiasm, and shouted acclamations,

In Greek, and Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,

Charmed by the lovely spectacle—

Though they knew of course what all this was worth,

What empty words they really were, these kingships.