The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

Though Decimus Brutus tendered the invitation with apparent sincerity, Octavian declined to move into his house in Mutina; he remained in his camp to hold the funerals of Pansa and Hirtius, return their ashes to Rome. Two days later Decimus came to see him, very perturbed. "I've heard that Publius Ventidius is on the march to join Antonius with three legions he's recruited in Picenum," he said. "That's interesting," Octavian observed casually. "What do you think I ought to do about it?" "Stop Ventidius, of course," Decimus said blankly. "That's not up to me, it's up to you. You're the one with proconsular imperium, you're the Senate's designated governor." "Have you forgotten, Octavianus, that my imperium doesn't permit me to enter Italy proper? Whoever stops Ventidius must enter Italy proper, because he's traveling through Etruria and marching for the Tuscan coast. Besides," said Decimus frankly, "my legions are all raw recruits who can't stand up to Ventidius's Picentines his are all Pompeius Magnus's old veterans Magnus settled on his own lands in Picenum. Your own men are veterans and the recruits Hirtius and Pansa brought are either veterans or blooded here. So it has to be you who goes after Ventidius." Octavian's mind raced. He knows I can't general, he wants me to get that spanking. Well, I think Salvidienus could do it, but that's not my problem. I daren't budge from here. If I do, the Senate will see me as another young Pompeius Magnus, indeed cocksure and overweeningly ambitious. Unless I tread carefully, I will be removed, and not merely from my command. From life itself. How do I do it? How do I say no to Decimus? "I refuse to move my army against Publius Ventidius," he said coolly. "Why?" gasped Decimus, staggered. "Because the advice has been tendered to me by one of my father's assassins." "You've got to be joking! We're on the same side in this!" "I am never on the same side as my father's assassins." "But Ventidius has to be stopped in Etruria! If he meets up with Antonius, we have it to do all over again!" "If that be the case, then so be it, said Octavian. He watched Decimus stalk off in high dudgeon, sighing with relief; now he had a perfect excuse not to move. An assassin had told him what to do, and his troops would back him in his refusing to take Decimus's advice. He didn't trust the Senate as far as he could throw it. Men in that body were hungering for a pretext to declare Caesar's heir hostis, and if Caesar's heir entered Italy proper with his army, that was a pretext. When I enter Italy proper with an army, said Octavian to himself, it will be to march on Rome a second time. A nundinum later he received confirmation that his instincts had been correct. Word came from the Senate hailing Mutina as a wonderful feat of arms. But the triumph it awarded for the victory went to Decimus Brutus, who had taken no part in the fighting! It also instructed Decimus to take the high command in the war against Antony, and gave him all the legions, including those belonging to Octavian, whose reward was an ignominious minor triumph, the ovation. The fasces of the dead consuls, said the Senate, had been returned to the temple of Venus Libitina until new consuls could be elected but it mentioned no date for an election, and Octavian's impression was that no election would ever be held. To further rebuff Octavian, the Senate had reneged on paying the bonuses to his troops. It was forming a committee to dicker with the legion representatives face-to-face, bypassing their commanders, and neither Octavian nor Decimus was to be on this committee. "Well, well, well!" said Caesar's heir to Agrippa. "We know where we stand, don't we?" "What do you intend to do, Caesar?" "Nihil. Nothing. Sit pat. Wait. Mind you," he added, "I don't see why you and a few others can't quietly inform the legion representatives that the Senate has arbitrarily reserved the right to decide for itself how much cash my soldiers will get. And emphasize that senatorial committees are notoriously miserly."

Hirtius's legions were camped on their own, whereas Pansa's three legions were camped with Octavian's three. Decimus took command of Hirtius's legions at the end of April, and demanded that Octavian hand over his own and Pansa's forces. Octavian politely but firmly refused, stoutly maintaining that the Senate had given him his commission, and that its letter was not specific enough to convince him that Decimus really was empowered to take command and legions off him. Very angry, Decimus issued a direct order to the six legions, whose representatives told him flatly that they belonged to young Caesar and would prefer to stay with young Caesar. Young Caesar paid decent bonuses. Besides, why should they soldier for a man who had murdered the old boy? They'd stick with a Caesar, wanted no part of assassins. Thus Decimus was obliged to move westward after Antony with some of his own troops from Mutina and Hirtius's three legions of Italian recruits, well blooded at Mutina and therefore the best men he had. But oh, for the six legions with Octavian! Octavian retired to Bononia, and there sat down to hope that Decimus ruined himself. A general Octavian might not be, but a student of politics and power struggles he was. His own options were few and inauspicious if Decimus didn't ruin himself; Octavian knew that if Antony merged with Ventidius and then succeeded in drawing Plancus and Lepidus on to his side, all Decimus had to do was reach an accommodation with Antony. That done, the whole pack of them would then turn on him, Octavian, and rend him. His one hope was that Decimus would be too proud and too shortsighted to see that refusing to join Antony spelled his ruin.

The moment he received Cicero's presumptuous letter telling him to mind his own provincial business, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus marshaled his legions and moved all of them to the vicinity of the western bank of the Rhodanus River, the border of his Narbonese province. Whatever was going on in Rome and in Italian Gaul, he intended to be positioned so that he could demonstrate to upstarts like Cicero that provincial governors were quite as large a part of tumultus as anyone else. It was Cicero's Senate had declared Marcus Antonius inimicus, not Lepidus's Senate. Lucius Munatius Plancus in Further Gaul of the Long-hairs was not quite sure whose Senate he supported, but a state of tumultus in Italy was serious enough for him to marshal all his ten legions and start marching down the Rhodanus. When he reached Arausio he halted in a hurry; his scouts reported that Lepidus and his army of six legions were camped a mere forty miles away. Lepidus sent Plancus a friendly message that said, in effect, "Come on over and visit!" Though he knew that Antony had been defeated at Mutina, the wary Plancus didn't know about Ventidius and the three Picentine legions marching to Antony's aid, or about Octavian's refusal to co-operate with Decimus Brutus; thus Plancus decided to ignore Lepidus's friendly overtures. He reversed his direction of march and moved north a little to see what happened next. In the meantime, Antony had hustled himself to Dertona and there took the Via Aemilia Scauri to the Tuscan Sea coast at Genua, where he met Ventidius and the three Picentine legions. The pair then laid a false scent for the pursuing Decimus Brutus, deluding him into believing that they were on the Via Domitia to Further Gaul rather than down on the coast. The ruse worked. Decimus passed Placentia and took the Via Domitia across the high Alps, far to the north of Antony and Ventidius. Who followed the coast road and sat down at Forum Julii, one of Caesar's new veteran colonies. Where Lepidus, moving east from the Rhodanus River, arrived on the opposite bank of the local stream and sat his army down casually. In close contact, the troops of both armies fraternized with some help from two of Antony's legates. A new version of the Tenth was with Lepidus, and the Tenth had developed a tradition of liking Antony ever since the days when he had stirred mutiny in Campania. So it was easy for Antony at Forum Julii; Lepidus accepted the inevitable and joined forces with him and Ventidius. By this time May was wearing down into its second half and even in Forum Julii there were rumors that Gaius Cassius was busy taking over Syria. Interesting, but not of great moment. The movements of Plancus and his huge army up the Rhodanus were more important by far than Cassius in Syria. Plancus had been edging his legions closer to Antony, but when his scouts reported that Lepidus was also at Forum Julii, Plancus panicked and retreated to Cularo, well north of the Via Domitia, and sent a message to Decimus Brutus, still on the Via Domitia. When Decimus received this letter, he struck off toward Plancus, reaching Cularo early in June. There the two decided to amalgamate their armies and cleave to the Senate of the moment, Cicero's. After all, Decimus had its full mandate, and Plancus was a legal governor. When he then heard that Lepidus had also been declared inimicus by Cicero's Senate, Plancus congratulated himself that he had chosen rightly. The problem was that Decimus had changed terribly, lost all his old panache, that marvelous military ability he had displayed so consistently during Caesar's war against the Long-hairs. He wouldn't hear of their moving from around Cularo, fretted about the unblooded state of the majority of their troops, insisted that they do nothing to provoke a confrontation with Antony. Their fourteen legions were just not enough not nearly enough! So everybody played a waiting game, unsure of success if it came to a pitched battle. This was not a clear cut ideological contest between two sides whose soldiers believed ardently in what they were fighting for, and there were no lions anywhere. At the beginning of Sextilis the scales tipped Antony's way; Pollio and his two legions arrived from Further Spain to join him and Lepidus. Why not? asked a grinning Pollio. Nothing exciting was going on in his province now that Cicero's Senate had given command of Our Sea to Sextus Pompey what a stupid thing to do! "Truly," said Pollio, shaking his head in despair, "they go from bad to worse. Anyone with a particle of sense can see that Sextus Pompeius is simply gathering strength to hold Rome to ransom over the grain supply. Still, it has made life extremely boring for an historian like me. There'll be more to write about if I'm with you, Antonius." He gazed around in delight. "You do pick good camps! The fish and the swimming are superb, the Maritime Alps a magnificent backdrop much nicer than Corduba!" If life was offering Pollio a wonderful time, it was not doing nearly as well by Plancus. For one thing, he couldn't get away from Decimus Brutus's eternal complaints. For another, when the listless Decimus wouldn't, it fell to him to write to the Senate trying to explain why he and Decimus hadn't moved against Antony and his fellow inimicus, Lepidus. He had to make Octavian his chief butt, blame Octavian for not stopping Ventidius, and condemn him for refusing to give up his troops. The moment Pollio arrived, the two inimici sent Plancus an invitation to join them; abandoning Decimus Brutus to his fate, Plancus accepted with relief. He marched for Forum Julii and its gala atmosphere, failing to notice as he came down the eastern slopes of the Rhodanus valley that everything was unnaturally dry, that the crops of this fertile region weren't forming ears.

The terrible panic and depression he had experienced after Caesar's death had returned to haunt Decimus Brutus; after Plancus deserted, he threw his hands in the air and abdicated his military duty and his imperium. Leaving his bewildered legions where they were in Cularo, he and a small group of friends set off overland to join Marcus Brutus in Macedonia. Not an unfeasible endeavor for Decimus, who was fluent in many Gallic tongues, and envisioned no problems en route. It was high summer, all the alpine passes were open, and the farther east they traveled, the lower and easier the mountains became. He did well until he entered the lands of the Brenni, who inhabited the heights beyond that pass into Italian Gaul bearing their name. There the party was taken prisoner by the Brenni and brought before their chieftain, Camilus. Thinking that all Gauls must loathe Caesar, their conqueror, and thinking to impress Camilus, one of Decimus's friends told the chieftain that this was Decimus Brutus, who had killed the great Caesar. The trouble was that among the Gauls Caesar was passing into folklore alongside Vercingetorix, was loved as a supreme martial hero. Camilus knew what was going on, and sent word to Antony at Forum Julii that he held Decimus Junius Brutus captive what did the great Marcus Antonius want done with him? "Kill him" was Antony's curt message, accompanied by a fat purse of gold coins. The Brenni killed Decimus Brutus and sent his head to Antony as proof that they had earned their money.

3

On the last day of June the Senate declared Marcus Aemilius Lepidus inimicus for joining Antony, and confiscated his property. The fact that he was Pontifex Maximus created some confusion, as Rome's highest priest could not be stripped of his high priesthood, nor could the Senate deny him the big emolument he received from the Treasury every year. Hostis would have done it, inimicus didn't. Though Brutus, writing from Macedonia, deplored his sister Junilla's descent to pauperdom, the truth was that she continued to live very comfortably in the Domus Publica, and had the use of any villa she fancied between Antium and Surrentum. No one appropriated Junilla's jewelry, wardrobe or servants, nor would Vatia Isauricus, married to her elder sister, have condoned any financial measures on the part of the state that affected her well-being. All Brutus was doing was playing politics in the proper fashion; some of the donkeys would believe him, and weep. The Liberators left in Rome were dwindling. Deriving an obscene pleasure from torturing a slave, Lucius Minucius Basilus found himself tortured and killed when his slaves rose up against him en masse. His death was not felt to be a loss, especially by those Liberators remaining, from the brothers Caecilius to the brothers Casca. They still attended the Senate, but privately wondered for how long: Caesar Octavianus lurked, in the person of his agents. Rome seemed filled with them, and all they did was ask people why the Liberators were still unpunished. Indeed, Antony, Lepidus, Ventidius, Plancus, Pollio and their twenty-three legions worried those in Rome far less than Octavian did. Forum Julii seemed an eternity away compared to Bononia, right on the junction of the Via Aemilia and the Via Annia two routes to Rome. Even Brutus in Macedonia considered Octavian a far greater threat to peace than he did Mark Antony. The object of all this apprehension sat placidly in Bononia and did nothing, said nothing. With the result that he became shrouded in mystery; no one could say with any conviction that he knew what Caesar Octavianus was after. Rumor said he wanted the consulship still vacant but when applied to, his step-father, Philippus, and his brother-in-law, Marcellus Minor, just looked inscrutable. By now people knew that Dolabella was dead and Cassius was governing in Syria, but, like Forum Julii, Syria was an eternity away compared to Octavian in Bononia. Then, much to Cicero's horror (though secretly he toyed with the idea), another rumor started: that Octavian wanted to be the junior consul to Cicero's senior consul. The young man sitting at the feet of the wise, venerable older man, there to learn his craft. Romantic. Delicious. But even though exhausted by the great series of speeches against Mark Antony, Cicero retained sufficient good sense to feel that the picture this conjured up was utterly false. Octavian couldn't be trusted an inch.

Toward the end of Julius, four hundred centurions and hoary veterans arrived in Rome and sought an audience with the full Senate, bearing a mandate from their army and proposals from Gaius Julius Caesar Filius. For themselves, the promised bonuses. For Caesar Filius, the consulship. The Senate said a resounding no to both. On the last day of the month renamed in his adopted father's honor, Octavian crossed the Rubicon into Italy with eight legions, then forged ahead with two legions of handpicked troops. The Senate flew into a panic and sent envoys to beg that Octavian halt his march. He would be allowed to stand for the consulship without needing to present himself inside the city, so there was no real reason to continue! In the meantime, two legions of veterans from Africa Province arrived in Ostia. The Senate snatched at them eagerly and put them in the fortress on the Janiculum, from which they could look down on Caesar's pleasure gardens and Cleopatra's vacant palace. The knights of the First Class and the upper end of the Second Class donned armor, and a militia of young knights was raised to man the Servian Walls. All of it was no more than a clutching at straws; those in nominal control had no idea what to do, and those with a status lower than the Second Class went serenely about their business. When the mighty fell out, the mighty did the bleeding. The only time the common people suffered was when they rioted, and not even the lowliest were in a mood to riot. The grain dole was being issued, commerce went on so jobs were safe, next month would see the ludi Romani, and nobody in his or her right mind ventured into the Forum Romanum, which was where the mighty usually bled. The mighty went right on clutching at straws. When a rumor arose that two of Octavian's original legions, the Martia and the Fourth, were about to desert him and help the city, a huge sigh of relief went up only to turn into a wail of despair when the rumor was found to be baseless. On the seventeenth day of Sextilis, Caesar's heir entered Rome unopposed. The troops stationed in the Janiculan fortress reversed swords and pila and went over to the invader amid cheers and flowers. The only blood that was spilled belonged to the urban praetor, Marcus Caecilius Cornutus, who fell on his sword when Octavian walked into the Forum. The common people hailed him with hysterical joy, but of the Senate there was no sign. Very properly, Octavian withdrew to his men on the Campus Martius, there to receive anyone who asked to see him. The next day the Senate capitulated, humbly asked if Caesar Octavianus would be a candidate for the consular elections, to be held immediately. As the second candidate, the senators timidly suggested Caesar's nephew, Quintus Pedius. Octavian graciously acceded, and was elected senior consul, with Quintus Pedius as his junior.

Nineteen days into Sextilis and still more than a month off his twentieth birthday, Octavian offered up his sacrificial white bull on :he Capitol and was inaugurated. Twelve vultures circled overhead, in omen so portentous and awesome that it had not been seen since the time of Romulus. Though his mother and sister were barred from this all male gathering, Octavian was perfectly happy to count the faces present, from his doubting stepfather to the appalled senators. What the bewildered Quintus Pedius thought, his young cousin didn't know or care about. This Caesar had arrived on the world stage, and was not going to leave it untimely.

XI

The Syndicate

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

To Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa had fallen the role of most faithful follower, a role he continued to welcome as much as he relished it. Not for Agrippa the pangs of envy or ambition to be first; his feelings for Octavian remained unalloyed love, total admiration, tender protectiveness. Others might condemn Octavian, or loathe him, or deride him, but Agrippa alone understood exactly who and what Octavian was, thought no worse of him for the extremes in his character. If Caesar's intellect had lifted him into the aether, Octavian's very different mentality, Agrippa decided, enabled him to descend into the underworld. No human failing escaped his notice, no weakness was ignored, no chance remark went unweighed. His instincts were reptilian, in that he preserved his immobility while others made the mistake of moving. When he did move, it was so fast that it was a blur, or else so slow that it seemed an illusion. Agrippa interpreted his job as making sure that Octavian survived to achieve the great destiny he perceived as his right, as the natural outcome of who and what he was. And for Agrippa, the highest reward was to be Octavian's best friend, the one in whom he confided. He did nothing to deflect his idol's attention from men like Salvidienus and Maecenas, others like Gaius Statilius Taurus rising to the rank of intimate friend; there was no need, for Octavian's own instincts kept them at one remove from his innermost thoughts and desires. Those he reserved for Agrippa's ear, and Agrippa's alone. "The first thing I must do," Octavian said to Agrippa, "is have you, Maecenas, Salvidienus, Lucius Cornificius and Taurus put into the Senate. There's no time for quaestorian elections, so adlection it will have to be. Philippus can move it. Then we set up a special court to try the assassins. You will indict Cassius, Lucius Cornificius will indict Marcus Brutus. One of my friends for each assassin. Naturally I expect every juror to return a verdict of CONDEMNO. If any juror should vote ABSOLVO, I want to know his name. For future reference, you understand. It always pays to know the men who have the courage of their convictions." He laughed. "Or their exonerations." "You'll legislate the court personally?" Agrippa asked. "Oh, no, that wouldn't be wise. Quintus Pedius can do it." "It sounds," said Agrippa, brows meeting, "as if you mean this to happen quickly, but it's high time that I returned to a certain place for another load of wooden planks." "No more wood for the moment, Agrippa. The Senate agreed to pay each of my original legionaries twenty thousand in bonuses, therefore the money will come out of the Treasury." "I thought the Treasury was empty, Caesar." "Not quite, but it isn't healthy. Nor do I intend to strip it. By tradition, the gold is never touched. However, the reports of the plebeian aediles are alarming," said Octavian, revealing that he wasn't wasting any time wading into the work; this was one consul who intended to be hands-on. "Last year's harvest was a poor one, but this year's is disastrous. Not only in our grain provinces, but all the way from the western ocean to the eastern ocean. Nilus isn't inundating, the Euphrates and the Tigris are low, and there have been no spring rains anywhere. A colossal drought. That's why my asthma is rather bad." "It's better than it used to be," soothed Agrippa. "Perhaps you're growing out of it." "I hope so. I detest having to appear in the House looking blue around the gills and wheezing, but appear I must. Though I do think the terrible attacks are less frequent." "I'll offer to Salus." "I do, every day." "The harvest?" Agrippa prompted, heeding the message: he too must offer to Salus every day. "It seems there literally won't be one. What grain there is will fetch huge prices, so Quintus Pedius is going to have to bring some emergency measures into law forbidding the sale of grain to private vendors ahead of the state. That's why I can't strip the Treasury. It's no part of my strategy to impoverish business, but grain will have to be a special case. Despite my father's colonies for the urban poor, there are still a hundred and fifty thousand free grain chits issued, and that must continue. Cicero and Marcus Brutus wouldn't agree with me, but I value the esteem of the Head Count. It gives Rome most of her soldiers." "Why not pay the legion bonuses in wood, Caesar?" "Because there's a principle involved," Octavian said in tones that brooked no argument. "Either I run the Senate, or the Senate runs me. Were it a body of wise men, I'd be grateful for its counsel, but it's nothing but factions and frictions." "Do you plan to abolish it?" Agrippa asked, fascinated. Octavian looked genuinely shocked. "No, never! What I have to do is re-educate it, Agrippa, though that won't be done in a single day or a single consulship. The Senate's proper function is to recommend decent laws and leave executive government to the elected magistrates." "What about the wagons of wood, then?" "They stay where they are. Things are going to get worse long before they get better, and I want a reserve of money against far more daunting situations than a drought and Marcus Antonius. This time tomorrow I become Caesar Filius in law, the lex curiata will be passed. That means I'll have Caesar's fortune minus his gift to the people, which I'll pay immediately. But I don't mean to squander anything I have from my father, be it wood or investments. For the moment I have Rome to myself, but do you think I don't realize that must end? The contents of the Treasury are going to have to pay for everything while wastrels like Antonius exist." He stretched contentedly, smiling Caesar's smile for Agrippa's eyes alone. "I wish," he remarked, "that I had the Domus Publica as an office. My house is too small." Agrippa grinned. "Buy a bigger one, Caesar. Or hold a proper election and get yourself voted in as Pontifex Maximus." "No, Lepidus can stay Pontifex Maximus. I have my eye on a bigger house, but not the Domus Publica. Unlike my father, I have no desire to make a huge splash in Rome's pond. He reveled in magnificence because it suited his nature. He enjoyed notoriety. I do not," said Octavian. "But," Agrippa objected, still haunted by the specter of legionary bonuses, "you have over three hundred million to pay the legions. That's twelve thousand talents of silver. I don't see how you can do it, Caesar, without using wood." "I don't intend to pay all of it," Octavian said nonchalantly. "Just half of it. I'll owe them the rest." "They'll change sides!" "Not after I talk to them and explain that payment over time guarantees a future income. Especially if there's ten percent interest payable on it. Do not fret so, Agrippa, I know what I'm doing. I'll talk them into it and keep their loyalty." He will too, thought Agrippa, awed. What a plutocrat he'd make! Atticus would have to look to his laurels.

