Chapter IV
IV
When Octavius and I reached Rome, I naturally wanted to tell my father what Caesar had said and ask him about the time when they had known one another. But more than a year had passed since I stormed out of his house with such bitter words, and I doubted he would even see me.
I was also wary of provoking further questions from Octavius.
He had been curious about my private talk with his uncle, jealous even.
He wanted to know what had passed between us.
I told him only that Caesar had ordered me to join the legions in Macedonia, and that afterwards we had discussed the Battle of Munda.
This partial answer appeared to satisfy him.
I was reluctant to embark on a line of enquiry with my father that might somehow reopen the matter.
Therefore I decided not to speak to him just yet, but to bide my time and await a better opportunity.
On such decisions our lives turn.
Octavius was happier following our return from Spain than I had ever seen him.
For the first time, he was popular. Young men who had shunned him in the past now clamoured for the company of the dictator’s favoured nephew.
He celebrated his eighteenth birthday with a large party.
But he was suspicious of his new friends’ sincerity, and I remained his closest companion.
We went around the city together most days, and often to the theatre.
In September, Caesar summoned him to the country, and he spent time with his uncle and with Cleopatra, who were living openly together as if they were husband and wife.
Afterwards, he travelled back with Caesar to Rome, riding in a chariot driven by Decimus Brutus, Caesar’s favourite general.
In the front chariot was Caesar himself, driven by Mark Antony, his right-hand man.
To accompany such senior commanders was a notable honour for a young man who had not yet even fought in a battle.
And when the dictator entered the city from the Field of Mars for his fifth triumphal procession, Octavius was once again prominent.
But this time, standing in the crowd watching them pass, even I could not help noticing Caesar’s unpopularity.
He had triumphed not over foreign enemies, but over his fellow citizens, the sons of Pompey the Great and other noble families.
Was such huge spilling of Roman blood a cause for celebration?
The applause was muted. Later, when he installed a golden statue of Cleopatra in the Temple of Venus, the resentment became more outspoken.
Octavius asked me if he ought to warn Caesar of the public mood. I advised him that he should, and he swore he would. But of course he did not. Nobody, let alone a teenage nephew, dares to speak frankly to a god. This is how power destroys itself, by the fearsome energy of its own achievement.
In November, Octavius had a final dinner with his uncle to say goodbye. Caesar asked him to convey his regards to me. He said he would see us both in six months’ time, when we would join his personal staff as he passed through Apollonia at the start of his Parthian campaign.
The next day, accompanied by a retinue of slaves and various officers, including Salvidienus, we set off together to join the legions.
To reach Apollonia from Rome requires a long journey overland to the harbour at Brundisium, followed by a voyage across the straits to Illyricum. The distance is four hundred miles. It takes two weeks.
Apollonia is a pleasant enough place, on the mouth of the River Aous, which affords it a fine harbour. We were given handsome quarters in the city’s fortress, known as the Citadel.
Six legions were mustering across Illyricum and Macedonia, encamped along the great highway that leads to the east, in readiness for Caesar’s next war.
There was no longer any pretence that Octavius was merely an ordinary soldier.
Each week cohorts were marched to the surrounding plain for him to inspect.
These legionaries were the core of the army that had defeated Pompey at Pharsalus.
They worshipped Caesar. They hailed his nephew with cheers.
Yet Octavius remained dignified and modest, and in briefings with the senior commanders showed himself eager only to learn.
He was mature beyond his years. I could see why Caesar put such faith in him.
The dictator had decreed that as part of his training to become a statesman, Octavius should receive lessons in oratory from Apollodorus of Pergamon, the famous Greek tutor of rhetoric, who happened to live in Apollonia. Octavius asked me to join him.
The old man was nearly eighty. He must have strained his vocal cords in pursuit of his art.
At any rate, he spoke in whispers. Myself, I was no orator, then or now, and I had no interest in learning the difference between logos and ethos, or practising breathing techniques and voice projection.
