The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

The asthma improved only a little on the journey, over the sealed Via Minucia but behind two molting mules, but Octavius refused to stop for longer than it took to change teams; they reached the house of Aulus Plautius on nightfall. "Philippus couldn't come, he has to stay closer to Rome," Plautius said, showing Agrippa where to put Octavius, "but he's sent a letter at the gallop, and there's one from Atia too." Breathing easier with each passing moment, Octavius lay propped on pillows on a comfortable couch and extended his hand to the anxious Agrippa. "You see?" he asked, his smile as beautiful as Caesar's. "I knew I'd be safe with Marcus Agrippa. Thank you." "When did you last eat?" asked Plautius. "In Apollonia," said the famished Agrippa. "Where are my letters?" Octavius demanded, more interested in reading than eating. "Hand them over for the sake of peace," Agrippa said, used to him. "He can read and eat at the same time." Philippus's letter was longer than the brief note sent to Apollonia, and included a full list of the Liberators as well as the news that Caesar had named Gaius Octavius as his heir, and had also adopted him in his will.

I cannot understand Antonius's toleration of these loathsome men, let alone what seems to be implied approval of their act. They have been granted a general amnesty, and though Brutus and Cassius have not yet appeared on their tribunals to resume their praetorian duties, it is being said that they will do this very shortly. Indeed, I imagine that they would already be back at work, had it not been for the advent of a fellow who appeared three days ago at the spot where Caesar's body was summarily burned. He calls himself Gaius Amatius, and insists that he is Gaius Marius's grandson. Certainly he has considerable oratorical skill, which argues against a purely peasant origin. First he informed the crowds they continue to gather every day in the Forum that the Liberators are utter villains, and must be killed. His anger is directed at Brutus, Cassius and Decimus Brutus more than at the others, though my own opinion is that Gaius Trebonius is the biggest villain. He didn't participate in the actual murder, but he masterminded the plot. On that first day Amatius inspired the crowd to anger: it began, as happened at the funeral, to howl for Liberator blood. His second appearance was even more effective, and the crowd grew really ugly. But yesterday's appearance, Amatius's third, was worse. He accused Marcus Antonius of complicity in the deed! Said that Antonius's accommodation of the Liberators (oddly enough, Antonius did use the word "accommodation") was deliberate. Antonius was publicly patting the Liberators on the back, rewarding them. They walk around as free as birds, yet they murdered Caesar Antonius was thick as thieves with Brutus and Cassius, hadn't the people seen that for themselves? All this, and more. So the crowd grew riotous. I am leaving for my villa at Neapolis, where I will meet you, but I have just heard that some of the Liberators have decided since the appearance of this Gaius Amatius to leave Italy. Cimber has gone to his province in a huge hurry, so have Staius Murcus, Trebonius and Decimus Brutus. The Senate met to discuss the provinces, and Brutus and Cassius attended, expecting to hear where they would be sent to govern next year. Instead, Antonius discussed only his province, Macedonia, and Dolabella's province, Syria. No talk of pursuing Caesar's war against the Parthians, however. Antonius has laid claim to the six crack legions encamped in western Macedonia, insists they are now his. For war against Burebistas and the Dacians? He didn't say so. I think he is simply ensuring his own survival if things come to yet another civil war. No decisions were taken about the other nine legions, which have not been recalled to Italy The Senate, aided and abetted by Cicero who was back in the House the moment Caesar died, praising the Liberators to the skies is busy starting to unravel Caesar's laws, which is a tragedy. There's no thought behind it. They remind me of a child getting its hands on mama's sewing halfway through shaping a sleeve. One other subject I must mention before closing your inheritance. Octavius, I beg you not to take it up! Come to an agreement with the one-eighth heirs whereby the estate is more equitably split up, and decline to be adopted. To take up your inheritance is to court death. Between Antonius, the Liberators and Dolabella, you won't live out the year. They will crush you, an eighteen-year-old. Antonius is beside himself with rage at being cut out of the will, especially by a mere lad. I do not say he did conspire with Caesar's assassins, for there is no proof of it, but I do say that he has few scruples and no ethics. So when I see you, I will expect to hear you say that you have decided to decline Caesar's bequest. Live to be an old man, Octavius.

Octavius put the letter down, chewing hungrily on a chicken leg. Thank all the gods, the asthma was lifting at last. He felt curiously invigorated, able to deal with anything. "I am Caesar's heir," he said to Plautius and Agrippa. Working his way through the very generous meal as if it were his last, Agrippa paused, the eyes beneath that jutting, thick-browed forehead gleaming. Plautius, who evidently knew this already, looked grim. "Caesar's heir," said Agrippa. "What exactly does that mean?" "It means," Plautius answered, "that Gaius Octavius inherits all Caesar's money and estates, that he will be rich beyond any imagination. But Marcus Antonius expected to inherit, and isn't pleased." "Caesar also adopted me. I am no longer Gaius Octavius, I am Gaius Julius Caesar Filius." As he announced this, Octavius seemed to swell, his grey eyes as brilliant as his smile. "What Plautius didn't say was that, as Caesar's son, I inherit his enormous clout and his clientele. I will have at least a quarter of Italy as my clients my legal followers, pledged to do my bidding and almost everyone in Italian Gaul, because Caesar absorbed all Pompeius Magnus's clients there as well as having multitudes of his own." "Which is why your stepfather doesn't want you to take up this terrible inheritance!" Plautius cried. "But you will," Agrippa said, grinning. "Of course I will. Caesar trusted me, Agrippa! In giving me his name, Caesar said that he thinks I have the strength and the spirit to continue his struggle to put Rome on her feet. He knew that I don't have the ability to inherit his military mantle, but that didn't matter as much to him as Rome does." "It's a death sentence." Plautius groaned. "The name Caesar will never die, I will make sure of that." "Don't, Octavius!" Plautius implored. "Please don't!" "Caesar trusted me," Octavius repeated. "How can I betray that trust? If he were my age and this was given to him to do, would he abrogate it? No! And nor will I." Caesar's heir broke the seal on his mother's letter, glanced at it, tossed it into the brazier. "Silly," he said, and sighed. "But then, she always is." "I take she's begging you not to take up your inheritance either?" asked Agrippa, back into the food. "She wants a living son, she says. Pah! I do not intend to die, Agrippa, no matter how much Antonius might want me to. Though why he should, I have no idea. No matter how the estate's divided, he's not an heir. Maybe," Octavius went on, "we wrong Antonius. Perhaps his chief desire isn't Caesar's money, but Caesar's clout and clientele." "If you don't intend to die, then eat," said Agrippa. "Go on, Caesar, eat! You're not a tough, stringy old bird like your namesake, and you've nothing in your stomach at all. Eat!" "You can't call him Caesar!" Plautius bleated. "Even if he is adopted, his name becomes Caesar Octavianus, not plain Caesar." "I'm going to call him Caesar," said Agrippa. "And I will never, never forget that the first person to call me Caesar was Marcus Agrippa," the debatably named heir said, gaze soft. "Will you cleave to me through thick and thin?" Agrippa took the outstretched hand. "I will, Caesar." "Then you will rise with me. So I pledge it. You will be famous and powerful, have your pick of Rome's daughters." "You're both too young to know what you're doing!" Plautius moaned, wringing his hands. "We're not, you know," said Agrippa. "I think Caesar knew what he was doing too. He chose his heir wisely." Because Agrippa was right, Octavian2 ate, his mind putting aside this extraordinary fate in favor of a more immediate and pressing concern: his asthma. Again, Caesar had come to his rescue in providing Hapd'efan'e, who had explained his malady to him in simple yet unoptimistic terms. Something no physician had done before. If he was in truth to survive, then he must follow Hapd'efan'e's advice in all ways, from avoiding foods like honey and strawberries to disciplining his emotions into positive channels. Dust, pollen, chaff and animal hair would always be hazards, there was nothing he could do about those beyond try to avoid them, and that wouldn't always be possible. Nor would he ever be a good sailor, between the heavy air and the seasickness. What he had to banish was fear, not easy for one whose mother had inculcated it in him so firmly. Caesar's heir should know no fear, just as Caesar had known no fear. How can I assume Caesar's name and massive dignitas if I stand there in public whistling like a bellows and blue in the face? I will conquer this handicap, because I must. Exercise, Hapd'efan'e had said. Good food. And a placid frame of mind. How can the owner of Caesar's name have a placid frame of mind?

Very tired, he slept dreamlessly from just after that late dinner until two hours before dawn, not sorry that Plautius's spacious house permitted him and Agrippa to have separate rooms. When he woke, he felt well and breathed easily A drumming sound brought him to the window, where he found Brundisium in the grasp of driving rain; a glance up at the faint outline of the clouds ascertained that they were ragged, scudding before a high wind. There would be nobody on the streets today, for this weather had set in. Nobody on the streets today... An idle thought, it wandered aimlessly through his mind and bumped into a fact he hadn't remembered until the two collided. From what Plautius had said, all of Brundisium knew that he was Caesar's heir, just like the rest of Italy. The news of Caesar's death had spread like wildfire, so the news of Caesar's heir, this eighteen-year-old nephew (he would forget the "great"), had gone after it with equal speed. That meant that whenever he showed his face, people would defer to him, especially if he announced himself as Gaius Julius Caesar. Well, he was Gaius Julius Caesar! He would never again call himself anything else, save perhaps to tack "Filius" on to it. As for the Octavianus a useful way to tell friend from enemy. Those who called him Octavianus would be those who refused to acknowledge his special status. He remained at the window watching the thick rods of rain angle down before the wind, his face, even his eyes, composed into a tranquil mask that gave nothing of his thoughts away. Inside that bulbous cranium the same huge skull Caesar and Cicero both owned his thoughts were very busy, but not tumultuous. Marcus Antonius was desperate for money, and there would be none from Caesar. The contents of the Treasury were probably fairly safe, but right next door in the vaults of Gaius Oppius, chief banker to Brundisium and one of Caesar's loyalest adherents, lay a vast sum of money. Caesar's war chest. Possibly in the neighborhood of thirty thousand talents of silver, from what Caesar had said take it all with you, don't rely on sending back to the Senate for more because you mightn't get it. Thirty thousand talents amounted to seven hundred and fifty million sesterces. How many talents can one of those massive wagons I saw in Spain carry if it's drawn by ten oxen? These will be Caesar's wagons here too the very best from axle grease to stout, iron-bound Gallic wheels. Could one wagon carry three, four, five hundred talents? Now that's the kind of thing Caesar would know at once, but I do not. How fast does a groaning wagon travel? First I have to get the war chest out of the vaults. How? Unabashed. Just walk in and ask for it. After all, I am Gaius Julius Caesar! I have to do this. Yes, I must do this! But even supposing I managed to spirit it away, where to hide it? That's easy on my own estates beyond Sulmo, estates my grandfather had as spoils from the Italian War. Useful only for the timber they bear, logged and sent to Ancona for export. So cover the silver with a layer of wooden planks. I have to do this! I must! Holding a lamp, he went to Agrippa's room and woke him. A true warrior, Agrippa slept like the dead, yet was fully alert at a soft word. "Get up, I need you." Agrippa slipped a tunic over his head, ran a comb through his hair, bent to lace on boots, grimacing at the sound of rain. "How many talents can a heavy army wagon carry, and how many oxen are needed to pull it?" asked Octavian. "One of Caesar's wagons, at least a hundred with ten oxen, but a lot depends on how the load is distributed the smaller and more uniform the components, the heavier the cargo can be. Roads and terrain are factors too. If I knew what you were after, Caesar, I could tell you more." "Are there any wagons and teams in Brundisium?" "Bound to be. The heavy baggage is still in transit." "Of course!" Octavian slapped his thigh in vexation at his own density. "Caesar would have conveyed the war chest from Rome in person, it's still here because he'll take it on in person, so the wagons and oxen are here too. Find them for me, Agrippa." "Am I allowed to ask what and why?" "I'm appropriating the war chest before Antonius can get his hands on it. It's Rome's money, but Antonius would use it to pay his debts and run up more. When you find the teams and wagons, bring them into Brundisium in a single line, then dismiss their drivers. We'll hire others after they're loaded. Park the leading one outside Oppius's bank next door. I'll organize the labor," said Octavian briskly. "Pretend you're Caesar's quaestor." Agrippa departed wrapped in his waterproof circular cape, and Octavian went to break his fast with Aulus Plautius. "Marcus Agrippa has gone out," he said, looking very ill. "In this weather?" Plautius asked, then sniffed. "Looking for a whorehouse, no doubt. I hope you have more sense!" "As if asthma were not enough, Aulus Plautius, I feel a sick headache coming on, so it's bed for me in absolute silence. I'm sorry I won't be able to keep you company on such an awful day." "Oh, I shall curl up on my study couch and read a book, which is why I've sent my wife and children to my estates peace and quiet to read. I intend to best Lucius Piso oh, you've eaten nothing!" cried Plautius, clucking. "Off you go, Octavius." Off the young man went, into the rain. The living rooms opened on to the back lane to avoid the noise of wagons rumbling up and down the main street; if Plautius became immersed in his book, he'd hear nothing. Fortuna is my partner in this enterprise, thought Octavian; the weather is perfect for this, and the Lady of Good Luck loves me, she will see me through. Brundisium is used to strings of wagons and moving armies.

* * *

Two cohorts of troops were camped in a field on the outskirts of the city, all veterans not yet incorporated into legions, having enlisted too late or come too far to reach Capua before the legions left. Whatever military tribune was in charge of them had abandoned them to their own devices, which in weather like this consisted of dice, knucklebones, board games and talk; wine was off legionary menus since the Tenth and Twelfth had mutinied. These men, who had belonged to the old Thirteenth, had no sympathy with mutiny and had only enlisted again because they loved Caesar and fancied a good long campaign against the Parthians. Having heard of his awful death, they grieved, and wondered what was going to happen to them now. No expert on legionary dispositions, the rather small, hooded and caped visitor had to enquire of the sentries whereabouts the primipilus centurion lived, then trudged down the rows of wooden huts to knock on the door of a somewhat larger structure. The noise of voices inside ceased; the door opened. Octavian found himself looking up at a tall, burly fellow who wore a red, padded tunic. Eleven other men sat around a table, all in the same gear, which meant that the visitor surveyed the entire centurion complement of two cohorts. "Shocking weather," said the door opener. "Marcus Coponius at your service." Engaged in doffing his sagum, Octavian didn't reply until he was done, then stood in his trim leather cuirass and kilt, mop of golden hair damp but not wringing wet. There was something about him that brought the eleven other centurions to their feet, quite why they didn't know. "I'm Caesar's heir, so my name is Gaius Julius Caesar," said Octavian, big grey eyes welcoming their hard-bitten faces, a smile on his lips that was hauntingly familiar. A collective gasp went up, the men stiffened to attention. "Jupiter! You look just like him!" Coponius breathed. "A smaller edition," Octavian said ruefully, "but I hope I still have some growing to do." "Oh, it's terrible, terrible!" said one at the table, tears gathering. "What will we do without him?" "Our duty to Rome," said Octavian, matter-of-fact. "That's why I'm here, to ask you to do a duty for Rome." "Anything, young Caesar, anything," said Coponius. "I have to get the war chest out of Brundisium as soon as I possibly can. There won't be any campaign to Syria, I'm sure you realize that, but so far the consuls haven't indicated what's going to happen to the legions over the waves in Macedonia or men like you, still waiting to be shipped. My job is to collect the war chest on behalf of Rome. My adjutant, Marcus Agrippa, is rounding up the wagons and oxen that carry the war chest, but I need loading labor, and I don't trust civilians. Will your men put the money on board the wagons for me?" "Oh, gladly, young Caesar, gladly! There's nothing worse than wet weather without no work to do." "That's very kind of you," said Octavian with the smile so reminiscent of Caesar's. "I'm the closest thing Brundisium has to a commanding officer at the moment, but I wouldn't like you to think that I have imperium, because I don't. Therefore I ask humbly, I don't command that you help me." "If Caesar made you his heir, young Caesar, and gave you his name, there's no need to command," said Marcus Coponius.

With a thousand men at his beck and call, many more than one of the sixty wagons were loaded simultaneously. Caesar had devised a knacky way to carry his money it was money, not unminted sows. Each talent, in the form of 6,250 denarii, was stored in a canvas bag equipped with two handles, so that two soldiers could easily carry a one-talent bag between them. Swiftly loading while the rain poured down unabated and all Brundisium remained indoors, even on this usually busy street, the wagons moved onward steadily to a timber yard where sawn planks were carefully placed over the bags to look as if sawn planks were all the wagons carried. "It's sensible," said Octavian glibly to Coponius, "to disguise the cargo, because I don't have the imperium to order a military escort. My adjutant is hiring drivers, but we won't let them know what we're really hauling, so they won't get here until after you're gone." He pointed to a hand cart that held a number of smaller linen bags. "This is for you and your men, Coponius, as a token of my thanks. If you spend any of it on wine, be discreet. If Caesar can help you in any way in the future, don't hesitate to ask." So the thousand soldiers pushed the hand cart back to their camp, there to discover that Caesar's heir had gifted them with two hundred and fifty denarii for each ranker, one thousand for each centurion, and two thousand for Marcus Coponius. The unit for accounting was the sestertius, but the denarius was far more convenient to mint, at four sesterces to the denarius. "Did you believe all that, Coponius?" asked one of the very gratified centurions. Coponius eyed him in scorn. "What d'you take me for, an Apulian hayseed? I don't have no idea what young Caesar's up to, but he's his tata's son, that's for sure. A thousand miles ahead of the opposition. And whatever he's up to ain't none of our business. We're Caesar's veterans. As far as I'm concerned, for one, anything young Caesar does is all right." He put his right index finger to the side of his nose and winked. "Mum's the word, boys. If someone comes asking, we don't know nothing, because we was never out in the rain." Eleven heads nodded complete agreement. So the sixty wagons rolled out in the pouring rain on the deserted Via Minucia almost to Barium, then set off cross-country on hard, stony ground toward Larinum, with Marcus Agrippa in civilian dress shepherding this precious load of timber planks. The drivers, who walked alongside their leading beasts rather than sat holding reins, were being paid very well, but not so excessively that they were curious; they were simply glad for the work at this slack season. Brundisium was the busiest harbor in all Italy, cargo and armies came and went incessantly.

Octavian left Brundisium a full nundinum later and took the Via Minucia to Barium. There he left it to join the wagons, still plodding north in the direction of Larinum at surprising speed considering that they hadn't used a road since before Barium. When he found them, he learned that Agrippa had been pushing them along while ever there was a moon to see by, as well as all day. "It's flat ground without hazards. It won't be so easy once we get into the mountains," Agrippa said. "Then follow the coast, don't turn inland until you see an unsealed road ten miles south of the road to Sulmo. You'll be safe enough on that road, but don't use any others. I'm going ahead to my lands to make sure there are no chattering locals and a good but accessible hiding place." Luckily chattering locals were few and far between, for the estate was forest in a land of forests. Having discovered that Quintus Nonius, his father's manager, still occupied the staff quarters of the comfortable villa where Atia used to bring her ailing son for a summer in mountain air, Octavian decided that the wagons would be safe in a clearing several miles beyond the villa. Logging, said Nonius, was going on in a different area, and people didn't prowl; there were too many bears and wolves.

