Chapter V #2
At the end of the meal, Philippus took me aside and accused me of putting Octavius up to this reckless adventure in order to further my own ambition. I had no wish to argue with him. I excused myself, left the villa and bedded down to sleep in a tent with the men.
The next day, accompanied by Balbus, Octavius and I went to see Cicero.
We found him alone with his secretary.
The Father of the Nation, as he liked to style himself, was now past sixty, somewhat corpulent, conscious of his dignity, and obviously wary of Caesar’s unexpected heir, who had dropped from the skies like a meteorite.
His first observation was that Octavius had brought an awful lot of soldiers with him, who were surrounding his house and making him uneasy.
Octavius guaranteed he would not be molested.
He said he had looked forward to this meeting for years, that he had read all Cicero’s books of philosophy and collected speeches, indeed that he had various passages of them off by heart.
The more he flattered, the more the old man preened.
– And what am I to call you? To be honest, I would find another Caesar hard to get used to at my age.
Octavius bowed his head politely.
– The Father of the Nation may call me whatever he likes.
– Octavius it is then.
After that, they were as warm together as old friends and withdrew to the terrace to talk privately, leaving Balbus and me alone with the silent secretary.
When they returned, Cicero asked us all to dine the following evening with the two men Caesar had designated to be consuls the following year, Aulus Hirtius and Vibius Pansa.
– They are staying in the neighbourhood. It would be useful for you to get to know them. Both are soldiers, and not at all stupid by any means, but somewhat green in the ways of politics. I am trying to teach them oratory – which between you and me is no easy task.
This was typical of the sort of malicious so-called wit Cicero liked to deploy behind people’s backs.
He was brilliant and duplicitous and entirely self-interested.
I distrusted him even more after listening to the patronising way he spoke to Octavius, and said so as soon as we were alone outside, walking back to our villa. Octavius brushed my concerns aside.
– Yes, he underrates me, but that is to my advantage. I can handle him.
I was not so confident. The old man had been elected consul before Octavius and I were even born. No one was more adept at steering a course through the treachery of politics. But I did not argue.
Octavius paid a second call on Cicero that afternoon, and went again the following morning.
Both times I watched them from the terrace as they walked along the beach, deep in conversation.
Sometimes Cicero stopped to skim a stone across the flat waves.
Occasionally Octavius extended his arm to help him over the rocks.
They might have been grandfather and grandson.
Nine of us attended Cicero’s dinner – Octavius and me, Atia and Philippus, Maecenas, Hirtius and Pansa, and Cicero and his secretary, who said nothing but watched his master intently and often turned away from the table to make a note of some clever remark.
They made a strange pair, as indeed did the two consuls-designate.
Hirtius, who had been Caesar’s staff officer in Gaul, was plump, and devoured every dish of Cicero’s exquisite food with a gourmet’s relish, while Pansa, who had been governor of Nearer Gaul, was thin as a stick, although he drank a great deal.
Both were in their thirties, both entirely Caesar’s creatures and both seemed lost without him.
The dinner stays in my memory for two reasons. One was that Philippus got drunk, and with his tongue loosened by wine reverted loudly to his view that Octavius should renounce his inheritance.
– You may call yourself Caesar, but that does not make you Caesar. You have not even fought in a battle! Do you really think you’re a match for Antony, who commanded the left wing at Pharsalus?
Octavius ignored him.
My other memory is the firmness with which Cicero took the directly opposite view.
Power did not fall into one’s lap, he asserted.
Power had to be seized. Octavius should certainly go to Rome.
One of the tribuneships was vacant – Cinna, the noted poet, had been killed in the rioting after Caesar’s funeral by the mob, who had mistaken him for Cinna the senator, one of the conspirators.
– You should put yourself forward as a candidate to replace him. Just avoid writing poetry.
Philippus muttered into his wine that Octavius was only eighteen, too young to be eligible as a candidate.
– That doesn’t matter. For Octavius, the move is win-win.
If Antony allows the rule to be waived and he gains a tribuneship, that will be a wonderful beginning.
But if he blocks him, that will be even better.