Two days later Philippus held a family dinner in honor of the new consuls, shrinking at the prospect of having to inform them that his younger son, Quintus, was making overtures to Gaius Cassius in Syria. Oh, for a life devoted to the pleasures of the table, of books, of a beautiful, cultured wife! Instead, he had been inflicted with a juvenile power grabber who apparently had no brakes. That, he remembered vaguely, was what Caesar's mother, Aurelia, had always said about her Caesar: he had no brakes. Nor did this second edition. Such a charming, inoffensive, quiet, sick little boy he had been! Now it was he, Philippus, who was sick. That long ambassadorial journey to Italian Gaul during the depths of winter had not only killed Servius Sulpicius; it was threatening to kill him and Lucius Piso too. Piso's ailment was pulmonary, his was rotting toes. The frostbite he had suffered had turned to something so unpleasant that the physicians shook their heads and the surgeons recommended amputation, which Philippus had rejected with horror. So the Philippus who greeted his guests wore slippers over socks stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs to disguise the stench of his blackened toes. The men outnumbered the women because three of the men were bachelors his elder son, Lucius, who stubbornly refused every bride Philippus suggested Octavian and Marcus Agrippa, whom Octavian had insisted upon bringing. When Philippus set eyes on this unknown Agrippa, his breath caught. So handsome, yet so much a man! Nearly as tall as Caesar had been, shoulders like Antonius, a soldierly bearing that endowed him with massive presence. Oh, Octavianus! cried Philippus within his mind, this young man will take it all off you! But by the time the dinner concluded, he had changed his mind. Agrippa belonged whole and entire to Octavianus. Not that he could level a charge of unchastity or indecency; they never touched, even when they walked together, and cast each other no caressing or languishing looks. Whatever this natural leader of men saw in Octavianus, it completely negated his own ambitions. My stepson is building a faction among men in his age group, and more shrewdly than Caesar, who always stood apart, held himself aloof from intimate friendships with men. Well, that old canard about King Nicomedes had done it, of course, but if Caesar had had an Agrippa, no one could have murdered him. My stepson is far different. He doesn't care about canards, they bounce off him like stones off a hippopotamus. For Octavian the dinner was a delight because his sister had come. Of all the people in his life, including his mother, Octavia lay closest by far to his heart. How she had bloomed! Her fair beauty shone Atia's down, though her nose wasn't as lovely, nor her cheekbones as high. It was all in her eyes, the most wonderful eyes any woman had ever owned, wide apart, widely opened, the color of an aquamarine, as revealing as his were shut away. Her nature was entirely love and compassion, and it looked out of her eyes. She only had to appear in the Porticus Margaritaria to shop, and everyone who saw her loved her at a single glance. My father had his daughter, Julia, as a conduit to the common people; I have Octavia. I will treasure her and shelter her for all my days as my good spirit. The three women were in a merry mood, Atia because her darling son was proving such a prodigy why had she never suspected it? After nearly twenty years of worrying herself to the point of illness over someone she had thought too frail to hang on to life, she was beginning to discover that her little Gaius was a huge force to be reckoned with. For all his wheezing, it came as a shock to realize that he would probably outlive everyone, even that magnificent Marcus Agrippa. Octavia was in a merry mood because her brother was there; his affection for her was fully returned. She was three years older than he, and wonderfully healthy herself; he had always been a superior kind of doll, toddling around in her wake beaming at her, plying her with questions, seeking haven with her when their mother fussed and clucked too unbearably. Octavia had always seen what Rome and her family were only now beginning to see: the strength, the determination, the brilliance, the ineradicable sense of specialness. She supposed that all of these were his Julian inheritance, but understood too that he possessed a hardheaded, frugal, down-to-earth side from their blood father's impeccably Latin stock. How composed he is! My brother will rule the world. Valeria Messala was in a merry mood because suddenly her life had opened up. The sister of Messala Rufus the augur, she had been wife to Quintus Pedius for thirty years, given him two sons and a daughter; one son was grown, the younger of contubernalis age, and the girl sixteen. Her chief beauty was her mass of red hair, though her swampy green eyes attracted attention too. She and Quintus Pedius had married as part of Caesar's network of political connections. A patrician, she was of much better family than the Pedii of Campania, though not of the Julii, and she had found that she and Quintus suited each other very well. If anything had bothered Valeria Messala, it was her husband's absolute loyalty to Caesar, who hadn't advanced him as rapidly as she felt proper. Now that he was junior consul, her every wish was answered. Her sons came from consular stock on both sides, and her daughter, Pedia Messalina, would make a truly splendid marriage. Oblivious to the masculine conversation, the women chattered about babies. Octavia had borne a girl, Claudia Marcella, last year, and was pregnant again. This time, she hoped, with a son. Her husband, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor, found himself in a curious position for one whose family had so obdurately and persistently opposed Caesar. He had retrieved his expectations and preserved his large fortune by marrying Octavia, whom he loved passionately because one couldn't not. But who would ever have dreamed that his wife's little brother would be senior consul at nineteen? And whereabouts was it all going to go? Somehow, he thought, to dizzying heights. Octavianus radiated success, though not in the flamboyant style of his great-uncle. "Do you think," Marcellus Minor asked Octavian and Pedius, "that it's the right time to prosecute the Liberators?" He caught the red look in Octavian's eyes at his use of this detested name, and amended it hastily. "The assassins, I mean, of course. Most of Rome uses 'Liberator' as an ironical device, not sincerely. But to go on with what I was saying, Caesar Octavianus, you have Marcus Antonius and the western governors to deal with, so is this the right time for trials, which are so drawn out?" "And from what I hear," said Philippus, coming to Marcellus Minor's rescue, "Vatinius isn't going to contest Marcus Brutus in Illyricum, he's coming home. That strengthens Brutus's position. Then there's Cassius in Syria, another threat to peace. Why try the assassins and exacerbate the situation? If Brutus and Cassius are tried and found guilty, they're outlaws and can't come home. That might tempt them into war, and Rome doesn't need yet another war. Antonius and the western governors are war enough." Quintus Pedius listened, but had no intention of answering. A most unhappy man, he was permanently embroiled in the affairs of the Julii, and hated it. His nature he had inherited from his country squire father, but his fate he had inherited from his mother, Caesar's eldest sister. All he wanted was a quiet life on his vast estates in Campania, not the consulship. Then his eyes fell on his wife, so animated, and he sighed. Patricians will always be patricians, he reflected wryly. Valeria loves being the consul's wife, talks of nothing but hosting the Bona Dea. "The assassins must be prosecuted," Octavian was saying. "The scandal lies in the fact that they weren't prosecuted the day after they did the deed. Had they, the present situation could never have arisen. It's Cicero and the Senate responsible for legalizing Brutus's position, which rather flows on to Cassius's, but it's Antonius and his Senate that didn't prosecute." "Which is my point," Marcellus Minor said. "If they weren't prosecuted immediately afterward indeed, were given a general amnesty will people understand?" "I don't care if people don't, Marcellus. Senate and People have to learn that a group of noblemen can't excuse the murder of a fellow nobleman in a legal office on patriotic grounds. Murder is murder. If the assassins had reason to believe that my father intended to make himself King of Rome, then they should have prosecuted him in a court of law," said Octavian. "How could they possibly have done that?" Marcellus asked. "Caesar was Dictator Perpetuus, above the law, inviolable." "All they had to do was strip him of his dictatorship it was voted to him, after all. But they didn't even try to strip him of it. The assassins voted in favor of Dictator Perpetuus." "They were afraid of him," said Pedius. He had been too. "Nonsense! Afraid of what? When did my father ever take a Roman life except in battle? His policy was clemency a mistake, but a reality nonetheless. Pedius, he had pardoned most of his assassins, some of them twice over!" "Still and all, they were afraid of him," said Marcellus. The young, smooth, beautiful face hardened, took on the mien of a cold, mature purveyor of terror. "They have more reason to be afraid of me! I won't rest until the last assassin is dead, his reputation in ruins, his property confiscated, his women and children paupers." A queer silence fell upon the men. Philippus broke it. "There are fewer and fewer to prosecute," he said. "Gaius Trebonius, Aquila, Decimus Brutus, Basilus " "But why," Marcellus interrupted, "is Sextus Pompeius to be prosecuted? He wasn't an assassin, and he's now officially Rome's proconsul of the seas." "His proconsular status is about to end, as you well know. I have a dozen witnesses to testify that his ships raided the African grain fleet two nundinae ago. That makes him a traitor. Besides, he's Pompeius Magnus's son," Octavian said flatly. "I will be rid of all Caesar's enemies." His auditors knew that the Caesar he meant was himself.

The trials of the Liberators came on within the first month of the consulship of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and Quintus Pedius; even though there were twenty-three separate hearings (the dead were tried too), the whole process was over within one nundinum. The jurors unanimously condemned each Liberator, who was declared nefas. All his property was confiscated by the state. Those Liberators like the tribune of the plebs Gaius Servilius Casca who were still in Rome fled, but pursuit was slow. Suddenly Servilia and Tertulla were homeless, though not for long. Their private fortunes had always been invested with Atticus, who bought Servilia a new house on the Palatine and took a great deal of undeserved credit for supporting the two women. When the subsidiary prosecution convicted Sextus Pompey of treason, one of the thirty-three jurors returned a tile marked A for ABSOLVO; the rest obediently said C for CONDEMNO. "Why did you do that?" Agrippa asked the man, a knight. "Because Sextus Pompeius is not a traitor" was the answer. Octavian filed away the name, rather pleased at the size of the man's fortune. He would keep. The bequests were distributed to the people, and Caesar's parks and gardens thrown open; Romans from all walks of life loved to stroll and picnic in verdant but tamed places. Octavian was pleased to hire Cleopatra's palace out to ambitious members of the First Class desirous of giving large feasts for their clients. Their names went into his "Items of Interest" file too. He secured the election of two intimates as tribunes of the plebs: Marcus Agrippa and Lucius Cornificius, for with Casca's flight, the College held two vacancies. Publius Titius, already a tribune of the plebs and anxious to stand high with Octavian, saved Octavian's life when the foreign praetor, Quintus Gallus, tried to murder him. Gallus was stripped of his office, the galvanized Senate condemned him to death without a trial, and the ordinary people were allowed to loot his house. Tiny shock waves were radiating through the First Class, who now began to ask themselves if Octavianus was any better than Antonius? True to his word, the new senior consul took enough money from the Treasury to pay his original three legions ten thousand sesterces each. Their representatives had readily agreed to his proposal that the other half should wait and accrue interest as a guarantee of future income. Though, with centurion extras, this amounted to less than four thousand talents, he took six thousand as much as he dared with grain prices spiraling and split the remainder up among his three later legions. He also recruited sixty humble rankers in each legion to work as his private agents, one man per century; their job was to spread word of Caesar's generosity and constancy, and also report any troublemakers. They were told to speak about the army as a long-term career sure to leave a soldier a relatively wealthy man at the end of fifteen or twenty years' service. Largesse was good, but secure, well-paid, all-expenses-founded, steady employment was better, was Octavian's message. Be loyal to Rome and Caesar and Rome and Caesar will always look after you, even if there are no wars to be fought. Garrison duty permitted family life on post. The army was an attractive career! Thus, even at this very early stage, Octavian began to prepare the legionaries for the idea of a permanent, standing army.

* * *

On the twenty-third day of September, which was his twentieth birthday, Octavian took eleven legions and marched north to contend with Mark Antony and the western governors. With him he took the tribune of the plebs Lucius Cornificius, an extraordinary action to care for the interests of his troops, all plebeians, he explained. Behind him in Rome he left Pedius to govern, with his two other tribunes of the plebs, Agrippa and Titius, to push Pedius's laws through the Plebeian Assembly. His more invisible helper, Gaius Maecenas, remained in Rome on less obvious business, chiefly concerned with recruiting innovative men of the lower classes. Agrippa hadn't liked abandoning Octavian. "You'll get into trouble if I'm not with you," he said. "I'll manage, Agrippa. I need you in Rome to gain experience in unwarlike matters, and learn about lawmaking. Believe me, I stand in no danger on this campaign." "But you're taking a tribune of the plebs," Agrippa objected. "One less known to be my loyalest follower," said Octavian. The march was fairly leisurely and ended at Bononia, where Octavian made camp and sent to Mutina for the six legions of raw recruits Decimus Brutus had deemed so hopeless that he left them behind when he chased Antony westward. Salvidienus was charged with drilling and training all recruits remorselessly while the army waited for Mark Antony to find it. Octavian had no intention of fighting Antony when he came, and had formulated a plan he thought had a fair chance of success, depending upon how persuasively he could talk. What he knew was that it was up to him to unite all the factions of Caesar's old civil war alliance; if he didn't, Rome would go to Brutus and Cassius, now controlling every province east of the Adriatic. A state of affairs that had to be terminated, but impossible to terminate unless all Caesar's adherents were united.

Early in October, Mark Antony took seventeen of his legions out of camp in Forum Julii, leaving six behind with Lucius Varius Cotyla to garrison the West. After their halcyon summer the men were fit, well rested, and spoiling for some action. All three governors marched with him: Plancus, Lepidus and Pollio. But of master plans there were none. Antony was well aware of Brutus and Cassius in the East and understood that they would have to be put down, but his thinking lumped Octavian in with the two Liberators as yet another unacceptable, obnoxious player in the power game. He was not enamored of losing valuable troops in battle against Octavian, but saw no alternative. Once Octavian was knocked out of the game, he would pick up Octavian's troops, but their loyalty would always be suspect, he knew. If the Martia and the Fourth could leave Marcus Antonius for a baby who reminded them of Caesar, what would they think of that selfsame Marcus Antonius when their baby Caesar lay dead at Marcus Antonius's hands? So he took the Via Domitia and crossed into Italian Gaul at Ocelum in a sour mood, not improved by his bedtime reading, the series of speeches Cicero had delivered against him. Though he despised Octavian, he hated Cicero. Were it not for Cicero, his position would be secure, his public enemy status would not exist, and Octavian wouldn't be a problem. It had been Cicero who encouraged Caesar's heir, Cicero who turned the Senate against him until even Fufius Calenus didn't dare speak up for him. Confiscation of his property hadn't been an issue, for though his debts were paid off, he had no money worth speaking of. Much as they might hunger to, the senators didn't dare touch Fulvia or his palace on the Carinae she was the granddaughter of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, and under the protection of Atticus. Fulvia. He missed her, and he missed his children by her. Full of news and well written, her letters had kept him informed of every event in Rome, and he had cause to be grateful to Atticus. Her hatred of Cicero was even greater than his own, if that were humanly possible.

When Antony reached Mutina, twenty miles from Octavian's camp on the outskirts of Bononia, he was met by the third tribune of the plebs, Lucius Cornificius. A holder of that office was the best of all envoys; even a Mark Antony had sufficient sense to understand that his cause would not be improved by the manhandling of a tribune of the plebs. They were sacrosanct and inviolate when acting for the Plebs, as Cornificius insisted he was, despite the fact that his boss belonged to the Patriciate. "The consul Caesar," said Cornificius, twenty-one years old, "wishes to confer with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus." "Confer, or surrender?" Antony sneered. "Confer, definitely confer. I bear an olive branch, not a reversed standard." Plancus and Lepidus were very much against the idea of any meeting with Octavian, whereas Pollio thought it excellent. So, after thinking things over, did Antony. "Tell Octavianus that I'll consider his proposal," Antony said. Lucius Cornificius did a lot of galloping back and forth over the next several days, but eventually it was agreed that Antony, Lepidus and Octavian would meet to confer on an island in the middle of the swift, strong Lavinus River near Bononia. It was Cornificius named the site on his last mission. "All right, that will do," said Antony after considering it from all sides, "provided that Octavianus moves his camp to the Bononian side of the river, while I move my camp to the Mutinan bank. If there's any treachery, we can fight it out on the spot." "Let Pollio and me come with you and Lepidus," Plancus said, unhappy because he knew that whatever was discussed would affect his whole future. "It ought to be more public, Antonius." Bright eyes twinkling, Gaius Asinius Pollio gazed at Plancus in amusement. Poor Plancus! A beautiful writer, an erudite man, but incapable of seeing what he, Pollio, saw plainly. What do men like Plancus and Pollio matter? What, really, does silly Lepidus matter? It's between Antonius and Octavianus. A man of forty versus a man of twenty. The known versus the unknown. Lepidus is merely their sop to throw to good dog Cerberus, their way to enter Hades undevoured. How terrific it is to be an eyewitness of great events when one is an historian! First the Rubicon, now the Lavinus. Two rivers, and Pollio was there.