Even here, Octavian was astonished to learn, people already knew that Caesar was dead and that Gaius Octavius was Caesar's heir. A fact that delighted Nonius, who had loved the quiet, sick little boy and his anxious mother. However, few if any of the locals knew who owned these timber estates, still referred to as "Papius's place" after their original Italian owner. "The wagons belong to Caesar, but people who aren't entitled to them will be looking for them everywhere, so no one must know that they're here on Papius's place," he explained to Nonius. "From time to time I may send Marcus Agrippa you'll meet him when the wagons arrive to pick up one or two of them. Dispose of the oxen as you think best, but always have twenty beasts on hand. Luckily you use oxen to tow logs to Ancona, so the presence of oxen won't seem unusual. It's important, Nonius so important that my life may depend upon your and your family's silence." "Don't you worry, little Gaius," said the old retainer. "I'll look after everything." Convinced that Nonius would, Octavian backtracked to the junction of the Via Minucia and the Via Appia at Beneventum, picked up the Via Appia there and resumed his journey to Neapolis, where he arrived toward the end of April to find Philippus and his mother in a fever of worry. "Where have you been?" Atia cried, hugging him to her and watering his tunic with tears. "Laid low with asthma in some mean inn on the Via Minucia," Octavian explained, removing himself from his mother's clutches, feeling an irritation he was at some pains to hide. "No, no, leave me be, I'm well now. Philippus, tell me what's happened, I've had no news since your letter to Brundisium." Philippus led the way to his study. A man of high coloring and considerable good looks, he seemed to his stepson's eyes to have aged a great deal in two months. Caesar's death had hit him hard, not least because, like Lucius Piso, Servius Sulpicius and several others among the thin ranks of the consulars, Philippus was trying to steer a middle course that would ensure his own survival no matter what happened. "Gaius Marius's so-called grandson, Amatius?" Octavian asked. "Dead," said Philippus, grimacing. "On his fourth day in the Forum, Antonius and a century of Lepidus's troops arrived to listen. Amatius pointed at him and screamed that there stood the real murderer of Caesar, whereupon the troops took Amatius into custody and marched him off to the Tullianum." Philippus shrugged. "Amatius never emerged, so the crowd eventually went home. Antonius went straight to a meeting of the Senate in Castor's, where Dolabella asked him what had happened to Amatius. 'I executed him, said Antonius. Dolabella protested that the man was a Roman citizen and ought to have been tried, but Antonius said Amatius wasn't a Roman, he was an escaped Greek slave named Hierophilus. And that was the end of it." "Which rather indicates what kind of government Rome has," Octavian said thoughtfully. "Clearly it isn't wise to accuse dear Marcus Antonius of anything." "So I think," Philippus agreed, face grim. "Cassius tried to bring up the subject of the praetors' provinces again, and was told to shut up. He and Brutus tried to occupy their tribunals several times, but desisted. Even after Amatius was executed, the crowd didn't welcome them, though their amnesty holds up. Oh, and Marcus Lepidus is the new Pontifex Maximus." "They held an election?" Octavian asked, surprised. "No. He was adlected by the other pontifices." "That's illegal." "There's no definition of legal anymore, Octavius." "My name isn't Octavius, it's Caesar." "That is still undecided." Philippus got up, went to his desk and withdrew a small object from its drawer. "Here, this has to go to you for the time being only, I hope." Octavian took it and turned it over between trembling hands, awed. A singularly beautiful seal ring consisting of a flawless, royally purple amethyst set in pink gold. It bore a delicately carved intaglio sphinx and the word CAESAR in mirrored capitals above the sphinx's human head. He slipped it on to his ring finger, to find that it fitted perfectly. The bigger Caesar's fingers had been slender, his own were shorter, thicker, more spatulate. A curious feeling, as if its weight and the essence of Caesar it had drawn into itself were suffusing into his own body. "An omen! It might have been made for me." "It was made for Caesar by Cleopatra, I believe." "And I am Caesar." "Defer that decision, Octavius!" Philippus snapped. "A tribune of the plebs the assassin Gaius Casca and the plebeian aedile Critonius took Caesar's Forum statues from their plinths and pedestals and sent them to the Velabrum to be broken up. The crowd caught them at it, went to the sculptor's yard and rescued them, even the two that had already been attacked with mallets. Then the crowd set fire to the place, and the fire spread into the Vicus Tuscus. A shocking conflagration! Half the Velabrum burned. Did the crowd care? No. The intact statues were put back, the two broken ones given to another sculptor to repair. Then the crowd started to roar, demanding that the consuls produce Amatius. Of course that wasn't possible. A terrible riot erupted the worst I ever remember. Several hundred citizens and fifty of Lepidus's soldiers were killed before the mob was dispersed. A hundred of the rioters were taken prisoner, divided into citizens and non-citizens, then the citizens were thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, and the non-citizens were flogged and beheaded." "So to demand justice for Caesar is treason," Octavian said, drawing in a breath. "Our Antonius is showing his true colors." "Oh, Octavius, he's just a brute! I don't think it occurs to him that some might interpret his actions as anti-Caesar. Look at what he did in the Forum when Dolabella was deploying his street gangs. Antonius's answer to public violence is slaughter because it's his nature to slaughter." "I think he's aiming to take Caesar's place." "I disagree. He abolished the office of dictator." "If 'rex' is a simple word, so too is 'dictator.' So I take it that no one dares to laud Caesar, even the crowd?" Philippus laughed harshly. "Antonius and Dolabella should hope! No, nothing deters the common people. Dolabella had the altar and column removed from the place where Caesar burned when he discovered that people were openly calling Caesar 'Divus Julius.' Can you imagine that, Octavius? They started worshiping Caesar as a god before the very stones where he burned were cold!" "Divus Julius," Octavian said, smiling. "A passing phase," said Philippus, misliking that smile. "Perhaps, but why can't you see its significance, Philippus? The people have started worshiping Caesar as a god. The people! No one in government started it in fact, everyone in government is doing his best to stamp it out. The people loved Caesar so much that they cannot bear to think of him gone, so they have resurrected him as a god someone they can pray to, look to for consolation. Don't you see? They're telling Antonius, Dolabella and the Liberators pah, how I hate that name! and everyone else at the top of the Roman tree that they refuse to be parted from Caesar." "Don't let it go to your head, Octavius." "My name is Caesar." "I will never call you that!" "One day you will have no choice. Tell me what else goes on." "For what it's worth, Antonius has betrothed his daughter by Antonia Hybrida to Lepidus's eldest boy. As both children are years off marriageable age, I suspect it will last only as long as their fathers are holding each other's pricks to piss. Lepidus went to govern Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul over two nundinae ago. Sextus Pompeius is now fielding six legions, so the consuls decided that Lepidus had better contain his Spanish province while he could. Pollio is still holding Further Spain in good order, so we hear. If we can believe what we hear." "And that wonderful pair, Brutus and Cassius?" "Have quit Rome. Brutus has given the urban praetor's duties to Gaius Antonius while he er recovers from severe emotional stress. Whereas Cassius can at least pretend to continue his foreign praetor's duties as he wafts around Italy. Brutus took both Porcia and Servilia with him I hear that the battles between the two women are Homeric teeth, feet, nails. Cassius gave out that he needs to be nearer to his pregnant Tertulla in Antium, but no sooner did he leave Rome than Tertulla arrived back in Rome, so who knows what the true story is in that marriage?" Octavian cast his stepfather an unsettlingly shrewd glance. "There's trouble brewing all over the place and the consuls aren't handling it skillfully, are they?" A sigh from Philippus. "No, they're not, boy. Though they're getting along better together than any of us believed possible." "And the legions, with regard to Antonius?" "Are being brought back from Macedonia gradually, I hear, apart from the six finest, which he's keeping there for when he goes to govern. The veterans still waiting for their land in Campania are growing restless because the moment Caesar died " " was murdered " Octavian interrupted. " died, the land commissioners stopped allocating the parcels to the veterans and packed up their booths. Antonius has been obliged to go to Campania and get the land commissioners back to work. He's still there. Dolabella is in charge of Rome." "And Caesar's altar? Caesar's column?" "I told you, gone. Just where is your mind going, Octavius?" "My name is Caesar." "Having heard all this, you still believe you'll survive if you take up your inheritance?" "Oh, yes. I have Caesar's luck," said Octavian with a very secretive smile. Enigmatic. If one's seal ring bore a sphinx, to be an enigma was mandatory.

Octavian went to his old room to find that he had been promoted to a suite. Even if Philippus did intend to talk him out of taking up his inheritance, that arch-fence-sitter was clever enough to understand that one didn't put Caesar's heir in accommodations fit for the master's stepson. His thoughts were disciplined, even if they were fantastic. The rest of what Philippus had had to say was interesting, germane to how he conducted himself in the future, but paled before the story of Divus Julius. A new god apotheosized by the people of Rome for the people of Rome. In the face of obdurate opposition from the consuls Antonius and Dolabella, even at the cost of many lives, the people of Rome were insisting that they be allowed to worship Divus Julius. To Octavian, a beacon luring him on. To be Gaius Julius Caesar Filius was wonderful. But to be Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius the son of a god was miraculous. But that is for the future. First, I must become known far and wide as Caesar's son. Coponius the centurion said I was his image. I am not, I know that. But Coponius looked at me through the eyes of pure sentiment; the tough, aging man he had served under and probably never seen at really close quarters was golden-haired and light of eye, was handsome and imperious. What I have to do is convince people, including Rome's soldiers, that when he was my age, Caesar looked just like me. I can't cut my hair that short because my ears are definitely not Caesar's, but the shape of my head is. I can learn to smile like him, walk like him, wave my hand exactly as he used to, radiate approachability and careless consciousness of my exalted birth. The ichor of Mars and Venus flows in my veins too. But Caesar was very tall, and in my heart I know that I have scant growing left to do. Perhaps another inch or two, but that will still fall far short of his height. So I will wear boots with soles four inches thick, and to make the device look less obvious, they will always be proper boots, closed at the toe. At a distance, which is how the soldiers will see me, I will tower like Caesar still not nearly as tall, but close enough to six feet. I will make sure that the men around me are all short. And if my own Class laughs, let them. I will eat the foods that Hapd'efan'e said elongate the bones meat, cheese, eggs and I will exercise by stretching. The high boots will be difficult to walk in, but they will give me an athletic gait because walking in them will require great skill. I will pad the shoulders of my tunics and cuirasses. It's Caesar's luck that Caesar was not a hulk like Antonius; all I have to be is an actor. Antonius will try to block my inheriting. The lex curiata of adoption won't come quickly or easily, but a law doesn't really matter as long as I behave like Caesar's heir. Behave like Caesar himself. And the money will be difficult to lay my hands on too because Antonius will block probate. I have plenty of my own, but I may need far more. How fortunate that I appropriated the war chest! I wonder when that oaf Antonius will remember that it exists, and send for it? Old Plautius lives in blissful ignorance, and while Oppius's manager will say that Caesar's heir collected it, I shall deny that. Protest that someone very clever impersonated me. After all, the appropriation happened the day after I arrived from Macedonia how could I have done it so swiftly? Impossible! I mean, an eighteen-year-old think of something so audacious, so breathtaking? Ha ha ha, what a laugh! I am an asthmatic, and I had a sick headache too. Yes, I will feel my way and keep my counsel. Agrippa I can trust with my very life; Salvidienus and Maecenas, less so, but they'll prove good helpmates as I tread this precarious path in my high-soled boots. First and foremost, emphasize the likeness to Caesar. Concentrate on that ahead of anything else. And wait for Fortuna to toss me my next opportunity. She will.

Philippus moved to his villa at Cumae, where the seemingly endless stream of visitors began, all anxious to see Caesar's heir. Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major came first, arrived convinced that the young man would not prove up to the task Caesar had given him, and departed in a very different frame of mind. The lad was as subtle as a Phoenician banker, and did have an uncanny look of Caesar despite the manifest discrepancies in features and stature. His fair brows were mobile in Caesar's exact fashion, his mouth had the same humorous curve, his facial expressions echoed Caesar's, so did the way his hands moved. His voice, which Balbus remembered as light, had deepened. The only concrete information Balbus prised out of him was that he definitely intended to be Caesar's heir. "I was fascinated," Balbus said to his nephew and business partner, Balbus Minor. "He has his own style, yes, but he has all Caesar's steel, never doubt it. I am going to back him." Next came Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, destined to be consuls next year if Antonius and Dolabella didn't decide that Caesar's appointments should be overturned. Knowing this, both were worried men. Both had met Octavian: Hirtius in Narbo, Pansa in Placentia. Neither had thought much about him, but now their eyes rested on him in puzzled wonder. Had he reminded them of Caesar then? He definitely did now. The trouble was that the living Caesar cast all others in the shade, and the contubernalis had been self-effacing. Hirtius ended in liking Octavian greatly; Pansa, remembering that dinner in Placentia, reserved judgement, convinced that Antonius would cut the boy's ambitions to ribbons. Yet neither man thought Octavian afraid, and neither man thought that his lack of fear was due to ignorance of what lay in store. He had Caesar's unswerving determination to see things through to the end, and seemed to contemplate his probable fate with a quite unyouthful equanimity. Cicero's villa, where Pansa and Hirtius were staying, was right next door. Octavian did not make the mistake of waiting for Cicero to call on him. He called on Cicero. Who eyed him rather blankly, though the smile oh, so like Caesar's! tugged at his heart. Caesar had possessed an irresistible smile, therefore resisting it had been a hard business. Whereas when it came from such an inoffensive, likeable boy as Gaius Octavius, he could respond to it without reserve. "You are well, Marcus Cicero?" Octavian asked anxiously. "I've been better, Gaius Octavius, but I've also been worse." Cicero sighed, unable to discipline that treacherous tongue into silence. When one was born to talk, one would talk to a post, and Caesar's heir was no post. "You've caught me in the midst of personal upheavals as well as upheavals of the state. My brother, Quintus, has just divorced Pomponia, his wife of many years." "Oh, dear! Isn't she Titus Atticus's sister?" "She is," Cicero said sourly. "Acrimonious, was it?" Octavian asked sympathetically. "Dreadfully so. He can't pay her dowry back." "I must offer my condolences for the death of Tullia." The brown eyes moistened, blinked. "Thank you, they are most welcome." A breath quivered. "It seems half a lifetime ago." "Much has happened." "Indeed, indeed." Cicero shot Octavian a wary look. "I must offer you condolences for Caesar's death." "Thank you." "I never could like him, you know." "That's understandable," said Octavian gently. "I couldn't grieve at his death, it was too welcome." "You had no reason to feel otherwise." So when Octavian took himself off after a properly short visit, Cicero decided that he was charming, quite charming. Not at all what he had expected. Those beautiful grey eyes held no coldness or arrogance; they caressed. Yes, a very sweet, decently humble young fellow. So when Octavian paid several more visits to Cicero, he was received warmly, allowed to sit and listen to the Great Advocate talk for some time on each occasion. "I do believe," Cicero said to his newly arrived houseguest, Lentulus Spinther Junior, "that the lad is really devoted to me." He preened. "Once we're all back in Rome, I shall take Octavius under my wing. I ah hinted that I would, and he was enraptured. So different from Caesar! The only similarity I find is the smile, though I've heard others call him Caesar's living image. Well, not everyone is gifted with my degree of perception, Spinther." "Everyone is saying that he means to take up his inheritance," said Spinther. "Oh, he will, no doubt about that. But it doesn't worry me in the least why should it?" Cicero asked, nibbling a candied fig. "Who inherits Caesar's vast fortune and estates doesn't matter a" he brandished his snack " fig. Who matters is the man who inherits Caesar's far vaster army of clients. Do you honestly think that they will cleave to an eighteen-year-old as raw as freshly killed meat, as green as grass, as naive as an Apulian goatherd? Oh, I don't say that young Octavius doesn't have potential, but even I took some years to mature, and I was an acknowledged child prodigy."

The acknowledged child prodigy was invited, together with Balbus Major, Hirtius and Pansa, to dinner at Philippus's villa. "I'm hoping that the four of you will support Atia and me in persuading Gaius Octavius to refuse his inheritance," Philippus said as the meal began. Though he itched to correct his stepfather, Octavian said nothing about wanting to be called Caesar; instead, he reclined in the most junior spot on the lectus imus and forced himself to eat fish, meat, eggs and cheese without saying anything at all unless asked. Of course he was asked; he was Caesar's heir. "You definitely shouldn't," said Balbus. "Too risky." "I agree," said Pansa. "And I," said Hirtius. "Listen to these august men, little Gaius," Atia pleaded from the only chair. "Please listen!" "Nonsense, Atia." Cicero chuckled. "We may say what we like, but Gaius Octavius isn't going to change his mind. It's made up to accept your inheritance, correct?" "Correct," said Octavian placidly. Atia got up and left, on the verge of tears. "Antonius expects to inherit Caesar's enormous clientele," Balbus said in his lisping Latin. "That would have been automatic had he been named Caesar's heir, but young Octavius here has er complicated the picture. Antonius must be offering to Fortuna in gratitude that Caesar didn't name Decimus Brutus." "Quite so," said Pansa. "By the time that you're old enough to challenge Antonius, my dear Octavius, he'll be past his prime." "Actually I'm rather surprised that Antonius hasn't come to congratulate his young cousin," Cicero said, diving into the mound of oysters that had been living in Baiae's warm waters that dawn. "He's too busy sorting out the veterans' land," Hirtius said. "That's why brother Gaius in Rome is enacting new agrarian laws. You know our Antonius too impatient to wait for anything, so he's decided to legislate reluctant sellers into giving up their land for the veterans. With little or no financial recompense." "That wasn't Caesar's way," said Pansa, scowling. "Oh, Caesar!" Cicero waved a dismissive hand. "The world has changed, Pansa, and Caesar is no longer in it, thank all the gods. One gathers that most of the silver in the Treasury went into Caesar's war chest, and of course Antonius can't touch the gold. There's not the money for Caesar's system of compensation, hence Antonius's more draconian measures." "Why doesn't Antonius repossess the war chest, then?" asked Octavian. Balbus sniggered. "He's probably forgotten it." "Then someone ought to remind him," said Octavian. "The tributes are due from the provinces," Hirtius remarked. "I know Caesar was planning to use them to continue buying land. Don't forget he levied huge fines on Republican cities. The next installments ought to be in Brundisium by now." "Antonius really ought to visit Brundisium," said Octavian. "Don't worry your head about where Antonius is going to find money," Cicero chided. "Fill it with rhetoric instead, Octavius. That's the way to the consulship!" Octavian flashed him a smile, resumed eating. "At least we six here can console ourselves with the fact that none of us owns land between Teanum and the Volturnus River," said Hirtius, who was amazingly knowledgeable about everything. "I gather that's where Antonius is garnishing his land. Latifundia only, not vineyards." He then proceeded to drop sensational news into the conversation. "Land, however, is the least of Antonius's concerns. On the Kalends of June he intends to ask the House to let him swap Macedonia for two of the Gauls Italian Gaul and Further Gaul excluding Lepidus's Narbonese province, as Lepidus is to continue governing next year. It seems Pollio in Further Spain will also continue next year, whereas Plancus and Decimus Brutus are to be required to step down." Discovering every eye fixed on him in horror, Hirtius made things even worse. "He is also going to ask the House to let him keep those six crack legions in Macedonia, but ship them to Italy in June." "This means Antonius doesn't trust Brutus and Cassius," said Philippus slowly. "I admit they've issued edicta saying they did Rome and Italy a great service in killing Caesar, and begging the Italian communities to support them, but if I were Antonius, I'd be more afraid of Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul." "Antonius," said Pansa, "is afraid of everybody." "Oh, ye gods!" cried Cicero, face paling. "This is idiocy! I can't speak so certainly for Decimus Brutus, but I know that Brutus and Cassius don't even dream of raising rebellion against the present Senate and People of Rome! I mean, I myself am back in the Senate, which shows everybody that I support this present government! Brutus and Cassius are patriots to the core! They would never, never, never incite an uprising in Italy!" "I agree," said Octavian unexpectedly. "Then what's going to happen to the campaign with Vatinius against Burebistas and his Dacians?" asked Philippus. "Oh, that died with Caesar," said Balbus cynically. "Then by rights Dolabella ought to have the best legions for Syria in fact, they're needed there now," said Pansa. "Antonius is determined to have the six best right here on Italian soil," said Hirtius. "To achieve what?" Cicero demanded, grey and sweating. "To protect himself against anyone who tries to tear him off his pedestal," said Hirtius. "You're probably right, Philippus the trouble when it comes will be from Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul. All he has to do is find some legions." "Oh, will we never be rid of civil war?" cried Cicero. "We were rid of it until Caesar was murdered," Octavian said dryly. "That's inarguable. But now that Caesar's dead, the leadership is in flux." Cicero frowned; the boy had clearly said "murdered." "At least," Octavian continued, "the foreign queen and her son are gone, I hear." "And good riddance!" Cicero snapped savagely. "It was she who filled Caesar's head with ideas of kingship! She probably drugged him too he was always drinking some medicine that shifty Egyptian physician concocted." "What she couldn't have done," said Octavian, "was inspire the common people to worship Caesar as a god. They thought of that for themselves." The other men stirred uneasily. "Dolabella put paid to that," Hirtius said, "when he took the altar and column away." He laughed. "Then hedged his bets! He didn't destroy them, he popped them into storage. True!" "Is there anything you don't know, Aulus Hirtius?" Octavian asked, laughing too. "I'm a writer, Octavianus, and writers have a natural tendency to listen to everything from gossip to prognostication. And consuls musing on the state of affairs." Then he dropped another piece of shocking news. "I also hear that Antonius is legislating the full citizenship for all of Sicily." "Then he's taken a massive bribe!" Cicero snarled. "Oh, I begin to dislike this this monster more and more!" "I can't vouch for a Sicilian bribe," Hirtius said, grinning, "but I do know that King Deiotarus has offered the consuls a bribe to return Galatia to its pre-Caesar size. As yet they haven't said yes or no." "To give Sicily the full citizenship endows a man with a whole country of clients," Octavian said thoughtfully. "As I am a mere youth, I have no idea what Antonius plans, but I do see that he's giving himself a lovely present the votes of our closest grain province." Octavian's servant Scylax entered, bowed to the diners, then moved deferentially to his master's side. "Caesar," he said, "your mother is asking for you urgently." "Caesar?" asked Balbus, sitting up quickly as Octavian left. "Oh, all his servants call him Caesar," Philippus growled. "Atia and I have talked ourselves hoarse, but he insists upon it. Haven't you noticed? He listens, he nods, he smiles sweetly, and then he does precisely what he meant to do anyway." "I am just profoundly grateful," Cicero said, suppressing his unease at hearing this about Octavius, "that the lad has you to guide him, Philippus. I confess that when I first heard that Octavius had returned to Italy so quickly after Caesar's death, I thought immediately what a convenient rallying point he'd make for a man intent upon overthrowing the state. However, now that I've actually met him, I don't fear that at all. He's delightfully humble, yes, but not fool enough to allow himself to be used as somebody else's cat's-paw." "I'm more afraid," said Philippus gloomily, "that it's Gaius Octavius will use others as his cat's-paws."