It will look as though he is frightened, and Octavius can appeal over his head to the people. The mob always responds to bravado.
Of course, Cicero’s advice was self-interested. He wanted to cause Antony as much trouble as possible. But still, it was a clever idea. I began to understand why Octavius had been so eager to consult him.
Philippus said that Octavius would never even get to Rome.
– He will be dead before he has gone fifty miles!
The table went quiet. Octavius looked at me. With a confidence I did not entirely feel, I uttered my only remark of the night.
– We have a thousand men under arms. We can get him there.
We left soon after dawn – Octavius, Maecenas and I on horseback, attended by a small escort of cavalry, Salvidienus following with the legionaries on foot.
We made thirty miles a day, staying at the villas of Caesar’s old followers along the route.
Everywhere, Octavius was feted. At Aricia we halted and rested at the home of the banker C.
Calvena Matius, so that Maecenas could go ahead and make sure it was safe for us to enter the city once our little army had caught up.
As soon as we received his message assuring us that Caesar’s supporters were eagerly awaiting us, we set off on the final leg with our legionaries behind us, standards flying.
Octavius was more nervous than I had ever seen him.
He shifted in his saddle and glanced constantly from side to side as if at any moment he feared an assassin’s arrow.
He stayed close to me, just as he had in the schoolyard only a few years earlier.
I thought how far we had come since then and how much further we might go.
Young as I was, I had no real sense of the dangers that lay ahead. I felt only excitement.
The sky was strange that final day of April.
The brown smoke from the distant city’s fires mingled with the clouds over the seven hills.
They shrouded the sun in a gauzy haze of red and orange and purple, so that it seemed to stare down at us like the eye of Cyclops.
I had never seen anything like it, and pointed it out to Octavius in the hope of calming his anxiety.
– Look, Caesar, there is an omen for you!
He put his hand to his brow and squinted at it.
– Yes, Agrippa, it is an omen right enough, but is it good or bad?
As we neared the Capena Gate, I could see the dust raised by the crowds streaming out to greet us.
Maecenas had done a wonderful job of alerting Caesar’s followers that his heir was approaching Rome.
By the time we reached the city walls, they were lining the road in their thousands, cheering him and strewing his path with flowers.
The effect upon Octavius was of water upon a wilting bloom. He straightened in his saddle, nodded from side to side in acknowledgement, spurred his horse and rode ahead of me, through the gate and into Rome, where Maecenas was waiting.
He urged Octavius to go directly to the Forum to address the people. We dismounted, and the three of us walked through the streets at the head of our soldiers, past spectators standing four or five deep on the steps of the temples and hanging out of their upstairs windows.
The Forum was already packed and noisy with chants of Vivat Caesar!
When we had fought our way through to the back of the Rostra, I shouted at Octavius to wait until I had deployed a cordon of our legionaries around the platform to protect him.
Then Maecenas and I followed him as he slowly mounted the steps.
The roar as he appeared in his black toga went on for a long time, despite his signals for the crowd to quieten down. Finally, when they were still, he started to speak.
– People of Rome!
His voice carried well. I did not pay much attention to what he said. I was too preoccupied scanning his audience for potential assassins.
The greatest demonstration of approval came when he promised to claim the inheritance that had been stolen from him so that he could fulfil Caesar’s bequest to every citizen of a bounty of three hundred sesterces.
But not all applauded. Supporters of Mark Antony, of whom there were many, including soldiers, cat-called and folded their arms. Maecenas nudged me and pointed to one well-dressed, diminutive woman standing beside a litter on the edge of the crowd.
She flicked the backs of her hands at Octavius, brushing him away like so much dirt.
Then she cupped them to her mouth, shouted a final inaudible insult and climbed into her litter, and her slaves carried her at a brisk trot out of the Forum.
Maecenas whispered in my ear that she was Fulvia, Mark Antony’s wife, and that she was doubtless hurrying even now to tell her husband what Octavius had just said.
Over the next few days, Octavius sent Antony repeated messages requesting a meeting. The consul ignored them all.
This was a setback he had not foreseen. Finally he decided we had no option except to call on Antony unannounced.