The island was small and grassy, shaded by several lofty poplars; there had been some willows too, but a party of sappers hauled them out so that the observers on each bank could have an unimpeded view of proceedings. The meeting place for the three negotiators marked by three curule chairs beneath a poplar was far enough away from the bevy of servants and secretaries who occupied the island's far end, there to distribute refreshments or wait to be summoned to take something down in writing. Antony and Lepidus were rowed across from their bank, both clad in armor, whereas Octavian chose his purple-bordered toga and maroon senatorial shoes with consular crescent buckles rather than his special boots. The audience was vast, for both armies lined the banks of the Lavinus and watched raptly while the three figures sat, stood, paced, gesticulated, looked at each other or stared pensively at the swirling waters. The greetings were typical: Octavian was suitably deferential, Lepidus amiable, Antony curt. "Let's get down to business," Antony said, and sat. "What do you think our business is, Marcus Antonius?" asked Octavian, waiting until Lepidus sat before taking his own chair. "To help you crawl out of the hole you've dug for yourself," said Antony. "You know if it comes to battle you'll lose." "We each have seventeen legions, and mine contain quite as many veterans, I believe," Octavian said coolly, fair brows up. "However, you have the advantage of a more experienced command." "In other words, you want to crawl out of that hole." "No, I'm not thinking of myself. At my age, Antonius, I can afford to suffer an occasional humiliation without its coloring the rest of my career. No, I'm thinking of them." Octavian indicated the watching soldiers. "I asked for this conference to see if we can work out a way to avoid shedding one drop of their blood. Your men or mine, Antonius, makes no difference. They're all Roman citizens, and all entitled to live, to sire sons and daughters for Rome and Italy, which my father believed were the same entity. Why should they have to shed their blood simply in order to decide whether you or I is the leader of the pack?" A question so unanswerable that Antony shifted uncomfortably, spoke uncomfortably. "Because your Rome isn't my Rome," he said. "Rome is Rome. Neither of us owns her. Both of us are her servants, we can't be her master. Everything you do, everything I do, should go to her greater glory, enhance her power. That is equally true of Brutus and Cassius. If you, and I, and Marcus Lepidus, vie for anything, it should be for the distinction of contributing the most to Rome's greater glory. We ourselves are mortal, whether we die here on a field of battle, or later, at peace with each other. Rome is eternal. Rome owns us." A grin showed. "I'll say this for you, Octavianus, you can talk. A pity you can't general troops." "If talk is my specialty, then I chose my field of action very well," said Octavian, smiling Caesar's smile. "Truly, Antonius, I do not want bloodshed. What I want is to see all of us who followed Caesar united again under one banner. The assassins did us no favor in murdering our undisputed leader. Since his death, we've split asunder. I blame no small part of it on Cicero, who is every Caesarean's enemy, just as he was Caesar's enemy. To me, if we spill blood here, we will have betrayed Caesar. And betrayed Rome. Rome's real enemies are not here in Italian Gaul. They're in the East. The assassin Marcus Brutus holds all of Macedonia, Illyricum, Greece, Crete, and through minions Bithynia, Pontus and Asia Province. The assassin Gaius Cassius holds Cilicia, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Syria, perhaps even Egypt by now." "I agree with you about Brutus and Cassius, said Antony, who was visibly relaxing. "Continue, Octavianus." "What I am asking for, Marcus Antonius, Marcus Lepidus, is an alliance. A reunification of all Caesar's loyal adherents. If we can sort out our differences and achieve that, then we can deal with the real enemies, Brutus and Cassius, from a position of power equal to theirs. Otherwise, Brutus and Cassius will win, and Rome will pass away. For Brutus and Cassius will hand the provinces back to the publicani and squeeze the socii so tightly that they will prefer barbarian or Parthian rule to Roman rule." Lepidus listened while Octavian expatiated upon his theme and Antony interpolated an occasional comment. Somehow it all sounded so reasonable and logical when Octavian explained it, though quite why that was, Lepidus didn't know, since nothing the young man said was novel or extraordinary. "It isn't that I'm afraid to fight, rather that I plain don't want to fight," Octavian reiterated. "We should conserve every bit of our combined strength for the real adversaries." "Hit them so hard that they don't have a chance to do what happened after Pharsalus," said Antony, getting into stride. "What exhausted Rome was the prolongation of the struggle against the Republicans. Pharnaces, then Africa, then Spain." And so it started, though it took the rest of that day to reach wholehearted agreement that all the factions of Caesar's adherents should reunite, for there were more men to please than the three who conferred. Both Antony and Octavian knew full well that if Antony had grown tired of being dominated by Caesar, then he had already passed the mark whereat he might agree to share leadership with a twenty-year-old newcomer whose only assets were his relationship to Caesar and the power stemming out of it. The best that might be accomplished was a temporary cessation in the contest for ultimate supremacy. What Octavian could do, and did on the island in the Lavinus River, was to give Antony the impression that Caesar's heir would yield supremacy until Antony's age negated it. If he thinks that, said Octavian to himself, it will sustain both of us until Brutus and Cassius are crushed. After that, we shall see. One thing at a time. "Of course my legions won't consent to a settlement that looks as if you've won," said Antony when discussions resumed on the second day. "Nor mine a settlement that looks as if I've lost," Octavian riposted, looking rueful. "And my legions, and Plancus's, and Pollio's," said Lepidus, "will want us to have a share of the leadership." "Plancus and Pollio will have to be content with consulships in the near future," said Antony harshly. "The stage is populated enough by the three sitting here." He had spent most of the night thinking, and he was far from stupid; his chief intellectual disabilities lay in his impulsiveness, his hedonism and his lack of interest in the art of politics. "How about," he asked, "if we split the leadership of Rome more or less equally between the three of us?" "That sounds interesting," said Octavian. "Do go on." "Um well... None of us should be consul, yet all of us should be something better than consul. You know, like three to share the dictatorship." "You abolished the dictatorship," Octavian said gently. "True, and I don't mean to imply that I regret that!" Antony snapped, bristling. "What I'm trying to say is that Rome can't be run by a succession of mere consuls until the Liberators are finished, yet a genuine dictator is too offensive to everyone who believes in democracy. If three of us share the control by having partial dictatorial powers, then we exert a measure of control over each other as well as running Rome the way she needs to be run for the time being." "A syndicate," said Octavian. "Three men. Triumviri rei publicae constituendae. Three men forming a syndicate to set the affairs of the Republic in order. Yes, it has a good ring to it. It will soothe the Senate and appeal to the People enormously. All of Rome knows that we embarked on military action. Imagine how splendid it will look when the three of us return to Rome the best of friends, our legions safe and unharmed. We'll show everybody that Roman men can sort out their differences without resorting to the sword that we care more about the Senate and the People than we do about ourselves." They sat back in their chairs and stared at each other with huge content. Yes, it was splendid! A new era. "It also," said Antony, "shows the People that we are their true government. There won't be any grumbling about civil war for the sake of civil war when we go east to fight Brutus and Cassius. That was a good idea to try and condemn the Liberators for treason, Octavianus. We can say that we're not fighting other Romans, we're fighting men who abrogated their citizenship." "We do more than that, Antonius. We keep agents circulating throughout Italy to reinforce indignation about the murder of their beloved Caesar. And when prosperity declines, we can blame Brutus and Cassius, who have appropriated Rome's revenues." "Prosperity declines?" asked Lepidus in dismay. "It is already declining," Octavian said flatly. "You're a governor, Lepidus. You must surely have noticed that the crops in your provinces haven't come in this year." "I haven't been in my provinces since early summer," Lepidus excused himself. "I've noticed that it's suddenly very expensive to feed my legions," said Antony. "Drought?" "Everywhere, including the East. So Brutus and Cassius must be suffering too." "What you're really saying is that we're going to run out of money," snarled Antony, glaring at Octavian. "Well, you pinched Caesar's war chest, so you can fund our campaign in the East!" "I did not steal the war chest, Antonius. I spent my entire patrimony on bonuses for my legions when I arrived in Italy, and I've had to take money from the Treasury to part-pay the bonuses I still owe my men. I'm in debt to them, and will be for a long time. I've no idea who took the war chest, but don't blame me." "Then it has to be Oppius." "You can't be sure. Some Samnite might as easily have done it. The solution doesn't lie in the past, Antonius. It's vital that we keep Rome and Italy fed and entertained, two very pricey undertakings, and we also have to keep a great number of legions in the field. How many do you think we'll need?" "Forty. Twenty to go with us, twenty more for garrison duty in the West, in Africa, and for dropping in our wake as we march. Plus ten or fifteen thousand cavalry." "Including noncombatants and horse, that's over a quarter of a million men." The big grey eyes looked glassy. "Think of the quantities of grain, chickpea, lentil, bacon, oil a million and a quarter modii of wheat a month at fifteen sesterces the modius is seven hundred and fifty talents a month for wheat alone. The other staples will double it, perhaps more in this drought." "What a fantastic praefectus fabrum you'd make, Octavianus!" said Antony, eyes dancing. "Joke if you must, but what I'm saying, Antonius, is that we can't do it. Not and feed Rome, feed Italy as well." "Oh, I know a way," Antony said too casually. "I'm all ears," said Octavian. "That you are, Octavianus!" "Are you done with the jokes?" "Yes, because the solution's no joke. We proscribe." The last word fell into a silence broken only by the faint rushing of the river, the rattle of golden poplar leaves waiting for the winter winds to blow them down, the far-off murmur of thousands of troops, the whinnying of horses. "We proscribe," Octavian echoed. Lepidus looked ready to faint pale, shaking. "Antonius, we daren't!" he cried. The reddish-brown eyes stared him down fiercely. "Oh, come, Lepidus, don't be a bigger fool than your mother and father made you! How else can we fund a state and an army through a drought? How else could we fund them even if there wasn't a drought?" Octavian sat looking thoughtful. "My father," he said, "was famous for his clemency, but it was his clemency killed him. Most of the assassins were pardoned men. Had he killed them, we would have no need to worry about Brutus and Cassius, Rome would have all the eastern revenues, and we'd be free to sail into the Euxine to buy grain from Cimmeria if we could get it nowhere else. I agree with you, Marcus Antonius. We proscribe, exactly as Sulla did. A one-talent reward for information from a free man or a freedman, a half-talent reward plus his freedom for a slave. But we don't make the mistake of documenting our rewards. Why give some aspiring tribune of the plebs of the future the chance to force us to punish our informants? Sulla's proscriptions netted the Treasury sixteen thousand talents. That's our target." "You're a perpetual surprise, my dear Octavianus. I thought I'd have a long job talking you into it," said Antony. "I'm first and foremost a sensible man." Octavian smiled. "Proscription is the only answer. It also enables us to rid ourselves of enemies, real or potential. All those with Republican sentiments or sympathy for the assassins." "I can't agree!" wailed Lepidus. "My brother Paullus is a die-hard Republican!" "Then we proscribe your brother Paullus," said Antony. "I have a few relatives of mine who'll have to be proscribed, some in conjunction with cousin Octavianus here. Uncle Lucius Caesar, for example. He's a very rich man, and he's been no help to me." "Or to me," said Octavian, nodding. He frowned. "However, I suggest that we don't render ourselves odious by executing our relatives, Antonius. Neither Paullus nor Lucius is a threat to our lives. We'll just confiscate their property and money. I think we'll both have to sacrifice some third cousins." "Done!" Antony made a purring noise. "But Oppius dies. I know he pinched Caesar's war chest." "We don't touch any of the bankers or top plutocrats," said Octavian, tones uncompromising. "What? But that's where the big money is!" Antony objected. "Precisely, Antonius. Think about it, please. Proscription is a short-term measure to fill the Treasury, it can't go on forever. The last thing we want is a Rome deprived of her money geniuses. We're going to need them forever. If you believe that a Greek freedman like Sulla's Chrysogonus is a replacement for an Oppius or an Atticus, you're touched in the head. Look at that freedman of Pompeius Magnus's, Demetrius rolling in wealth, but not Atticus's bootlace when it comes to turning money over. So we proscribe Demetrius, but we don't proscribe Atticus. Or Sextus Perquitienus, or the Balbi, or Oppius, or Rabirius Postumus. I grant you that Atticus and Perquitienus play both ends against the middle, but the bankers I've mentioned have been Caesareans ever since Caesar became a force in politics. No matter how tempting the size of their fortunes, we do not touch our own. Especially if they have the ability to keep money turning over. We can afford to proscribe Flavius Hemicillus, and perhaps Fabius both are Brutus's banking minions. But those Rome will need in the future must be sacrosanct." "He's right, Antonius, said Lepidus feebly. Antony had listened; now he thought, lips moving in and out, auburn brows meeting. Finally, "I see what you mean." His head hunched into his shoulders, he gave a mock shudder. "Besides, if I touched Atticus, Fulvia would kill me. He's been very good to her since the decree outlawing me. But Cicero goes and I mean head from neck, understood?" "Completely," Octavian said. "We concentrate on the rich, but only some of the fabulously rich. If enough men are proscribed, the amount of cash will add up quickly. Of course when it comes to property, we won't garner anything like the actual worth of the property we auction. Caesar's auctions have proven that as much as Sulla's did. But we'll be able to pick up some good estates for ourselves and our friends dirt cheap. Lepidus has to be compensated for the loss of his villas and estates, so he ought not to have to pay a sestertius for anything until his losses have been remedied." The appalled Lepidus began to look less appalled; this was an aspect of proscription that hadn't occurred to him. "Land for our veterans," said Antony, who loathed agrarian activity. "I suggest we confiscate the public lands of towns and municipia we can classify as inimical to Caesar or that made overtures of friendliness to Brutus and Cassius when they were issuing their edicts. Venusia, dear old Capua yet again, Beneventum, a few other Samnite nests. Cremona hasn't pulled its weight in Italian Gaul, and I know how to prevent Bruttium from offering aid to Sextus Pompeius. We'll put some soldier colonies around Vibo and Rhegium." "Excellent!" Octavian exclaimed. "I recommend too that we don't discharge all the legions after the war against Brutus and Cassius is over. We should retain a certain number of them as a standing army, have the men sign up for, say, fifteen years. This business of having to recruit every time we need troops may be the Roman way and a part of the mos maiorum, but it's a costly nuisance. Every time a man is discharged, he gets a piece of land. Some men have been in and out so many times over the last twenty years that they've accumulated a dozen plots of land which they rent out to tenant farmers or graziers. A standing army can garrison the provinces, be there to be called into service when and where it's needed without the perpetual expenses of recruiting and equipping fresh legions, or finding land on discharge." But that dissertation was a little much for Mark Antony, who shrugged, bored; his attention span was not the equal of the painstaking, minutiae-fixated Octavian's. "Yes, yes, but time is getting on, and I want to finish this business today, not next month." He assumed a crafty expression. "Of course we'll have to have some evidence of each other's good faith. Lepidus and I have affianced two of our children. You're single, Octavianus. How about a marriage bond with me?" "I'm engaged to Servilia Vatia," Octavian said woodenly. "Oh, Vatia won't care if you break it off! My Fulvia's eldest girl, Claudia, is eighteen. How about her? Terrific set of ancestors for your children! Julian, Gracchan, Claudian, Fulvian. You can't do better than a girl of Fulvia's and Publius Clodius's, now can you?" "No, I can't," said Octavian without hesitation. "Consider me betrothed to Claudia, provided Vatia consents." "Not betrothed, married," Antony said firmly. "Lepidus can conduct the ceremony as soon as we return to Rome." "If you wish." "You'll have to step down from the consulship," said Antony, riding high. "Yes, I rather imagined I'd have to do that. Whom do you suggest as suffect consuls for the rump of the year?" "Gaius Carrinas for senior, Publius Ventidius for junior." "Your men." Ignoring this, Antony swept on. "Lepidus for a second term next year, with Plancus as his junior." "Yes, we'll definitely have to have one of the Triumvirs as senior consul next year. And the year after?" "Vatia as senior, my brother Lucius as junior." "I am sorry about Gaius Antonius." Eyes filling with tears, Antony swallowed convulsively. "I will make Brutus pay for killing my brother!" he said savagely. Privately Octavian thought that Brutus had done efficiency and success a great service in ridding Rome of Gaius Antonius, bungler supreme, but he looked grieved and sympathetic, then changed the subject. "Have you thought how best to legislate our triumviral syndicate?" he asked. "Through the Plebs, it's become custom. Supraconsular powers imperium maius, even inside Rome for five years. Together with the right to nominate the consuls. Inside Italy we should all three have equal powers and govern equally, but outside Italy I think we should divide the provinces up. I'll take Italian Gaul and Further Gaul. Lepidus can have Narbonese Gaul and both the Spains, because I'm going to use Pollio as my legate in my provinces, let him do the actual governing." "Which leaves me," said Octavian, looking particularly sweet and humble, "the Africas, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. The er grain supply. Not a happy group of provinces, from what I hear. The governor of Africa Vetus is having a little private war with the governor of Africa Nova, and Sextus Pompeius has been using all those ships the Senate gave him to raid our grain fleets since well before Pedius's court condemned him." "Not pleased with your lot, Octavianus?" Antony asked. "Put it this way, Antonius. I won't complain about my lot provided that I have full and equal co-command with you when we go east to deal with Brutus and Cassius." "No, I won't agree to that." "You don't have any choice in the matter, Antonius. My own legions will insist on it, and you can't go east without them." Antony leaped out of his chair and strode to the water's edge, Lepidus following in alarm. "Come, Antonius," Lepidus whispered to him, "you can't have it all your own way. He's made big concessions. And he's right about his legions, they won't follow you." A long pause ensued, Antony scowling at the river, Lepidus with one hand on Antony's arm. Then Antony swung about, returned. "All right, you can have full co-command, Octavianus." "Good. Then we have a pact," Octavian said cordially, and held out his hand. "Let's shake on it to show the men that we've reached accord and there'll be no battle." The three walked to the very middle of the island, there to shake hands with each other. Cheers erupted from the throat of every watcher; the Triumvirate was a reality. Only one other difference of opinion arose, on the next day: namely, the order in which the Triumvirs would enter Rome. "Together," said Lepidus. "No, on three succeeding days," Antony contradicted. "I go first, Octavianus goes second, you go third, Lepidus." "I go first," Octavian said firmly. "No, I do," said Antony. "I go first, Marcus Antonius, because I am the senior consul and no laws have as yet been passed that give you or Marcus Lepidus any rights whatsoever. You're still public enemies. Even if you weren't, the moment you cross the pomerium into Rome, you give up your imperium and become mere privati. It is inarguable. I must go first, to preside over the removal of your outlaw status." Very put out he might be, but Mark Antony had no choice other than to agree. Octavian must enter Rome first.

2

Most of Italian Gaul was a flat alluvial plain watered by the Padus River and its many tributaries; when rain didn't fall, the local farmers could irrigate extensively, so the region had crops, full granaries. The most exasperating thing about the country, so close to Italy proper, was that it couldn't feed Italy proper. The Apennine mountain chain crossed the top of the leg from east to west and fused with the Maritime Alps in Liguria, thus forming a barrier too formidable for the transport of freight by land. Nor could Italian Gaul's grains and pulses be sent by sea; the winds were always contrary shipping from north to south. For this reason, the Triumvirs decided to leave their legions in Italian Gaul, and set out for Rome accompanied only by a few hand picked troops. "However," said Octavian to Pollio (they were sharing a gig), "since feeding Rome and Italy has fallen to me, I shall start sending wagon trains of wheat from the west of the province through Dertona to travel down the Tuscan coast. The gradients are not impossible on that route, it just hasn't been done." Pollio eyed him with fascination, having realized since they started out from Bononia that the young man never stopped thinking. His mind, Pollio decided, was precise, factual, preoccupied with logistics ahead of logic what interested him was how to get ordinary things done. If you gave him a million chickpeas to count, thought Pollio, he would stick at it until he did it and not make a mistake in his count. No wonder Antonius despises him! While Antonius dreams of military glory and of being the First Man in Rome, Octavianus dreams of how to feed people. While Antonius spends money profligately, Octavianus looks for the cheapest way to do things. Octavianus isn't a plotter, he's a planner. I do hope I live long enough to see what he ultimately becomes. So Pollio led Octavian on to speak on many subjects, including the fate of Rome. "What's your greatest ambition, Octavianus?" he asked. "To see the whole Roman world at peace." "And what would you do to achieve that?" "Anything," said Octavian simply. "Anything at all." "It's a laudable objective, but hardly likely to happen." The grey eyes turned to look into Pollio's amber orbs, their expression genuinely surprised. "Why?" "Oh, perhaps because war is ingrained in Romans. War and conquest add to Rome's revenues, most men think." "Her revenues," said Octavian, "are already great enough for her needs. War drains the Treasury dry." "That's not Roman thinking! War plumps the Treasury out look at Caesar and Pompeius Magnus, not to mention Paullus, the Scipios, Mummius," said Pollio, enjoying himself. "Those days are over, Pollio. The great treasures have all been absorbed into Rome already except for one." "The Parthian treasures?" "No!" Octavian said scornfully. "That's a war only Caesar could have contemplated. The distances are enormous and the army would have to live on forage for years, surrounded on all sides by enemy and formidable terrains. I mean the Egyptian treasure." "And would you approve of Rome's taking that?" "I will take it. In time," said Octavian, sounding smug. "It's a feasible objective, for two reasons." "And they are?" "The first, that it isn't necessary for a Roman army to get far from Our Sea. The second, that, apart from the treasure, Egypt produces grain that our growing population will need." "Many say the treasure doesn't exist." "Oh, it exists," said Octavian. "Caesar saw it. He told me all about it when I was with him in Spain. I know where it is and how to get it. Rome will need it because war drains her dry." "Civil war, you mean." "Well, think about it, Pollio. During the last sixty or so years, we've fought more civil wars than properly foreign ones. Romans against Romans. Conflicts over ideas of what constitutes the Roman Republic. Ideas of what constitutes liberty." "Wouldn't you be Greek and go to war for an idea?" "No, I would not." "What about going to war to ensure peace?" "Not if it means warring against fellow Romans. The war we fight against Brutus and Cassius must be the last civil war." "Sextus Pompeius might not agree with you. There's no doubt he flirts with Brutus and Cassius, but he won't commit himself to them entirely. He'll end in waging his own war." "Sextus Pompeius is a pirate, Pollio." "So you don't think he'll gather the remnants of Liberator forces after Brutus and Cassius are defeated?" "He's chosen his ground, and it's water. That means he can never mount a full campaign," said Octavian. "There's another prospect of civil war," said Pollio slyly. "What if he Triumvirs should fall out?" "Like Archimedes, I will shift the globe to avoid that. I assure you, Pollio, that I will never go to war against Antonius." And why, asked Pollio of himself, do I believe that? For I do.

Octavian entered Rome toward the end of November, on foot and togate, escorted by singers and dancers hymning peace between the Triumvirs, and surrounded by hordes of cheering, delighted people, at whom he smiled Caesar's smile, waved Caesar's wave, his feet in those high-soled boots. He went straight to the rostra and there announced the formation of the triumviri rei publicae constituendae in a short, moving speech that gave the crowds no doubt of his pivotal role in reconciling all parties in the pact. He was Caesar Peacemaker, not Caesar Warmaker. Then he went to the Senate, waiting in the Curia Hostilia to hear his news in more comfort and privacy. Publius Titius was instructed to convene the Plebeian Assembly immediately and revoke the legislation outlawing Antony and Lepidus. Though Quintus Pedius thus learned publicly that his consulship was about to end, Octavian saved the news of the proscriptions to tell him afterward. "Titius will enact the laws setting up the Triumvirate in the Plebs," he said to Pedius in Pedius's study, "but he'll also pass other, equally necessary measures." "What other, equally necessary measures?" Pedius asked warily, misliking the expression on his cousin's face, which was set. "Rome is bankrupt, therefore we proscribe." Flinching, Pedius put up his hands to ward off some invisible menace. "I refuse to condone proscription," he said, voice thin. "As consul, I will speak against it." "As consul, you will speak in favor. Oppose it, Quintus, and yours will be the first name on the list Titius will post upon the rostra and the Regia. Come, my dear fellow, be sensible," said Octavian softly. "Do you want a Valeria Messala widowed and homeless, her children prohibited from inheriting, from taking their rightful places in public life? Caesar's great-nephews? Quintus Junior will soon be standing for election as a tribune of the soldiers. And if you are proscribed, we'll have to proscribe Messala Rufus too." Octavian got up. "Think well before you say anything, cousin, I do implore you." Quintus Pedius thought well. That night, after his household was asleep, he fell on his sword. Summoned at dawn, Octavian had firm words to say to Valeria Messala, weeping and distraught. And to her augur brother. "I will give out that Quintus Pedius died in his sleep, worn out by his consular duties. Please understand that I have cogent reasons for wanting his death so described. If you value your lives, the lives of your children, and your property, obey my wishes. You'll know why soon enough."