2

After Decimus Brutus, Gaius Trebonius, Tillius Cimber and Staius Murcus left for their provinces, Rome's attention became focused on the two senior praetors, Brutus and Cassius. A few shrinking ventures into the Forum to test the atmosphere with a view to presiding at their tribunals had convinced the pair that to absent themselves was more sensible. The Senate had granted each of them a fifty-man bodyguard of lictors minus fasces, which served only to increase their visibility. "Leave Rome until feelings die down," Servilia advised. "If your faces aren't seen, people will forget them." She gave a snort of laughter. "Two years from now, you could run for consul without anyone's remembering that you murdered Caesar." "It was not murder, it was a right act!" Porcia shouted. "Shut up, you," Servilia said placidly; she could afford to be generous, she was well and truly winning the war. Porcia had handed it to her on a platter by growing steadily madder. "To leave Rome is to admit guilt," said Cassius. "I say we have to stick it out." Brutus was torn. The public half of him agreed with Cassius, whereas the private half dwelled wistfully upon an existence without his mother, whose mood hadn't improved after she gave Pontius Aquila his marching orders. "I'll think about it," he said. His way of thinking about it was to seek an interview with Mark Antony, who looked as if he was capable of containing all opposition. The result, Brutus decided, of the fact that the Senate, full of Caesar's creatures, had turned to Antony as to its guiding star. Comforting then to know that Antony really had accommodated the Liberators in every way. He was on their side. "What do you think, Antonius?" Brutus asked, big brown eyes as sad as ever. "It's no part of our intention to contest you or proper, ethical Republican government. Personally, I found your abolition of the dictatorship enormously reassuring. If you feel that good government would be assisted by our absence, then I'll talk Cassius into going." "Cassius has to go anyway," Antony said, frowning. "He's a third of his way into the foreign praetorship and he hasn't yet heard a case anywhere except in Rome." "Yes, I understand that," said Brutus, "but for me, it's a different matter. As urban praetor, I can't leave Rome for more than ten days at a time." "Oh, we can find a way around that," Antony said comfortably. "My brother Gaius has been acting as urban praetor ever since the Ides of March not hard, as you'd issued your edicta which, by the way, he says are excellent. He can go on doing the job." "For how long?" Brutus asked, feeling as if he were being swept along on an irresistible tide. "Between you and me?" "Yes." "At least four more months." "But," Brutus protested, aghast, "that would mean I wouldn't be in Rome to hold the ludi Apollinares in Quinctilis!" "Not Quinctilis," Antony said gently. "Julius." "You mean Julius is to stay in place?" Antony's little white teeth gleamed. "Certainly." "Would Gaius Antonius be willing to celebrate Apollo's games in my name? Naturally I will be funding them." "Of course, of course!" "Stage the plays I specify? I have definite ideas." "Of course, my dear fellow." Brutus made up his mind. "Then will you ask the Senate to excuse me from my duties for an indefinite period of time?" "First thing tomorrow," said Antony. "It's really better this way," he added as he accompanied Brutus to the door. "Let the people grieve for Caesar without reminders."

"I was wondering how long Brutus would last," Antony said to Dolabella later that same day. "The number of Liberators still inside Rome is steadily declining." "With the exception of Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, they're paltry men," Dolabella said contemptuously. "I'll grant you Decimus and Trebonius, but Trebonius isn't a problem now he's scuttled off to Asia Province. The one who does worry me is Decimus. He's a cut above the others for ability as well as birth, and we shouldn't forget that under Caesar's dictates he's consul with Plancus the year after next." Antony's frown gathered. "He could prove very dangerous. As one of Caesar's heirs, he has the power to collect at least some of Caesar's clients. While he's up there in Italian Gaul, he's among vast quantities of them." "Cacat! So he is!" cried Dolabella. "Caesar secured the full citizenship for those who live on the far side of the Padus, and now that Pompeius Magnus is out of the client equation, Caesar's inherited those who live on this side of the Padus as well. Would you care to bet that Decimus isn't going among them wooing them into his clientele?" "No," said Dolabella very seriously, "I wouldn't care to bet one sestertius on it. Jupiter! Here was I thinking of Italian Gaul as a province without any legions, when all the time it's stuffed with Caesar's veterans! The best of them, at that those who have already been allocated land, and those who have family holdings. Italian Gaul was Caesar's best recruiting ground." "Exactly. What's more, I've heard that those among them who enlisted under Caesar's Eagles for the Parthian war are starting to go home already. My crack legions are holding, but the other nine are definitely losing cohorts from Italian Gaul. And they're not coming home through Brundisium. They're marching through Illyricum, a few at a time." "Are you saying Decimus is recruiting already?" "I honestly don't know. All I'm prepared to say is that it behooves me to keep a close eye on Italian Gaul."

Brutus left Rome on the ninth day of April, but not alone. Porcia and Servilia insisted upon coming too. After an extremely trying night spent in the main hostelry at Bovillae just fourteen miles down the Via Appia from the Servian Walls of Rome Brutus had had enough. "I refuse to travel with you one moment longer," he said to Servilia. "Tomorrow you have two choices. Either you will enter the carriage I've hired to take you to Tertulla in Antium, or tell the driver to take you back to Rome. Porcia is going with me, but you are not." Servilia gave a twisted smile. "I shall go to Antium and wait until you admit that you can't make the right decisions without me," she said. "Without me, Brutus, you're an utter idiot. Look at what's happened to you since you listened to Cato's daughter ahead of your mother." Thus Servilia went to Tertulla at Antium, while Brutus and Porcia moved on a little way from Bovillae to his villa outside the small Latin town of Lanuvium, where, had they wished to look up the mountainside, they might have gazed at Caesar's daring villa on its massive piers. "I think Caesar's choosing an eighteen-year-old as his heir was very clever," said Brutus to Porcia as they dined alone. "Clever? I think it was remarkably foolish," said Porcia. "Antonius will make mincemeat out of Gaius Octavius." "That's just the point. Antonius doesn't need to," Brutus said patiently. "Loathe the man I might, but the only mistake Caesar ever made was in dismissing his lictors. Don't you see, Porcia? Caesar settled on someone so young and inexperienced that no one, no matter how deluded by imagined persecutions, will consider him a rival. On the other hand, the youth possesses all Caesar's money and estates. Perhaps for as many as twenty years, Gaius Octavius will seem no danger to anyone. He'll have time to grow and mature. Instead of selecting the biggest tree in the whole forest, Caesar planted a seed for the future. His money and estates will water that seed, give it nourishment, permit it to grow quietly and provoke no one to chop it down. In effect, his message to Rome and to his heir is that in time there will be another Caesar." He shivered. "The lad must have many traits in common with Caesar, many qualities that Caesar saw and admired. So twenty years from now, another Caesar will emerge from the forest's shadows. Yes, very clever." "They say Gaius Octavius is an effeminate weakling," Porcia said, kissing her husband's wrinkled brow. "I doubt that very much, my dear. I know my Caesar better than I know my Homer." "Are you going to lie down tamely under this banishment?" she demanded, returning to her favorite topic. "No," Brutus said calmly. "I've sent Cassius a message that I intend to draft a statement on both our behalves, addressed to all of Italy's towns and communities. It will say that we acted in their best interests, and beg for their support. I don't want Antonius to think that we're without support just because we gave in and left Rome." "Good!" said Porcia, pleased.

Not every town and rural district in Italy had loved Caesar; in some areas Republican sentiments had caused the loss of much public land, in others no Roman was loved or trusted. So the two Liberators found their statement well received in certain places, were even offered young men as troops if they wished to take up arms against Rome and all Rome stood for. A state of affairs that perturbed Antony, particularly after he left Rome himself to deal with veteran land in Campania; the Samnite parts of that lush region were seething with talk of a new Italian War under the aegis of Brutus and Cassius. So Antony sent Brutus a stiff letter informing him that he and Cassius were, consciously or unconsciously, stirring up revolt and courting a trial for treason. Brutus and Cassius answered him with another public statement that implored the discontented parts of Italy not to offer them any troops, to leave things as they lay. Setting Samnite hatred for Rome aside, there were still nests of ardent Republicans who looked to the pair as to saviors, which was unfortunate for Brutus and Cassius, genuinely not interested in stirring up revolt. In one such nest sat Pompey the Great's friend, praefectus fabrum and banker, Gaius Flavius Hemicillus, who approached Atticus and asked that canny plutocrat to put himself at the head of a consortium of financial magicians willing to lend the Liberators money for purposes Hemicillus left unspecified. Atticus courteously refused. "What I am willing to do privately for Servilia and Brutus is one thing," he told Hemicillus, "but public odium is quite another." Then Atticus informed the consuls of Hemicillus's overtures. "That settles it," said Antony to Dolabella and Aulus Hirtius. "I'm not governing Macedonia next year, I'm going to remain right here in Italy with my six legions." Hirtius raised his brows. "Italian Gaul as your province?" he asked. "Definitely. On the Kalends of June I'll ask the House for Italian Gaul and Further Gaul apart from the Narbonese province. Six crack legions camped around Capua will deter Brutus and Cassius and make Decimus Brutus think twice. What's more, I've written to Pollio, Lepidus and Plancus and asked them if they'll place their legions at my disposal if Decimus tries to raise rebellion in Italian Gaul. None of them will back Decimus, that's certain." Hirtius smiled, but didn't voice his thought: they'll wait and see, then back the stronger man. "What about Vatinius in Illyricum?" he asked aloud. "Vatinius will back me," Antony said confidently. "And Hortensius caretaking in Macedonia? He has long-standing ties to the Liberators," said Dolabella. "What can Hortensius do? He's a bigger lightweight than our friend and Pontifex Maximus, Lepidus." Antony huffed contentedly. "There'll be no uprisings. I mean, can you see Brutus and Cassius marching on Rome? Or Decimus, for that matter? There's not a man alive with the guts to march on Rome except me, that is, and I don't need to, do I?"

To Cicero, the world had gotten ever crazier since Caesar's death. He couldn't work out why, except that he blamed the failure of the Liberators to seize government on their not taking him into their confidence. He, Marcus Tullius Cicero, with all his wisdom, his experience, his knowledge of the law, had not been asked for advice by one single man. That included his brother. Quintus, free of Pomponia but unable to pay back her dowry, had filched a solution from Cicero and married a nubile young heiress, Aquilia. That way he could pay off his first wife and still have something to live on. Which had outraged his son to the point of huge temper tantrums. Quintus Junior ran to Uncle Marcus for support, but was silly enough to declare to Cicero that he still loved Caesar, would always love Caesar, and would kill any of the assassins foolish enough to appear in his vicinity. So Cicero had had a temper tantrum of his own and sent Quintus Junior packing. Having nowhere else to go, the young man attached himself to Mark Antony, an even worse insult. All Cicero could do after that was write letter after letter, to Atticus (in Rome), Cassius (on the road), and Brutus (still in Lanuvium), asking why people couldn't see that Antonius was a bigger tyrant than Caesar? His laws were hideous travesties. "Whatever you do, Brutus," he said in one letter, "you must return to Rome to take your seat in the House on the Kalends of June. If you're not there, it will be the end of your public career, and worse disasters will follow." One rumored disaster had him ecstatic, however; apparently Cleopatra, her brother Ptolemy and Caesarion had been shipwrecked on the way home and had all drowned. "And have you heard," he asked the visiting Balbus in his Pompeian villa Cicero was an incessant villa-hopper "what Servilia is doing?" He uttered a theatrical gasp, mimed horror. "No, what?" asked Balbus, lips twitching. "She's actually staying alone with Pontius Aquila in his villa down the road! Sleeping in the same bed, they say!" "Dear, dear. I heard that she'd broken with him after she found out he was a Liberator," said Balbus mildly. "She did, but then Brutus threw her out, so this is her way of embarrassing him and Porcia. A woman in her sixties, and he's younger than Brutus!" "More distressing by far is the declining prospect of peace in Italy," Balbus said. "I despair of it, Cicero." "Not you too! Truly, neither Brutus nor Cassius intends to start another civil war." "Antonius doesn't agree with you." Cicero's shoulders slumped, he sighed, looked suddenly eighty years old. "Yes, things are drifting warward," he admitted sadly. "Decimus Brutus is the main threat, of course. Oh, why didn't any of them seek counsel from me?" "Who?" "The Liberators! They did the deed with the courage of men, but about as much policy as four-year-olds. Like nursery children stabbing their rag doll to death." "The only one who might help is Hirtius." Cicero brightened. "Then let's both see Hirtius."

3

Octavian entered Rome on the Nones of May, accompanied only by his servants; his mother and his stepfather had declined to take any part in this insane venture. At the fourth hour of day he passed through the Capena Gate and commenced the walk to the Forum Romanum, clad in a spotless white toga with the narrow purple band of a knight on the exposed right shoulder of his tunic. Thanks to many hours of practicing how to walk in his high-soled boots, he made sufficient impression on the people he encountered to cause them to turn and watch his progress admiringly, for he was tall, dignified, and possessed of a straight-backed posture that forbade mincing or undulating; to do either would see him flat on his face. Head up, waving masses of golden hair gleaming, a slight smile on his lips, he proceeded along the Sacra Via with that easy mien of friendliness Caesar had made his own. "That's Caesar's heir!" one of his servants would whisper to a group of onlookers. "Caesar's heir has arrived in Rome!" another would murmur. The day was fine and the sky cloudless, but the humidity was suffocatingly high; so much water vapor saturated the air that the vault was leached of its blueness. Around the sun but some distance from it was a brilliant halo that had people pointing and wondering audibly what this omen meant. Rings around the full moon everybody had seen at some time, but a ring around the sun? Never! An extraordinary omen. It was easy to find the spot where Caesar had burned, for it was still covered with flowers, dolls, balls. Octavian turned off the Clivus Sacer and went to its margin. There, while the crowd continued to gather, he pulled a fold of toga over his head and prayed silently. Beneath the nearby temple of Castor and Pollux lay offices used by the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. Lucius Antonius, who was a tribune of the plebs, came out of Castor's basement door just in time to see Octavian tug the toga off his mop of hair. The youngest of the three Antonii was generally deemed the most intelligent of them, but he owned handicaps that militated against his ever standing as high in public favor as his eldest brother: he had a tendency to run to fat, he was quite bald, and he had a sense of the ridiculous that had gotten him into trouble with Marcus on more than one occasion. He stopped to watch the praying sprig, suppressing an urge to hoot with laughter. What a sight! So this was the famous Caesar's heir! None of the Antonii mixed in Uncle Lucius's circle and he never remembered setting eyes on Gaius Octavius, but this was he, all right. Couldn't be anyone else. For one thing, he knew that his brother Gaius, acting urban praetor, had received a letter from Gaius Octavius asking for permission to speak publicly from the rostra when he arrived in Rome on the Nones of May. Yes, this was Caesar's heir. What a figure of fun! Those boots! Who did he think he was fooling? And didn't he have a barber? His hair was longer than Brutus's. A proper little dandy look at the way he was primping the toga back into place. Is this the best you could do, Caesar? You preferred this perfect pansy to my brother? Then you were touched in the head when you made your will, Cousin Gaius. "Ave," he said, strolling up to Octavian with his hand out. "Is it Lucius Antonius?" Octavian asked with Caesar's smile unsettling, that and enduring the bone-crushing handshake with no change of expression. "Lucius Antonius it is, Octavius," Lucius said cheerfully. "We're cousins. Has Uncle Lucius seen you yet?" "Yes, I visited him in Neapolis some nundinae ago. He's not well, but he was glad to see me." Octavian paused, then asked, "Is your brother Gaius on his tribunal?" "Not today. He awarded himself a holiday." "Oh, too bad," said the young man, still smiling for the crowd, oohing and aahing. "I wrote to ask him if I might speak to the people from the rostra, but he didn't answer." "S'all right, I can give you permission," Lucius said, his brown eyes sparkling. Something in him was loving this poseur's gall, a typically Antonian reaction. Yet looking into those big, long-lashed eyes revealed nothing whatsoever; Caesar's heir kept his thoughts to himself. "Can you keep up with me in those brothel pounders?" Lucius asked, pointing to the boots. "Of course," said Octavian, striding out beside him. "My right leg is shorter than my left, hence the built up footware." Lucius guffawed. "As long as your third leg measures up is the important thing!" "I really have no idea whether it measures up," Octavian said coolly. "I'm a virgin." Lucius blinked, faltered. "That's a stupid secret to blurt out," he said. "I didn't blurt it out, and why should it be a secret?" "Hinting that you want to throw your leg over, eh? I'll be happy to take you to the right place." "No, thank you. I'm very fastidious and discriminating, is what I was implying." "Then you're no Caesar. He'd hump anything." "True, I am no Caesar in that respect." "Do you want people to laugh at you, coming out with things like that, Octavius?" "No, but I don't care if they do. Sooner or later they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces. Or crying." "Oh, that's neat, very neat!" Lucius exclaimed, laughing at himself. "You've turned the table on me." "Only time will prove that, Lucius Antonius." "Hop up the steps, young cripple, and stand midway between the two columns of beaks." Octavian obeyed, turned to stand confronting his first Forum audience: a considerable one. What a pity, he was thinking, that the way the rostra is oriented prevents a speaker from standing with the sun behind him. I'd dearly love to be standing with that halo around my head. "I am Gaius Julius Caesar Filius!" he announced to the throng in a surprisingly loud and carrying voice. "Yes, that is my name! I am Caesar's heir, formally adopted by him in his will." He put his hand up and pointed to the sun, almost overhead. "Caesar has sent an omen for me, his son!" But then, without pausing to endow the omen with a ponderous significance, he went smoothly to discuss the terms of Caesar's bequest to the people of Rome. This he dwelled upon at length, and promised that as soon as the will was probated, he would distribute Caesar's largesse in Caesar's name, for he was Caesar. The crowd lapped him up, Lucius Antonius noted uneasily; no one down on the flags of the Forum cared about the high-soled right boot (the left was quite hidden by a toga cut so that it fell just short of the ground), and no one laughed at him. They were too busy marveling at his beauty, his manly bearing, his magnificent head of hair, his startling likeness to Caesar from smile to gestures to facial expressions. Word must have spread very quickly, for a great many of Caesar's old, faithful people had appeared Jews, foreigners, Head Count. Not only his appearance helped Gaius Octavius; he spoke very well indeed, indicating that in time to come he would be one of Rome's great orators. When he was done, he was cheered for a long time; then he walked down the steps and into the crowd fearlessly, his right hand out, that smile never varying. Women touched his toga, almost swooned. If he really is a virgin I am beginning to think he was just taking the piss out of me he can alter that state with any female in this crowd, thought Lucius Antonius. The cunning little mentula pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully. "Off to Philippus's now?" Lucius Antonius asked Octavian as he began to move toward the Vestal Steps up on to the Palatine. "No, to my own house." "Your father's?" The fair brows rose, a perfect imitation of Caesar. "My father lived in the Domus Publica, and had no other house. I've bought a house." "Not a palace?" "My needs are simple, Lucius Antonius. The only art I fancy, I would dower on Rome's public temples, the only food I fancy is plain, I do not drink wine, and I have no vices. Vale," Octavian said, and began to climb the Vestal Steps lithely. His chest was tightening, the ordeal was over and he had done well. Now the asthma would make him pay.

Lucius Antonius made no move to follow him, just stood frowning.

