Chapter VI
VI
All power depends on force. All force depends on money.
That was the basic equation we learned like schoolboys in those early weeks in Rome.
We had two cohorts at our disposal, encamped outside the city. But these men needed to be paid. And if Octavius was to prevail, he would have to recruit many thousands more.
With the help of Balbus the Spaniard, Octavius convened a meeting of Caesar’s old financiers who were still loyal to his memory.
Chief among these were Caius Matius, known as Calvena on account of his baldness, in whose villa we had stayed before our final journey into Rome; Caius Oppius, who came from a family of bankers, and who had served as Caesar’s secretary; and Gaius Rabirius Postumus, the famous moneylender, so rich his debtors had included the King of Egypt.
Octavius also summoned his kinsmen Pedius and Pinarius, Caesar’s nephews, to whom had been bequeathed most of the quarter of Caesar’s estate that had not been left to him.
They each brought along an adviser or two. The meeting lasted an entire day. Before they arrived, Octavius ordered me to fill the house and the street outside with our legionaries, both for protection and to impress his visitors.
He opened proceedings with an eloquent account of his interview with Antony.
He warned them that the consul plainly intended to raise an army and make himself dictator, and that his next step would be to come after them for their money.
Only he, Octavius, could stop him. He requested their support in locating Caesar’s hidden wealth, which was rightfully his, and asked for loans, which he promised would be repaid.
He also asked them to use their influence to shut off all lines of credit to Antony.
Finally he demanded that Pedius and Pinarius should hand over their share of the family fortune: it would be returned with interest.
The bankers were polite. They were sympathetic. But they were sceptical. Men do not acquire great riches by rushing to give money to ambitious adolescents with risky prospects, however distinguished their names.
And then, late in the afternoon, Maecenas burst into the room and announced that a spy he had placed in Antony’s household had just informed him that Antony had left the city an hour ago and was on his way to Campania to recruit an illegal army from Caesar’s veterans.
The news had a dramatic effect. I am reminded of that moment when a water diviner’s twigs cross and he orders a hole to be dug in a dusty landscape.
Suddenly the dry earth began to gush with liquid as the secret springs of wealth that flow beneath the streets of Rome were turned in Octavius’s direction.
No one wanted to be seen reluctant. By evening, the documents were signed and we had all the money we needed.
After the visitors had gone, I asked Maecenas if what he had said was true.
He confirmed it was. In fact, Antony had left the previous day, accompanied by Fulvia and his younger brother, Lucius.
Maecenas and Octavius, with the connivance of Balbus, had held back the news until near the end of the meeting, when it would have the most dramatic effect.
I felt aggrieved to have been left out of the secret, but Octavius said I had done my part by putting on a show of force.
I argued that we should not let Antony get a head start.
Now that we had money, we should go to Campania ourselves immediately and raise another legion. Octavius shook his head.
– I knew you would propose that, which is one reason why I did not tell you.
Oh, Agrippa – always spoiling for a fight!
Listen, there are plenty of men in the south who are pledged to me already.
Let Antony recruit his army among the rest. The more he gathers, the more it will terrify the Senate and the men of property and bring them over to my side.
Meanwhile, I shall take advantage of his absence from the city to gain the support of Rome.
I asked how he intended to do that.
– By bribery, of course! By staging a great festival of games and feasting in honour of Caesar’s memory, and by giving every citizen three hundred sesterces in accordance with the terms of his will. Let Antony start raising his army. He will return to a hostile city.
Octavius duly made a public announcement that he would sponsor ten days of festivities to celebrate Venus in the second part of Quintilis (or July, as the Senate had decreed the month should now be called in honour of Julius Caesar).
At the same time, he transferred to the city’s authorities all the dictator’s parklands and orchards along the banks of the Tiber for public use in perpetuity.
And he promised that on the last day of the festival he would pay out Caesar’s legacy to the Roman people.
His popularity soared.