Antony entered the city in more state than Octavian, aware that his thunder was stolen. He wore his ornate armor and his leopard-skin cloak and tack on his new Public Horse, Clemency, was escorted by his guard of German cavalry, and was extremely pleased at his reception. Octavian had been right; the Roman people wanted no military conflict between factions. So when Lepidus entered the next day, he too was greeted joyously. Toward the end of November, Octavian resigned his consulship and was succeeded by two grizzled victims of the Italian War, Gaius Carrinas and Publius Ventidius. The moment the suffect consuls were installed, Publius Titius went to the Plebs. First he legislated the Triumvirate into official existence with the consent of every tribe, then enacted public-enemy laws that echoed Sulla's in almost every detail, from the rewards for information to the publicly posted list of the proscribed. One hundred and thirty names were on the first list, headed at Antony's request by Marcus Tullius Cicero. Most of the other men on it were already dead or fled; Brutus and Cassius were also named. The reason for proscription was "Liberator sympathies." The First and Second Classes were caught unawares and flew into a panic fueled by the arrest and execution of the tribune of the plebs Salvius as soon as the comitial meeting was over. The heads of the victims were not displayed, simply dumped with the bodies in the lime pits of the Campus Esquilinus necropolis. Octavian had persuaded Antony that a climate of terror was more endurable if visible reminders were not in evidence. The sole exception would be Cicero, if he was found still in Italy. Lepidus had proscribed his brother Paullus, Antony his uncle Lucius Caesar and Octavian cousins, though none was executed. A proviso not made for Pollio's father-in-law or Plancus's praetor brother, both killed. Three other proscribed praetors died, as did the tribune of the plebs Publius Appuleius, not as lucky as Gaius Casca, fled with his brother to the East. Vatinius's old legate, the unflagging Quintus Cornificius, went on the list and was executed. Atticus and the bankers had been privately informed that they were not to be proscribed, which did much to keep money from going into hiding, always a danger in trying times. The Treasury cells, empty of all but the precious gold and ten thousand talents of silver, began slowly to fill with the cash reserves and liquid investments of Lucius Caesar, several Appuleii, Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, the two assassin brothers Caecilius, the venerable consular Marcus Terentius Varro, the very wealthy Gaius Lucilius Hirrus, and hundreds more. Not everyone died. Quintus Fufius Calenus took in old Varro and defied the proscription authorities (the proscriptions were, as in Sulla's time, bureaucratically run) to kill him until he could get to Antony and secure his life. Lucilius Hirrus fled the country with his slaves and clients by fighting his way to the sea, and the town of Cales bolted its gates and refused to give up Publius Sittius's brother. Cato's beloved Marcus Favonius was proscribed, but managed to escape from Italy, as did others. Provided that the money was left behind, the Triumvirs didn't care deeply about the fate of the persons to whom it had belonged. Except, that is, for Cicero, whom Antony was determined to bring to a nasty end. Charged with this mission, the tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius Laenas (a very famous name) left Rome with a party of soldiers and a centurion, Herennius, to check Cicero's villas. The loyal Caesareans Quintus Cicero and his son had gone on the second proscription list, informed on by a slave who swore that their sentiments had changed, that they now were bent on fleeing the country to join the Liberators. So Laenas had three targets, though the great Marcus Cicero was by far the most important, must be attended to first.

The outcome of Octavian's second march on Rome had stunned Cicero, who had gone to the new senior consul and begged that he be excused from attending future meetings of the Senate. "I am tired and ill, Octavianus," he had explained, "and I would very much like to be able to go to my estates whenever I wish. Is that possible?" "Of course!" Octavian had said warmly. "If I can excuse my stepfather from meetings, I can certainly excuse you and Lucius Piso. Philippus and Piso are still suffering the aftermath of that terrible winter journey, you know." "I opposed the sending of that embassage." "Indeed you did. A pity the Senate ignored you." Looking at this beautiful young man, whose exterior had not changed one iota since landing in Brundisium all those months ago, Cicero suddenly realized that Octavian had dedicated himself to the pursuit of power at all costs. How had he ever deluded himself that he could influence this pitiless pillar of ice? Caesar had owned feelings, including a shocking temper, but Octavian mimed feelings. His likeness to Caesar was an acted-out sham. From that moment Cicero had abandoned all hope, even of persuading Brutus to come home. In his last letters Brutus had turned so critical and acerbic that Cicero felt no urge to write to him, apprise him what he thought of the consulship of Caesar Octavianus and Quintus Pedius. From his interview with the new senior consul, Cicero had gone at once to see Atticus. "I won't visit you again," he had said, "nor am I going to write to you. Truly, Titus, it is better this way, for both our sakes. Look after Pilia, little Attica and yourself. Do nothing to antagonize Octavianus! When he made himself consul, the Republic died for good. Neither Brutus nor Cassius nor even Marcus Antonius will prevail. Our old, clement master has had the last laugh. He knew exactly what he was doing when he made Octavianus his heir. Octavianus will complete his work, believe me." Atticus had gazed at him through a mist of tears. How old he was looking! Fallen away to skin and bone, those wonderful dark eyes as hunted as a deer's surrounded by baying wolves. Of the vast presence that had so dominated and awed Rome's law courts for forty years, nothing was left. When his dearest, most exasperating and impulsive friend had embarked upon that series of invectives aimed at Marcus Antonius, Atticus had hoped to see Cicero healed, back to normal after so many bitter disappointments, griefs, and that constant loneliness devoid of daughter and wife, of brotherly affection. But the advent of Octavianus had killed his revival; it is now Octavianus, thought Atticus, whom Cicero fears the most. "I shall miss our correspondence," Atticus had said, not knowing what else to say. "Not one of your letters to me isn't treasured and preserved." "Good. Publish them when you dare, please." "I will, Marcus, I will." After that, Cicero had retired completely from public life, nor wrote a single letter. When he learned of the triumviral pact in Bononia, he quit Rome, leaving the faithful Tiro behind to send him reports of everything that happened. First he went to Tusculum, but the old farmhouse was too full of memories of Tullia and Terentia and his pleasure-loving, martial son. Thank all the gods that young Marcus was now with Brutus! And pray to all the gods that Brutus would win! When Tiro sent an urgent note to tell him that proscription had come in and his was the first name on the list, he packed up and took the byways and lanes to his villa at Formiae, still using his litter, a painfully slow mode of transport, but the only one Cicero could bear. His intention was to take a ship from the nearest port, Caieta, to flee to Brutus or perhaps to Sextus Pompey in Sicily he wasn't sure, couldn't make up his mind. It seemed Fortuna favored him, for there was a ship for hire in Caieta harbor, and its master agreed to take him despite his proscribed status; the proscription notices had gone up in every town throughout Italy. "You're a special case, Marcus Cicero," the master said. "I can't condone the persecution of one of Rome's greatest men." But it was the beginning of December, and winter weather had arrived with gales, a little sleet; the ship put out to sea and was forced back inshore several times, though its master refused to give up, insisted they could make it at least to Sardinia. A terrible depression invaded Cicero, a weariness so draining that he understood its message: there was to be no leaving Italy for Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose very heartstrings were tied to it. "Put in to Caieta and set me ashore, he said. A servant was sent running to his villa, about a mile away upon the heights of Formiae, and returned three hours after dawn on the seventh day of December with Cicero's litter and bearers. Wet and shivering, Cicero climbed into its cushioned, welcoming shelter and lay back to wait for whatever was to come. I am going to die, but at least I will die in the country I have worked so hard and so often to save. I succeeded with that cur Catilina, but then Caesar ruined my victory with his speech I did not act unconstitutionally by executing Rome's enemies without a trial! Even Cato said as much. But Caesar's speech stuck like a burr, and some men looked at me with contempt ever after. Even so, life since has been a shadow, a phantasm, except for my speeches against Marcus Antonius. I am tired of living. I no longer want to endure life's cruelties, its travesties. Gaius Popillius Laenas and his men caught the litter on its slow ascent of the hill, dismounted and encircled it. The centurion Herennius drew his sword, two feet of razor-sharp, double-edged efficiency. Cicero poked his head out of the litter to look. "No, no!" he called to his servants. "Don't try to fight! Submit quietly and save your lives, please." Herennius approached him and raised the sword to the boiling, sullen sky. Gazing at it, Cicero noted that its shade of grey was duller, darker than the vault, and did not glitter. He put his palms upon the litter's margin and pushed his shoulders out of it, then extended his neck as much as he could manage. "Strike well," he said. The sword descended and took Cicero's head from his body in one neat blow; the stump gouted blood, the body tensed and did a short, recumbent dance as the head hit the muddy path and rolled a little distance, then stopped. The servants were keening and weeping, but Popillius Laenas's party ignored them. Herennius bent to pick up the head by its back hair, grown long so Cicero could comb it forward over his bald spot. A soldier produced a box, the head was dropped into it. Concentrating upon this, Laenas didn't notice two of his men haul the rapidly exsanguinating body out of the litter until he heard the scrape of swords coming out of scabbards. "Here, what do you think you're doing?" he asked. "Was he right- or left-handed?" a soldier demanded. Laenas looked blank. "I don't know," he said. "Then we'll cut off both his hands. One of them wrote awful things about Marcus Antonius." Laenas considered this, then nodded. "Go ahead. Put them in the box, then let's get moving." The men rode back to Rome without stopping, their horses foamed and blown by the time they reached Antony's palace on the Carinae, where a startled steward let them into the peristyle. Carrying the box, Laenas strode into the atrium to find Antony and Fulvia waiting, wrapped in night robes, blinking the last of sleep from their eyes. "You wanted this, I believe," said Popillius Laenas, giving Antony the box. Antony withdrew the head and held it up, laughing. "Got you at last, you vindictive old cunnus!" he shouted. Far from being revolted, Fulvia snatched at the head. "Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me!" she shrilled while Antony kept holding it just out of her reach, laughing and teasing. "My men brought you something else," said Laenas. "Look in the box, Marcus Antonius." So Fulvia succeeded in grabbing the head; Antony was busy removing and inspecting the two hands. "We didn't know if he was right- or left-handed, so we brought you both of them to be sure. As my men said, they wrote awful things about you." "You've earned an extra talent." Antony grinned. He glanced at Fulvia, who had put the head down on a console table and was busy scrabbling among its untidy contents scrolls, papers, ink, pens, wax tablets. "What are you doing?" he asked her. "Ah!" she exclaimed, holding up a steel stylus. Cicero's eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. Antony's wife thrust her long-nailed fingers between the lips and fished about, then squeaked with triumph and yanked. Out came Cicero's tongue, held by her nails. She took the thick strap of flesh in a harder hold and skewered it with the stylus, which lay athwart the mouth and kept the tongue protruding. "That's what I think of his gift of the gab," she said, eyeing her work with huge satisfaction. "Fix up a wooden frame and nail it to the rostra," Antony ordered Laenas. "The head in the middle, a hand to either side." So when Rome awoke at dawn, it saw Cicero's head and hands nailed to the rostra on a wooden frame. The Forum frequenters were devastated. Since his twelfth birthday Cicero had walked the flags of the Forum Romanum without rhetorical peer. The trials! The speeches! The sheer wonder of his words! "But," said one frequenter, mopping his tears, "dear Marcus Cicero is still champion of the Forum."

The two Quintus Cicerones perished shortly thereafter, though their heads were not displayed. What the divorced Pomponia felt, at least for her son, an appalled Rome soon learned. She kidnaped the slave who had informed on them and killed him by making him carve slices off his own body, broil them, and eat them.

The barbarity of Antony's revenge on Cicero did not sit well with Octavian, but, since there was nothing he could do about it, he made no reference to it in public or in private; he simply avoided Antony's company whenever possible. When he had first set eyes on Claudia, he had thought that perhaps he could learn to love her, for she was very pretty, very dark (he liked dark women), and suitably virginal. But after he saw Cicero's skewered tongue and listened to Fulvia's describing the pleasure she had taken in doing this particular indignity to Cicero's flesh, Octavian decided that Claudia was not going to bear any children of his. "Therefore," he said to Maecenas, "she will be my wife in name only. Find six big, strapping German women slaves and make sure that Claudia is never left alone. I want her a virgin against the day when I can return her to Antonius and her vulgar harpy of a mother." "You're sure?" asked Maecenas, knitting his brows. "Believe me, Gaius, I would as soon touch a decayed black dog as any daughter of Fulvia's!" Because Philippus chose to die on the same day, the wedding itself was a very quiet affair; Atia and Octavia couldn't come, and the moment the ceremony was over, Octavian joined his mother and sister, leaving his wife alone with her German guards. The bereavement gave him an excellent excuse for not consummating the marriage. But as time went on it became obvious to Claudia that consummation was unlikely to occur at all. She found her husband's attitude and her guards inexplicable; on meeting him, she had thought him handsome, alluringly aloof. Now she lived as a virtual prisoner, untouched and apparently undesired. "What do you expect me to do about it?" Fulvia asked when appealed to for help. "Mama, take me home!" "I can't do that. You're a peace offering between Antonius and your husband." "But he doesn't want me! He doesn't even talk to me!" "That sometimes happens with arranged marriages." Fulvia got up, chucked her daughter under the chin bracingly. "He'll come to his senses in time, girl. Wait him out." "Ask Marcus Antonius to intercede for me!" Claudia pleaded. "I'll do no such thing. He's far too busy to be bothered with trivialities." And off went Fulvia, absorbed in her latest family; Clodius had been a long time ago. With no one left to whom she could appeal, Claudia had no choice other than to suffer her existence, which did improve after Octavian bought Quintus Hortensius's enormous old mansion at the proscription auctions. Its size allowed her a suite of rooms to herself, which removed her entirely from Octavian's vicinity; youth being resilient, she made friends of her German women, and set out to have as happy a life as a married virgin could.

Octavian was not sleeping alone. He had taken a mistress. Never plagued by strong sexual impulses, the youngest of the Triumvirs had contented himself with masturbation until after his marriage, when the perceptive and subtle Maecenas took a hand. It was high time, he decided, that Octavian had a woman. So he cruised the premises of Mercurius Stichus, famous for his sex slaves, and found Octavian's ideal woman. A girl of twenty who had a small boy child, she hailed from Cilicia, had been the toy of a pirate chieftain in Pamphylia, and bore the name of Sappho, just like the poet. Ravishingly pretty, dark of hair and eye, round and cuddly, she had, said Mercurius Stichus, a sweet nature. Maecenas brought her home and popped her into Octavian's bed on his first night in Hortensius's old mansion. The ploy worked; there was no disgrace in a slave, no possibility of her gaining ascendancy over a master like Octavian. He liked her docile submission, he appreciated her situation, he let her have time with her child, he esteemed the new maturity taking sexual liberties gave him. In fact, were it not for Sappho, Octavian's life during the early days of the Triumvirate would have been extremely unpleasant. Controlling Antony was always difficult, sometimes as in the affair of Cicero's death impossible. The proscription auctions weren't fetching nearly enough, and it fell to Octavian to cull the informants' lists to see who had sufficient ready money to warrant posting as a Liberator sympathizer. Additional taxes had to be found, hints dropped to the inviolate plutocrats and bankers that they had better start giving large donations toward buying grain, the price of which kept spiraling. Not very many days into December, all the Classes from First to Fifth discovered that they had to pay the state a year's income in cash forthwith. But even that wasn't enough. At the end of December the tribune of the plebs Lucius Clodius, a creature of Antony's, brought in a lex Clodia that compelled all women who were sui iuris in control of their own money to pay a year's income forthwith. This annoyed Hortensia very much. The widow of Cato's half brother Caepio and the mother of Caepio's only daughter (married to the son of Ahenobarbus), Hortensia had inherited far more of her father's famous rhetorical skills than had her brother, now proscribed because he had offered Macedonia to Brutus. With Cicero's widow, Terentia, and a group of women who included Marcia, Pomponia, Fabia the ex-Chief Vestal, and Calpurnia, Hortensia marched into the Forum and mounted the rostra, the others in her wake. And there they stood, wearing chain mail shirts, helmets on their heads, shields at rest on the ground, swords in their hands. Such an extraordinary sight that every Forum frequenter collected; so too, though at first it wasn't remarked upon, did a great many women from all walks of life, including a good number of professional whores in flame-colored togas, gaudy wigs and paint. "I am a Roman citizen!" Hortensia roared in a voice that was audible in the Porticus Margaritaria. "I am also a woman! A woman of the First Class! And what exactly does that mean? Why, that I go to my marriage bed a virgin, and then become the chattel of my husband! Who can execute me for unchastity, though I cannot reproach him for having sex with other women or men! And when I am widowed, I am not supposed to marry again. Instead, I must depend upon the charity of my family to house me, for under the lex Voconia I cannot inherit any fortunes, and if my husband wants to plunder my dowry, it is very hard to prevent him!" Boom! came the sound of the flat of her sword against the boss of her shield; the audience jumped. "That is the lot of a woman of the First Class! But how would it differ were I a woman of a lower Class, or if I had no Class at all? I would still be a Roman citizen! I would still be a virgin when I went to my marriage bed, and I would still be the chattel of my husband! I would still have to depend upon the charity of my family when I was widowed. But at least I would have the opportunity to espouse more than a man! I could espouse a profession, a trade, a craft. I could earn a living for myself as a painter or a carpenter, a physician or a herbalist. I could sell the produce of my garden or my hen house. If I wished, I could sell my body by working as a whore. I could save a little of what I earned and put it away for my old age!" Boom! This time all the swords on the rostra thumped the shield bosses; the female segment of the audience stood rapt, the male segment scandalized. "Therefore, as a Roman citizen and a woman, I feel entitled to register the outrage of every Roman citizen woman who earns an income of any kind and has the power to control her income! I stand here on behalf of my own First Class, whose income is derived from dowry or meager inheritance, and on behalf of all those women of lower Class or no Class whose income is derived from eggs! vegetables! plumbing! painting! construction! whoredom! et cetera, et cetera! For all of us are to lose a year's income to fund the insanities of Roman men! Insanities I say, and insanities I mean!" Boom! Boom! Boom! This time the swords on shields were joined by the cymbals of whores, the feet of women in the crowd, and went on longer. The Forum frequenters looked angrier and angrier, were growling and shaking their fists. Up went Hortensia's sword, waved around her head. "Do the citizen women of Rome vote?" she yelled. "Do we elect magistrates? Do we vote for or against laws? Did we have a chance to vote against this disgraceful lex Clodia that says we must pay a year's income to the Treasury? No, we did not have a chance to vote against this insanity! An insanity sponsored by a trio of smug, privileged, moronic men named Marcus Antonius, Caesar Octavianus and Marcus Lepidus! If Rome wants to tax us, then Rome must give us the franchise as well as citizenship! If Rome wants to tax us, then Rome will have to let us vote for magistrates, vote for or against laws!" Up went the sword again, this time joined by all the other swords, and accompanied by shrill cheers from the listening women, howls of rage from the listening Forum frequenters. "And just how are the idiots who run Rome going to collect this iniquitous tax?" Hortensia demanded. "The men of the five Classes are enrolled by the censors, their incomes written down! But we Roman citizen women aren't entered on any rolls, are we? So how are the idiots who run Rome going to decide what our incomes are? Is some brute of a Treasury agent going to stride up to some poor little old woman in the marketplace selling her embroideries or her lamp wicks or her eggs, and ask her what she earns in a year? Or, even worse, arbitrarily decide what she earns on the evidence of his own bigoted misogynism? Are we to be badgered and bullied, browbeaten and bludgeoned? Are we? Are we?" "No!" screamed several thousand female throats. "No, no!" The male throats were suddenly silent; it had suddenly dawned on the Forum frequenters that they were shockingly outnumbered. "I should think not! All of us standing on the rostra are widows Caesar's widow, Cato's widow, Cicero's widow among us! Did Caesar tax women? Did Cato tax women? Did Cicero tax women? No, they did not! Cicero and Cato and Caesar understood that women have no public voice! The only power at law we have is the right to own our little bit of money free and clear, and now this lex Clodia is going to strip us even of that! Well, we refuse to pay this tax! Not one sestertius! Unless we are accorded different rights the right to vote, the right to sit in the Senate, the right to stand for election as magistrates!" Her voice was drowned in a huge cheer. "And what of the Triumvir Marcus Antonius's wife, Fulvia?" thundered Hortensia, eyes noting the entire College of Lictors appear at the back of the crowd and start to push their way toward the rostra. "Fulvia is the richest woman in Rome, and sui iuris! But is she to pay this tax? No! No, she is not! Why? Because she's given Rome seven children! By, I add, three of the most reprehensible villains ever to mount a rostra or a woman! While we, who obeyed the mos maiorum and remained widowed, are to pay!" She strode to the edge of the rostra and thrust her face at the lictors, nearing the front. "Don't you dare try to arrest us!" she roared. "Go back to your masters and tell them from Quintus Hortensius's daughter that the sui iuris women of Rome from highest to lowest will not pay this tax! Will not pay it! Go on, shoo! Shoo, shoo!" The women in the crowd took it up: "Shoo! Shoo!"

"I'll have the sow proscribed! I'll proscribe all the sows!" snarled Antony, livid. "You will not!" snapped Lepidus. "You'll do nothing!" "And say nothing," Octavian growled.

The next day a red-faced Lucius Clodius went back to the Plebeian Assembly to repeal his law and bring in a new one that compelled every sui iuris woman in Rome, including Fulvia, to pay the Treasury one-thirtieth of her income. But it was never enforced.