"The cunning little fox, he pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully," Lucius said to Fulvia a little later. She was with child again, and missing Antony acutely, which made her short-tempered. "You shouldn't have let him speak," she said, her face somber enough to reveal a few unflattering lines. "Sometimes you're an idiot, Lucius. If you've reported his words accurately, then what he said when he pointed to the ring around the sun implied that Caesar is a god and he the son of a god." "D' you really think so? I just thought it was crafty," said Lucius, still chuckling. "You weren't there, Fulvia, I was. He's a born actor, that's all." "So was Sulla. And why inform you he's a virgin? Youths don't do that, they'd rather die than admit that." "I suspect he was really informing me that he's not a homosexual. I mean, he's so pretty any man would get ideas, but he denied having any vices. His needs are simple, he says. Though he's a good orator. Impressed me, actually." "He sounds dangerous to me, Lucius." "Dangerous? Fulvia, he's eighteen!" "Eighteen going on eighty, more like. He's after Caesar's clients and adherents, not after noble colleagues." She got up. "I shall write to Marcus. I think he ought to know." When Fulvia's letter about Caesar's heir was followed two nundinae later by one from the plebeian aedile Critonius telling Antony that Caesar's heir had tried to display Caesar's golden curule chair and gem-studded gold wreath at the games in honor of Ceres, Mark Antony decided it was time to return to Rome. The little mongrel hadn't gotten his way Critonius, in charge of the ludi Ceriales, had forbidden any such displays. So young Octavius had then demanded that the parade show the diadem Caesar had refused! Another no from Critonius saw him defeated, but not penitent. Nor cowed. What's more, said Critonius, he insisted on being addressed as "Caesar"! Was going all over Rome talking to the ordinary people and calling himself "Caesar"! Wouldn't be addressed as "Octavius," and even declined "Octavianus"! Accompanied by a bodyguard of veterans several hundred strong, Antony clattered into Rome upon a blown horse twenty-one days into May. His rump was sore and his temper the worse for a grueling ride, not to mention that he had had to interrupt vitally important work if he didn't keep the veterans on his side, what might the Liberators do? One other item dumped a colossal amount of fuel on his rage. He had sent to Brundisium for the tributes from the provinces and Caesar's war chest. The tributes had duly arrived in Teanum, his base of operations a great relief, as he could go on buying land and paying something off his debts. Antony wasn't fussy about using Rome's moneys for his private purposes. As consul, he simply sent Marcus Cuspius of the Treasury a statement saying he owed that establishment twenty million sesterces. But the war chest didn't come to Teanum because it wasn't in Brundisium. It had been commandeered by Caesar's heir in Caesar's name, the bewildered bank manager informed Antony's legate, the ex-centurion Cafo. Aware that he couldn't go back to Campania armed with no more than this, Cafo made extensive enquiries all over Brundisium and its suburbs, even the surrounding countryside. What he learned amounted to nothing. The day the money disappeared had been one of torrential rain, no one had been out and about, two cohorts of veterans in a camp said no one in his right mind would have been out in that kind of weather, and no one had seen a train of sixty wagons anywhere. Aulus Plautius when applied to looked utterly blank and was prepared to swear on his family's heads that Gaius Octavius had had nothing to do with any thefts from the bank next door. He had only arrived from Macedonia the day before, and was terribly ill in the bargain blue in the face. So Cafo rode back to Teanum after deputing several of his men to start asking after a train of wagons north to Barium or west to Tarentum or south to Hydruntum, while others enquired if any laden ships had put out to sea as soon as the gale eased. By the time Antony rode for Rome, all these investigations had yielded nothing. No train of wagons had been seen anywhere, no ships had put out. The war chest had disappeared off the face of the earth, or so it seemed. Since it was too late in the day to summon Gaius Octavius, Antony soaked his sore rump in a mineral bath, then had a lusty all-over bath with Fulvia, saw the sleeping Antyllus, ate a huge meal washed down by plenty of wine, then went to bed and slept. Dolabella, he was informed at dawn, had gone out of town for a few days, but Aulus Hirtius arrived as he was breaking his fast and didn't look in a good mood either. "What do you mean, Antonius, bringing fully armed soldiers into Rome?" he demanded. "There are no civil disturbances, and you don't have Master of the Horse privileges. The city is alive with rumors that you intend to arrest the Liberators still here I've had seven of them visit me already! They're writing to Brutus and Cassius you're provoking war!" "I don't feel safe without a bodyguard," Antony snarled. "Safe from whom?" Hirtius asked blankly "That snake in the grass Gaius Octavius!" Hirtius flopped on to a chair. "Gaius Octavius?" Unable to stifle it, he laughed. "Oh, come, Antonius, really!" "The little cunnus stole Caesar's war chest in Brundisium." "Gerrae!" said Hirtius, laughing harder. A servant appeared. "Gaius Octavius is here, domine." "Let's ask him, then," said the scowling Antony, temper not improved at Hirtius's patent disbelief. The trouble was that he didn't dare antagonize Hirtius, the loyalest and most influential of Caesar's adherents in Rome. Carried huge weight in the Senate, and would be consul next year too. The high-soled boots came as a surprise to Hirtius and Antony both, and didn't contribute to metaphors like snakes in the grass. This demure, togate youth with his odd pretensions, a danger? Worthy of an escort of several hundred armed troops? Hirtius threw Antony a speaking, mirthful glance, leaned back in his chair and prepared to observe the clash of the titans. Antony didn't bother to rise or extend his hand. "Octavius." "Caesar," Octavian corrected gently. "You are not Caesar!" Antony bellowed. "I am Caesar." "I forbid you to use that name!" "It is mine by legal adoption, Marcus Antonius." "Not until the lex curiata of adoption has been passed, and I doubt it ever will be. I'm senior consul, and I'm in no hurry to convene the Curiate Assembly to ratify it. In fact, Gaius Octavius, if I have anything to do about it, you'll never see a lex curiata passed!" "Go easy, Antonius," said Hirtius softly. "No, I will not! You stinking little pansy, who do you think you are, to defy me?" Antony roared. Octavian stood expressionless, eyes wide and completely opaque, nothing in his pose betraying fear or even tension. His hands, left cuddling folds of toga, right by his side, were curved in a relaxed manner, and his skin was free of sweat. "I am Caesar," he said, "and, as Caesar, I wish to have that part of Caesar's fortune intended to go to the People of Rome as their inheritance." "The will hasn't been probated, you can't have it. Pay the people out of Caesar's war chest, Octavius." Antony sneered. "I beg your pardon?" Octavian asked, allowing himself to look astonished. "You stole it from Oppius's vaults in Brundisium." Hirtius sat up, eyes gleaming. "I beg your pardon?" Octavian repeated. "You stole Caesar's war chest!" "I can assure you that I didn't." "Oppius's manager will testify that you did." "He can't, because I didn't." "You deny that you presented yourself to Oppius's manager, announced that you were Caesar's heir, and requested the thirty thousand talents of Caesar's war chest?" Octavian began to smile delightedly. "Edepol! Oh, what a clever thief!" He chuckled. "I'll bet he didn't produce any proof, because even I didn't have any in Brundisium. Perhaps Oppius's manager stole it himself. Dear, dear, what an embarrassment for the state! I do hope you find it, Marcus Antonius." "I can put your slaves to torture, Octavius." "I had only one with me in Brundisium, which will make your task easier if you charge me. When did this heinous crime take place?" Octavian asked coolly. "On a day of terrible rain." "Oh, that exonerates me! My slave was still prostrate from seasickness, and I from asthma and a sick headache. I do wish," said Octavian, "that you would accord me my due and call me Caesar." "I will never call you Caesar!" "I must serve you notice, Marcus Antonius, since you are the senior consul, that I intend to celebrate Caesar's victory games after the ludi Apollinares, but still during Julius. That is why you see me this morning." "I forbid it," Antony said harshly. "Here, you can't do that!" Hirtius said indignantly. "I'm one of Caesar's friends prepared to contribute funds, and I would hope you'll be contributing yourself, Antonius! The boy's right, he's Caesar's heir and has to celebrate them." "Oh, get out of my sight, Octavius!" Antony snapped. "My name is Caesar," said Octavian as he departed. "You were intolerably rude," said Hirtius. "What possessed you to rant and rave at him? You never even asked him to sit down." "The only thing I'd ask him to sit down on is a spike!" "Nor can you deny him his lex curiata." "He can have his lex curiata when he produces the war chest." That set Hirtius to laughing again. "Gerrae, Gerrae, Gerrae! If someone did indeed steal the war chest, then it had to be an undertaking that must have been nundinae in the planning and execution, Antonius, as you well know. You heard Octavianus, he'd only just arrived from Macedonia, and he was ill." "Octavianus?" asked Antony, still scowling. "Yes, Octavianus. Whether you like it or not, his name is Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. I shall call him Octavianus. No, I won't go so far as to call him Caesar, but Octavianus gives him his due as Caesar's heir," said Hirtius. "He's remarkably cool and clever, isn't he?" When Hirtius walked out into the peristyle of the palace on the Carinae, he found Antony's veteran escort gathered in it, apparently waiting on the senior consul's orders. And there in the middle of them was Octavianus, smiling Caesar's smile, moving his hands like Caesar, it seemed capable too of Caesar's wit, for they were all laughing at whatever he was saying in that deep voice that sounded more like Caesar's every time Hirtius heard him. Before Hirtius reached the group, Octavianus was gone with a Caesarean wave. "Oh, he's lovely!" sighed one old stager, wiping his eyes. "Did you see him, Aulus Hirtius?" another asked, eyes equally misty. "Caesar's image, young Caesar!" What game is he playing? wondered Hirtius, heart sinking. Not one of these men will be in the ranks by the time Octavianus comes into his own, as he certainly will. It must be their sons he wants. Is he capable of that much planning?

The loss of Caesar's war chest had a profound effect upon Antony's plans, plans he wasn't prepared to outline in full to men like Aulus Hirtius. Land for the veterans wasn't an insuperable problem; it could always be legislated away from private ownership and put into the ager publicus. Even the most powerful knights of the Eighteen, who would be the victims of all such laws (along with many senators), were lying low and not doing too much complaining since the death of Caesar. Nor were his own debts what worried Antony most. Since Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, another factor had crept into being, escalating to the point where every soldier in every legion expected to be paid hefty bonuses for fighting. Ventidius was recruiting two new legions in Campania, and every enlisting man wanted a cash gift of a thousand sesterces simply to join up. Not only was it going to cost the state the inevitable sums for equipment, it was going to cost ten million sesterces in cash, payable immediately. The six crack legions still in Macedonia had held together, but their representatives were now in Teanum dropping hints. With the loss of the Parthian spoils, was it going to be worth soldiering? Would the Dacian spoils be equal to the Parthian? How could Antony tell them that there were not going to be any Dacian spoils either, because they were coming back to Italy to shore up the consul's power? Before he gave them that news, he had to find them ten thousand sesterces each in cash bonuses payable on landing in Brundisium. Leaving out the extra money their centurions would cost, that was three hundred million sesterces. But he didn't have the money, and he couldn't get the money. The provincial tributes had to cover a great many ordinary governmental expenses apart from the cost of legions. With Caesar dead, no man alive could hold legionary loyalty without cash bonuses; if his exertions in Campania had told him nothing else, they had told him that. "What about the emergency hoard in the temple of Ops?" asked Fulvia, to whom he confided everything. "There isn't one," Antony said gloomily. "It's been raided by everybody from Cinna and Carbo to Sulla." "Clodius said it was paid back. If he hadn't managed to pass his law to annex Cyprus to pay for the free grain dole, he planned to garnish the money from Ops. After all, she's Rome's plenty, the fruits of the earth, so he considered Ops a properly legal source for free grain. As it was, his law passed, so he never needed to raid Ops." Antony swooped on her and kissed her thoroughly. "What would I do without you, my own personification of Ops?" Opsiconsiva's temple on the Capitol was only moderately old; though she was numen and therefore faceless, disembodied, belonging to the days when Rome first emerged, her original temple had been burned to the ground, and this one erected by a Caecilius Metellus a hundred and fifty years ago. It wasn't large, but the Caecilii Metelli had kept it painted and clean. The single cella contained no image, nor was it the site of sacrifices to Ops, for she had an altar in the Regia of more importance to the state religion. Like all Roman temples, Ops of the Capitol stood atop a tall podium because these basements were sacrosanct, protected by the deity above, therefore were often used to store precious objects and items, including money or bullion. Moving after dark and accompanied only by his henchmen, Mark Antony forced the door to Ops's basement and let his lamp play across the great stacks of tarnished silver sows, breath suspended. Ops had been paid back with interest! He had his money. Which he proceeded to remove in broad daylight, not all at once and not very far. Just across the Capitol, through the Asylum, and into Juno Moneta's basement, where the mint was located. There, day and night, the silver sows were converted into silver denarii. He could pay his legions for a long time to come, and even pay off his debts. Ops had held twenty-eight thousand silver talents seven hundred million sesterces. Things moved into place for the Kalends of June, when he would ask the Senate to exchange his provinces. And after that, he would have brother Lucius use the Plebeian Assembly to strip Italian Gaul off Decimus Brutus at once. A letter from Brutus and Cassius had him snarling.

It would please us greatly to be present in the Senate on the Kalends of June, Marcus Antonius, but we must seek assurances from you that we will be safe. It grieves us that, though we are the two senior praetors, neither you nor any other magistrate keeps us informed about what is happening in Rome. We appreciate your concern for our welfare, and thank you once again for your many accommodations since the Ides of March. However, it has come to our attention that the city is full of Caesar's old soldiers, and that they intend to re-erect the altar and column to Caesar which the consul Dolabella so rightly dismantled. Our question is: will we be safe if we come to Rome? Please, we humbly beg, give us assurances that our amnesties remain in place, and that we will be welcome in Rome.

Feeling very much better now that his financial worries were a thing of the past, Antony replied to this almost obsequious plea with scant consideration for Liberator sentiments.

I cannot give you assurances of safety, Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius. It's true that the city is full of Caesar's old soldiers, who are holidaying here while they wait for their land or debate whether to re-enlist in the legions I am recruiting in Campania. As to their intentions regarding what I call Caesar-worship, you may have assurances from me that Caesar-worship will not be encouraged. Come to Rome for the meeting on the Kalends of June, or do not come. The choice is entirely yours.

There! That would tell them what their place was in the Antonian scheme of things! And also tell them that, should they decide to take advantage of Samnite discontent, there would be legions in the neighborhood to put rebellion down. Yes, by Ops, excellent! His mood plummeted on the Kalends of June when he entered the Curia Hostilia to find attendance so thin that he had no quorum. Had Brutus, Cassius and Cicero been there, he would have scraped in, but they were not. "All right," he said to Dolabella through his teeth, "I'll go straight to the Plebeian Assembly. Lucius!" he called to his brother, leaving arm in arm with Gaius Antonius. "Convoke the Plebeian Assembly for two days hence!" The Plebeian Assembly, also thinly attended, had no quorum regulations. If one member of each tribe turned up, the meeting could proceed, and two hundred-odd had turned up, spread across the thirty-five tribes. The pace was fast and Antony's mood furious, so none of the Plebs was prepared to argue with Lucius Antonius, and none of his fellow tribunes of the plebs were prepared to interpose a veto. In short order the Plebs awarded Italian Gaul and Further Gaul minus the Narbonese province to Marcus Antonius for a period of five years with unlimited imperium, then went on to award Syria to Dolabella for five years with unlimited imperium. This lex Antonia de permutatione provinciarum went into immediate effect, which meant that Decimus Brutus was stripped of his province. The Plebeian Assembly's work wasn't done; the first fruits of Antony's deal with the legions became evident when Lucius Antonius brought in yet another law, this one providing a third type of juror to staff the courts: high ranking ex-centurions, who were not required to have a knight's income to qualify for jury duty. Antony's youngest brother followed this up with another land bill, this one to distribute ager publicus to the veterans through the medium of a seven-member commission comprising Mark Antony, Lucius himself, Dolabella, and four minions who included the Liberator Caesennius Lento, busy smarming to Antony. If Hirtius had heard rumors that King Deiotarus of Galatia was bribing Antony, he saw those rumors confirmed when Armenia Parva was taken off Cappadocia and added to Galatia. The two consuls had found their feet and proclaimed their style of government: corruption and self-service. A brisk trade in tax exemptions and privileges dated from the Kalends of June, and all those permanently banned from the citizenship by Caesar after he discovered that Faberius was selling the citizenship now could buy it after all. While the mint kept on coining silver sows from Ops. "What," asked Antony of Dolabella, "is power for, if not to use to one's own best advantage?"

The Senate met again five days into June, this time with a quorum present. To the astonishment of Lucius Piso, Philippus and the few on the front benches, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus Senior sat there among them. Sulla's greatest friend and political ally, Vatia Senior had been retired from public life for so long that most had quite forgotten his existence; his Roman house was occupied by his son, Caesar's friend at present returning from governing Asia Province, while Vatia Senior contemplated the beauties of Nature, Art and Literature in his villa at Cumae. Once the prayers were said and the auspices taken, Vatia Senior rose to his feet, the sign that he wished to speak. As the most senior and august among the consulars, it was his entitlement to do so. "Later," said Antony curtly, to a chorus of gasps. Dolabella turned his head to glare ferociously at Antony. "I hold the fasces in June, Marcus Antonius, therefore this is my meeting! Publius Vatia Senior, it is an honor to welcome you back to the House. Please speak." "Thank you, Publius Dolabella," Vatia Senior said, voice a little thready, but quite audible. "When do you mean to discuss provinces for the praetors?" "Not today," Antony answered before Dolabella could. "Perhaps we should discuss them, Marcus Antonius," Dolabella said stiffly, determined not to be overridden. "I said, not today! It is postponed," snarled Antony. "Then I ask that you give special consideration to two of the praetors," said Vatia Senior. "Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Though I cannot condone their taking the law into their own hands to kill Caesar Dictator, I am concerned for their welfare. While ever they remain in Italy, their lives are threatened. Therefore I move that Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius be voted provinces at once, no matter how long the other praetors must wait. I further move that Marcus Brutus be awarded the province of Macedonia, since Marcus Antonius has relinquished it, and that Gaius Cassius be awarded the province of Cilicia, together with Cyprus, Crete and Cyrenaica." Vatia Senior stopped, but didn't sit; an imperfect silence fell, disturbed by ominous mutters from the top tiers, where Caesar's appointees had no love for Caesar's assassins. Gaius, the praetor Antonius, rose to his feet, looking angry. "Honored consuls, da-de-da the rest," he shouted impudently, "I agree with the consular Vatia Senior, in that it is high time we saw the backs of Brutus and Cassius! While ever they remain in Italy, they represent a threat to government. Since this House voted them an amnesty, they can't be tried for treason, but I refuse to see them given provinces while innocent men like me are told we must wait! I say, give them quaestor's duties! Give them commissions to buy in grain for Rome and Italy. Brutus can go to Asia Minor, Cassius to Sicily. Quaestor's duties are all that they deserve!" A debate followed that showed Vatia Senior how unpopular his cause was; if he needed further proof, he received it when the House voted to give Brutus and Cassius grain commissions in Asia Minor and Sicily. Then, to rub it in, Antony and his minions poked fun at him, mocked his age and his old-fashioned ideas. So as soon as the meeting was over, he went back to his villa in Campania. Once home, he asked his servants to fill his bath. Then Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus Senior stretched out in the water with a sigh of bliss, opened the veins of both wrists with a lancet, and drifted into the warm, infinitely welcome arms of death.

"Oh, how can I bear such a homecoming?" Vatia Junior asked Aulus Hirtius. "Caesar murdered, my father suicided " He broke down again, wept bitterly. " and Rome in the clutches of Marcus Antonius," Hirtius said grimly. "I wish I could see a way out, Vatia, but I can't. No one can stand against Antonius, he's capable of anything from blatant illegality to summary execution without trial. And he has the legions on his side." "He's buying the legions," said Junia, very glad to see her husband home. "I could kill my brother Brutus for setting all of this in motion, but Porcia pulls his strings." Vatia wiped his eyes, blew his nose. "Will Antonius and his tame Senate let you be consul next year, Hirtius?" he asked. "He says so. I'm careful not to thrust my face under his nose too often it's wiser to stay invisible. Pansa thinks the same. That's why we don't attend many meetings." "So there's no one with the clout to oppose him?" "Absolutely no one. Antonius is running wild."

4

And thus it did seem to Rome's and Italy's leading men of business and politics during that dreadful spring and summer after the Ides of March. Brutus and Cassius wandered from place to place around the Campanian coast, Porcia fastened to Brutus as by a rivet. On the one occasion when they found themselves in the same villa as Servilia and Tertulla, the five of them bickered constantly. News had come of the grain commissions, which mortally offended them how dare Antony palm them off with duties befitting mere quaestors? Cicero, calling on them, found Servilia convinced that she still possessed enough power in the Senate to have the decision reversed, Cassius in the mood for war, Brutus utterly despondent, Porcia carping and nagging as usual, and Tertulla in the depths of despair because she had lost her baby. He went away shattered. It's a shipwreck. They don't know what to do, they can't see a way out, they exist from day to day waiting for some axe or other to fall. The whole of Italy is foundering because malign children are running it and we less malign children have no defenses against their kind of chaos. We have become the tools of professional soldiers and the ruthless brute of a man who controls them. Was this what the Liberators envisioned when they conspired to eliminate Caesar? No, of course not. They could see no further than eliminating Caesar they genuinely thought that once he was gone, everything would go back to normal. Never understanding that they themselves would have to take the tiller of the ship of state. And in not taking it, they have let it run on the rocks. A shipwreck. Rome is done for.

