Chapter IV #2
Some wept, some raged, most were too stunned to speak. A few, including Salvidienus, a man who recognised an opportunity when he saw one, proposed that we should immediately muster the legions in Illyricum and Macedonia and march on Rome to avenge the assassination.
The debate became noisy and fractious. Octavius sat apart and silent. At midnight I announced he needed to sleep and asked everyone to leave.
After they had gone, we continued talking late into the night.
For now, at least, his seniors seemed willing to defer to him.
But how long would that last? When the shock wore off, he would no longer have his uncle’s authority to protect him.
I told him he should appeal over the officers’ heads to the ordinary soldiers.
Recalling my promise to Caesar to protect him, I added that he ought to have regard to his own security.
If the conspiracy was as extensive as it appeared, involving senior members of the Senate, he might well be a target for assassination himself.
He asked me to arrange a small bodyguard of trusted men, which I did.
I did not sleep at all that night. It was incredible to me that Caesar, who always travelled so well guarded, often with a thousand men, should have exposed himself to such danger.
As I lay with my eyes wide open in the darkness, I pictured him charging into the front line at Munda, his exhilaration in the face of danger.
It was as if at the end of his life he had sought out death deliberately.
Why? To defy it? To prove himself truly a god?
It was madness. I imagined how jubilant my father must have been when he learned of his death.
I felt anger at Caesar for so recklessly depriving us of his existence, and then an overwhelming grief.
For the first time in my life, I too allowed myself to weep.
The next morning, Octavius appeared and announced our plan to the officers. He would go at once and show himself to the legions, inform them of Caesar’s murder and ask for their loyalty. As we had calculated, they could hardly object.
By mid afternoon, thousands of men had been drawn up on the plain.
The howl of rage and grief that erupted when they heard of Caesar’s slaughter still rings in my ears.
Standing on a cart, Octavius held up his hand for silence.
In a voice honed by his lessons with Apollodorus – a voice deeper and more resonant than I had ever heard before – he promised to avenge the foul crime.
In the meantime, he appealed to them in the name of his uncle to maintain their discipline until the situation in Rome was clearer.
– And then we shall hunt down these treacherous dogs – all the way to the gates of hell if needs be!
As the men roared their support, I glanced at the faces of the officers. They could be in no doubt now of the loyalty of their men to Caesar’s nephew, nor of the strength of his will.
That night, to our frustration, the weather closed in.
No boats could make the crossing from Italy.
Octavius stayed in the Citadel, protected by his guards, pacing the ramparts, playing dice – a pastime to which he has always been addicted – talking endlessly of what the assassination might mean for the future.
On the fifth day, a vessel finally made land from Brundisium and a messenger ran up from the quayside carrying another letter from Atia.
Beckoning me to follow him, Octavius took it into his private quarters and read it aloud.
It was dated three days after the first.
His mother reported that Caesar’s will had been retrieved from the Vestal Virgins that morning.
The seal had been broken in front of witnesses in the house of Mark Antony, the man he had appointed consul.
It was a new will, only deposited with the Vestals in September.
After various smaller bequests to relatives and the people of Rome, the dictator bequeathed three quarters of his estate to his great-nephew Octavius, whom he now adopted as his son, henceforth to be known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus …
Octavius stopped reading. We stared at one another.
It was unbelievable, as great a shock in its way as the assassination.
It was a few moments before he could continue.
The rest of the letter warned that Mark Antony had been bitterly disappointed by the terms of the will.
He had assumed that he would be Caesar’s heir.
Both Atia and his stepfather urged Octavius not to accept the inheritance.
If he returned to Italy to try to claim it, his life would be in great danger.
He should stay where he was while they tried to negotiate a settlement that would guarantee his safety.
In the meantime, they were leaving Rome for the security of their villa on the Bay of Naples. He should reply to them there.
Octavius threw the letter to the floor in disgust.
– I have just become the richest man in the world, and they want me to give it all away!
After railing for some time against the cowardice of Philippus, recalling his refusal to take sides in the civil war, he retrieved the letter and read it through again. He became more pensive.
– Well, I do not know. Perhaps there is something in what they say. It is one thing to be given a prize, quite another to take it.
He asked me what I thought he should do. I was amazed he would even hesitate.
– Don’t ask me what I would do. Ask yourself what Caesar would have done. Your uncle has given you the chance to fulfil a glorious destiny. Seize it!
That settled the matter. Octavius would not turn his back on his fate. From then on, whenever he had doubts, I had only to say, ‘What would Caesar have done?’ and his courage flared up again.
How extraordinary it seems, looking back, that he and I, aged eighteen and nineteen, should briefly have contemplated invading Italy with Octavius at the head of the Macedonian legions.
I was all for it, but mercifully Octavius immediately saw the folly of such a plan.
Even assuming the soldiers would consent to follow him, and their commanders would do the same, it would take weeks to arrange the transports.
And how would we feed and control an army of thirty thousand when we arrived?
But Caesar’s great watchword was speed – speed above all things – and Octavius knew he could not afford to wait.
He sat down at once and wrote to his mother.
He told her that under no circumstances should she reject his inheritance.
He said that it was his sacred duty to fulfil Caesar’s wishes.
Legally he was now the head of the family.
Blood and law were on his side. He would return to Italy and claim what was rightfully his.
He gave the letter to the messenger and ordered him to return to his ship and take it immediately to the villa of Philippus in Puteoli.