XII

East Of The Adriatic

From JANUARY until DECEMBER of 43 B.C.

After an arduous winter passage across the Candavian mountains, Brutus and his little force arrived outside Dyrrachium on the third day of January. Ordered down from Salona by Mark Antony, the governor of Illyricum, Publius Vatinius, had occupied Petra camp with one legion. Nothing daunted, Brutus moved his troops into one of the many fortresses dotting the circumvallations built five years ago when Caesar and Pompey the Great had waged siege war there. But Brutus's action proved hardly necessary. Not four days later Vatinius's soldiers opened the gates of Petra camp and went over to Brutus. Their commander Vatinius, they said, had already gone back to Illyricum. Suddenly Brutus owned a force of three legions and two hundred cavalrymen! No one was more surprised than he, no one less sure how to general an army. However, he did understand that fifteen thousand men required the services of a praefectus fabrum to ensure that they were kept fed and equipped, so he wrote to his old friend, the banker Gaius Flavius Hemicillus, who had done this duty for Pompey the Great would he do the same for Marcus Brutus? That out of the way, the new warlord decided to move south to Apollonia, where sat the official governor of Macedonia, Gaius Antonius. And money just fell into his lap! First came the quaestor of Asia Province, young Lentulus Spinther, carrying its tributes to the Treasury; no lover of Mark Antony, Spinther promptly turned the cash over to Brutus and returned to his boss, Gaius Trebonius, to tell him that the Liberators were not going to lie down tamely after all. No sooner had Spinther departed than the quaestor of Syria, Gaius Antistius Vetus, arrived en route to Rome with Syria's tributes. He too turned the cash over to Brutus, then elected to stay who knew what was going on in Syria? Nicer by far in Macedonia. In mid January the city of Apollonia surrendered without a fight, its legions announcing that they much preferred Brutus to the loathesome Gaius Antonius. Though men like young Cicero and Antistius Vetus urged Brutus to execute this least talented and unluckiest of the three Antonian brothers, Brutus refused. Instead, he allowed the captive Gaius Antonius the run of his camp, and treated him with great courtesy. Brutus's cup ran over when Crete, originally senatorially assigned to him, and Cyrenaica, originally assigned to Cassius, both notified him that they were content to function in the interests of the Liberators, if in return they might be sent proper governors. Brutus delightedly obliged. Now he had six legions, six hundred horse, and no less than three provinces Macedonia, Crete and Cyrenaica. Almost before he could assimilate this bounty, Greece, Epirus and coastal Thrace declared for him. Amazing! Oozing content, Brutus wrote to the Senate in Rome and let it know these facts, with the result that on the Ides of February the Senate officially confirmed him as governor of all these territories, then added Vatinius's province of Illyricum to his tally. He was now governor of almost half the Roman East! At which moment came news from Asia Province. Dolabella, he learned, had tortured and beheaded Gaius Trebonius in Smyrna, an horrific deed. Oh, but what had happened to the gallant Lentulus Spinther? Shortly thereafter he received a letter from Spinther telling him that Dolabella had pounced in Ephesus and tried to find out where Trebonius had hidden the province's money. But Spinther had played dense and stupid so well that the frustrated Dolabella simply ordered him to get out before moving on into Cappadocia. Brutus was now in a fever of apprehension over Cassius, from whom he had heard nothing. He wrote to various places warning Cassius that Dolabella was bearing down on Syria, but had no idea whether or not they reached their target. Through all of this, Cicero was writing to beg Brutus to return to Italy, a tempting alternative now that he was in official favor. In the end, however, Brutus decided that the best thing he could do was to retain control of the Roman land route east across Macedonia and Thrace the Via Egnatia. Then if Cassius needed him, he could march to his assistance. By now he had a trusty little band of noble followers who included Ahenobarbus's son, Cicero's son, Lucius Bibulus, the son of the great Lucullus by Servilia's younger sister, and yet another defecting quaestor, Marcus Appuleius. Though most were in their twenties, some barely that old, Brutus made them all legates, distributed them through his legions, and counted himself very fortunate.

The worst of not being in Italy was the uncertainty of the news from Rome. A dozen people were writing to Brutus regularly, but what each had to say conflicted with what everyone else said. Their perspectives were different, sometimes contradictory; often they tendered mere rumors as incontrovertible fact. After the deaths of Pansa and Hirtius on the battlefield in Italian Gaul, he was told that Cicero would be the new senior consul with the nineteen-year-old Octavianus as his junior. This was followed by an assurance that Cicero already was consul! Time proved that none of it was true, but how was he to know fact from fiction at this removed distance? Porcia badgered him with tales of her woes at Servilia's hands, Servilia sent him an infrequent, curt missive informing him that his wife was a madwoman, Cicero protested that he wasn't consul nor would be consul, but that too many honors were being heaped upon young Octavianus. So when the Senate itself ordered Brutus back to Rome, Brutus ignored the directive. Who was telling the truth? What was the truth? Unappreciative of Brutus's courtesy, Gaius Antonius was giving trouble, had taken to donning his purple-bordered toga and haranguing Brutus's soldiers about his unjust captivity, his governor's status. When Brutus forbade Gaius Antonius to wear his purple-bordered toga, he switched to a plain white one and went right on haranguing. Which forced Brutus to confine him to his quarters and set a guard on him. So far he hadn't impressed the troops, but Brutus was too insecure a commander to let him be. When big brother Mark Antony sent crack troops to Macedonia to extricate Gaius, they went over to Brutus instead; his tally was now seven legions and a thousand horse! Bolstered by his military strength, Brutus decided that it was time he headed east to rescue Cassius from Dolabella. Behind him in Apollonia he left the original Macedonian legion as a garrison; Antony's brother he left in the custody of Gaius Clodius, one of the very many Clodiuses of that wayward patrician clan, Claudia. Having started his march from Apollonia on the Ides of May, he reached the Hellespont toward the end of June, an indication that he wasn't a swift mover. The Hellespont crossed, he made for Nicomedia, the capital of Bithynia, where he ensconced himself in the governor's palace. His fellow Liberator, the governor Lucius Tillius Cimber, had picked up his traps and moved east to Pontus, and Cimber's Liberator quaestor, Decimus Turullius, had mysteriously disappeared; no one, thought Brutus wryly, wants to become involved in a civil war. Then came a letter from Servilia.

I have some bad news for you, even if it is good news for me. Porcia is dead. As I told you in earlier correspondence, she had not been well since your departure. I gather that others have told you this also. First she began to neglect her appearance, then to refuse to eat. When I promised her that I would have her tied down and fed by force if necessary, she relented and ate enough to keep living, though every bone ended in showing. Next came bouts of talking to herself. She wandered around the house jabbering and gibbering about what, no one could tell. Nonsense, pure nonsense. Though I was having her closely watched, I confess that she was too cunning for me. I mean, how could one ever guess why she asked for a brazier? It was three days after the Ides of June, and the weather was on the cool side. I simply assumed that starvation caused her to feel cold. Certainly she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering. Her servant Sylvia found her dead about an hour after the fire tripod was delivered to her sitting room. She had eaten red-hot coals, still had one in her hand. Apparently the kind of food she craved, wouldn't you say? I have her ashes, but am not sure what you want to do with them mix them with Cato's now they're finally home from Utica, or save them to mix with your own? Or just build a tomb for her alone? You can pay for it if that is your wish.

Brutus dropped the letter as if it too burned, eyes wide but vision turned inward. Watching inside his mind as Servilia tied his wife to a chair, jacked her mouth wide open, and forced the coals down her throat. Oh, yes, Mama, it was you. You conceived the idea out of your threat to force-feed my poor tormented girl. Its horrific cruelty would have appealed to you you are the cruelest person I know. Do you think me a fool, Mama? No one, no matter how mad, can commit suicide that way. Bodily reflexes alone would prevent it. You tied her down and fed them to her. The agony! Oh, Porcia, my pillar of flame! My dearly beloved, core of my being. Cato's daughter, so full of courage, so alive, so passionate. He didn't weep. He didn't even destroy the letter. Instead he walked out on to the balcony overlooking that mirrored sound of water and stared sightlessly at the forested hill on its far side. I curse you, Mama. May you be visited daily by the Furies. May you never again know a moment's peace. A comfort for me to know that Aquila your lover died at Mutina, but you never cared for him. Leaving aside Caesar, the ruling passion of your entire life has been your hatred of Cato, your own brother. But your killing Porcia is a signal to me. That you do not expect ever to see me again. That you deem my cause hopeless and my chances of success nonexistent. For if I ever did see you again, I would tie you down and feed you hot coals.

* * *

When King Deiotarus sent Brutus a legion of infantry and said that he would do whatever lay in his power to aid the Liberators, Brutus wrote (vainly, as it turned out) to all the cities of Asia Province and demanded that they give him troops, ships and money. From Bithynia he asked two hundred warships and fifty transports, but there was no one to implement his request, nor would the local socii co-operate; Cimber's quaestor, Turullius, he now discovered, had taken everything the province could offer and gone to serve Cassius. News from Rome continued to be alarming: Mark Antony was a second-class public enemy, so was Lepidus. Then Gaius Clodius, the legate Brutus had left in charge of Apollonia, wrote to tell Brutus that he had heard for absolute certain that Mark Antony was in the act of mounting a full-scale invasion of western Macedonia to rescue his brother. Clodius's response had been to lock himself and the Legio Macedonica inside Apollonia and to kill Gaius Antonius. His logic was impeccably Clodian: once Antony learned that his brother was dead, he'd cancel his invasion. Oh, Gaius Clodius, why did you do that? Marcus Antonius is inimicus, he's in no position to mount any rescue invasions! Terrified nonetheless of what Antony might do when he found out that his brother was dead, Brutus put some of his legions into camp along the river Granicus in Bithynia, and ordered the rest to march back into the west as far as Thessalonica while he himself raced ahead to see exactly what was happening on the Adriatic coast of Macedonia. Nothing. When he reached Apollonia late in Julius, he found the Legio Macedonica enthusiastically investigating reported landings of Antonian troops here, there, and everywhere. "But every last report is spurious," said Gaius Clodius. "Clodius, you should not have executed Gaius Antonius!" "Of course I should," said Gaius Clodius, unrepentant. "In my view, the world is well rid of the cunnus. Besides, as I said to you in my letter, I was sure that if Marcus knew his brother was dead, he wouldn't bother trying to rescue a corpse. And I was right." Brutus threw his hands in the air who could reason with a Clodius? They were all mad. So he backtracked east again to Thessalonica, where he found his legions and Gaius Flavius Hemicillus already at work. Cassius was finally in contact, informing the astonished Brutus that Syria was uncontestably his. Dolabella was dead, and he was planning to invade Egypt and punish its queen for not helping him. That would take two months, said Cassius, after which he would start mounting an expedition to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians. Those seven Roman Eagles taken from Crassus at Carrhae had to be wrested from their pedestals in Ecbatana. "Cassius's work is cut out for him for some time to come," said Hemicillus, one of those people noble Rome could produce by the dozens: meticulous, efficient, logical, canny. "While he is so engaged, it would benefit your troops greatly if you were to blood them in a small campaign." "A small campaign?" Brutus asked warily. "Yes, against the Thracian Bessi." It turned out that Hemicillus had befriended a Thracian prince named Rhascupolis, whose tribe was subject to King Sadala of the Bessi, the major people of inland Thrace. "I want," said Rhascupolis, introduced to Brutus, "independent status for my tribe and the title Friend and Ally of the Roman People. In return for that, I will help you conduct a successful war against the Bessi." "But they're fearsome warriors," Brutus objected. "Indeed they are, Marcus Brutus. However, they have their weaknesses, and I know every one of them. Use me as your mentor, and I promise you victory over the Bessi within a single month, as well as plenty of spoils," said Rhascupolis. Like other coastal Thracians, Rhascupolis did not look like a barbarian; he wore proper clothes, was not tattooed, spoke Attic Greek, and conducted himself like any other civilized man. "Are you the chieftain of your tribe, Rhascupolis?" Brutus asked, sensing that something was being withheld. "I am, but I have an older brother, Rhascus, who thinks he should be chieftain," Rhascupolis confessed. "And where is this Rhascus?" "Gone, Marcus Brutus. He is not a danger." Nor was he. Brutus led his legions into the heart of Thrace, a huge area of country between the Danubius and Strymon Rivers and the Aegean Sea, more lowland than highland, and, as he soon learned, capable of producing wheat even in the midst of this drought, which seemed to exist almost everywhere. Feeding his troops had become an expensive exercise, but with the Bessi grain in his enormous cavalcade of ox wagons, Brutus could look forward to winter in better spirits. The campaign had lasted throughout the month of Sextilis, and at the end of it Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's unmartial paper shuffler, had blooded his army with minimal losses. That army had hailed him imperator on the field, which entitled him to celebrate a triumph; King Sadala had made his submission, and would walk in his parade. Rhascupolis became undisputed ruler of Thrace, was assured that he would receive Friend and Ally status as soon as the Senate answered Brutus's communication. It did not occur either to Rhascupolis or to Brutus to wonder what had become of Rhascus, the older brother ejected from the chieftainship. Nor, for the moment, did Rhascus, safe in hiding, intend to tell them that his mind was applied to the problem of how to become King Rhascus of Thrace.

Brutus crossed the Hellespont for the second time that year around the middle of September, and picked up the legions he had left camped along the Granicus River. Then he heard that Octavian and Quintus Pedius were the new consuls, and wrote frantically to Cassius, urging him to abandon any campaigns against Egypt or the Parthians. What he had to do was march north and join their forces, said Brutus, for with the monstrous Octavian in control of Rome, everything had changed. A destructive child had been given the world's biggest and most complex toy to play with. In Nicomedia, Brutus learned that the Liberator governor, Lucius Tillius Cimber, had marched from Pontus to join Cassius, but had left Brutus a fleet of sixty warships. So Brutus set out for Pergamum, where he demanded tribute, though he made no attempt to tamper with Caesar's dispositions anent Mithridates of Pergamum, who was allowed to keep his little fiefdom provided that he made a hefty donation to Brutus's hungry war chest. Caught, Mithridates gave the hefty donation. Brutus finally arrived in Smyrna in November, there to sit himself down and wait for Cassius. All the ready money in Asia Province had long gone; there remained only temple wealth in the form of gold or silver statuary, objects of arts, plate. Stifling his qualms, Brutus confiscated everything from everywhere, melted his loot down and minted coins. If Caesar, he thought, could put his profile on coins minted during his lifetime, so too could Marcus Brutus. Thus Brutus's coins displayed his profile, with various laudations of the Ides of March on their reverse sides: a cap of liberty, a dagger, the words EID MAR. More and more men had joined his cause. Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus a son of Messala Niger arrived in Smyrna with Lucius Gellius Poplicola, once Antony's intimate. The Casca brothers appeared; so did Tiberius Claudius Nero, Caesar's least favorite incompetent, accompanied by a close Claudian relative, Marcus Livius Drusus Nero. Importantly, Sextus Pompey, who controlled the seas west of Greece, had indicated that he would not hinder the Liberators. The only staff problem Brutus had was Labienus's son, Quintus, who bade fair to outdo his father when it came to barbaric savagery. What, asked Brutus of himself, am I to do with Quintus Labienus before his conduct ruins me? It was Hemicillus gave an answer: "Send him to the court of the King of the Parthians as your ambassador," said the banker. "He'll feel right at home there." So Brutus did, a decision that was to have far-reaching consequences in the fairly distant future. Of more concern was the news that the consuls in Rome had tried all the Liberators, who were now nefas, stripped of their citizenships and property; the Casca brothers had brought it. There could be no going back now, no hope of reaching an accommodation with Octavian's Senate.

2

By the middle of January, Cassius owned six legions and the province of Syria save only for Apameia, wherein the rebel Caecilius Bassus was still holed up. Then Bassus threw open the gates of Apameia and offered Cassius his two good legions, which swelled Cassius's army to eight. The moment each district in the province learned that the legendary Gaius Cassius was back, local faction fighting ceased. Antipater came hurrying from Judaea to assure Cassius that the Jews were on his side, and was sent back to Jerusalem under orders to raise money and make sure that no hostile elements among the Jews made trouble. They had always favored Caesar, a Jew lover; Cassius was no Jew lover, but intended to make full use of this awkward, fractious people. When news reached Antipater that Aulus Allienus, sent to obtain Alexandria's four legions for Dolabella, was on the march north with these troops, he immediately couriered word to Cassius in Antioch. Cassius came south, met Antipater, and together they had no trouble persuading Allienus to surrender his four legions. Cassius's army now held twelve experienced legions and four thousand horsemen, the best force in the Roman world. Did he have ships, his happiness would have been unalloyed, but he had no ships at all. Or so he thought. Unbeknownst to him, young Lentulus Spinther had met up with the admirals Patiscus, Sextilius Rufus and the Liberator Cassius Parmensis, and gone to war against the fleets of Dolabella, in full sail for Syria. Dolabella himself had marched overland through Cappadocia: when he crossed the Amanus and entered Syria, he had no idea that Spinther, Patiscus and the others were busy defeating his fleets, then commandeering most of the vessels for Cassius's use. The horrified Dolabella found every hand in Syria turned against him; even Antioch shut its gates and announced that it belonged to Gaius Cassius, Syria's true governor. Grinding his teeth, Dolabella flounced off to make an offer to the elders of the port city of Laodiceia: if Laodiceia gave Dolabella aid and sanctuary, he would make it Syria's capital once he had taught Cassius a much-needed lesson. The elders accepted with alacrity. While he went to work fortifying Laodiceia, Dolabella sent agents to suborn Cassius's troops to no avail. Every soldier hewed stoutly to his hero, Gaius Cassius. Who was this Dolabella? A brawling drunkard who had tortured a Roman governor, beheaded him.

April saw Cassius still in ignorance of the maritime success Spinther and the others were enjoying. Sure that Dolabella would soon be possessed of hundreds of ships, Cassius sent envoys to Queen Cleopatra to demand a huge fleet of warships and transports from Egypt, to be delivered to Cassius yesterday. Cleopatra's reply was in the negative: Egypt was in the throes of famine and pestilence, she said, therefore in no position to help. Her regent on Cyprus did send ships, as did Tyre and Aradus in Phoenicia but not enough to content Cassius, who resolved to invade Egypt and show its Caesarean queen that a Liberator was not to be taken lightly.

Sure that his fleets would arrive soon, and sure too that Mark Antony was even then sending him additional troops, Dolabella barricaded himself inside Laodiceia. He had no idea that Antony was now inimicus rather than the proconsul of Italian Gaul. Laodiceia stood on the swollen end of a bulbous promontory connected to the Syrian mainland by an isthmus only four hundred yards wide. Which made the city extremely difficult to besiege. Dolabella's legions were camped outside its walls, a section of which was torn down and re-erected across the isthmus. And by mid-May a few ships began to turn up, their masters assuring Dolabella that the great bulk of them weren't far behind. But nobody really knew what anybody else was doing, which contributed as much to the fortunes of the war in Syria as any brilliant feats of command. Spinther had gone to the Pamphylian city of Perge to pick up the dead Trebonius's cache of money for Cassius, while his colleagues Patiscus, Sextilius Rufus and Cassius Parmensis chased Dolabella's fleets off the high seas. A state of affairs neither Dolabella nor Cassius knew about as Cassius brought a segment of his army up to Laodiceia; he went to work to build an awesome rampart across the isthmus just outside Dolabella's wall, which it overlooked. That done, he put artillery atop it and bombarded Dolabella's camp remorselessly. At which moment Cassius finally discovered that he owned all the fleets. Cassius Parmensis arrived with a flotilla of quinqueremes, broke the chain on Laodiceia's harbor, entered, and sent every ship of Dolabella's moored inside to the bottom. Blockade was now complete. No supplies could reach Laodiceia. Starvation set in, as did disease, but the city held out until the beginning of Julius, when the day commander of Dolabella's wall opened the doors and gates in it to admit Cassius's troops. By the time they reached Laodiceia itself, Publius Cornelius Dolabella was dead by his own hand. Syria now belonged to Cassius from the Egyptian border to the Euphrates River, beyond which the Parthians skulked, unsure what was going on, and unwilling to invade with Cassius around. Amazed at his good fortune but positive that it was well deserved Cassius wrote to Rome and to Brutus, his mood soaring until he felt himself invincible. He was better than Caesar.