The two sets of games in the new month of Julius, first those of Apollo, then those dedicated to Caesar's victories, diverted and amused the people, who poured into Rome from as far afield as Bruttium, the toe, and Italian Gaul, the rump atop the leg. It was high summer, very dry and hot time for a month of holiday. Rome's population almost doubled. Brutus, the absentee celebrant of the ludi Apollinares, had staked his all on a performance of the Tereus, a play by the Latin author Accius. Though the common people preferred the chariot races that opened and closed the seven days of the games, and in between thronged to the big theaters staging Atellan mimes and the musically rich farces of Plautus and Terence, Brutus was convinced that the Tereus would serve as a meter to tell him what the common people thought about the assassination of Caesar. The play was replete with tyrannicide and the reasons behind it a tragedy of epic proportions. Therefore it didn't appeal in the least to the common people, who didn't go to see it a fact that Brutus's ignorance of the common people rendered him incapable of grasping. The audience was an elite one, stuffed with literati like Varro and Lucius Piso, and the play was received with almost hysterical approval. After this news was relayed to Brutus, he went around for days convinced that he was vindicated, that the common people condoned Caesar's assassination, that soon a full reinstatement would come for the Liberators. Whereas the truth was that the production of the Tereus was a brilliant one, the acting superb, and the play itself so rarely staged that it came as a welcome change to dramatically jaded elite palates. Octavian, the celebrant of the ludi Victoriae Caesaris, had implanted no gauges to monitor popular response to his games, but was gifted with one by Fortuna herself. His games ran for eleven days, and were somewhat different in structure from the other games Rome saw fairly regularly throughout the warmer months. The first seven days were devoted to pageants and scenes, with the opening day's pageant, a re-enactment of Alesia, situated in the Circus Maximus a cast of thousands, mock battles galore, an exciting and novel display organized and directed by Maecenas, who demonstrated a rare talent for this sort of activity. To the principal funder of the games went the honor of giving the signal that they should begin, and Octavian, standing in the box, seemed to the enormous crowd to be a reincarnation of Caesar; much to Antony's annoyance, Octavian was cheered for a full quarter of an hour. Though this was immensely satisfying, Octavian well knew that it was not an indication that Rome belonged to him; it was an indication that Rome had belonged to Caesar. That was what upset Antony. Then, about an hour before sunset on the opening day, just as Vercingetorix sat cross-legged at Caesar's feet, a huge comet appeared in the northern skies above the Capitol. At first no one noticed it, then a few fingers pointed at the stella critina, and suddenly the whole two hundred thousand jammed into the Circus were on their feet, screaming wildly. "Caesar! The star is Caesar! Caesar is a god!" The next day's pageants and scenes, like the five more after them, were relegated to smaller venues around the city, but every day the comet rose about an hour before sunset, and shone through most of the night with eerie brilliance. Its head was as big as the moon, its tail swept behind it in two shimmering trails right across the northern heavens. And during the wild-beast hunts, the horse races, the chariot races and the other magnificent spectacles held in the Circus Maximus for the last four days of the games, the long-haired star personifying Caesar continued to shine. The very moment the games were over, it disappeared. Octavian had acted quickly. By the second day of the games, Caesar's statues throughout the city bore gilded stars on their foreheads. Thanks to Caesar's star, Octavian had won more than he lost, for Antony himself had forbidden the display of Caesar's golden chair and wreath in the parade, and Caesar's ivory statue was not carried in the procession of the gods. On the second day of the games, Antony had delivered a stirring speech to the audience in Pompey's theater, vigorously defending the Liberators and playing down Caesar's importance. But with that uncanny comet shining, all Antony's counter-measures went for nothing. To those who offered him comments or asked him questions, Octavian replied that the star must indicate Caesar's godhead; otherwise, why did it appear on the first day of his victory games and vanish the moment those games were over? Unanswerable in any other way. Inarguable. Even Antony could not contradict such unimpeachable evidence, while Dolabella chewed his nails down to the quick and thanked his primal instincts for not destroying Caesar's altar and column. Though he didn't re-erect them. Inside himself, Octavian looked at Caesar's star differently. Naturally it endowed Caesar's heir with some of Caesar's godly mystery; if Caesar were a god, then he was the son of a god. He saw that reflected in many eyes as he deliberately walked around Rome's less salubrious neighborhoods. This child of Palatine exclusivity had been quick to understand that to remain exclusive was no way to inspire love in the ordinary people. Nor would it have occurred to him that to stage a play full of droning terror and high-flown dialogue would tell him anything about the people who lived in Rome's less salubrious neighborhoods. No, he walked and talked, told those he met that he wished to learn about his father, Caesar please tell me your story! And many of the people he met were Caesar's veterans, in Rome for the two sets of games. They really liked him, deemed him humble, grateful, very ready to listen to anything they had to say. More important, Octavian discovered that Antony's public rudeness to him over the course of the games had been noticed, was strongly condemned. A core of invulnerable security was forming in him, for Octavian knew perfectly well what Caesar's star really meant. It was a message to him from Caesar that his destiny was to rule the world. His desire to rule the world had always seemed to be there, but so tenuous, so manifestly impossible that he had called it a daydream, a fantasy. But from the moment the long-haired star had appeared, he knew otherwise. The sense of destiny had suddenly become certainty. Caesar meant him to rule the world. Caesar had passed to him the task to heal Rome, enhance her empire, endow her with unimaginable power. Under his care, under his aegis. I am the man. I will rule the world. I have time to be patient, time to learn, time to rectify the mistakes I must surely make, time to grind opposition down, time to deal with everyone from the Liberators to Marcus Antonius. Caesar made me heir not just to money and estates, but to his clients and adherents, his power, his destiny, his godhead. And by Sol Indiges, by Tellus, and by Liber Pater, I will not disappoint him. I will be a worthy son. I will be Caesar.

* * *

At the end of the eighth day of the games, which was the first back in the Circus Maximus, a delegation of centurions cornered Antony as he left the Circus after doing everything he could to make it clear to the crowd that he despised Caesar's heir. "It's got to stop, Marcus Antonius," said the spokesman, who happened to be Marcus Coponius, chief centurion of those two cohorts present in Brundisium when Octavian had needed help to remove the war chest. The two cohorts were now destined to join the Fourth. "What's got to stop?" Antony snarled. "The way you treat dear young Caesar, sir. It ain't right." "Are you asking for a court-martial, centurion?" "No, sir, definitely not. All I'm saying is that there's a great big hairy star in the sky called Caesar, who's gone to live with the gods. He's shining on his son, young Caesar a sort of a thank you for putting on these terrific games, we see it. It ain't me complaining, Marcus Antonius, sir. It's all of us. I got fifty men here with me, all centurions or ex-centurions from the old boy's legions. Some have re-enlisted, like me. Some have land Caesar gave them. I got land Caesar gave me last time I was discharged. And we notice how you treat the dear young chap. Like he was dirt. But he ain't dirt. He's young Caesar. And we say it's got to stop. You've got to treat young Caesar right." Uncomfortably aware that he was in a toga, not in armor, and therefore less impressive in legionary eyes, Antony stood with a storm of feelings crossing his ugly-handsome face feelings the delegation pretended not to see. His frustration had gotten the better of him, his impatience had led him into conduct that he hadn't realized would be so offensive to men he needed desperately. The trouble was that he had viewed himself as Caesar's natural heir, and had believed that Caesar's veterans would agree that he was. A mistake. At heart they were children. Brave and strong, great soldiers. But children nonetheless. Who wanted their adored Marcus Antonius to smarm and cuddle up to a pretty pansy in high-soled boots because said pretty pansy was Caesar's adopted son. They didn't see what he saw. They saw someone that sentiment had convinced them was how Caesar must have looked at eighteen. I never knew Caesar at eighteen, but maybe he did look like a pretty pansy. Maybe he was a pretty pansy, if there's any truth in the story about King Nicomedes. But I refuse to believe that Gaius Octavius is an embyronic Caesar! No one could change that much. Octavius doesn't have Caesar's arrogance, style, or genius. No, he gets his way by deceit, honey-sweet words, sympathy and smiles. He says himself that he can't general troops. He's a lightweight. But these idiots want me to be nice to him because of a wretched comet. "What's your definition of treating Gaius Octavius right?" he asked, managing to look more interested than angry. "Well, for a start, we think you ought to proclaim in public that you're friends," said Coponius. "Then all who are interested should show up on the Capitol at the foot of the steps to Jupiter Optimus Maximus at the second hour on the day after the games finish," said Antony with as much good grace as he could muster. "Come, Fulvia," he said to his wife, standing fearfully behind him. "You'd better watch your step with that little worm," she said as she toiled up the Steps of Cacus, the babe in her womb growing large enough to be a handicap. "He's dangerous." Antony put his hand in the flat of her back and began to push her upward, a help. That was one of the nicest things about him; another husband would have ordered a servant to assist her, but he saw no loss of dignity in doing it himself. "My mistake was in thinking I didn't need my bodyguard for the games. Lictors are useless." This was said loudly, but the next statement was muttered. "I thought the legions would be on my side in this. They belong to me." "They belonged to Caesar first," puffed Fulvia. So on the day after Caesar's victory games ended, over a thousand veterans clustered on the Capitol anywhere that they could see the steps of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Defiantly in armor, Mark Antony arrived first, early because he wanted to pass among the assembled men, chat to them, joke with them. When Octavian arrived he was togate and in ordinary shoes. Smiling Caesar's smile, he walked swiftly through the ranks to stand in front of Antony. Oh, cunning! thought Antony, sitting ruthlessly on his impulse to smash that pretty face to pulp. Today he wants everybody to see how small he is, how harmless and inoffensive. He wants me to look a bully, a churl. "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus," Antony began, hating with every part of him to speak that odious name, "it's been drawn to my attention by these good fellows that I er haven't always given you a proper measure of respect. For which I sincerely apologize. It was done unintentionally I've got too much on my mind. Will you forgive me?" "Gladly, Marcus Antonius!" Octavian cried, smile broader than ever, and thrust out his hand. Antony shook it as if it were made of glass, red eyes roving over the faces of Coponius and the original fifty to see how this nauseating performance was going down. All right, but not enough, their faces said. So, holding in his gorge, Antony put his hands on Octavian's shoulders and drew him into an embrace, kissed him smackingly on both cheeks. That did it. Sighs of content arose, then the whole crowd applauded. "I'm only doing this to please them." Antony whispered into Octavian's right ear. "Ditto," whispered Octavian. The pair of them left the Capitol by walking through the men, Antony's arm about Octavian's shoulders, so far beneath his own that the worm looked an innocent, gorgeous child. "Lovely!" said Coponius, weeping unashamedly. The big grey eyes met his, a ghost of a different smile in their limpid depths.

Sextilis came in with a new, equally unpleasant shock for Antony. Brutus and Cassius issued a praetorian edict to all the towns and communities of Italy which differed greatly in content from the two they had issued in April. Couched in prose that had Cicero drooling, it announced that, while they wished to absent themselves from Rome to govern provinces, they were not about to be palmed off with quaestorian duties like buying in grain. To buy in grain, they said, was a gross insult to two men who had already governed provinces, and governed them well. Cassius at a mere thirty years of age had not only governed Syria, but had also defeated and driven out a large Parthian army. And Brutus had been Caesar's personal choice to govern Italian Gaul with a proconsular imperium, though he hadn't yet been praetor. Further, the edict went on, it had come to their ears that Marcus Antonius was accusing them of preaching sedition to the Macedonian legions returning to Italy. This was a false accusation that they insisted Antonius retract forthwith. They had always acted in the interests of peace and liberty, never at any time had they tried to incite civil war. Antony's response was a devastating letter to them.

Who do you think you are, putting up your notices in every town from Bruttium and Calabria to Umbria and Etruria? I have issued a consular edict that will go up in the place where yours will be torn down, from Bruttium and Calabria to Umbria and Etruria. It will tell the people of Italy that the pair of you are acting in your own private interests, that your edict does not have praetorian authority. It will go on to warn its readers that should more unofficial notices go up under your names, such notices will be seriously regarded as potentially treasonous, and that their authors may well find themselves designated public enemies. That's what I will say in public. In this letter I will go further. You are behaving treasonously, and you have no right to demand anything from the Senate and People of Rome. Instead of whining and bleating about your grain commissions, you ought to be fawning at the Senate's feet saying a series of abject thank-yous for being given any kind of official duties. After all, you deliberately murdered the man who was legally the head of the Roman state did you really expect to be dowered with gold curule chairs and gem-studded gold wreaths for committing treason? Grow up, you stupid, pampered adolescents! And how dare you accuse me publicly of saying that you've tried to tamper with my Macedonian legions? Why on earth should I start those sorts of rumors, tell me that? Shut up and pull your heads in, or you'll be in even bigger trouble than you already are.

On the fourth day of Sextilis, Antony had a reply from Brutus and Cassius, addressed to him privately. He had expected profuse apologies, but he didn't get them. Instead, Brutus and Cassius stubbornly maintained that they were legal praetors, could legally issue any edicts they wanted to issue, and could not be accused of anything other than consistently working for peace, harmony and liberty. Antony's threats, they said, held no terrors for them. Hadn't their own conduct proved that their liberty was more precious to them than any friendship with Marcus Antonius? They ended with a Parthian shot: "We would remind you that it is not the length of Caesar's life that is the issue, but rather, the briefness of his reign." What had happened to his luck? wondered Antony, feeling more and more that events were conspiring against him. Octavian had publicly forced him into a corner which had informed him that his control of the legions wasn't as complete as he had thought; and two praetors were busy telling him that it lay in their power to end his career in the same way they had ended Caesar's. Or so he took that defiant letter, chewing his lips and fuming. The briefness of a reign, eh? Well, he could deal with Decimus in Italian Gaul, but he couldn't deal with a war on two fronts, one with Decimus in the far north and another with Brutus and Cassius south in Samnite Italy, always ready to have another go at Rome. Octavian could have told him why he had lost his luck, but of course it never occurred to Antony to enquire of his most gnatlike enemy. He had lost it on that first occasion when he had been rude to Octavian. The god Caesar hadn't liked it. Time then, Antony decided, to concede enough to Brutus and Cassius to be rid of them so that he could concentrate on Decimus Brutus. So he convened the Senate the day after he received their letter and had the Senate award them a province each. Brutus was to govern Crete, and Cassius to govern Cyrenaica. Neither place possessed a single legion. They wanted provinces? Well, now they had provinces. Goodbye, Brutus and Cassius.

5

Cicero despaired, grew gloomier with every day that passed. This, despite the fact that he and Atticus had finally managed to evict the urban poor from Caesar's colony at Buthrotum. They had applied to Dolabella, who was very happy, after a long talk with Cicero, to take a huge bribe from Atticus that ensured the survival of the leather, tallow and fertilizer empire in Epirus. Atticus had needed some good news, for his wife had come down with the summer paralysis, and was gravely ill. Little Attica mourned because no one would let her see her mother, who had to stay in Rome while Atticus sent his daughter and her servants to isolation in his villa at Pompeii. Money had again become a terrible problem for Cicero, due in large measure to young Marcus, still on his Grand Tour and perpetually writing home for additional funds. Neither of the Quintuses was speaking to him, his brief marriage to Publilia hadn't yielded as much revenue as he had thought thanks to her wretched brother and mother, and Cleopatra's agent in Rome, the Egyptian Ammonius, was refusing to pay the Queen's promissory note. And after he had gone to so much trouble to have all his speeches and dissertations copied on the best paper, complete with marginal illustrations and exquisite script! It had cost him a fortune that her promissory note clearly said she was willing to refund him. Ammonius's grounds for refusing to pay up: that Caesar's death had caused her to decamp before the collected Ciceroniana was delivered! Then here it is, send it to her! was Cicero's reply. Ammonius just raised his brows and retorted that he was sure the Queen, home again safely in Egypt (the rumored shipwreck hadn't happened), had better things to do than read thousands of pages of Latin prating. So here he was with the finest edition of his entire works ever made, and no one willing to buy it! What he wanted to do, he had decided, was to leave Italy, go to Greece, confront young Marcus and then wallow in Athenian culture. His beloved freedman Tiro was working indefatigably toward this end, but where was the money to come from? Terentia, sourer than ever, was busy piling up the sesterces, but when applied to, had answered that at last count he had owned ten fabulous villas from Etruria to Campania, all stuffed with the most enviable art works, so if he was strapped for cash, sell a few villas and statues, don't write asking her to pay for his ridiculous follies! His encounters with Brutus went round and round without ever seeming to go anywhere; Brutus too was thinking of going to Greece. What he absolutely refused to do was to accept a grain-buying commission! Then the silly fellow sailed off with Porcia to the little island of Nesis, not far from the Campanian coast. Whereas Cassius had elected to take up his grain commissionership in Sicily, and was busy assembling a fleet; harvest was nearing. Then Dolabella, delighted at the promptness with which Atticus had paid his bribe, agreed to give Cicero permission to leave Italy how disgraceful, to think that a consular of his standing had to apply for permission to go abroad! Such was Caesar's dictate, which the consuls had not rescinded. Swallowing his ire, Cicero sold a villa in Etruria he never visited; now he had the money to go as well as the permission. What thrust him into actually going was the change in name of the month Quinctilis to the month Julius. When receiving letters dated Julius became utterly intolerable, Cicero hired a ship and sailed from Puteoli, where Cassius's grain fleet was assembling. But nothing was intended to proceed smoothly! Cicero's ship got as far as Vibo, off the coast of Bruttium, and couldn't make further headway because of high, contrary winds. Taking this as a message that he was not destined to leave Italy at this time, Cicero disembarked at the fishing village of Leucoptera, a hideously stinking, awful place. It was always the same; somehow the moment leaving Italy arrived, he couldn't bear to go. His roots were just too deeply implanted in Italian soil. Tired and in need of real hospitality, Cicero turned in at the gates of Cato's old estates in Lucania, expecting to find no one there. The lands had gone to one of Caesar's three ex-centurion crown-winning senators, who hadn't wanted estates so far from his home ground of Umbria, and sold them to an unknown buyer. It was the seventeenth day of Sextilis when Cicero's litter entered the gates; this awful summer was wearing down at last. Once inside, he saw that the lamps dotting the gardens were lit someone was home! Company! A good meal! And there at the door to welcome him was Marcus Brutus. His eyes suddenly brimming with tears, Cicero fell on Brutus's neck and hugged him fervently. Brutus had been reading, for he still had a scroll in his hand, and was very taken aback at the effusion of Cicero's greeting until Cicero explained his odyssey and its pain. Porcia was with her husband, but didn't join them for supper, a relief as far as Cicero was concerned. A very little Porcia went a very long way. "You won't know that the Senate has granted Cassius and me provinces," said Brutus. "I have Crete, Cassius has Cyrenaica. The news came just as Cassius was about to sail, so he decided not to be a grain commissioner, and handed his fleet over to a prefect. He's in Neapolis with Servilia and Tertulla." "Are you pleased?" Cicero asked, warm and content. "Not very, no, but at least we do have provinces." Brutus gave a sigh. "Cassius and I haven't been getting along together lately. He derided my interpretation of the reception of the Tereus, could talk about nothing except young Octavianus, who tried Antonius's temper dreadfully over those victory games in Caesar's honor. And of course the stella critina appeared over the Capitol, so all Rome's teeming hordes are calling Caesar a god, with Octavianus egging them on." "The last time I saw young Octavianus I was startled at the change in him," Cicero contributed, burrowing comfortably into his couch. How wonderful to enjoy a cozy meal with one of the few civilized men in Rome! "Very sprightly very witty very sure of himself. Philippus wasn't at all happy, confided to me that the young fool is becoming hubristic." "Cassius deems him dangerous" was Brutus's comment. "He tried to display Caesar's gold chair and wreath at his games, and when Antonius said no, he stood up to the senior consul as if he were Antonius's equal! Quite unafraid, extremely outspoken." "Octavianus won't last because he can't last." Cicero cleared his throat delicately. "What of the Liberators?" "Despite our being granted provinces, I think the prospects are grim," Brutus said. "Vatia Isauricus is back from Asia and fit to be tied, between Caesar's death and his father's suicide Octavianus is insisting that the Liberators must be punished and Dolabella is everybody's enemy, as well as his own worst enemy." "Then I shall go on to Rome at dawn," said Cicero. True to his word, he was ready to depart at first light, not really pleased that Porcia was there to farewell him too. He knew perfectly well that she despised him, considered him a braggart, a poseur, a man of straw. Well, he considered her a mannish freak who, like every other woman, had formed no opinions that hadn't belonged to a man first in her case, her father. Cato's villa was not pretentious, but it did have some truly magnificent murals. As they stood in the atrium, the increasing light fell upon a wall filled by a tremendous painting of Hector saying farewell to Andromache before going out to fight Achilles. The artist had caught Hector in the act of giving his son, Astyanax, back to his mother, but instead of looking at the child, she was gazing piteously at Hector. "Wonderful!" Cicero cried, drinking in the painting avidly. "Is it?" asked Brutus, staring at it as if he had never seen it until that moment. Cicero began to quote:

"Restless spirit, do not distress yourself with thoughts of me! No man sends me into the underworld untimely; yet no man can escape his fate either, be he coward or hero. Go home and look after your sort of work, loom and spindle. Supervise your servants so they spin and weave too. War is men's work, and the men of Troy must cleave to it, especially me."

Brutus laughed. "Oh, come, Cicero, you don't expect me to say that to Cato's daughter, do you? Porcia is the equal of any man in courage and high intent." Her face lighting up, Porcia turned to Brutus and pulled his hand against her cheek, which embarrassed him in front of Cicero; yet he made no move to take his hand away. Eyes blazing rather madly, Porcia said: "I have no father and mother now. ... So you, my Brutus, are father and mother both to me, as well as my most beloved husband." Brutus detached his hand and left her side, gave Cicero a tight grimace that seemed the closest he could get to a smile. "You see how erudite she is? She's not content to paraphrase she picks the eyes out of eyeless Homer. No mean feat." Laughter booming, Cicero blew a kiss to Andromache in the painting. "If she can pick the eyes out of blind old Homer, my dear Brutus, then you and she are well matched. Goodbye, my two epitomators, and may we meet again in better times." Neither waited at the door to watch him enter his litter. Toward the end of Sextilis, Brutus took ship from Tarentum to Patrae in Greece; he left Porcia behind with Servilia.