I am certain that if Antony had been in the city, he would have found some way to put a stop to Octavius’s preparations.
But by the time he returned at the beginning of June, it was too late.
The gladiators had been hired. The wild beasts could be heard growling in their cages.
And Octavius was the toast of Rome. If Antony had interfered, he would have been torn to pieces.
Instead, he intensified his military planning.
He arranged for his followers in the Senate to pass a motion stripping Decimus, one of the leading assassins, of his province of Nearer Gaul, along with its legions, and transferring it all to him.
The following day, accompanied by the mob of soldiers he had raised in Campania, he summoned an assembly of the people and had the motion voted into law.
It was entirely illegal – no proper notice had been given, and only his supporters were allowed into the Forum to vote – but by this time, legalities no longer mattered. Force was all that counted.
It was a period of great peril for Octavius.
Once again his mother and stepfather pleaded with him to withdraw from Rome.
He refused. I brought our soldiers into the city to protect him.
Each day I studied him for signs that the strain might bring about a recurrence of his old illness.
But his nerve held. He was determined to face down Antony.
On the twentieth day of July, the festival of Venus began.
There were feasts and plays, beast hunts and funeral games for his adopted father.
It was all a great success, despite the unexpected appearance of a comet in the night sky.
Such a natural phenomenon was usually taken as an ill omen, but Octavius turned it to his advantage by mounting the Rostra and proclaiming that the hairy star was the soul of Caesar ascending into heaven.
The only interference from Antony, who refused to attend any part of the festivities, came at the end, when Octavius tried to display the dictator’s golden throne in the Forum.
Antony refused to release it. This was taken as an insult to his memory by the great majority of Caesar’s veterans – not just ours, but Antony’s as well – and he was obliged to back down.
The throne was produced. Representatives of the veterans then called upon Octavius and Antony and demanded that they reconcile publicly in the Temple of Jupiter.
Octavius agreed. Antony at first refused, and was only reluctantly persuaded to change his mind.
At the appointed hour, I escorted Octavius with a heavy bodyguard through the summer heat to the temple, and there we waited by the altar in the cool shade of the interior for such a long time that I became convinced Antony was not coming.
Finally he appeared with his brother, Lucius, to the cheers of his assembled soldiers.
He marched to the altar and brusquely shook hands with Octavius.
The contrast between the two – Octavius not yet nineteen, short and round-shouldered; Antony in his prime, immense and bear-like – was painful to observe.
They spoke a few words – I could not hear their exchange – and then Antony left, with a broad smile on his face.
Afterwards, I asked Octavius what Antony had said.
– He said that the next time we meet, it will be on the battlefield, and then we will see who is the true heir of Caesar.
A few days later, at the head of our two cohorts, accompanied by Maecenas and Salvidienus, we set out for Campania to start raising our army.
Now began a race against time to muster enough legionaries before the fighting began.
The advantages lay with Antony. He was a renowned and brilliant general.
He already had a force three or four times the size of ours and, as consul, could claim it was the legitimate army of the Senate.
The legions he had summoned home from Macedonia would also come under his command as soon as they arrived.
Looking back, I am amazed at how confident we felt.
I would not embark on such a venture today, even if my health was strong.
But then wars would not occur unless they were fought by men too young and reckless to understand the risks they are taking.
We had two sources of strength denied to Antony.
The first was Octavius’s status as Caesar’s heir, which once again drew veterans flocking to his standard wherever he raised it.
The second was money. Thanks to Balbus and his banker friends, we travelled with several wagons full of gold and silver.
We were able to offer recruits almost five times the pay Antony could afford.
Within a couple of months, we had gathered a force of six thousand men, already armed.
This was sufficient to reconstitute two of Caesar’s most famous Gallic legions – the Seventh, which had invaded Britain and fought at Pharsalus, and the Eighth, which had been with him in Egypt and helped win the Battle of Thapsus.