Now, however, he had to find the money to keep his enterprise going, not an easy matter in a province denuded first by Pompey the Great's Metellus Scipio, then by Caesar in retaliation. He adopted Caesar's technique, demanding the same sum from a city or district as it had paid to Pompey, knowing very well that he was not going to get anything like the amounts stipulated. However, when he settled for less, he appeared a merciful, temperate man. Having been so loyal to Caesar, the Jews were hit hardest. Cassius demanded seven hundred talents of gold, which the people of Judaea just didn't have. Crassus had stolen their gold from the Great Temple, and no Roman since had given them the chance to accumulate more. Antipater did what he could, dividing the task of obtaining the bullion between his sons Phasael and Herod, and one Malichus, a secret supporter of a faction determined to rid Judaea of King Hyrcanus and his Idumaean sycophant Antipater. Of the three collectors, Herod did best. He took one hundred talents of gold to Cassius in Damascus, presenting himself to the governor in a humble, charming fashion. Cassius remembered him well from his earlier days in Syria; then a youth, Herod had nonetheless made an impression, and Cassius was fascinated now to see how the ugly young man had turned out. He found he liked the wily Idumaean, doomed never to qualify as king because his mother was a gentile. A pity, thought Cassius. Herod was an ardent advocate of Rome's presence in the East, and would have made loyal allies out of the Jews did he rule them. For at least Rome was akin to Judaea; the alternative, rule by the King of the Parthians, was more hideous by far. The other two gold raisers did poorly. Antipater was able to scrape together enough to make Phasael's contribution look respectable, but Malichus failed miserably because Malichus wasn't about to give the Romans anything. Determined to show that he meant business, Cassius summoned Malichus to Damascus and condemned him to death. Antipater came hurrying with a further hundred talents and begged Cassius not to carry out the sentence; the mollified Cassius spared Malichus, whom Antipater bore back to Jerusalem, unaware that Malichus had wanted to be a martyr. Some communities, like Gompha, Laodiceia, Emmaus and Thamna were sacked and razed to the ground, their peoples sent to the slave markets of Sidon and Antioch. All of which meant that Cassius now had the leisure to think about invading Egypt. This was not merely to punish its queen; it was also due to the fact that Egypt was said to be the richest country on the face of the globe, except perhaps for the Kingdom of the Parthians. In Egypt, thought Cassius, he would find the funds to rule Rome. Brutus? Brutus could be the head of his bureaucracy. Cassius no longer believed in the Republican cause, he deemed it deader than Caesar. He, Gaius Cassius Longinus, would be the King of Rome. Then he got Brutus's letter.

Terrible news from Rome, Cassius. I am sending this at the gallop in the hope that it reaches you before you set out to invade Egypt. That is now quite impossible. Octavianus and Quintus Pedius are consuls. Octavianus marched on Rome and the city gave in without a murmur. It seems likely that there will be civil war between them and Antonius, who has allied himself with the governors of the western provinces. Antonius and Lepidus are both outlawed, and the Liberators tried and condemned nefas in Octavianus's court. All our property is forfeit, though Atticus writes assuring me that he is looking after Servilia, Tertulla and Junilla. Vatia Isauricus and Junia will have nothing to do with them. Decimus Brutus is defeated in Italian Gaul and has fled, no one knows where. This is our best opportunity to win Rome. If Antonius and Octavianus should patch up their differences (though I admit that does not seem likely), then we will spend the rest of our lives outlawed. Therefore I say that if you haven't yet started for Egypt, don't. We have to stick together and make a move to take Italy and Rome. We might have been able to conciliate Antonius one day, but Octavianus? Never. Caesar's heir is obdurate, all the Liberators must die disenfranchised and poverty-stricken. Leave what legions you deem necessary to garrison Syria in your absence and march to join me as soon as you can. I conquered the Bessi and have a great quantity of grain and other foodstuffs, so our combined army will eat. Some parts of Bithynia and Pontus have also produced crops, which will belong to us, not to Octavianus to keep Rome pacified. I hear that Italy and the West are as dry as all Greece, Africa and Macedonia. We must act now, Cassius, while we can feed our men and while we still have money in our war chests. Porcia is dead. My mother says suicide. I am desolate.

Cassius wrote back immediately. Yes, he would march for Asia Province, probably inland through Cappadocia and Galatia. Was it Brutus's intention to go to war against Octavianus and then hope to make a deal with Antonius? An answer came swiftly: yes, that was what Brutus hoped to do. March at once, we will meet in Smyrna in December. Send as many ships as possible. Cassius picked his two best legions and sat them down, one in Antioch, one in Damascus, then appointed his loyalest follower, an ex-centurion named Fabius, as temporary governor. Leaving noblemen to govern, in Cassius's experience, only meant trouble. A sentiment Caesar would have echoed heartily. Just before he left the vicinity of Antioch to head north, he learned from Herod that the ingrate Malichus had poisoned his benefactor Antipater in Jerusalem, and rejoiced in his deed. "I have him prisoner," wrote Herod. "What shall I do?" "Have your revenge" was Cassius's answer. Herod did. He took the fanatically Judaic Malichus to Tyre, home of the purple-dye industry and home of the hated god Baal. Therefore a religiously anathematic place to a Jew. Two of Cassius's soldiers led the naked and barefoot Malichus out into the middle of a stinking mass of putrefying shellfish carcasses, and there very slowly killed him while Herod watched. The body was left to rot among the murex. Learning of Herod's revenge on Malichus, Cassius laughed softly. Oh, Herod, you are a very interesting man! At the pass through the Amanus range called the Syrian Gates, Tillius Cimber, the Liberator governor of Bithynia and Pontus, joined Cassius with a legion of Pontic troops. That brought the army up to eleven legions, plus three thousand cavalry as many horses as the practical Cassius thought the countryside would bear this side of grassy Galatia.

Cimber and Cassius agreed that their progress would have to be leisurely enough to squeeze as much money as possible out of every land they traversed. In Tarsus they fined the city the fantastic sum of fifteen hundred gold talents, and insisted that it be paid before they left. The terrified city councillors melted down every precious object in the temples, then sold the free Tarsian poor into slavery; even that didn't begin to approach the sum, so they went on selling Tarsians into slavery, ascending the social ladder. When they managed to gather five hundred gold talents, Cassius and Cimber pronounced themselves satisfied and departed up through the Cilician Gates to Cappadocia. They had sent their cavalry on ahead to demand money from Ariobarzanes, who said flatly that he had none, and pointed to the holes in his doors and window shutters where once golden nails had resided. The old king was killed on the spot and his palace plus the temples of Eusebeia Mazaca plundered to little effect. Deiotarus of Galatia donated infantry and cavalry as his share, then stood aside and watched his temples and palace pillaged. You can tell, he thought wearily, that Brutus and Cassius are in the moneylending business. Nothing is sacred except money. At the beginning of December, Cassius, Cimber and the army entered Asia Province through the wild and beautiful mountains of Phrygia, then followed the course of the Hermus River down to the Aegean Sea. Reunion with Brutus was only a short ride down a good Roman road. If everyone they encountered looked poor and downtrodden, if every temple and public building looked shabby and neglected, they chose not to notice. Mithridates the Great had made a far worse chaos of Asia Province than any Roman.

3

When Cleopatra had arrived in Alexandria that June three months after the death of Caesar, she had found Caesarion safe and well in the custody of Mithridates of Pergamum, wept on her uncle's bosom, thanked him lovingly for his care of her realm, and sent him home to Pergamum laden down with a thousand talents of gold. Gold that Mithridates was to find very handy when Brutus demanded tribute; he paid the specified amount and said nothing about the large surplus of bullion still in his secret coffers.

Now three years of age, Cleopatra's son was tall, golden-haired, blue of eye and growing more like Caesar every day. He could read and write, discuss affairs of state a little, and was fascinated by the work his birth had made his lot. A happy chance. Time then to say goodbye to Ptolemy XIV Philadelphus, Cleopatra's half brother and husband. The fourteen-year-old boy was handed over to Apollodorus, who had him strangled and gave out to the citizens of Alexandria that their king had died of a familial trouble. True enough. Caesarion was elevated to the throne as Ptolemy XV Caesar Philopator Philomator Ptolemy Caesar, father-loving and mother-loving. He was anointed Pharaoh by Cha'em, high priest of Ptah, and became Lord of the Two Ladies, He of the Sedge and Bee; he was also given his own physician, Hapd'efan'e. But Caesarion could not marry Cleopatra. Father-daughter or mother-son incest was religiously unacceptable. Oh, for the daughter Caesar had never given her! A mystery and clearly the will of the Gods, but why? Why, why? She, the personification of Nilus, had not quickened, even during those last months when she and Caesar were together in Rome for many nights of love. When her menses began to flow as her ship had put out from Ostia, she had fallen to the deck and howled, screeched, torn her hair, lacerated her breasts. She had been late, been sure she was with child! Now there would never be a full sister or brother for Caesarion. In about the time that it would have taken for news that Egypt had a new king to travel from Alexandria to Cilicia and back again, Cleopatra received a letter from her sister Arsino. Despite Caesar's plans that she would spend the rest of her days in service to Artemis of Ephesus, Arsino had escaped as soon as she learned of Caesar's assassination. She had gone to earth in the temple kingdom of Olba, where, it was said, the descendants of Ajax's archer brother, Teucer, still ruled. It was described in some of the Alexandrian texts, which Cleopatra had consulted the moment she learned Arsinos whereabouts, hoping to find a clue as to how she could eliminate her sister. Hauntingly beautiful, said the texts, with its gorges, white and racing rivers, jagged peaks of many colors; its people lived in roomy houses cut inside the cliffs, warm in winter, cool in summer, and made exquisite lace that procured an income for Olba. What she read discouraged Cleopatra. Arsino was safe enough there to think herself inviolate, untouchable. Her letter asked that she be allowed to return to Egypt and take up her rightful place as a princess of the House of Ptolemy. Not, swore Arsino on the paper, to attempt to usurp the throne! There was no need for that. Let her come home, she begged, to marry her nephew, Caesarion. That would mean children of the true blood for Egypt's throne within little more than a decade. Cleopatra wrote one word back: NO! She then issued an edict to all her subjects that forbade the Princess Arsino to enter Egypt. If she did, she was to be put to death at once and her head sent to the Pharaohs. This edict found favor with her subjects of Nilus, but not with her Macedonian and Greek subjects in Alexandria, whom Caesar had tamed beyond any thought of insurrection, but who still thought it a good idea for Caesarion to have a suitably Ptolemaic bride. After all, he couldn't marry someone without a drop of the same blood in her veins!

On the Ides of Julius, the priests read the first Nilometer, at Elephantine on the Nubian border. The news was sent down the length of the mighty river to Memphis in a sealed packet that Cleopatra opened with a leaden heart. She knew what it would say: that Nilus was not going to inundate, that this year of Caesar's death would see the river in the Cubits of Death. Her foreboding was confirmed. Nilus measured twelve feet, well and truly down in the Cubits of Death. Caesar was dead, and Nilus had failed. Osiris was returned to the West and the Realm of the Dead, carved up in twenty-three chunks, and Isis searched for the pieces in vain. Though she saw the wonderful comet not long after on the far northern horizon, she did not know that it had coincided with Caesar's funeral games in Rome, nor was she to learn that for two more months, by which time its spiritual significance had faded. Well, business must go on, and a ruler's business was to rule, but Cleopatra had no heart for it as the year wore down. Her sole joy was Caesarion, who shared her life more and more. She needed a new husband and more children desperately, but whom could she marry? Someone of either Ptolemaic or Julian blood. For a while she toyed with the idea of her cousin Asander in Cimmeria, but abandoned him with little regret; none of her people, Egyptian or Alexandrian, would take kindly to a grandson of Mithridates the Great as the husband of a granddaughter of Mithridates the Great. Too Pontic, too Aryan. The line of the Ptolemies was finished. Therefore her husband would have to be of Julian blood quite impossible! They were Romans, laws unto themselves. All she could do was send agents to winkle Arsino out of Olba, which finally happened after a gift of gold. Shipped first to Cyprus, she was then shipped back to the precinct of Artemis in Ephesus, where Cleopatra had her watched closely. Killing her was out of the question, but while ever Arsino lived, there were Alexandrians who saw her as preferable to Cleopatra. Arsino could marry the King, Cleopatra could not. Some might have asked why Cleopatra was so opposed to the idea of a marriage between Arsino and her son: the answer was simple. Once Arsino was the wife of Pharaoh, it would be so easy for her to eliminate her older sister. A potion, a knife in the dark, a royal cobra, even a coup. The moment that Caesarion had a wife acceptable to Alexandria and Egypt, his mother was expendable.

No one in the Royal Enclosure expected that the famine when it came would be so terrible, for the usual recourse was to buy in grain from elsewhere than Egypt. This year, however, every land around Our Sea had seen its crops fail, so there was no grain to buy in to feed that massive parasite, Alexandria. A desperate Cleopatra sent ships into the Euxine Sea and managed to buy some wheat from Asander of Cimmeria, but an unknown person Arsino? then whispered to him that his cousin Cleopatra didn't think him good enough to share her throne. The Cimmerian supply dried up. Where else, where else? Ships sent to Cyrenaica, usually capable of producing grain when other places couldn't, returned empty to say that Brutus had taken the Cyrenaican grain to feed his gigantic army, and that his partner in crime, Cassius, had afterward taken by force what the Cyrenaicans had kept to feed themselves.

In March, when the harvest ought to have been filling the granaries to overflowing, the field rats and field mice of the Nilus valley had no gleanings to pick through, no precious little hoards of wheat and barley and pulses to tide them over. So they quit the fields and moved into the villages of Upper Egypt between Nubia and the beginning of the anabranch that enclosed the land of Ta-she. Every dwelling was mud brick with an earthen floor, be it the meanest hovel or the mansion of the nomarch. Into all these premises came the field rodents and their cargo of fleas, which hopped off their bony, anemic hosts and hopped into bedding, mats, clothes, there to feast upon human blood. The rural workers of Upper Egypt sickened first, came down with chills and high fevers, splitting headaches, aching bones, tenderly painful bellies. Some died within three days spitting copious, putrid phlegm. Others did not spit, but rather developed hard, fist-sized lumps in groins and armpits, hot and empurpled. Most who had this form of the disease died at the lump stage, but some survived long enough for the lumps to burst and produce cupfuls of foul pus. They were the lucky ones, who mostly got better. But no one, even the temple physician-priests of Sekhmet, had any idea how the frightful epidemic was transmitted. The people of Nubia and Upper Egypt died in thousands upon thousands, and the plague began to move slowly down the river. The tiny harvest that had been gathered stayed inside piles of jars on the river's wharves; the local people were too sick and too few to load it on to barges and send it to Alexandria and the Delta. When word of the plague reached Alexandria and the Delta, no one volunteered to venture down the river and do the loading either. Cleopatra faced a hideous dilemma. There were three million people in and around Alexandria, and another million in the Delta. Disease had closed the river to both these hungry hordes, and all the gold in the treasure vaults could not buy grain from abroad. Word went to the Arabs of southern Syria that there would be huge rewards for those men willing to go down Nilus and load grain, but the rumors of a terrible plague kept the Arabs away too. The desert was their shield against whatever was going on in Egypt; travel between southern Syria and Egypt dwindled and then ceased, even by sea. Cleopatra could feed her urban millions for many months to come on what the granaries still contained from last year's harvest, but if the next Nilus inundation were also in the Cubits of Death, Alexandria would starve, even if the more rural Delta people survived. One of the few consolations was the appearance of Dolabella's legate Aulus Allienus, to remove those four legions from garrison duty in Alexandria. Expecting to meet opposition, Allienus was baffled when he found the Queen eager to oblige him yes, yes, take them! Take them tomorrow! Without them, there would be thirty thousand fewer mouths to feed.

She had to make some decisions. Caesar had nagged her to think ahead, but she wasn't by nature that kind of person. Nor did anyone, least of all a cosseted monarch, know the mechanics of plague. Cha'em had told her that the priests would contain the disease, that it would not spread north of Ptolemais, where all river and road traffic had been stopped. Except of course that traffic among field rodents proceeded, albeit at a slower rate. Understandably, Cha'em was too busy marshaling his priest army to go to Alexandria and see Pharaoh, who didn't travel south to see him either. She had no one to advise her, and absolutely no idea what she ought to do. Plunged into gloom anyway by Caesar's passing, Cleopatra couldn't summon the necessary detachment for decision making. Assuming from the usual pattern that next year's Inundation would also be in the Cubits of Death, she issued an edict that inside the city only those with the Alexandrian citizenship would be allowed to buy grain. The Delta people would be allowed to buy grain only if they were engaged in agricultural pursuits or the production of paper, a royal monopoly that had to be continued. There were a million Jews and Metics in Alexandria. Caesar had gifted them with the Roman citizenship, and Cleopatra had matched his generosity by granting them the Alexandrian citizenship. But, after Caesar sailed away, the million Greeks of the city had insisted that if the Jews and Metics had the citizenship, they ought to have it too. In the end the only residents of the city who didn't have the citizenship, once confined to just three hundred thousand Macedonians, were the hybrid Egyptians. If the citizenship were to exist as it did at the moment, then the granaries would have to provide something over two million medimni of wheat or barley every month. Could that be cut to something over one million medimni every month, the prospect was brighter. So Cleopatra reneged on her promise and stripped the Jews and Metics of the Alexandrian citizenship while allowing the Greeks to keep it. Her wisdom as a ruler was running backward: she had never taken Caesar's advice and issued free grain to the poor, and now she removed the franchise from a third of the city's populace in order, as she saw it, to save the lives of those most entitled to dwell in Alexandria by right of bloodline. No one in the Royal Enclosure said a word against the edict; autocracy bred its own disadvantages, one of which was that autocrats preferred to associate with people who agreed with them, didn't like people who disagreed with them unless they were on a level with Caesar and who in Alexandria was, to Cleopatra? The edict fell upon the Jews and Metics like a thunderbolt. Their sovereign, in whose service they had toiled, for whom they had given up much, including precious lives, was going to let them starve. Even if they sold everything they owned, they would still not be allowed to buy grain, the staple of existence. It was reserved for the Macedonian and Greek Alexandrians. And what else was there for an urban populace to eat in time of famine? Meat? There were no animals in drought. Fruit? Vegetables? The markets had none in drought, and despite the presence of Lake Mareotis, nothing grew in that sandy soil. Alexandria, the artificial graft on the Egyptian tree, just could not feed itself. Those in the Delta would eat something, those in Alexandria would not. People began to leave, especially out of Delta and Epsilon Districts, but even that was not easy. The moment rumors of plague ran around the ports of Our Sea, Alexandria and Pelusium ceased to see foreign ships dock, and Alexandrian merchantmen voyaging abroad found that they were not allowed to dock in foreign ports. In its little corner of the world, Egypt was quarantined by no edict save the ages-old fear and horror of plague. The riots began when the Alexandrians of Macedonian and Greek extraction barricaded the granaries and mounted huge numbers of guards wherever food was stockpiled. Delta and Epsilon Districts boiled, and the Royal Enclosure became a fortress.

To compound her woes, Cleopatra also had Syria to worry about. When Cassius sent asking for warships and transports, she had to decline because she still hoped to find a source of grain somewhere in the world, would need every ship to bring it back including war galleys how else was she going to ensure that her transports would be allowed to dock and load? As summer began, she learned that Cassius intended to invade. On the heels of that, word came from the first Nilometer that, as she had expected, the Inundation was down in the Cubits of Death again. There would be no harvest, even if sufficient people along Nilus were alive to plant the seed, which was debatable. Cha'em sent her figures that said sixty percent of the population of Upper Egypt was dead. He also told her that he thought the plague had crossed the frontier the priests had erected athwart the valley at Ptolemais, though now he hoped to arrest it below Memphis. What to do, what to do?

Around the end of September things suddenly improved a little. Limp with relief, Cleopatra learned that Cassius and his army had gone north to Anatolia; there would be no invasion. Unaware of Brutus's letter, she assumed that Cassius had heard how bad the plague was, and had decided not to risk exposure to it. At almost the same moment, an envoy from the King of the Parthians arrived and offered to sell Egypt a large amount of barley. So distraught was she that at first she could only babble to the envoys about the difficulties she would have importing it; with Syria, Pelusium and Alexandria closed, the barley would have to be barged down the Euphrates to the Persian Sea, brought around Arabia and into the Red Sea, then all the way up to the very top of the gulf that separated Sinai from Egypt. With plague all along Nilus, she babbled to the expressionless envoys, it could not be unloaded at Myos Hormos or the usual Red Sea ports because it couldn't go overland to the river. Babble, babble, babble. "Divine Pharaoh," the leader of the Parthian delegation said when she let him get a word in, "that isn't necessary. The acting governor of Syria is a man called Fabius, who can be bought. Buy him! Then we can send the barley overland to Nilus Delta." A large amount of gold changed hands, but gold Cleopatra had in enormous quantities; Fabius graciously accepted his share of it, and the barley came overland to the Delta. Alexandria would eat a little longer. News from Rome was scanty, thanks to the general ban on Pelusium and Alexandria, but not long after the Parthian envoys departed (to tell their royal master that the Queen of Egypt was an incompetent fool), Cleopatra received a letter from Ammonius, her agent in Rome. Gasping, she discovered that Rome hovered on the brink of at least two separate civil wars: one between Octavianus and Marcus Antonius, one between the Liberators and whoever was in control of Rome when their armies reached Italy. No one knew what was going to happen, said Ammonius, except that Caesar's heir was senior consul, and everybody else was outlawed. Gaius Octavius! No, Caesar Octavianus. A twenty-year-old? Senior consul of Rome? It beggared description! She remembered him well a very pretty boy with a faint hint of Caesar about him. Grey eyed, very calm and quiet, yet she had sensed a latent power in him. Caesar's great-nephew, and therefore a cousin of Caesarion's. A cousin of Caesarion's! Mind whirling, Cleopatra walked to her desk, sat down, drew paper forward and picked up a reed pen.