Mark Antony sent a message to Cicero, arrived in Rome, that he was to present himself in the Senate for the obligatory first-day-of-the-month meeting. When Cicero didn't turn up, an irate Antony left for Tibur to attend to some urgent business. With Antony safely out of town, Cicero went to the Senate the next day; the House had prorogued its meeting to finish its early September agenda. And in its chamber the vacillating, vainglorious consular Marcus Tullius Cicero finally found the courage to embark upon what was to be his life's work: a series of speeches against Marcus Antonius. No one expected this first speech; everyone was staggered, and many were frightened out of their wits. The softest and most subtle of the series, the first was the most telling, in part because it came out of the blue. He started kindly enough. Antony's actions after the Ides of March had been moderate and conciliatory, said Cicero; he hadn't abused possession of Caesar's papers, had restored no exiles, had abolished the dictatorship forever, and suppressed disorder among the common people. But from May onward, Antony began to change, and by the Kalends of June a very different man stood revealed. Nothing was done through the Senate anymore, everything was done through the People in their tribes, and sometimes even the will of the People was ignored. The consuls-elect, Hirtius and Pansa, did not dare to enter the Senate, the Liberators were virtually exiled from Rome, and the veteran soldiers were actively encouraged to seek fresh bonuses and fresh privileges. Cicero protested at the honors being paid to Caesar's memory and thanked Lucius Piso for his speech on the Kalends of Sextilis, deploring the fact that Piso had found no support for his motion to make Italian Gaul a part of Italy proper. He condoned the ratification of Caesar's acts, but condemned the ratification of mere promises or casual memoranda. He went on to enumerate those of Caesar's laws that Antony had transgressed, and made much of the fact that Antony tended to transgress Caesar's good laws, uphold the bad ones. In his peroration he exhorted both Antony and Dolabella to seek genuine glory rather than dominate their fellow citizens through a reign of terror. Vatia Isauricus followed Cicero and spoke to the same effect just not nearly as well. The old master was back, and the old master had no peer. Significantly, the House dared to applaud. With the result that Antony returned to Rome from Tibur to find a new mood in the Senate and all kinds of rumors circulating in the Forum, where the frequenters were abuzz with discussions about Cicero's brilliant, timely, most welcome, very brave speech. Antony reacted with a towering temper tantrum and demanded that Cicero be present in the House to hear his answer on the nineteenth day of September; but Antony's rage contained palpable fear, had an element of bluster no one had seen or heard before. For Antony knew that if two consulars as prestigious as Cicero and Vatia Isauricus dared to speak out openly against him in the House, then his ascendancy was waning. A conclusion reinforced midway through the month when he put a new statue of Caesar, star on its brow, in the Forum bearing an inscription which denied that Caesar was a god of any kind. The tribune of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius spoke against the inscription to a crowd; suddenly, Antony realized, even the mice were growing fangs. If he blamed the change in attitude on anyone in particular, it was on Octavian, not on Cicero. That sweet, demure, fetching boy was working against him on all fronts. Starting on the day when he had been forced by the centurions to apologize publicly to Octavian, Antony had come to understand that he was not dealing with a pretty pansy he was dealing with a cobra. So when the House met on the nineteenth day of September, he thundered a tirade against Cicero, Vatia, Tiberius Cannutius and everyone else who was suddenly presuming to criticize him openly. He didn't mention Octavian that would have been to make a fool of himself but he did get on to the subject of the Liberators. For the first time, he condemned them for striking down a great Roman, for acting unconstitutionally, for doing outright murder. This change of face didn't go unremarked; the balance was beginning to tip against the Liberators when even Marcus Antonius found it necessary to speak against them. For which Antony blamed Octavian and no one else. Caesar's heir was saying unequivocally to all prepared to listen that while ever the Liberators continued to go unpunished, Caesar's shade was unappeased. Didn't the stella critina say with the force of a clap of thunder that Caesar was a god? A Roman god! Of massive power and moment to Rome, yet unappeased! Nor did Octavian limit his categorical statements to the common people. He said them to the upper classes too. What were Antony and Dolabella going to do about the Liberators? Was overt treason to be condoned, even extolled? The months since the Ides of March, said Octavian to all and sundry, had seen nothing but a permissive passivity; the Liberators walked around free men, yet had killed a Roman god. A god who received no official sacrifices, and was unappeased. Toward the end of the first nundinum in October, Antony's mushrooming sense of persecution caused him to purge his bodyguard of veteran soldiers. He arrested some of them on the charge of attempting to assassinate him, and went so far as to allege that Octavian had paid them to assassinate him. A highly indignant Octavian got up on the rostra in front of a suspiciously large audience and denied the allegation passionately. In a very good speech. Everybody listening believed him completely. Antony got the message, had to content himself with dismissing the men he had accused; he didn't dare execute them. Did he, he would do himself irreparable harm in the eyes of soldiers and civilians alike. The day after Octavian's address, fresh deputations from the legions and the veterans came to see him and inform him that they wouldn't stand for Antony's harming one single hair of Octavian's darling golden head. Somehow, though it was a mystery to Antony quite how, Caesar's heir had become a talisman of the army's good luck; he had fused himself into legionary worship alongside the Eagles. "I don't believe it!" he cried to Fulvia, pacing up and down like a caged beast. "He's a a child! How does he do it, for I swear he has no Ulysses whispering in his ear how to do it!" "Philippus?" she suggested. Antony blew a derisive noise. "Not he! He's too careful of his skin, and it runs in that family for generations. There's no one, Fulvia, no one! The artfulness, the guile they're him! I don't even understand how Caesar saw what he is!" "You're boxing yourself into a corner, my love," Fulvia said with conviction. "If you stay in Rome, you'll end in massacring everyone from Cicero to Octavianus, and that would be your downfall. The best thing you can do is go and fight Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul. A victory or two against the prime mover among the Liberators, and you'll retrieve your position. It's vital that you retain control of the army, so put your energies into that. Face the fact that you're not by nature a politician. It's Octavianus who is the politician. Draw his fangs by absenting yourself from Rome and the Senate."

* * *

Six days before the Ides of October, Mark Antony and a swollen Fulvia left Rome together to go to Brundisium, where four of the six crack Macedonian legions were due to land. Antony had at least a partial casus belli, for Decimus Brutus was ignoring the directives both of the Senate and the Plebeian Assembly by maintaining that he was the legal governor of Italian Gaul, and by continuing to recruit soldiers. Before he left Rome to go to Brundisium, Antony sent a curt order to Decimus Brutus to quit his province, as Antony was coming to replace him as the new governor. If Decimus refused to obey, then Antony had a complete casus belli. And Antony was sure Decimus had no intention of obeying; did he, his public career was over and the prospect of trial for treason inevitable.

Not to be outmaneuvered, Octavian left Rome the day after Antony and Fulvia, bound for the legionary camps in Campania. A number of legions shipped from Macedonia were bivouacked there, as well as some thousands of veterans and young men now of age who had enlisted when Ventidius began to recruit. With him Octavian took Maecenas, Salvidienus and the Apennine-hopping Marcus Agrippa, recently returned with two wagons full of wooden planks. The banker Gaius Rabirius Postumus also tagged along, together with the most prominent citizen in Latin Velitrae, one Marcus Mindius Marcellus, an Octavian relative of huge wealth. They started in Casilinum and Calatia, two small towns on the Via Latina in northern Campania. Those in the area who had enlisted, be they veteran or youngster, received two thousand sesterces on the spot, and were promised twenty thousand more later if they swore to hew to Caesar's heir. Within the space of four days, Octavian had five thousand soldiers willing to march anywhere with him. What a wonderful thing a war chest was! "I don't believe," he said to Agrippa, "that it's necessary to recruit a whole army. I don't have the experience or the talent to go to war against Marcus Antonius. What I'm doing is making it look to the rest of the legions as if I am in need of one legion to protect myself from Antonius. And that's what Maecenas and his agents are going to be doing spreading the word that Caesar's heir doesn't want to fight, he simply wants to live."

In Brundisium, Antony wasn't faring nearly as well. When he offered the men of the four newly disembarked crack legions four hundred sesterces each as a bonus, they laughed at him and said that they could get more from young Caesar. To Antony, this came as a colossal shock; he had no idea that those two cohorts of troops under the centurion Marcus Coponius still encamped on Brundisium's outskirts were fraternizing with the new arrivals and talking big money from Caesar's heir. "The little prick!" he said savagely to Fulvia. "I turn my back, and he's buying my soldiers! Paying them hard cash, would you believe? Where did he get the money? I can tell you that he did steal Caesar's war chest!" "Not necessarily," Fulvia answered reasonably. "Your courier says he has Rabirius Postumus with him, which means he must have access to Caesar's money, even if the will hasn't been probated." "Well, I know how to deal with mutiny," Antony snarled, "and it won't be as gently as Caesar dealt with it!" "Marcus, don't do anything rash!" she entreated. Antony ignored her. He paraded the Legio Martia, cut every tenth man out of its ranks, and executed every fifth one of them for insubordination. By no means a decimation, but twenty-five legionaries died, so randomly that all were innocent of troublemaking. The Legio Martia and the other three crack legions fell quiet, but Marcus Antonius was now loathed. When another of the crack legions arrived from Macedonia, Antony sent the Legio Martia and two others up the Adriatic coast of the peninsula toward Italian Gaul. The remaining two, one of which was the Legio Alauda, Caesar's old Fifth Legion, he marched up the Via Appia in the direction of Campania, hoping to catch Octavian in the act of suborning the consul's troops. But the two legions were humming with stories about young Caesar and his audacity also his stunning generosity. And they were more knowledgeable about young Caesar's activities than Mark Antony was, for they knew that he wasn't suborning the consul's legions, he had contented himself with one legion of new troops in order to protect himself. Since Antony's action with the Legio Martia, these two legions sympathized with young Caesar. So fresh trouble erupted not far up the Via Appia. Again, Antony's way of dealing with it was to execute the hapless victims of a blind count, not the ringleaders. However, the dark looks which followed him as he rode at the head of his troops decided him that it was not wise to enter Campania. Instead, he turned and marched up the Adriatic coast.

* * *

It was, thought Cicero, a nightmare. So much happened during October and November that his head spun. Octavian was incredible! At his age, and without any kind of experience, he was dreaming of going to war against Marcus Antonius! Rome rumbled with rumors of approaching war, of Antonius heading for Rome with two legions, of Octavian and his unorganized troops, only a legion in number, milling around in northern Campania without a definite objective. Did Octavian actually think to oppose Antonius in Campania, or was he intending to march on Rome? Privately Cicero hoped that the boy would march on Rome: it was the smart thing to do. How did Cicero know so much? Because Octavian wrote to him constantly. "Oh, Brutus, where are you?" Cicero mourned. "What a golden opportunity you're missing!"

Word had come to Rome of disquieting events in Syria too, via a slave of the rebel Caecilius Bassus, still penned up in Apameia. The slave had traveled with Brutus's director, Scaptius, and told Servilia, who went to see Dolabella. There were now six legions in Syria, she told Rome's at-home consul, all concentrated around Apameia. First of all, she told Dolabella, they were disaffected, as were the four legions garrisoning Egyptian Alexandria. And, a second, more amazing fact, all these legions expected Cassius to arrive as the new governor! If Bassus's slave were to be believed, said Servilia, all ten legions desperately wanted to see Cassius the governor of Syria. Dolabella panicked. Within the space of a day, he had packed up and set off for Syria, leaving Rome in charge of the urban praetor, Gaius Antonius, and without so much as bothering to write a note to Antony or tell the Senate that he was leaving. As far as Dolabella was concerned, Cassius must have been making secret overtures to the Syrian and Alexandrian legions, so it was vital that he reach his province ahead of Cassius. Servilia maintained that he was quite mistaken, that Cassius had voiced no desire to usurp governance of Syria illegally, but Dolabella refused to heed her. He sent his legate Aulus Allienus by separate ship to Alexandria with orders to bring him those four legions to Syria, and himself took ship from Ancona to western Macedonia; it was no time of year to sail the seas, so he would march overland. Cicero knew as well as Servilia that Cassius was not en route for Syria, but as October turned into November, he was far more worried about events in Campania. Octavian's letters indicated that he was definitely thinking of marching on Rome, as they kept begging Cicero to remain in Rome. He needed Cicero in the Senate, he wanted to act constitutionally through the Senate to depose Antony please make sure that the moment he arrived outside the Servian Walls, the Senate convened so that he could address it and state his case against Antony! "I don't trust his age and I don't honestly know what kind of disposition he possesses," Cicero said to Servilia, so frantic with worry that he could think of no better confidant than a woman. "Brutus couldn't have chosen a less opportune moment to go to Greece he should be here to defend himself and the rest of the Liberators. In fact, were he here, it's possible that he and I together could swing the Senate and People right away from Antonius and Octavianus both, and restore the Republic." Servilia eyed him a trifle cynically; her mood wasn't the best because that sow Porcia was back in residence, and madder than ever. "My dear man," she said wearily, "Brutus doesn't belong to himself or to Rome. He belongs to Cato, though Cato's been dead now for over two years. Reconcile yourself to the fact that Antonius has gone too far, and Rome has had enough of him. He hasn't Caesar's intelligence or charisma, he's a bull charging blindly. As for Octavianus he's a nothing. Rat cunning, I give you, but not Caesar's bootlace. I liken him to the young Pompeius Magnus, head full of dreams." "The young Pompeius Magnus," Cicero said dryly, "bluffed Sulla into the co-command and went on to become Rome's undisputed First Man. Caesar was a late bloomer, when you think about it. Never did anything remarkable until he went to Long-haired Gaul." "Caesar," Servilia snapped tartly, "was a constitutional man! Everything in suo anno, everything according to the Law. When he did act unconstitutionally, it was only because not to do so would have seen the end of him, and that patriotic he wasn't." "Well, well, let's not argue about a dead man, Servilia. His heir is very much alive, and a mystery to me. I suspect he is to everyone, even Philippus." "The mystery boy is busy in Campania organizing his soldiers into cohorts, so I'm told," said Servilia. "With other children as his helpers I ask you, whoever heard of Gaius Maecenas or Marcus Agrippa?" Cicero chuckled. "In many ways, all three remind me of absolute yokels. Octavianus firmly believes that the Senate will meet at his command if he marches on Rome, though I keep telling him in my letters that it cannot meet without either consul in Rome to head it." "I confess I'm dying to meet Caesar's heir." "Apropos of nothing, have you heard well, you must have, as the wife of the new Pontifex Maximus is your daughter! that poor Calpurnia has bought a little house on the outer Quirinal and is living there with none other than Cato's widow?" "Naturally," said Servilia, whose hair was now a fascinating mixture of jet-black and snow-white stripes; she smoothed it with one beautiful hand. "Caesar left her well provided for, and Piso can't persuade her to remarry, so he's washed his hands of her or rather, his wife has. As for Marcia, she's another of the faithful widow, Cornelia-the-Mother-of-the-Gracchi breed." "And you've inherited Porcia." "Not for very long," Servilia said cryptically.

When Octavian learned that Antony had changed his mind about driving for Rome through Campania and turned to follow his first three legions up the Adriatic coast to Italian Gaul and Decimus Brutus, he decided to march on Rome. Though everyone from his stepfather, Philippus, to his epistolary adviser, Cicero, deemed him a feckless youth without any comprehension of reality, Octavian was well aware how perilous was this alternative. It was not undertaken with any illusions, nor was he sure what its outcome would be. But long hours of thought had convinced him that the one fatal mistake was to do nothing. If he remained in Campania while Mark Antony drove north on the wrong side of the Apennines, both the legions and Rome would conclude that Caesar's heir was a talker rather than a doer. His model was always Caesar, and Caesar dared everything. The last thing Octavian wanted was a battle, for he knew he didn't have the manpower or the skill to defeat a seasoned campaigner like Mark Antony. However, if he moved on Rome, he was telling Antony that he was still very much a player in the game, that he was a force to be reckoned with. No army lying in wait to oppose him, he marched up the Via Latina, took the diverticulum that led around the outside of the Servian Walls to the Campus Martius, set up a camp there, put his five thousand men into it, then led two cohorts into Rome and peacefully occupied the Forum Romanum. There he was greeted by the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, who welcomed this new patrician on behalf of the Plebs and invited him to mount the rostra, speak to the very thin crowd. "No Senate?" he asked Cannutius. Cannutius sneered. "Fled, Caesar, every last one of them, including all the consulars and senior magistrates." "So I cannot appeal for a legal deposition of Antonius." "They're too afraid of him to do it." After a word to Maecenas to send out his agents and try to drum up a decent audience, Octavian went to his house and changed into his toga and high-soled boots, then returned to the Forum to find about a thousand hardened Forum frequenters assembled. He climbed on to the rostra and proceeded to give a speech that came as a gratifying surprise to the audience; it was lyrical, precise, structured, delivered with every rhetorical gesture and device perfect and a treat to listen to. He began by praising Caesar, whose exploits he lauded for what they were done for the greater glory of Rome, ever and always for the greater glory of Rome. "For what is Rome's greatest man, if he is not the glory of Rome herself? Until the day he was murdered he remained Rome's most faithful servant the bringer of riches, the enhancer of empire, the living personification of Rome!" After the hysterical cheers died down, he went on to discuss the Liberators and demanded justice for Caesar, struck down by a paltry group of little men obsessed with their perquisites of office and their First Class privileges, not with the greater glory of Rome. Proving himself as good an actor and impersonator as Cicero, he went through them one by one, starting with Brutus and miming his cowardly behavior at Pharsalus; talked of the ingratitude of Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, who owed all that they were to Caesar; imitated Minucius Basilus in the throes of torturing a slave; told how he himself had seen the amputated head of Gnaeus Pompeius after Caesennius Lento had done that deed. Not one of the twenty-three assassins escaped his merciless derision, his razor wit. After which he asked the crowd why Marcus Antonius, who was Caesar's close cousin, had been so compassionate, so tolerant of the Liberators? Hadn't he, Caesar Filius, seen Marcus Antonius huddled with Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus in Narbo, where the plot was hatched? Wasn't it true that Marcus Antonius again had huddled with Gaius Trebonius outside the Curia Pompeia while the rest went inside and used their daggers on Caesar? Hadn't Antonius murdered hundreds of unarmed Roman citizens in the Forum? Hadn't Antonius accused him, Caesar Filius, of attempted murder without a shred of proof? Hadn't Antonius thrown Roman citizens from the Tarpeian Rock without trial? Hadn't Antonius abused his office by selling everything from the Roman citizenship to tax exemptions? "But I have bored you for long enough," he concluded. "All I have left to say is that I am Caesar! That I intend to win for myself the public standing and legal offices that my beloved father won! My beloved father, who is now a god! If you do not believe me, look now to the spot where Caesar was burned and see that Publius Dolabella admitted Caesar's godhead by re-erecting his altar and column! Caesar's star in the heavens said everything! Caesar is Divus Julius, and I am his son! I am Divi Filius, and I will live up to everything that the name Caesar embodies!" Drawing a long breath, he turned amid the cheering and walked from the rostra to Caesar's altar and column, there to pull a fold of toga over his head and stand praying to his father. It was a memorable performance, one that the troops he had brought into the city never forgot, and were assiduous in spreading to every soldier they came into contact with in later times. That was the tenth day of November. Two days later, word came that Mark Antony was fast approaching Rome on the Via Valeria with the Legio Alauda, which he put into camp at Tibur, not far away. Hearing that all Antony had was one legion, Octavian's men started hoping for battle. That was not to be. Octavian went to the Campus Martius, explained that he refused to fight fellow Romans, pulled stakes and marched his troops north on the Via Cassia. At Arretium, the home of Gaius Maecenas, who belonged to its ruling family, he went to earth among friends and waited to see what Mark Antony would do.