After a while – to Apollodorus’s relief as well as my own – I stopped attending his classes.
The months passed agreeably. We trained every day with the cavalry, learned the rudiments of tactics and command, and Octavius studied how to address the Senate and a public assembly.
It was not all work. Out of his armour, away from his entourage, no one recognised him.
This enabled us to move freely through the roughest districts, with their taverns and brothels.
We hunted and fished and got up to all the usual mischief of young men far from home.
I had heard of a Greek astrologer named Theogenes who lived in the city.
One day, around the middle of March, I suggested as a different kind of amusement that we should visit him and have our horoscopes cast. Octavius, who has always been superstitious, was reluctant, but I persuaded him, even though, unlike him, I did not take such fortune-tellers seriously.
We found Theogenes living down a back street, in a garret atop a tumbling tenement building. He was a curious, emaciated, toothless creature. I gave him money and he agreed to cast our futures. Octavius was still wary, so Theogenes began with mine.
I provided him with the date of my birth, and he consulted his charts, then studied my palm.
After a few moments, he cried out in amazement, dropped my hand and declared he had never seen such a fate: that I was destined to accomplish great – no, no, incredible deeds.
He laid it on so thick that Octavius fell into an ill temper and stormed out of the room.
I needed no fortune-teller to predict trouble ahead if I did not remedy the situation.
I told Theogenes that he had got it all wrong, that it was not me but my friend who was destined for greatness.
I handed over a few more coins, hurried out into the street, caught up with Octavius and with difficulty persuaded him to return.
The old man duly played his part to perfection, casting Octavius’s horoscope and this time falling to his knees – all that he said he could do in the presence of such a glorious future.
Octavius was deeply impressed by the prophecy.
From then on, he set even greater store by auguries, omens, comets, flights of birds, lightning flashes and other such supernatural signs.
I decided that to tell him what I had done would be unwise, and a few days later, when the old man’s predictions started to come true, it became impossible.
We had been out hunting in the hills since dawn and had returned at dusk with a brace of wild boar, as proud as if we had speared a pair of lions.
We dined together alone.
Supper had just been cleared when a slave announced that a messenger had arrived from Rome.
As soon as the visitor appeared, Octavius greeted him with pleasure, recognising him as one of his family’s most trusted freedmen.
He asked what had brought him such a long distance.
The poor fellow was exhausted from his journey and too overwhelmed by what he had come to say to utter it.
Without a word, he handed over the letter.
As Octavius read it, I watched his expression change from puzzlement to incredulity. He held it out to me, then buried his head in his hands.
It was from his mother, Atia – a short letter, and scrawled in such a hurry I remember that parts of it were almost illegible.
Dated the Ides of March, it stated bluntly, without any softening preliminaries, that Caesar had been murdered in the Senate earlier that day; that the assassins – twenty or more senators, who included such prominent figures as Decimus, Brutus and Cassius – were still at large; that Philippus had barricaded the house; and that the streets of Rome were too dangerous for members of Caesar’s family to venture beyond their gate.
She ended by begging Octavius to stay in Apollonia, out of harm’s way. She prayed for his health and safety, and promised to write as soon as she had more news.
In those few instants, our youth was ended.
I felt faint and weightless, as if the ground had dissolved beneath me and my whole world had gone. I put my arm around Octavius’s shoulders to console him. He was weeping, his body shaking, convulsed by grief.
After a while, my mind began to work again. I turned to the messenger, who was slumped on a couch.
– The Ides was two weeks ago. What has happened since?
The man had now recovered sufficiently to speak, but he swore he knew nothing more. He had left Rome the moment Atia had given him the letter and had galloped across an Italy that was entirely calm, peacefully unaware of the catastrophe that had befallen the state.
Once Octavius had recovered his composure, I suggested to him that he should summon the senior officers who were living in the Citadel and break the news.