I congratulate you, Caesar, on your election as Rome's senior consul. How wonderful to think that Caesar's blood lives on in such a peerless individual as yourself. I remember you well, when you came with your parents to my receptions. Your mother and stepfather are well, I trust? How proud they must be! What news can I give you that might assist you? We are in famine in Egypt, but so, it seems, is the whole world. However, I have just received the happy news that I can buy barley from the King of the Parthians. There is also a frightful plague in Upper Egypt, but Isis has spared Lower Egypt of the Delta and Alexandria, from which city I write this on a beautiful day of sun and balmy air. I pray that the autumnal air of Rome is equally salubrious. You will, of course, have heard that Gaius Cassius has left Syria in the direction of Anatolia, probably, we think, to conjoin with his fellow criminal, Marcus Brutus. Whatever we can do to help you bring the assassins to justice, we will. It may be that, after your consulship has ended, you might choose Syria as your province. To have such a charming neighbor would please me very much. Egypt is close, and well worth a visit. No doubt Caesar told you of his travels on Nilus, of the sights and wonders to be seen only in Egypt. Do, dear Caesar, think about visiting Egypt in the near future! All that it has is yours for the asking. Delights beyond your wildest imagination. I repeat, all that Egypt has is yours for the asking.

The letter was sent off the same day on a fast trireme, no expense spared, direct for Rome. With the letter went a tiny box in which reposed one enormous, perfect, pink ocean pearl. Dear Isis, prayed Pharaoh, brow upon the floor, bent as low as the meanest of her subjects, dear Isis, send this new Caesar to me! Give Egypt life and hope again! Let Pharaoh bear sons and daughters of Caesar's blood! Safeguard my throne! Safeguard my dynasty! Send this new Caesar to me, and pour into me all the arts and wiles of the countless Goddesses who have served you, and Amun-Ra, and all the Gods of Egypt, as Pharaoh. She could expect a reply within two months, but first came a letter from Cha'em to tell her that the plague had reached Memphis and was killing thousands. For some inexplicable reason, the priests in the temple precinct of Ptah were being spared; only those priest-physicians whom Sekhmet governed were sickening, and that because they had gone into the city to minister. The strong contagious element had prompted them not to return to Ptah's temple, but to stay where they were. A great sorrow to Cha'em. But be warned, he said. The disease would now spread into the Delta and into Alexandria. The Royal Enclosure must be sealed off from the city. "Perhaps," said Hapd'efan'e thoughtfully when Cleopatra showed him Cha'em's letter, "it has to do with stone. The temple precinct is stone, its grounds are flagged. Whatever it is that carries the plague might not like such a barren environment. If so, then this stone palace will be a protection. And, if so, then the garden soil will be dangerous. I must consult the gardeners and have them plant the flower beds with wormwood." Octavian's reply reached Alexandria before the plague did, at the end of November.

Thank you for your good wishes, Queen of Egypt. It may please you to know that the number of living assassins is dwindling. I will not rest until the last one is dead. In the New Year I expect my task will be to deal with Brutus and Cassius. My stepfather, Philippus, is dying by inches. We do not expect him to live out the month. His toes have rotted and the poison is in his bloodstream. Lucius Piso is also dying, of an inflammation of the lungs. I write this from Bononia in Italian Gaul, where the autumnal air is freezing and full of sleet. I am here to meet Marcus Antonius. As I do not like traveling, I will never visit Egypt as a tourist. Your offer is most kind, but I must refuse it. The pearl is beautiful. I have set it in gold and will put it around the neck of Venus Genetrix in her temple in Caesar's forum.

Meet Marcus Antonius? Meet? What precisely does he mean by that? And what an answer. Consider yourself slapped on the face, Cleopatra. Octavianus is an icy man, not interested in Egyptian affairs, even of the heart. So it can't be Caesar's heir. He has rejected me. I adore Lucius Caesar, but he would never make love where Caesar made love. Who else is there with Julian blood? Quintus Pedius. His two sons. Lucius Pinarius. The three Antonian brothers, Marcus, Gaius and Lucius. A total of seven men. It will have to be whichever of them comes first to my end of Their Sea, for I cannot travel to Rome. Seven men. Surely they can't all be as cold a fish as Octavianus. I will pray to Isis to send me a Julian, and sisters and brothers for Caesarion.

The plague reached Alexandria in December, and cut the city's population by seventy percent Macedonians, Greeks, Jews, Metics, hybrid Egyptians perished in roughly equal numbers. Those who survived would eat well; Cleopatra had drawn the hatred of a million people upon her head for nothing. "God," said Simeon the Jew, "does not discriminate."

XIII

Funding An Army

From JANUARY until SEXTILIS (AUGUST) of 42 B.C.

"You can't possibly think of invading Italy without a great deal more money," said Hemicillus to Brutus and Cassius. "More money?" gasped Brutus. "But there's no more to be had!" "Why?" asked Cassius, frowning. "Between what I squeezed out of Syria and what Cimber and I collected on the way here, I must have two thousand gold talents." He turned on Brutus with a snarl. "Have you managed to collect none, Brutus?" "Far from it," Brutus said stiffly, resenting the tone. "Mine is all in coin, about two-thirds silver, a third gold, and amounts to ?" He looked at Hemicillus enquiringly. "Two hundred million sesterces." "All up, then, we have four hundred million sesterces," said Cassius. "That's enough to mount an expedition to conquer Hades." "You forget," Hemicillus said patiently, "that there will be no spoils, always the difficulty in civil war. Caesar took to giving his troops cash donatives in lieu of a share of spoils, but what he gave out was nothing compared to what soldiers demand now. Octavianus promised his legions twenty thousand per man, a hundred thousand for centurions of highest rank down to forty thousand for a junior centurion. Word travels. The men expect big money." Brutus got up and walked to the window, looked out across the port, filled with hundreds of warships and transports. His appearance had surprised Cassius, used to the mournful dark mouse; this Brutus was brisker, more martial. His success against the Bessi had endowed him with much needed confidence, and Porcia's death had hardened him. The recipient of most of Servilia's letters, Cassius too had been appalled by her callous acceptance of Porcia's horrible suicide, but, unlike Brutus, he believed it had been a suicide. The Servilia he loved was not the woman Brutus had known and feared since memory began. Nor had Brutus voiced his conviction of murder to Servilia's favorite male relative, who would have rejected it adamantly. "What has happened to Rome?" Brutus asked the multitude of ships. "Where is patriotism? Loyalty?" "Still there," Cassius said harshly. "Jupiter, you're a fool, Brutus! What do ranker soldiers know about warring factions among their leaders? Whose definition of patriotism is a ranker soldier going to believe? Yours, or the Triumvirs'? All men know is that when they draw their swords, it will be against fellow Romans." "Yes, of course," said Brutus, turning with a sigh. He sat down and stared at Hemicillus. "Then what do we do, Gaius?" "Find more money," Hemicillus said simply. "Where?" "To start with, in Rhodes," said Cassius. "I've been talking to Lentulus Spinther, who tried several times to prise ships and money out of the Rhodians without getting either. So did I. According to Rhodes, their treaties with Rome don't include providing a specific side in a civil war with any aid whatsoever." "And," said Hemicillus, "another part of Asia Minor that has never really been tapped Lycia. Too difficult for the governors of Asia Province to get at to be bothered trying." "Rhodes and Lycia," said Brutus. "I presume we're going to have to go to war to persuade them to help our enterprise?" "In the case of Rhodes, definitely," said Cassius. "It may be that a simple request to say, Xanthus, Patara and Myra will suffice, if they know the alternative is invasion." "How much should we ask from Lycia?" Brutus asked Hemicillus. "Two hundred million sesterces." "Rhodes," Cassius said grimly, "can give us twice that and still have some left over." "Do you think that one thousand million will see us through to Italy?" Brutus asked. "I'll do my sums later, when I know exactly what our strength will be," said Hemicillus.

Wintering in Smyrna was comfortable, even in this dry year. Of snow there was none, of wind little, and the broad valley of the Hermus enabled the Liberators to scatter their massive army over sixty miles of separate camps, each of which soon acquired its satellite community providing wine, whores and entertainment for the soldiers. Small farmers brought vegetables, ducks, geese, chickens and eggs to sell to eager buyers, sticky confections of oily pastry and syrup, an edible snail of the region, even plump frogs from the marshes. Though the big merchants in the urban settlements did not profit much from an army that had its own staples with it, these commercially unversed yet enterprising peasants, taxed to poverty, began to see a trace of prosperity return. For Brutus and Cassius, living in the governor's residence alongside Smyrna port, the chief advantage of this winter location was the swiftness of news from Rome. So they had learned, aghast, of the formation of the Triumvirate, and understood that Octavian deemed the Liberators a far greater threat to his Rome than he did Marcus Antonius. The Triumviral intention was clear: Brutus and Cassius would have to be eliminated. War preparations were going on all over Italy and Italian Gaul, and none of the forty-plus legions the Triumvirs could call upon had been discharged from service. Rumor said that Lepidus, now senior consul with Plancus as his junior, was to remain in Rome to govern, while Antony and Octavian were to deal with the Liberators; the most quoted commencement date for their campaign was May. More horrifying even than all this was the news that Caesar had officially been declared a god, and that the cult of Divus Julius, as he was to be known, would be propagated all over Italy and Italian Gaul, with temples, priests, festivals. Octavian now openly called himself "Divi Filius," and Mark Antony had not voiced an objection. One of the Triumvirs was the son of a god, their cause must be the right one! So much had Antony's attitude changed since his own disastrous consulship that he now joined with Octavian in forcing the Senate to swear an oath to uphold all of Divus Julius's laws and dictates. And an imposing temple to Divus Julius was being built in the Forum Romanum on the site where his body had been burned. The People of Rome had won their battle to be allowed to worship Caesar. "Even if we beat Antonius and win Rome, we're going to have to suffer Divus Julius forever," Brutus said miserably. "The place has gone downhill," Cassius answered, scowling. "Can you imagine some lout raping a Vestal Virgin?" That news had come too, that Rome's most revered women, used to walking freely about the city unaccompanied, now had to take a lictor as a bodyguard; Cornelia Merula, strolling alone to visit Fabia on the Quirinal, had been attacked and molested, though rape was Cassius's word, not mentioned in Servilia's letter. In all the history of Rome, the Vestals, clad in their unmistakable white robes and veils, had been free to come and go without fear. "It represents a milestone," Brutus said sadly. "The old values and taboos are no longer respected. I'm not even sure I want to enter Rome ever again." "If Antonius and Octavianus have anything to do with it, you won't, Brutus. All I know is that they'll have to fight hard to prevent my entering Rome," said Cassius.

With nineteen legions, five thousand cavalry and seven hundred ships at his disposal, Cassius sat down to work out how to extract six hundred million sesterces out of Rhodes and the cities of Lycia. Brutus was present, but had learned over the preceding few nundinae to be suitably deferential when Cassius had command on his mind; to Cassius, Brutus had simply had a stroke of luck in Thrace rather than generaled an authentic campaign. "I'll take Rhodes," he announced, "which means a maritime war, at least to begin with. You'll invade Lycia, a land business, though you'll have to bring your troops in by sea. I doubt that there's much use for horse in either case, so I suggest that we send all but a thousand of our cavalry to Galatia for the spring and summer." He grinned. "Let Deiotarus bear their cost." "He's been very generous and helpful" from Brutus, timidly. "Then he can be even more generous and helpful" from Cassius. "Why can't I march overland from Caria?" Brutus asked. "I suppose you could, but why would you want to?" "Because Roman foot hate sea voyages." "All right, please yourself, but you can't muddle along at a snail's pace, and you'll have some nasty mountains to cross." "I understand that," Brutus said patiently. "Ten legions and five hundred horse for scouting." "No baggage train if there are nasty mountains. The army will have to use pack mules, which means it can't afford to be on the march for longer than six nundinae. I'll have to hope that Xanthus has sufficient food to feed me when I get there. I do think Xanthus ought to be my first target, don't you?" Cassius blinked, rather startled. Who would have thought to hear so much military common sense from Brutus? "Yes, Xanthus first," he agreed. "However, there's nothing to stop you sending more food by sea and picking it up when you reach Xanthus." "Good idea," said Brutus, smiling. "And you?" "As I said, sea battles, though I'll need four legions who will board transports and endure the deep whether they like it or not," said Cassius.

2

Brutus set out with his ten legions and five hundred cavalry in March, following a good Roman road south through the valley of the Maeander River to Ceramus, where he negotiated the coast for as long as he could. The route offered him plenty of forage, for the granaries still contained wheat from last year's lean harvest, and he didn't care if his confiscations left the local people hungry, though he was sensible enough to heed their pleas that he must leave them enough seed to plant this year's crops. Unfortunately the spring rains hadn't come, a bad omen; the fields would have to be watered by hand from the rivers. How, asked the farmers piteously, were they to do that if they were too weak from hunger? "Eat eggs and poultry," said Brutus. "Then don't let your men steal our chickens!" Deeming this reasonable, Brutus tightened up on illicit plundering of farmyard animals by his troops, who were beginning to discover that their commander was tougher than he looked.

The Solyma Mountains of Lycia were formidable, towering eight thousand feet straight up from the water's edge; it was thanks to them that no governor of Asia Province had ever bothered to regulate Lycia, determine a tribute or send legates to enforce his edicts. Long a haven for pirates, it was a place where the settlements were confined to a series of narrow river valleys, and all communication between settlements went on by sea. The land of Sarpedon and Glaucus of Iliad fame commenced at the town of Telmessus, where the good Roman road stopped. From Telmessus onward, there was not so much as a goat track. Brutus simply made his own road as he marched, cycling the duty of going ahead to hack and dig with picks and shovels through his legions, whose men groaned and whined at the labor, but put their backs to it when their centurions administered the knobbed ends of their vine rods. The dryness meant beautiful weather, no danger of landslides and no mud to slow the pack mules down, but camps were a thing of the past; each night the men curled up where they were along the ten-foot-wide rubble of the road, indifferent to the spangled nets of stars in the sky, the soaring, lacy cataracts of boiling little rivers, the pine-smothered peaks scarred by mighty hollows where whole flanks had fallen away, the pearly mists that coiled around the blackish-green trees at dawn. On the other hand, they had all noticed the big, shiny chunks of jet-black rock their picks turned over, but only because they had thought this some rare gemstone; the moment they were informed that it was just unworkable glass, they cursed it along with everything else on that grueling road-making exercise through the Solyma. Only Brutus and his three philosophers had the temperament and the leisure to appreciate the beauties that unfolded by day, continued in mysterious form after dark, when creatures screamed from the forest, bats flitted, night birds hung silhouetted against the moon-silvered vault. Apart from appreciating the scenery, they each had their preferred activities: for Statyllus and Strato of Epirus, mathematics; for the Roman Volumnius, a diary; whereas Brutus wrote letters to dead Porcia and dead Cato. It was a mere twenty miles from Telmessus to the valley of the Xanthus River, but those twenty miles occupied more than half of the thirty-day, hundred-and-fifty-mile march. Both Lycia's biggest cities, Xanthus and Patara, stood on this river's banks Patara at its mouth, Xanthus fifteen miles upstream. Brutus's army spilled off its homemade road into the valley closer to Patara than Xanthus, Brutus's first target. Unluckily for him, a stray shepherd had warned the cities, whose people used the hours to good advantage; they razed the countryside, evacuated the suburbs and shut the gates. All the granaries were inside, there were springs of fresh water, and the walls of Xanthus in particular were massive enough bastions to keep the Romans out. Brutus's two chief legates were Aulus Allienus, a skilled soldier from a family of Picentine nobodies, and Marcus Livius Drusus Nero, a Claudian aristocrat adopted into the Livian clan; his sister, Livia, was betrothed to Tiberius Claudius Nero, though not yet old enough to marry this insufferable dolt whom Caesar had loathed and Cicero had wanted as his son-in-law. Using both Allienus and Drusus Nero as his advisers, Brutus put his military machine into siege mode. The scorched earth had annoyed him, as it removed vegetables from his legionary menu; he wouldn't bother starving the Xanthians out, he'd try to take the city quickly.

Considered by his peers to be extraordinarily erudite, Brutus actually was well versed in only a very few subjects philosophy, rhetoric, certain literature. Geography bored him, as did non-Roman history save for titans like Thucydides, so he never read earth-people like Herodotus. Thus he knew nothing about Xanthus, apart from a tradition that said it had been founded by the Homeric King Sarpedon, who was worshiped as the city's principal god and had the most imposing temple. But Xanthus had another tradition too, unknown to Brutus. Twice before it had been besieged, first by a general of Cyrus the Great of Persia's named Harpagus the Mede, then by Alexander the Great. When it fell, as fall it did, the entire population of Xanthus had committed suicide. Among the frenzied activities the Xanthians had pursued during that period of grace the shepherd's warning gave them was the gathering of a huge amount of firewood; as the Roman siege swung into operation, the people inside the city heaped the wood into pyres in every open space. The towers and the earthworks went up in the proper Roman manner, and the various pieces of artillery were wheeled into position; ballistas and catapults rained missiles of all kinds except blazing bundles the city had to fall intact. Then the three rams arrived, the last items hauled along the new road. They were made of seasoned oak swung on thick yet supple ropes attached to a portable framework that was rapidly assembled, each fronted by a great bronze ram's head, beautifully fashioned from curled horns to sneering lips to menacing, half-closed eyes. There were only three gates in the walls, ram-proof because they were mighty openwork portcullises of oak plated with very heavy iron; when pounded, they bounced like springs. Undeterred, Brutus put the rams to work on the walls themselves, which had not the tensile strength to resist, and slowly began to crumble. Too slowly, for they were very thick. When Allienus and Drusus Nero judged that the Xanthians felt threatened enough to become desperate, Brutus withdrew his forces as if tired of trying, apparently off to see what he could do to Patara. Armed with torches, a thousand beleaguered men streamed out of Xanthus intent upon burning the artillery and siege towers. The lurking Brutus pounced and the Xanthians fled, only to find themselves shut out of the city because the prudent gate guards had lowered the portcullises. All thousand raiders perished. Next day at noon the Xanthians tried again, this time making sure their gates remained open. Beating a hasty retreat as soon as the torches were thrown, they discovered that the portcullis machinery was far too slow; the Romans, in hot pursuit, poured inside until the gate operators chopped through the hoist ropes and the portcullises crashed down. Those beneath died instantly, but two thousand Roman legionaries had managed to get inside. They didn't panic. Instead, they formed up into tortoises and migrated to the main square, there to take refuge in the temple of Sarpedon, which they barred and defended. The sight of those falling portcullises had a profound effect on the besiegers. Legionary camaraderie was very powerful; the thought of two thousand of their fellows trapped inside Xanthus moved Brutus's army to anguished madness. A level-headed, cool madness. "They will have banded together and sought shelter," said Allienus to an assemblage of senior centurions, "so we'll assume that for the time being they're safe enough. What we have to do is work out how to get inside and rescue them." "Not the portcullises," said primipilus Malleus. "The rams are useless, and we've nothing to cut through that iron plate." "Still, we can make it look as if we think we can break them down," Allienus said. "Lanius, start." He raised his brows. "Any other ideas?" "Ladders and grapples everywhere. They can't man every inch of the walls with pots of hot oil, and they don't have enough siege spears, the fools. We'll probe for weak spots," said Sudis. "Get it done. What else?" "Try to find some locals left outside the walls and um ask them nicely if there are any other ways to get in," said the pilus prior Callum. "Now you're talking!" said Allienus with a grin. Shortly afterward Callum's party came back with two men from a nearby hamlet. It didn't prove necessary to be nice to them; they were furiously angry because the Xanthians had burned their market gardens and orchards. "See there?" asked one, pointing. A main reason why Xanthus's bastions were so impregnable lay in the fact that the back third of the city had been built flush against the crags of a cliff. "I see, but I don't see," said Allienus. "The cliff isn't half as bad as it looks. We can show you a dozen snake paths that will put you among the outcrops on the cliff face. That isn't getting inside, I know, but it's a start for you clever chaps. You won't find any patrols, though you'll find defenses." The orchardist spat. "Cocksucking shits that they are, they burned our apples in flower, and all our cabbages and lettuces. All we got left are onions and parsnips." "Rest assured, friend, that when we've taken the place, your village will get first pick of whatever's in there," said Callum. "Edible, I mean." He shaded his brow beneath the helmet with its immense sideways ruff of scarlet horsehair and tapped his thigh with his vine staff. "Right, all the limber ones for this. Macro, Pontius, Cafo, your legions are young, but I don't want any ninnies that get dizzy on heights. Go on, move!" By noon the cliff swarmed with soldiers, high enough to look down over the walls and see what awaited them inside: a dense palisade of spikes many feet wide. Some of the men produced iron pegs and hammered them into the rock, then tied long ropes to them that dangled over a concave section of precipice; a man would grasp the end of the rope, his fellows would start pushing him as a father pushed a child on a swing, until momentum had him soaring over the deadly palisade to drop beyond it on to paving. All afternoon soldiers penetrated the back defenses in dribs and drabs, forming into a tight square. When enough men had made it, the men split into two squares and fought their way to the two gates most convenient for the army waiting outside, and went to work on the portcullises with saws, axes, wedges and hammers; the inside faces had not been reinforced with iron plates. Hacking and hewing in a frenzy, they got through the oak in a superbly organized assault on the top and both sides of the portcullis until the iron outside was bared. Then they took long crowbars and twisted the plates until the whole portcullis tumbled to lie on the ground. The army cheered deafeningly, and charged. But the Xanthians had a tradition to uphold, and did. The streets were full of pyres, so were the light wells of every insula and the peristyles of all the houses. The men killed their women and children, threw them on to the wood, set fire to it and climbed on top to finish themselves with the same bloody knives. All of Xanthus went up in flames, not one square foot of it was spared. The soldiers marooned in Sarpedon's temple managed to carry out what valuables they could, and other groups did the same, but Brutus ended in obtaining less from Xanthus than the siege had cost him in time, food, lives. Determined that his Lycian campaign wasn't going to begin in utter ignominy, he waited until the fires died out and had his men comb every inch of the charred wreckage for melted gold and silver.