Antony's first move was to summon the Senate, intending to have Octavian declared hostis a formal public enemy who was stripped of citizenship, was not entitled to trial, and could be killed on sight. But the meeting never took place; he received horrific news that forced him to leave the city immediately. The Legio Martia had declared for Octavian, had turned off the Adriatic road and was heading for Rome on the Via Valeria, thinking that Octavian was still in Rome. Having acted so precipitately that he had brought no soldiers with him, when Antony met the Legio Martia at Alba Fucentia he was in no condition to punish them as he had in Brundisium. No mean orator, he was obliged instead to try to make the legionaries see reason, talk them out of this mutiny. To no avail. The men apostrophized him as cruel and stingy, said flatly that they would fight for Octavian and no one else. When Antony offered them two thousand sesterces each, they refused to take the money. So he contented himself with informing them that they weren't worth a legionary's pinch of salt and returned to Rome thwarted, while the Legio Martia hied itself off to join Octavian at Arretium. The one thing Antony had learned from the Legio Martia was that none of the soldiers on Octavian's side or on his side would fight each other if he tried to bring on a battle. The little snake who was now openly calling himself Divi Filius could sit in Arretium inviolate. Once back in Rome, Antony proceeded to do something unconstitutional yet again: he summoned the Senate to a night meeting in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol. The Senate was forbidden to conduct a meeting after sundown, but it went ahead anyway. Antony forbade the three tribunes of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, Lucius Cassius and Decimus Carfulenus to attend, and moved once more to have Octavian declared hostis. But before he could call for a division, more horrific news arrived. The Fourth Legion had declared for Octavian too, and with it went his quaestor, Lucius Egnatuleius. For a second time he was unable to outlaw Caesar's heir, and to rub that in, Tiberius Cannutius sent him a message that, in the event of a bill of attainder against Octavian, he would have great pleasure in vetoing it when it came before the Plebs for ratification. So, while the Fourth Legion marched for Octavian in Arretium, Antony's meeting of the Senate ended in discussing petty subjects. Antony praised Lepidus lavishly for reaching an agreement with Sextus Pompeius in Nearer Spain, then took the province of Crete off Brutus and the province of Cyrenaica off Cassius. His own ex-province of Macedonia (now minus most of its fifteen legions) he gave to his praetor brother, Gaius Antonius. Worst of all, Antony didn't have Fulvia to advise him. She had gone into labor while he spoke in the House, and for the first time in a laudably large number of births, she suffered badly. Antony's second son by her was eventually born, leaving Fulvia seriously ill. He decided to call the boy Julius, which was a direct slap at Octavian, as it emphasized the Julian blood in the Antonii. Iullus (or Iulus) was Aeneas's son, the founder of Alba Longa, the Roman people and the Julians. All his self-serving cronies had gone into hiding, abandoning Antony to the counsel of his brothers, no help or consolation. Events had become so complex and unnerving that he just couldn't handle them, especially now that that dog Dolabella had deserted his post to rush off to Syria. In the end Antony decided that the only possible thing to do was to march for Italian Gaul to eject Decimus Brutus, who had replied to his order to quit the province with a curt refusal. That was what Fulvia had always suggested, and she had a habit of being right. Octavian would just have to wait until he had defeated Decimus; it had occurred to him that the moment Decimus was crushed, he would inherit Decimus's legions, who would feel no loyalty to Caesar's heir. Then he'd act! He hadn't had the wisdom or the patience to behave as he ought when Octavian had come on the scene welcome him and get to know him. Instead he had rebuffed the boy, who had turned nineteen on the twenty-third day of September. So now he found himself with an adversary whose quality was as unproven as it was unguessable. The best he could do before he left for Italian Gaul was to issue a series of edicts denouncing Octavian's army as a private one, therefore treasonous, and calling it Spartacist rather than Catilinarian, thus deriding Octavian's thoroughly Roman men as a rabble of slaves. The edicts also contained juicy canards about Octavian's homosexuality, his stepfather's gross gluttony, his mother's unchastity, his sister's reputation as a whore, and his blood father's puerile ineffectuality. Rome read them and laughed in disbelief, but Antony was not present to witness how they were received. He was on his way north.

Once Antony was gone, Cicero embarked on his second attack against Antony. It could not be called a speech, because he never delivered it; he published it instead. But it answered all the charges against Octavian, and went on to feed its avid readers with a mountain of dirt about the senior consul. His intimates were gladiatorial stars like Mustela and Tiro, freedmen like Formio and Gnatho, actress-whores like Cytheris, actors like Hippias, mimes like Sergius, and gamblers like Licinius Denticulus. He made very serious allegations that Antony had been a part of the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, hence his reluctance afterward to prosecute them. He accused Antony of stealing Caesar's war chest as well as the seven hundred million from the temple of Ops, and stated that it had all gone to pay his debts. After that, he detailed the wills of men who had left Antony everything, and paid Antony back for calling Octavian a homosexual by describing in lavish detail his years-long affair with Gaius Curio, later one of his wife's husbands. The carousing was dwelled upon lovingly, from the litterloads of mistresses to the lion-drawn chariot to the vomiting upon the rostra and in other public places. Rome had a field day reading it. With Antony absent he was investing the town of Mutina, in which Decimus Brutus had barricaded himself and Octavian still in Arretium, Rome now belonged at last to Cicero, who continued to deliver his diatribes against Antony with increasing baldness and savagery. A tinge of admiration for Octavian began to creep into them: if Octavian hadn't marched on Rome, Antony would have massacred every consular left and set himself up as an absolute ruler, so Rome owed Octavian a great debt. As with all Cicero's rhetoric, written or spoken, the facts were inaccurate if that served his purposes, and the truth elastic. The influence of the Catonians and the Liberators had quite disappeared from the Senate, which was now splitting into two new factions Antony's and Octavian's. This, despite the fact that one was senior consul, and the other not even a junior senator. To be neutral was becoming extremely difficult, as Lucius Piso and Philippus were finding out. Naturally a major part of Rome's attention was focused on Italian Gaul, where a hard winter was descending; military action was therefore going to be slow and indecisive until spring.

Toward the end of December, his three legions comfortably camped in the neighborhood of Arretium, Octavian returned to Rome, where his family greeted him with uneasy gladness. Philippus, who steadfastly refused to commit himself to Octavian in public, was not so behindhand in private, and spent hours and hours with his wayward stepson, telling him that he must be cautious, that he mustn't ever commit himself to a civil war against Antony, that he mustn't keep insisting that he be called Caesar, or horrors! Divi Filius. Octavia's husband, Marcellus Minor, had come to the conclusion that young Octavian was a major political force who was not about to wait for maturity to claim high office, and started cultivating him assiduously. Caesar's two nephews, Quintus Pedius and Lucius Pinarius, indicated that they were firmly on Octavian's side. There were also three more men on the fringes of the family, for Octavian's father had been married before he married Atia, and had a daughter, also named Octavia. This older Octavia had espoused one Sextus Appuleius, and had two adolescent sons, Sextus Junior and Marcus. The Appuleii too began to nose around the nineteen-year-old who had assumed family leadership. Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Gaius Rabirius Postumus had been the first of Caesar's bankers to take up Octavian's cause, but by the end of the year the rest were in his camp too: Balbus Minor, Gaius Oppius (who was convinced Octavian had stolen the war chest), and Caesar's oldest friend, the plutocrat Gaius Matius. As well as his blood father's relative, Marcus Mindius Marcellus. Even that cagey individual Titus Atticus was taking Octavian very seriously, warned his colleagues to be nice to Caesar's heir. "The first thing I have to do," said Octavian to Agrippa, Maecenas and Salvidienus, "is get myself adlected to the Senate. Until I am, I have to operate as a complete privatus." "Is it possible?" asked Agrippa dubiously. He was enjoying himself immensely, for upon him and Salvidienus devolved the army duties, and he was discovering in himself a competence quite the equal of the older Salvidienus. The troops of the Fourth and the Legio Martia had taken a strong fancy to him. "Oh, very possible," said Maecenas. "We'll work through Tiberius Cannutius, even though his term as a tribune of the plebs is finished. We'll also buy a couple of the new ones. Additionally, Caesar, you have to go to work on the new consuls the moment they step into office on New Year's Day. Hirtius and Pansa belong to Caesar, not to Antonius. Once Antonius ceases to be consul, they'll get up more courage. The Senate has reinforced their appointment and stripped Macedonia off Gaius Antonius. All promising for you, Caesar." "Then," said Octavian, smiling Caesar's smile, "we'll just have to wait and see what the New Year brings. I have Caesar's luck, so I'm not about to go down. The only direction I'm going is up, up, up."

6

When Brutus reached Athens at the end of Sextilis, he finally found the adulation he had expected for assassinating Caesar. The Greeks had a very soft spot for a tyrannicide, and so they regarded Brutus. Much to his embarrassment, he discovered that statues of himself and Cassius were already under construction, and would go up on imposing plinths in the agora right next to the statues of the great Greek tyrannicides, Aristogeiton and Harmodius. With him he had taken his three tame philosophers, Strato of Epirus, Statyllus and the Latin Academic, Publius Volumnius, who wrote a little and sponged a lot. The four of them entered into Athenian intellectual life with enthusiasm and delight, spent their time going from this talk to that, and sitting at the feet of the current philosophical idols, Theomnestus and Cratippus. Which puzzled Athens very much. Here was the tyrannicide behaving like any other Roman with intellectual pretensions, skipping from theaters to libraries to lectures. For Athens had assumed that Brutus was there to raise the East and throw Rome out. Instead nothing! A month later Cassius too reached Athens, and the pair moved into a commodious house; of Brutus's vast fortune, hardly any was left in Rome or Italy. It came east with him, and Scaptius was every bit as good a manager as Matinius. In fact, Scaptius intended to be better than Matinius. Thus there was no shortage of money, and the three tame philosophers lived terrifically well. For Statyllus, used to Cato, a welcome change. "The first thing you have to do is come and see our statues in the agora," Brutus said eagerly, almost pushing Cassius out the front door. "Oh, I am awed! Such wonderful work, Cassius! I look like a god. No, no, I'm not suffering from Caesar's complaint, but I can tell you that a good Greek statue of oneself is far superior to anything the Velabrum workshops can produce." When Cassius set eyes on them, he fell on the ground laughing, had eventually to move to a place from which he couldn't see them before he could regain his equanimity. Both statues were full length, and absolutely nude. The spindling, round-shouldered, unathletic Brutus looked like a Praxiteles boxer, bulging with muscles, and suitably endowed with an imposing penis, plump long scrotum. No wonder he thought it marvelous! As for himself well, maybe he was as well endowed as his effigy and as splendid in body but to see himself there for all homophilic Athens to drool over was just terribly, terribly funny. Brutus flew into a huff and marched them home without saying another word. One day in Brutus's company told Cassius that his brother-in-law was idyllically happy living the life of a wealthy Roman in this cultural capital of the world, whereas Cassius itched to do something, get on with something significant. Servilia's news that Syria expected him as its governor had given him his idea; he would go to govern Syria. "If you have the sense you're born with," he told Brutus, "you'll go to Macedonia and govern it before Antonius finishes pulling all its legions out. Grab the legions still there, and you'll be inviolable. Write to Quintus Hortensius in Thessalonica and ask him what's happening." But before Brutus could, Hortensius wrote to him and told him that as far as he, Quintus Hortensius, was concerned, Marcus Brutus was welcome to come and govern Macedonia. Antonius and Dolabella weren't true consuls, they were wolfsheads. With a prod from Cassius, Brutus wrote back to Hortensius and said yes, he would come to Thessalonica, bringing a couple of young men who could act as legates Cicero's son, Marcus, and Bibulus's young son, Lucius. Plus others. Within a nundinum Cassius had taken ship to island-hop the Aegean to Asia Province, leaving the hesitant Brutus hovering between what he saw as his duty, to go to Macedonia, and his true inclination, to stay in Athens. So he didn't hurry north, as he should have, especially after he heard that Dolabella was rushing through the province on his way to Syria. And, of course, he had to write letters from Athens before he started out; the proximity of Servilia and Porcia worried him. So he wrote to Servilia and warned her that from this time on he would be difficult to contact, but that whenever he could, he would send Scaptius to see her. Writing to Porcia was far harder; all he could do was beg her to try to get along with her mother-in-law, and tell her that he loved her, missed her. His pillar of fire. Thus it was the end of November before Brutus arrived in Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia; Hortensius greeted him ecstatically, and promised that the province would stand by him. But Brutus quibbled. Was it right to take Hortensius's place before the New Year? Hortensius was due to step down then, but if he acted prematurely, the Senate might decide to send an army to deal with a usurping quasi-governor. Four of Antony's crack legions were gone, but the other two, said Hortensius, seemed likely to remain in Dyrrachium for some time to come. Even so, Brutus procrastinated, and a fifth crack legion left. The one fascinating piece of news from Rome was Octavian's march on the city, which puzzled Brutus greatly. Who was this extremely young man? How did he think he could get away with defying a boar like Marcus Antonius? Were all the Caesars cut from the same cloth? In the end he decided that Octavian was a nonentity, that he would be eliminated by the New Year.

Very much out of things, Publius Vatinius the governor of Illyricum sat in Salona with his two legions and waited for news from Mark Antony that the drive into the lands of the Danubius River was to take place. Finally late in November he received a letter from Antony that ordered him to take his men and march south to assist Gaius Antonius in taking charge of western Macedonia. Unaware of the degree of Antony's unpopularity, Vatinius did as he was told, alarmed by Antony's insistence that Brutus was aiming to snatch Macedonia, and that Cassius was on his way to Syria to snatch it from Dolabella. So Vatinius marched south to occupy Dyrrachium at the very end of December, his progress an ordeal of snow and ice; winter was early and unusually severe. He found all but two legions gone, one crack and one not so crack, but at least Dyrrachium was a comfortable base. He settled down to wait for Gaius Antonius, as far as he knew the legitimate governor of Macedonia.

* * *

Brutus still waited for news from Rome, which Scaptius brought midway through December. Octavian had gone to earth in Arretium, and a bizarre situation was developing. Two of Antony's legions had mutinied in favor of Octavian, yet nobody's troops would fight, not Octavian's against Antony, or Antony's against Octavian. Caesar's heir, said Scaptius, was now called plain Caesar by almost everyone, and he had a distinct look of Caesar about him. Two attempts by Antony to have Octavian declared hostis had failed, so Antony had gone off to Italian Gaul to invest Mutina, where Decimus Brutus was holed up. How extraordinary! More to the point for him, he learned that the Senate had stripped him of Crete, and Cassius of Cyrenaica. They were not yet declared public enemies, but Macedonia had been given to Gaius Antonius to govern, and Vatinius was ordered to help him. According to Servilia and Vatia Isauricus, Antony's intentions were grandiose. Armed with a five-year imperium maius, he would crush Decimus Brutus, then sit north of the Italian border with Rome's very best legions for five years, having guaranteed himself a continuous frontier westward through Plancus and Lepidus to Pollio, plus eastward through Vatinius to Gaius Antonius. He had ambitions to rule Rome, yes, but understood that the presence of Octavian meant that he couldn't for perhaps another five years. Finally Brutus acted. He left Hortensius in Thessalonica and marched west on the Via Egnatia with Hortensius's one legion and a few cohorts of Pompey the Great's veterans who had settled in the country around the capital. Young Marcus Cicero and Lucius Bibulus went with him; so did the tame philosophers. But the weather was appalling, Brutus's progress painfully slow. He battled on at a snail's pace, and was still in the Candavian highlands at the end of the year Caesar died.

Cassius got to Smyrna in Asia Province early in November, to find Gaius Trebonius in residence and well ensconced as governor. With him was another of the assassins, Cassius Parmensis, who was serving as Trebonius's legate. "I make no secret of it," Cassius said to them. "I intend to beat Dolabella to Syria and take the province off him." "Good for you," said Trebonius, beaming approval. "Have you any money?" "Not a sestertius," Cassius confessed. "Then I can give you some to start off your war chest," said Trebonius. "What's more, I can give you a small fleet of galleys, and I'll donate you the services of two handy legates, Sextilius Rufus and Patiscus. Both good admirals." "I'm a good admiral too," said Cassius Parmensis. "If you can use me, I'll go with you as well." "Can you really spare three good men?" Cassius asked Trebonius. "Oh, yes. Asia Province is nothing if not peaceful. They'll be glad of some activity." "I have less palatable information, Trebonius. Dolabella is going to Syria by land, so you're bound to see him." Trebonius shrugged. "Let him come. He has no authority in my province." "Since I'm going on as soon as possible, I'd be grateful if you could round up those war galleys," said Cassius. They appeared at the end of November. Cassius sailed with his three admirals, determined that he was going to acquire more ships en route. With him went a cousin, one of the many Lucius Cassiuses, and a centurion named Fabius. No tame philosophers for Gaius Cassius! In Rhodes he had no luck whatsoever. True to form, the city of Rhodus refused him ships or money, explaining that they wanted no part of internecine Roman strife. "One day," he said pleasantly to the ethnarch and the harbormaster of Rhodus, "I'll make you pay for this. Gaius Cassius is a bad enemy, and Gaius Cassius doesn't forget an insult." In Tarsus he met the same response, and made the same reply. After which he sailed on to northern Syria, though he was too clever to leave his fleet moored where it might encounter a fleet belonging to Dolabella when he arrived. Caecilius Bassus occupied Apameia, but the assassin Lucius Staius Murcus occupied Antioch and had those six restless, disaffected legions. When Cassius appeared, Murcus handed over the reins gladly and paraded his troops to show them that they now had the governor they wanted, Gaius Cassius. "I feel as if I've come home," he said in a letter to Servilia, always his favorite correspondent. "Syria is where my heart is."

All of which was a subtle beginning to civil war, if indeed civil war was to emerge from this confused hodgepodge of provinces and would-be governors. Everything depended upon how those in Rome handled the situation; at this stage of affairs, neither Brutus nor Cassius nor even Decimus Brutus really presented major threats to the Senate and People of Rome. Two good consuls and a strong Senate could quash all these pretensions to imperium, and no one had actually challenged the central government on its own turf. But did Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius have the clout to control the Senate or Marcus Antonius or his martial allies to east and west or Brutus or Cassius or Caesar's heir? When the old year died, that awful year of the Ides of March, no one knew what might happen.

X

Armies All Over The Place

From JANUARY until SEXTILIS (AUGUST) of 43 B.C.