He did better at Patara, which defied the Romans when the artillery and siege equipment first appeared, but it had no suicidal tradition like Xanthus, and eventually surrendered without the pain of undergoing protracted siege. The city turned out to be very rich, and yielded fifty thousand men, women and children for sale into slavery. The appetite of the world for slaves was insatiable, for, as the saying went, you either owned slaves, or were slaves. No people anywhere disapproved of slavery, which varied from place to place and people to people. A Roman domestic slave was paid a wage and was usually freed within ten or fifteen years, whereas a Roman mine or quarry slave was worked to death within one year. Slavery too had its social gradations: if you were an ambitious Greek with a skill, you sold yourself into slavery to a Roman master knowing you would prosper, and end a Roman citizen; if you were a hulking German or some other barbarian defeated and captured in battle, you went to the mines or quarries and died. But by far the largest market for slaves was the Kingdom of the Parthians, an empire larger than the world of Our Sea plus the Gauls. King Orodes was eager to take as many slaves as Brutus could send him, for the Lycians were educated, Hellenized, skilled in many crafts, and a handsome people whose women and girl children would be popular. His majesty paid in hard cash through his own dealers, who followed Brutus's army in their own fleet of ships like vultures the depredations of a barbarian horde on the move. Between Patara and Myra, the next port of call, lay fully fifty miles of the same gorgeous but awful terrain the army had covered to get this far. Building another road was no answer; Brutus now understood why Cassius had advocated sailing, and commandeered every ship in Patara harbor as well as the transports he had sent around from Miletus with food. Thus he sailed to Myra, at the mouth of the well-named Cataractus River. Sailing proved a bonus in another way than convenience. The Lycian coast was as famous for pirates as the coasts of Pamphylia and Cilicia Tracheia, for in the groins of the mighty mountains lay coves fed by streamlets, ideal for pirate lairs. Whenever he saw a pirate lair, Brutus sent a force ashore and collected a huge amount of booty. So much booty, in fact, that he decided not to bother with Myra, turned his fleet around and sailed west again. With three hundred million sesterces in his war chest from the Lycian campaign, most of it garnished from pirates, Brutus brought his army back to the Hermus valley in June. This time he and his legates took up residence in the lovely city of Sardis, forty miles inland and more ascetically pleasing than Smyrna.

3

The coast of Asia Province was not only rugged; it also thrust a series of peninsulas out into the Aegean Sea, which made voyages tedious for merchantmen sailing close inshore, always having to traipse around another rocky protrusion. The last such peninsula on the way to Rhodes was the Cnidan Chersonnese, with the port of Cnidus on its very tip; the entire very long, thin finger of land was simply referred to by the city's name, Cnidus. For Cassius, Cnidus was handy. He took four legions from the Hermus valley and put them into camp there, while he marshaled his fleets at Myndus on the next peninsula up, just west of the fabulous city of Halicarnassus. He was using a vast number of big, slow galleys from quinquereme down to trireme, nothing any smaller, which he knew the Rhodians, masters of maritime warfare, would deem easy game. His admirals were the same trusty fellows who had made mincemeat out of Dolabella's men: Patiscus, the two Liberators Cassius Parmensis and Decimus Turullius, and Sextilius Rufus. The command of his land army was split between Gaius Fannius Caepio and Lentulus Spinther. Of course the Rhodians heard about all this activity and sent an innocent-looking pinnace to spy on Cassius; when its crew reported back about the mammoth craft Cassius was employing, the Rhodian admirals had a good laugh. They preferred taut, trim triremes and biremes, usually undecked, with two banks of oars in outriggers and very businesslike bronze beaks for ramming. Rhodians never used marines or soldiers to board the enemy, they simply raced around clumsy warships in deft circles and either forced these leviathans to collide with each other, or got up a good straight run and rammed them so hard they were holed; they were also experts at coming alongside a ship and shearing off its oars. "If Cassius is stupid enough to attack with his elephants of ships," said the wartime chief magistrate, Alexander, to the wartime chief admiral Mnaseas, "he'll go the way of Poliorketes and King Mithridates the so-called Great, ha ha ha. Ignominious defeat! I agree with the Carthaginians of old no Roman ever born can fight on the sea when the enemy's a seafaring people." "Yes, but in the end the Romans crushed the Carthaginians," said Archelaus the Rhetor, who had been brought to the city of Rhodus from his idyllic rural retreat because he had once taught Cassius rhetoric when Cassius had been a youth in the Forum. "Oh, yes!" sneered Mnaseas. "But only after a hundred and fifty years and three wars! And then they did it on land." "Not entirely," Archelaus persisted stubbornly. "Once they invented the corvus gangplank and could board troops in number, Carthage's fleets didn't do very well." The two wartime leaders glared at the old pedant and began to wish that they had left him to his bucolic maunderings. "Send Gaius Cassius an embassage," Archelaus pleaded. So the Rhodians sent an embassage to see Cassius at Myndus, more to shut Archelaus up than because they thought it would achieve anything. Cassius received the deputation arrogantly and loftily told its members that he was going to wallop them. "So when you get home," he said, "tell your council to start thinking about negotiating a peace settlement." Back they went to tell Alexander and Mnaseas that Cassius had sounded so confident! Perhaps it might be best to negotiate? Alexander and Mnaseas hooted in derision. "Rhodes cannot be beaten at sea," said Mnaseas. He lifted his lip in contempt and looked thoughtful. "To illustrate the point, I note that Cassius has his ships out exercising every day, so why don't we show him what Rhodes can do? Catch him sitting on the latrine, dreaming that Roman drill can beat Rhodian skill." "You're a poet," said Archelaus, who really was a nuisance. "Why don't you hop off to Myndus and see Cassius yourself?" Alexander suggested. "All right, I will," said Archelaus. Who took a pinnace to Myndus and saw his old pupil, pulling all his rhetorical brilliance out of his magical speaking hat to no avail. Cassius heard him out unmoved. "Go back and tell those fools that their days are numbered" was as much satisfaction as Archelaus could get. "Cassius says your days are numbered," he told the wartime commanders, and was sent back to his rustic villa in disgrace.

Cassius knew exactly what he was doing, little though Rhodes thought that. His drills and exercises went on remorselessly; he supervised them himself, and punished severely when his ships did not perform up to expectations. A great deal of his time was filled in shuttling back and forth between Myndus and Cnidus, which he could do while supervising, for the land army had to be fit for action too, and he believed in the personal touch. Early in April the Rhodians picked out their thirty-five best vessels and sent them out on a surprise raid, their quarry Cassius's busily exercising fleet of unwieldy quinqueremes. At first it looked as if the Rhodians would win easily, but Cassius, standing in his pinnace flagging messages to his captains, was not at all flustered. Nor did his captains panic, start to run into each other or present a tempting beam to the enemy. Then the Rhodians realized that the Roman ships were herding them into a smaller and smaller area of water, until finally they could not turn, ram, or perform any of the brilliant maneuvers for which they were so famous. Darkness enabled the Rhodians to break out of the net and dash for home, but behind them they left two ships sunk and three captured.

Rhodes sat ideally poised at the eastern bottom corner of the Aegean Sea; eighty miles long, the lozenge-shaped, hilly, fertile island was large enough to feed itself, as well as to form a barrier to ongoing sea traffic heading for Cilicia, Syria, Cyprus and all points east. The Rhodians had exploited this natural bounty by going to sea, and relied upon their naval superiority to protect their island. Cassius's land army sailed on the Kalends of May in a hundred transports, with Cassius himself leading eighty war galleys that also carried marines. He was ready on all fronts. When it saw this huge armada bearing down, out came the entire Rhodian fleet, only to succumb to the same tactics Cassius had used off Myndus; while the sea battle raged, the transports slipped past unharmed, allowing Fannius Caepio and Lentulus Spinther to land their four legions safely on the coast to the west of Rhodus city. Not only were there twenty thousand well-equipped, mail-shirted soldiers forming up into rank and column, but cranes were winching and gangways were rolling staggering amounts of artillery and siege machines ashore! Oh, oh, oh! The horrified Rhodians had no land army of their own, and no idea how to withstand a siege. Alexander and the Rhodian council sent a frantic message to Cassius that they would capitulate, but even as this was being done, the ordinary people inside Rhodus were busy opening all the gates and doors in the walls to admit the Roman army. The only casualty was a soldier who fell and broke his arm.

Thus the city of Rhodus was not sacked, and the island of Rhodes sustained little damage. Cassius set up a tribunal in the agora. Wearing a wreath of victory laurels on his cropped light brown hair, he mounted it clad in his purple-bordered toga. With him were twelve lictors in crimson tunics bearing the axed fasces, and two hoary veteran primipilus centurions in decorations and shirts of gold scales, one bearing a ceremonial spear. At a gesture from Cassius, the centurion rammed the spear into the tribunal deck, a signal that Rhodes was the prisoner of the Roman war machine. He had the other centurion, owner of a famously stentorian voice, read out a list of fifty names, including those of Mnaseas and Alexander, had them brought to the foot of his tribunal and executed on the spot. The centurion then read out twenty-five more names; they were exiled, their property confiscated along with the property of the fifty dead men. After which Cassius's impromptu herald bawled out in bad Greek that every piece of jewelry, every coin, every gold or silver or bronze or copper or tin sow, every temple treasure and every item of valuable furniture or fabric were to be brought to the agora. Those who obeyed willingly and honestly would not be molested, but those who tried to flee or conceal their possessions would be executed. Rewards for information were offered to free men, freedmen, and slaves. It was a perfect act of terrorism that achieved Cassius's ends immediately. The agora became so piled with loot that the soldiers couldn't carry it away fast enough. Very graciously he allowed Rhodes to keep its most revered work of art, the Chariot of the Sun, but he allowed it to keep nothing else. A legate entered every dwelling in the city to make sure no precious thing remained, while Cassius himself led three of the legions into the countryside and stripped it barer than carrion birds a carcass. Archelaus the Rhetor lost nothing for the most logical of reasons: he had nothing. Rhodes yielded an incredible eight thousand gold talents, which Cassius translated as six hundred million sesterces.

On his return to Myndus, Cassius issued an edict to all of Asia Province that each city and district was to pay him ten years' tributes or taxes in advance and that included every community previously enjoying an exempt status. The money was to be presented to him in Sardis. Though he didn't leave at once for Sardis. Word had come through the regent of Cyprus, the very frightened Serapion, that Queen Cleopatra had assembled a large fleet of warships and merchant vessels for the Triumvirs, even including some of the precious barley she had bought from the Parthians. Neither famine nor pestilence had prevented her making this decision, said Serapion, one of those who wanted Arsino on the throne. Cassius detached Lucius Staius Murcus the Liberator and sixty big galleys from his fleets and ordered him to lie in wait for the Egyptian ships off Cape Taenarum at the foot of the Greek Peloponnese. An efficient man, Staius Murcus did as he was told swiftly, but he waited in vain. Finally a message reached him that Cleopatra's fleet had encountered a violent storm off the coast of Catabathmos, turned and limped back to Alexandria. However, said Staius Murcus in a note to Cassius, he didn't think he could be of much use in the eastern end of Our Sea, so he was going to take himself and his sixty galleys off to the Adriatic around Brundisium. There, he thought, he could make plenty of mischief for the Triumvirs, attempting to get their armies across to western Macedonia.

4

Sardis had been the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, and so immensely rich that its king of five hundred years ago, Croesus, was still the standard by which wealth was measured. Lydia fell to the Persians, then passed into the hands of the Attalids of Pergamum, and so, by the testament of the last King Attalus, into Rome's fold in the days when much of the territory Rome owned had been bequeathed to her in wills. It rather tickled Brutus to choose King Croesus's city as headquarters for the vast Liberator enterprise, the place from which his and Cassius's armies would embark upon their long march westward. To Cassius when he arrived, an irksome nuisance. "Why aren't we on the sea?" he demanded the moment he had shed his leather traveling cuirass and kilts. "I'm fed up with looking at ships and smelling fish!" Brutus snapped, caught off guard. "Therefore I have to make a hundred-mile round trip every time I want to visit my fleets, just to soothe your nose!" "If you don't like it, go live with your wretched fleets!" Not a good beginning to the vast Liberator enterprise. Gaius Flavius Hemicillus, however, was in an excellent mood. "We will have enough funds," he announced after several days in the company of a large staff and many abacuses. "Lentulus Spinther is to send more from Lycia," said Brutus. "He writes that Myra yielded many riches before he burned it. I don't know why he burned it. Pity, really. A pretty place." Yet another reason why Brutus was grating on Cassius. What did it matter if Myra was pretty? "Spinther sounds a great deal more effective than you were," Cassius said truculently. "The Lycians didn't offer to pay over ten years' tribute to you." "How could I ask for something the Lycians had never paid? It didn't occur to me," Brutus bleated. "Then it should have. It did to Spinther." "Spinther," Brutus said haughtily, "is an unfeeling clod." Oh, what's the matter with the man? asked Cassius silently. He has no more idea how to run a war than a Vestal. And if he moans about Cicero's death one more time, I'll throttle him! He hadn't one good thing to say about Cicero for months before his death, now the passing of Cicero is a tragedy outranking the best Sophocles can do. Brutus wafts along in a world all his own, while I have to do all the real work. But it wasn't only Brutus who nettled Cassius; Cassius was nettling Brutus quite as much, chiefly because he harped and he harped about Egypt. "I should have gone south to invade Egypt when I intended to," he would say, scowling. "Instead, you palmed me off with Rhodes a mere eight thousand gold talents, when Egypt would have yielded a thousand thousand gold talents! But no, don't invade Egypt! Go north and join me, you wrote, as if Antonius was going to be on Asia's doorstep within a nundinum. And I believed you!" "I didn't say that, I said now was our chance to invade Rome! And we have money enough from Rhodes and Lycia anyway," Brutus would answer stiffly. And so it went, neither man in charity with the other. Part of it was worry, part of it the manifest differences in their natures: Brutus cautious, thrifty and unrealistic; Cassius daring, splashy and pragmatic. Brothers-in-law they might be, but in the past they had spent mere days living together in the same house, and that not often. Besides the fact that Servilia and Tertulla had always been there to damp the combustible mixture down. Though he had no idea he wasn't helping the situation, poor Hemicillus didn't help, always appearing to voice the latest rumor about how much the troops expected as cash donatives, fuss and fret because he'd have to recalculate their expenses.

Then, toward the end of Julius, Marcus Favonius appeared in Sardis asking to join the Liberator effort. After escaping from the proscriptions he had gone to Athens, where he had lingered for months wondering what to do; when his money ran out, he realized that the only thing he could do was go back to war on behalf of Cato's Republic. His beloved Cato was dead four years, he had no family worth speaking of, and both Cato's son and Cato's son-in-law were under arms. Brutus had been delighted to see him, Cassius far less so, but his presence did compel the two Liberators to put a better face on their constant differences. Until, that is, Favonius walked into the midst of a terrible quarrel. "Some of your junior legates are behaving shockingly toward the Sardians," Brutus was saying angrily. "There's no excuse for it, Cassius, no excuse at all! Who do they think they are, to push Sardians rudely off their own pathways? Who do they think they are, to walk into taverns, guzzle expensive wine, then refuse to pay for it? You should be punishing them!" "I have no intention of punishing them," Cassius said, teeth bared in a snarl. "The Sardians need teaching a lesson, they're arrogant and unappreciative." "When my legates and officers behave that way, I punish them, and you should punish yours," Brutus insisted. "Shove," said Cassius, "your punishment up your arse!" Brutus gasped. "You you typical Cassian! There's not a Cassius alive who isn't an oaf, but you're the biggest oaf of all!" Standing unnoticed in the doorway, Favonius decided that it was time to break the quarrel up, but even as he moved, Cassius swung a fist at Brutus. Brutus ducked. "Don't, please don't! Please, please, please!" Favonius squawked, arms and hands flapping wildly as Cassius pursued the cringing Brutus with murder written on his face. Desperate to head Cassius off, Favonius threw himself between the two men in an unconsciously wonderful imitation of a panicked fowl. Or at least that was how the mercurial Cassius saw Favonius as his rage cleared; he burst into howls of laughter while the terrified Brutus dodged behind a desk. "The whole house can hear you!" Favonius cried. "How can you command an army when you can't even command your own feelings?" "You're absolutely right, Favonius," said Cassius, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes. "You're insufferable!" the unmollified Brutus said to Cassius. "Insufferable or not, Brutus, you have to suffer me, just as I have to suffer you. Personally I think you're a gutless cocksucker you'll always provide the orifice! At least I'm the one shoves it in, which makes me a man." In answer, Brutus stalked from the room. Favonius gazed at Cassius helplessly. "Cheer up, Favonius, he'll get over his snit," Cassius said, clapping him lustily on the back. "He had better, Cassius, or your enterprise will come to an abrupt end. All Sardis is talking about your rows." "Luckily, old friend, all Sardis will soon have other things to talk about. Thank all the gods, we're ready to march."

The great Liberator enterprise got under way two days into Sextilis, the army marching overland to the Hellespont while the fleets made sail for the island of Samothrace. Word had come from Lentulus Spinther that he would meet them on the Hellespont at Abydos, and word had come from Rhascupolis of the Thracians that he had found an ideal site for a mammoth camp on the Gulf of Melas, only a day's march beyond the straits. No Caesars when it came to rapid movement, Brutus and Cassius pushed their land forces north and west at a pace that saw them take a month to reach the Gulf of Melas, a mere two hundred miles from Sardis. The actual ferrying of troops across the Hellespont, however, took a full nundinum of that. Thence they took the sea-level pass that fractured the precipitous terrain of the Thracian Chersonnese, and so came down to the fabulously rich, dreamy expanse of the Melas River valley, where they pitched a more permanent camp. Cassius's admirals left their flagships to join the conference the two commanders held in the little town of Melan Aphrodisias. And here Hemicillus did his final totting up, for here, the Liberators had resolved, they would pay their land and sea forces those cash bonuses. Though none of their legions was at full strength, averaging 4,500 men per legion, Brutus and Cassius had 90,000 Roman foot soldiers distributed over 19 legions; they also had 10,000 foreign foot soldiers under Roman Eagles. In cavalry they were extremely well off, having 8,000 Roman-run Gallic and German horse, 5,000 Galatian horse from King Deiotarus, 5,000 Cappadocian horse from the new King Ariarathes, and 4,000 horse archers from the small kingdoms and satrapies along the Euphrates. A total of 100,000 foot and 24,000 horse. On the sea, they had 500 warships and 600 transports moored around Samothrace, plus Murcus's fleet of 60 and Gnaeus Ahenobarbus's fleet of 80 hovering in the Adriatic around Brundisium. Murcus and Ahenobarbus themselves had come to the conference on behalf of their men. In Caesar's time, it had cost 20 million sesterces to equip one full strength legion with everything: clothing, personal arms and armor, artillery, mules, wagons, oxen teams, tack, tools and implements for the artificers, and supplies of wood, iron, firebricks, molds, cement and other items a legion might need for the manufacture of gear on the march or under siege. It cost a further 12 million to keep a legion in the field for twelve continuous months in good, cheap grain years, what with food, clothing replacements, repairs, general wear and tear and army pay. Cavalry was less expensive because most horse troopers were the gift of foreign kings or chieftains, who paid to outfit them and keep them in the field. In Caesar's case, that had not held true after he dispensed with the Aedui and grew to rely on German cavalry; that, he had to fund himself. Brutus and Cassius had had to bear the cost of creating and equipping fully half their legions, and also bore the cost of those 8,000 Roman-run horse troopers plus the 4,000 horse archers. Thus what money they had before the campaigns against Rhodes and Lycia had gone on equipping. It was the latter two sources of income that would pay at Melas; with what Lentulus Spinther had squeezed out of Lycia in Brutus's wake, and what the cities and regions of the East had managed to scrape together, the Liberators had 1,500 million sesterces in their war chest. But there were more men to pay than the legionaries and the horse troopers: they also had to pay the army noncombatants; and the men of the fleets, who included oarsmen, sailors, marines, masters, specialist sailors, artificers and noncombatants. About 50,000 men altogether on the sea, and 20,000 land noncombatants. It was true that Sextus Pompey didn't charge a fee for his help in the West, where he now virtually controlled the grain sea lanes from the grain provinces to Italy. But he did charge for the grain he sold the Liberators at ten sesterces the modius (he was charging the Triumvirs fifteen per modius). It took five modii to feed a soldier for a month. Between selling Rome back the wheat he stole from her grain fleets and what he sold the Liberators, Sextus Pompey was becoming fabulously rich.