Exactly twenty years after his own memorable consulship, during which (as he would tell anyone prepared to listen) he had saved his country, Marcus Tullius Cicero found himself at the center of events again. Fear for his own safety had muzzled him many times over the course of those twenty years, and the one time he had desperately tried to save the Republic when he had almost talked Pompey the Great out of civil war he had failed, thanks to Cato. But now, with Marcus Antonius gone north, Cicero could look around Rome and see no one with the steel or the sinew to prevent his carrying all before him. At long last a golden tongue would prove more telling than military might and brute force! Though he had hated Caesar and worked constantly to undermine him, a part of him had always known that Caesar was the phoenix capable of rising from his own ashes. Ironically vindicated after he was physically burned, when that star had risen to tell all of Rome's world that Caesar would never, never go away. But Antony was better to work against because Antony provided so much ammunition: coarse, intemperate, cruel, impulsive, thoughtless. And, swept away on the power of his own rhetoric, Cicero set out to destroy Antony in the sure knowledge that this was one target without the ability to rise again. His head was stuffed with visions of the Republic restored to its old form, in the charge of men who revered its institutions, stood forth as champions of the mos maiorum. All he had to do was convince the Senate and People that the Liberators were the true heroes, that Marcus Brutus, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Cassius the three Antony had singled out as Rome's worst enemies were in the right of it. That it was Antony in the wrong. And if, in this simplistic equation, Cicero neglected to incorporate Octavian, then he had good reason: Octavian was a nineteen-year-old youth, a minor piece to be used on the game board as a lure, carrying within him the seeds of his own destruction. When Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius were inaugurated the new consuls on New Year's Day, Mark Antony's status shifted. He was no longer consul, but consular, and whatever powers he had accrued could be chipped away. Like others before him, he hadn't bothered to obtain his governorship and imperium from the body constitutionally able to endow them, the Senate; he had gone to the Plebs in its tribal assembly. Therefore one could argue that the whole People had not consented because all patricians were excluded from the Plebeian Assembly. Unlike the other comitia and the Senate, the Plebs was not constrained by religious precursors; the prayers were not said, the auspices were not taken. A tenuous argument after men like Pompey the Great, Marcus Crassus and Caesar had obtained provinces and imperium from the Plebs, but one that Cicero used nonetheless. Between the second day of September and New Year's Day he had spoken against Mark Antony four times, to telling effect. The Senate, full of Antony's creatures, was beginning to waver, for Antony's own conduct made the position of his creatures difficult. Though not accompanied by tangible evidence, the allegation that Antony had conspired with the Liberators to kill Caesar held enough logic to damage him, and his rudeness to Caesar's heir put his creatures in a cleft stick, as they were mostly Caesar's appointees. Antony had come to power as Caesar's heir, even if he wasn't mentioned in Caesar's will; a mature man, he was the natural inheritor of the staggering army of Caesar's clients, and had walked off with enough of them to cement his position. But now Caesar's real heir was wooing them to his service from the bottom up. Octavian couldn't say yet that the majority of senators rued their connection to Antony, but Cicero was intent upon helping him there for the time being. Once the senators were detached from Antony, he, Cicero, would gradually swing them not to Octavian but to the Liberators. Which meant making it look as if Octavian himself preferred the Liberators to Mark Antony, so unacceptable was Mark Antony. In this, Cicero was immeasurably helped by the fact that Octavian wasn't a senator, therefore found it hard to deny the attitude Cicero was bestowing upon him for Cicero's ends. The Great Advocate had embarked upon this tack at a meeting of the Senate held toward the end of December; a groundswell had developed against Antony that he couldn't fight because he wasn't in Rome. Which put both Octavian and Antony in the same bind, at the mercy of a master senatorial tactician. Cicero had a powerful ally in Vatia Isauricus, who blamed Antony for his father's suicide, and implicitly believed that Antony was one of the assassination conspirators. Vatia's clout was enormous, including on the back benches, for he had been, with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, Caesar's staunchest aristocratic supporter. Now, commencing on the second day of January, Cicero set out to discredit Antony so completely that the Senate would endorse Decimus Brutus as the true governor of Italian Gaul, vote to fire Antony and declare him hostis, a public enemy. After both Cicero and Vatia spoke, the senators were definitely wavering. All each really wanted was to hang on to what little power he had, and to stick to a lost cause would imperil that. Were they ripe? Were they ready? Was this the moment to call for a division on the motion that Marcus Antonius be declared hostis, an official enemy of the Senate and People of Rome? The debate seemed to be over, and looking at the faces of the hundreds of pedarii on the top tiers, it was easy to see where the vote was going to go: against Antony. What Cicero and Vatia Isauricus overlooked was the right of the consuls to ask others to speak before a division. The senior consul was Gaius Vibius Pansa, who therefore held the fasces for the month of January, and was chairing the meeting. He was married to the daughter of Quintus Fufius Calenus, Antony's man to the death, and loyalty dictated that he should do what he could to protect his father-in-law's friend Marcus Antonius. "I call," came Pansa's voice from the chair, "upon Quintus Fufius Calenus for his opinion!" There. He had done what he could; it was up to Calenus now. "I suggest," said Calenus craftily, "that before the House sees a division upon Marcus Cicero's motion, an embassage be sent to Marcus Antonius. Its members should be empowered to command Antonius to lift his siege at Mutina and submit to the authority of the Senate and People of Rome." "Hear, hear!" cried Lucius Piso, a neutral. The pedarii stirred, started to smile: a way out! "It is madness to send ambassadors to see a man whom this House declared an outlaw twelve days ago!" roared Cicero. "That's stretching it, Marcus Cicero," said Calenus. "The House discussed outlawry, but it wasn't formally implemented. If it were, what's today's motion all about?" "Semantic quibbling!" Cicero snapped. "Did the House on that day or did it not? commend the generals and soldiers opposing Marcus Antonius? The men of Decimus Brutus, in other words? Decimus Brutus himself, in other words? Yes, it did!" From there he launched into his usual diatribe against Mark Antony: he passed invalid laws, blocked the Forum with armed troops, forged decrees, squandered the public moneys, sold kingdoms, citizenships and tax exemptions, besmirched the courts, introduced bands of brigands into the temple of Concord, massacred centurions and troops at and near Brundisium, and threatened to kill anyone who stood up to him. "To send an embassage to see such a man is only to delay the inevitable war and weaken the indignation rampant in Rome! I move that a state of tumultus be declared! That the courts and other governmental business be suspended! That civilians don military garb! That a levy to raise soldiers be instituted throughout the whole of Italy! That the welfare of the state be entrusted to the consuls by an Ultimate Decree!" Cicero paused to wait out the hubbub this ringing peroration brought in its wake, shivering in exultation and oblivious to the fact that his oratory was thrusting Rome into yet another civil war. Oh, this was life! This was his own consulship all over again, when he had said much the same about Catilina! "I also move," he said when he could be heard, "that a vote of thanks be tendered to Decimus Brutus for his forbearance, and a second vote of thanks be tendered to Marcus Lepidus for making peace with Sextus Pompeius. In fact," he added, "I think a gilded statue of Marcus Lepidus should be erected on the rostra, for the last thing we need is a double civil war." As no one knew whether he was serious or not, Pansa ignored the gilded statue of Marcus Lepidus and very shrewdly set Cicero's motions aside. "Is there any other business the House should consider?" Vatia rose immediately and commenced a long speech in praise of Octavian that had to be adjourned when the sun set. The House would sit again on the morrow, said Pansa, and for however many days it took to settle all business. Vatia resumed his panegyric of Octavian on the morrow. "I admit," he said, "that Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is extremely young, but there can be no getting away from certain facts first, that he is Caesar's heir secondly, that he has displayed maturity far beyond his years thirdly, that he has the loyalty of a great many of Caesar's veteran troops. I move that he be adlected into the Senate immediately, and that he be allowed to stand for the consulship ten years ahead of the customary age. As he is a patrician, the customary age is thirty-nine. That means he will qualify as a candidate ten years from now, when he turns twenty-nine. Why do I recommend these extraordinary measures? Because, conscript fathers, we are going to need the services of all Caesar's veteran soldiers not attached to Marcus Antonius. Caesar Octavianus has two legions of veteran troops and a third legion of mixed troops. Therefore I further ask that Caesar Octavianus, in possession of an army, be given a propraetor's imperium and assigned one-third of the command against Marcus Antonius." That set the cat among the pigeons! But it showed a great many of the backbenchers that they could no longer support Mark Antony in as whole a way as they hoped; the most they could do was refuse to declare him hostis. So the debate raged until the fourth day of January, on which date several resolutions were passed. Octavian was adlected into the Senate and given a one-third command of Rome's armies; he was also voted the money he had promised his troops as bonuses. The governance of all Rome's provinces were to remain as at Caesar's dictate, which meant that Decimus Brutus was officially Italian Gaul's governor, and his army the official one. Matters on that fourth day were enlivened by the appearance of two women in the portico outside the Curia Hostilia doors: Fulvia and Julia Antonia. Antony's wife and mother were dressed in black from head to foot, as were Antony's two little sons, the toddler Antyllus holding his grandmother's hand, the new babe Iullus in his mother's arms. The four of them wept and howled without let, but when Cicero demanded that the doors be shut, Pansa wouldn't allow it; he could see that Antony's women and children were having an effect on the backbenchers, and he didn't want Antony declared hostis, he wanted that embassage sent. The ambassadors chosen were Lucius Piso, Lucius Philippus and Servius Sulpicius Rufus, three eminently eminent consulars. But Cicero fought the embassage tooth and nail, insisted that it go to a division. Whereupon the tribune of the plebs Salvius vetoed a division, which meant that the House had to approve the embassage. Mark Antony was still a Roman citizen, albeit one acting in defiance of the Senate and People of Rome. Fed up with sitting on their stools, the senators disposed of the embassage swiftly. Piso, Philippus and Servius Sulpicius were instructed to see Antony at Mutina and inform him that the Senate wished him to withdraw from Italian Gaul, not to advance within two hundred miles of Rome with his army, and to submit to the authority of the Senate and People. Having delivered this message to Antony, the embassage was then to seek an audience with Decimus Brutus and assure him that he was the legitimate governor and had the Senate's sanction. "Looking back on it," said Lucius Piso gloomily to Lucius Caesar, present in the House again, "I don't honestly know how any of this has happened. Antonius acted stupidly and arrogantly, yes, but tell me one thing he's done that someone else hasn't?" "Blame Cicero," said Lucius Caesar. "Men's emotions get the better of their good sense, and no one can stir the emotions like Cicero. Though I doubt that anyone reading what he says can have any idea what it's like actually to hear him. He's a phenomenon." "You would have abstained, of course." "How could I not? Here I am, Piso, between a wolfshead of a nephew and a cousin for whom I can find no comparison in the entire animal kingdom. Octavianus is a completely new creation."

* * *

Knowing what was coming, Octavian marched north from Arretium to the Via Flaminia, and had reached Spoletium when the Senate's commission caught up with him. The nineteen-year-old senator's propraetorian imperium was right there for all his three legions to see: six lictors clad in crimson tunics, bearing the axes in their fasces. The two leading lictors were Fabius and Cornelius, and all had served Caesar since his days as a praetor. "Not bad, eh?" he asked Agrippa, Salvidienus and Maecenas, sounding complacent. Agrippa grinned proudly, Salvidienus began to plan military action, and Maecenas asked a question. "How did you manage it, Caesar?" "With Vatia Isauricus, you mean?" "Well, yes, I suppose that's what I mean." "I asked to marry Vatia's eldest daughter as soon as she's of age," said Octavian blandly. "Luckily that won't happen for several years, and a lot can happen in several years." "You mean you don't want to marry Servilia Vatia?" "I don't want to marry anyone, Maecenas, until I'm smitten, though it mightn't work out that way." "Will it come to a battle with Antonius?" Salvidienus asked. "I sincerely hope not!" Octavian said, smiling. "And most definitely not while I'm the senior magistrate in the neighborhood. I'm perfectly happy to defer to a consul. Hirtius, I imagine."

Aulus Hirtius had commenced his junior consulship a sick man, had struggled through the inauguration ceremony and then retired to his bed to recover from a lung inflammation. So when the Senate notified him that he was to lead three more legions in Octavian's wake, catch the new young senator up and assume the co-command of their combined forces, Hirtius was in no fit condition to take the field. Which didn't stop this loyal and selfless man; he wrapped himself up in shawls and furs, chose a litter as his conveyance, and commenced the long journey north on the Via Flaminia into the teeth of a bitter winter. Like Octavian, he didn't want a battle against Antony, was determined to pursue any other course that presented itself. He and Octavian joined forces on the Via Aemilia inside the province of Italian Gaul, southeast of the big city of Bononia, and went into camp between Claterna and Forum Cornelii, much to the delight of these two towns, assured of fat army profits. "And here we stay until the weather improves," said Hirtius to Octavian through chattering teeth. Octavian eyed him in concern. It was no part of his plans to let the consul die; the last thing he wanted was too high a profile. So he agreed to this ultimatum eagerly, and proceeded to supervise Hirtius's nursing, armed with the knowledge of lung ailments which he had soaked up from Hapd'efan'e.

Mobilization in Italy proper was going ahead at full speed; hardly anyone in Rome had realized the enmity Antony had generated among large elements of the Italian communities, which had suffered more at his hands than Rome herself had. Firmum Picenum promised money, the Marrucini of northern Adriatic Samnium threatened to strip Marrucine objectors of their property, and hundreds of rich Italian knights subsidized the equipping of troops. The groundswell was greater outside Rome than inside. A delighted Cicero took the opportunity to speak out against Antony again at the end of January, when the House met to discuss trivia. By this time, the betrothal of Octavian and Vatia's eldest daughter was generally known, and heads nodded while lips smirked. The fine old custom of making political alliances through marriage still flourished, a cheering thought when so much had changed. Word had traveled ahead of the returning embassage that it had gotten nowhere with Antony, though just what Antony had told it wasn't known. Which didn't deter Cicero from delivering his seventh oration against Antony. This time he attacked Fufius Calenus and other Antonian partisans savagely for manufacturing reasons why Antony couldn't possibly agree to the Senate's terms. "He must be declared hostis!" roared Cicero. Lucius Caesar objected. "That's not a word we should bandy about lightly," he said. "To declare a man hostis is to deprive him of his citizenship and offer him up as sword fodder to the first patriotic man who sees him. I agree that Marcus Antonius was a bad consul, that he did many things that disadvantaged and disgraced Rome, but hostis? Surely inimicus is punishment enough." "Naturally you'd think so! You're Antonius's uncle," Cicero retorted. "I won't permit the ingrate to retain his citizenship!" The argument raged on into the next day, Cicero refusing to back down. Hostis it must be. At which moment two of the three ambassadors returned; Servius Sulpicius Rufus had succumbed to the freezing weather, and died. "Marcus Antonius refuses to meet the Senate's conditions," said Lucius Piso, looking pinched and worn, "and has issued some of his own. He says he will give up Italian Gaul to Decimus Brutus if he can retain Further Gaul until after Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius have been consuls four years hence." Cicero sat stunned. Marcus Antonius was stealing his thunder! He was proclaiming to the Senate that he was switching sides, that he acknowledged the entitlements of the Liberators, that they must have everything Caesar had given them before they killed him! But that was his, Cicero's, ploy! To oppose Antonius was to oppose the Liberators. Cicero's interpretation was not the only one. The Senate chose to see Antony's ploy as a repeat of Caesar's before he took the fatal step and crossed the Rubicon. Therefore it opposed Antony and ignored his references to Brutus and Cassius. For the choice was the same as with Caesar: to accede to Antony's demands was to admit that the Senate couldn't control its magistrates. So the House declared a state of tumultus, which meant civil war, and authorized the consuls Pansa and Hirtius to meet Antony on a field of battle by passing the Ultimate Decree. It refused, however, to declare Antony hostis. He was inimicus. A victory for Lucius Caesar, albeit a Pyrrhic one. All Antony's laws as consul were invalidated, which meant that his praetor brother, Gaius, was no longer governor of Macedonia, that his seizure of the silver in Ops was illegal, that his land allocations for the veterans fell by the wayside the repercussions went on and on.

Just before the Ides of February a letter came from Marcus Brutus to inform the Senate that Quintus Hortensius had confirmed him as governor of Macedonia, and that Gaius Antonius was now shut up in Apollonia as Brutus's prisoner. All the legions in Macedonia, said Brutus, had hailed him as governor and their commander. Dreadful news! Horrific! Or was it? By this, the Senate was in total disarray, didn't know what to do. Cicero advocated that the House officially confirm Marcus Brutus the governor of Macedonia, and asked the Antonians why they were so against the two Brutuses, Decimus and Marcus? "Because they're murderers!" Fufius Calenus shouted. "They're patriots," said Cicero. "Patriots." On the Ides of February the Senate made Brutus the governor of Macedonia, gave him a proconsular imperium, then added Crete, Greece and Illyricum to his provinces. Cicero was ecstatic. Now he had only two things left to do. The first, to see Antony a beaten man on a battlefield in Italian Gaul. The second, to see Syria taken off Dolabella and given to Cassius to govern.

* * *

The first anniversary of Caesar's assassination brought a new horror, for it was on the Ides of March that Rome learned of the atrocities committed by Publius Cornelius Dolabella. En route to Syria, Dolabella had plundered the cities of Asia Province. When he reached Smyrna, where the governor Trebonius was residing, he entered the city by stealth at night, took Trebonius prisoner, and demanded to know where the province's moneys were stored. Trebonius refused to tell him, even after Dolabella resorted to torture. Not the worst pain Dolabella could inflict had the power to loosen Trebonius's tongue; Dolabella lost his temper, killed Trebonius, cut off his head and nailed it to the plinth of Caesar's statue in the agora. Thus Trebonius became the first assassin to die. The news devastated the Antonians. How could they defend him when his colleague had behaved like a barbarian? When Pansa called the House into immediate session, Fufius Calenus and his cronies had no choice other than to vote with the rest that Dolabella be stripped of his imperium and declared hostis. All his property was confiscated, but it amounted to nothing; Dolabella had never managed to clear himself of debt. Then a fresh wrangle broke out, thanks to the fact that Syria was now a vacant governorship. Lucius Caesar proposed that Vatia Isauricus be given a special commission to take an army east and deal with Dolabella. This peeved the senior consul Pansa greatly. "Aulus Hirtius and I have already been given the East for our provinces next year," he told the House. "Hirtius is to govern Asia Province and Cilicia, I am to govern Syria. This year our armies are committed to fighting Marcus Antonius in Italian Gaul, we can't fight Dolabella in Syria as well. Therefore I recommend that this year be devoted to the war in Italian Gaul, and next year to war in Syria against Dolabella." The Antonians saw this proposal as their best bet. Antony still had to be beaten, and they were convinced he couldn't be beaten. Pansa's proposition would keep the legions already in Italy there for the rest of the year, by which time Antony would have thrashed Hirtius, Pansa and Octavian, and the legions would all belong to him. Then he could go to Syria. Cicero had a different answer. Give Syria to Gaius Cassius to govern! Now, right this moment! As no one knew whereabouts Cassius was, this proposal came as a shock. Did Cicero know something the rest of the Senate didn't know? "Don't give this job to a slug like Vatia Isauricus, and don't pop it in the cellar to store for Pansa next year either!" said Cicero, forgetting protocol and manners. "Syria has to be attended to now, not later, and by a young, vigorous man in his prime. A young, vigorous man who already knows Syria well, and has even dealt with the Parthians. Gaius Cassius Longinus! The best and only man for this governorship! What's more, give him the power to make military requisitions in Bithynia, Pontus, Asia Province and Cilicia. Give him unlimited imperium for five years. Our consuls Pansa and Hirtius have their work cut out for them in Italian Gaul!" Of course from there it was on to Antony. "Do not forget that this Marcus Antonius is a traitor!" Cicero cried. "When he handed Caesar a diadem on the day of the Lupercalia, he showed the whole world that he was Caesar's real murderer!" A look at the faces of his audience showed him that he hadn't hammered Cassius home enough. "I judge Dolabella as Antonius's equal in barbarity! Give Syria to Gaius Cassius immediately!" But that Pansa was not about to allow. He forced a motion through the House which gave him and Hirtius command of the war against Dolabella as soon as the war in Italian Gaul was over. He was now absolutely committed to the war in Italian Gaul and had to get it over and done with quickly so he at least could leave for Syria during this year, not next. So Pansa handed the care of Rome over to the praetors and took more legions to Italian Gaul. The day after Pansa left, the governor of Further Gaul, Lucius Munatius Plancus, and of Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, sent letters to the Senate that said they would deeply appreciate it if the Senate would come to an accommodation with Marcus Antonius, a Roman as loyal as they were. The message was implicit: the Senate ought not to forget that there were two big armies sitting on the far side of the Alps, and that these two armies were under the command of governors who favored Marcus Antonius. Blackmail! said Cicero to himself, and took it upon himself to sit down and write to Plancus and Lepidus, though he had no authority to do so. With eleven speeches delivered against Mark Antony, he had entered a state of exaltation that forbade his climbing down in any way, so what he said to Plancus and Lepidus was injudiciously arrogant stay out of things you're too far away to know about, mind your own provincial business, and don't stick your noses into Rome's affairs! Not a high aristocrat, Plancus took Cicero's rebuke with his sangfroid intact, whereas Lepidus reacted as if punctured by an ox goad how dare that New Man nobody Cicero upbraid an Aemilius Lepidus!

2

After March came in, the weather in Italian Gaul improved a little; Hirtius and Octavian pulled up stakes and moved closer to Mutina, forcing Antony, who had control of Bononia, to abandon that city and concentrate all his legions around Mutina. When news came that Pansa was on his way from Rome with three legions of recruits, Hirtius and Octavian elected to wait for him before offering Antony battle. But Antony also knew that Pansa was approaching, and struck at Pansa before he could join forces with his two co-commanders. The engagement took place at Forum Gallorum, some seven miles from Mutina, and the decision went to Antony. Pansa himself was badly wounded, but managed to get a message to Hirtius and Octavian that he was under attack. The official dispatches to Rome later said that Hirtius had ordered Octavian to remain behind and defend their camp while he went to Pansa's aid, but the truth was that Octavian had come down with asthma. What kind of general Antony was he demonstrated very clearly at Forum Gallorum. Having trounced Pansa, he made no attempt to form up his ranks and march to shelter; instead he let his men run wild, ransack Pansa's baggage train, scatter in all directions. Coming up without warning, Hirtius caught him in no condition to fight, and Antony went down so badly that he lost the better part of his army, extricated himself only with great difficulty. So the overall honors of the day went to Aulus Hirtius, Caesar's beloved clerkly marshal. Some days later, the twenty-first one of April, Hirtius and Octavian tricked Antony into a second battle and defeated him so decisively that he had no choice other than to evacuate his siege camps around Mutina, flee westward on the Via Aemilia. It had been Hirtius in command, Hirtius's battle plan Octavian followed, but even so, he divided his share of the legions into two and put Salvidienus in charge of one half, Agrippa of the other. He had not lost sight of the fact that he was no general, but he also had no intention of putting legates in command of his legions who had the necessary birth and seniority to claim his half of the victory for themselves. Though they had won and the assassin Lucius Pontius Aquila, fighting for Antony, was killed Fortuna was not completely on Octavian's side. Supervising the battle atop a horse on a mound, Aulus Hirtius was felled by a spear and died on the spot. The next day Pansa died of his wounds, which left Caesar Octavianus the only commander the Senate and People of Rome retained. Except for Decimus Brutus, liberated from the siege of Mutina, and very upset that he hadn't had a chance to fight Antony himself. "The only legion Antonius managed to save unharmed is the Fifth Alauda," Octavian said to Decimus Brutus when they met inside Mutina, "but he has some stray cohorts from the remainder of his forces, and he's moving westward very swiftly indeed." For Octavian, this was an unpleasant encounter; as the Senate's lawful commander, he was obliged to be friendly and cooperative in his relations with this murderer. So he was stiff, reserved, cold. "Do you intend to follow Antonius?" he asked. "Only after I see what develops," Decimus answered, liking Octavian no better than Octavian liked him. "You've come a long way since you were Caesar's personal contubernalis, haven't you? Caesar's heir, a senator, a propraetore imperium my, my!" "Why did you kill him?" Octavian asked. "Caesar?" "Who else's death would interest me?" Decimus shut his pale eyes, put his pale head back, and spoke with dreamy detachment. "I killed him because all that I or any other Roman nobleman had was by his grace and favor at his dictate. He took upon himself the authority of a king, if not the title, and deemed himself the only man capable of governing Rome." "He was right, Decimus." "He was wrong." "Rome," said Octavian, "is a world empire. That means a new form of government. The annual election of a group of magistrates won't work anymore, nor even five-year imperiums to govern in the provinces, which was Pompeius Magnus's answer. Caesar's too, in the beginning. But Caesar saw what had to be done long before he was murdered." "Aiming to be the next Caesar?" Decimus asked maliciously. "I am the next Caesar." "In name, that's all. You won't be rid of Antonius easily." "I am aware of that. But I will be rid of him, later if not sooner, said Octavian. "There will always be an Antonius." "I disagree. Unlike Caesar, I will show those who oppose me no clemency, Decimus. That includes you and the other assassins." "You're a cocksure child in need of a spanking, Octavianus." "I am not. I am Caesar. And the son of a god." "Oh yes, the stella critina. Well, Caesar is far less of a danger now he's a god than when he was a living man." "True. However, as a god he's there to be made capital out of. And I will make capital out of him as a god." Decimus burst out laughing. "I hope I live long enough to see Antonius administer that spanking!" "You won't," said Octavian.