Chapter VIII
VIII
Octavius invited me to join him and move back into my old quarters in his parents’ villa.
But I did not like the changed atmosphere of the place.
His mother’s health had broken under the strain of worrying about her son; she seldom left her bed.
His stepfather had been part of a peace delegation sent by the Senate to negotiate with Antony, which Octavius regarded as a treacherous attempt to undermine him.
They argued about the need to restore the Republic.
– Do you think I have done all this in order to prop up that rotten structure?
In a fit of rage, he ordered Philippus to take leave of absence from the Senate and clear out of Rome.
My friend had changed. How could he not? Nobody dared challenge him, not even his dying mother. He was the master of the household now. I resolved to leave as soon as I could.
On the nineteenth day of August, he was elected consul, along with Pedius. It was an easy victory. The voting pens were surrounded by his soldiers. Theirs were the only names on the ballot. He was still a month short of his twentieth birthday.
I decided to return to the family home and see if I could reconcile with my father.
But when I went to visit, I found my brother, Lucius, in residence with his young family.
He told me my father had died earlier in the year.
No one could say why. One day he had seemed well enough, and the next he had fallen into a coma from which he never recovered.
Lucius swore he had sent me a letter to inform me.
I am sure he had, but in the chaos of sieges and marches and battles it had never reached me.
To lose a father to whom one has been close must be a terrible sadness for any son. And yet to lose a father from whom one has been estranged may perhaps be even worse. I had no happy memories to draw on for consolation. I had only regret for the conversations we had never had.
My father’s estate was small, but the share my brother passed on to me was enough to rent an apartment, and there I lived for the next few months.
Most days I would see Octavius. By now he was burdened with administering the state.
He worked all hours, issuing a flood of orders and decrees.
He had grasped by instinct one of the great lessons of politics – that power is like a muscle.
It must be exercised constantly, otherwise it will turn flabby and weak.
He could not leave his army idle. To that end, he had decided to use his eleven legions to crush Brutus and Cassius, who were raising a huge army in Greece.
For such a war to be legal, he needed to repeal the law that had granted the assassins amnesty.
He arranged for them to be tried in absentia and asked me to prosecute Cassius.
There would be no advocate for the defence, and no need for witnesses.
Cassius had condemned himself out of his own mouth. His actions spoke for themselves.
Nevertheless, I prepared carefully and made a study of Cassius’s career.
I was impressed despite myself. He had been Crassus’s second in command when his expeditionary force was wiped out in Parthia.
He had escaped, regrouped, and repelled a Parthian invasion.
He was a soldier of high renown. His crime was that he was not prepared to bow the knee to a dictator.
In different circumstances, I could imagine we might have been friends.
When the day of the trial came, I was more nervous than I ever had been before a battle.
I memorised my speech, which Octavius had drafted for me, fortified myself with a glass or two of wine, and climbed up onto the platform in the Forum, where a large crowd was waiting.
It passed off well enough. The verdict of guilty was a formality, and Octavius was sufficiently impressed to promise that he would arrange for me to be elected a tribune in November, which would give me a seat in the Senate.
However, he said that before we could mount an expedition against Brutus and Cassius, it would be necessary for us first to make peace with Antony.
That brilliant soldier had retrieved his position, against all odds, by joining forces with Lepidus, the highly ambitious governor of Southern Gaul, who controlled the province’s legions. Octavius still detested and distrusted Antony, but told me he intended to try to forge an alliance with him.
– No doubt one or the other of us will break it as soon as he feels strong enough. But for now, our interests are best served by cooperation.
Emissaries exchanged messages, and it was agreed that a peace conference would take place between Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, who demanded to be included, on an island in the River Rhenus near Bononia that had been reconnoitred by both sides during the fighting at Mutina.
In October, we set off for the north at the head of an army of five legions.
It was a relief to leave the city and its intrigues behind me and be on the move again.
Sometimes I gave my horse to my staff officer and marched with the men.
I found solace in the dull routine of tramping mile after mile, with no thought of the past and no future to concern me except the effort of putting one foot in front of the other.
And it was useful to listen to the complaints of the men.
They had not been paid for many months. I passed on their grievances to Octavius.
But he said his coffers were empty – another reason why he had to make a deal with Antony.
We encamped along the eastern bank of the River Rhenus.
Antony’s forces faced us on the western side.
With so many hostile legionaries crammed into a small area, there was an hourly risk of war flaring up again.
The men yelled insults at one another across the river and occasionally exchanged missiles.
Lepidus, who had been consul during Caesar’s rule, and whose father and brother had also held that office, was the Republic’s chief priest, the Pontifex Maximus.
An erect and bony aristocrat, very conscious of his breeding, he carried himself aloof, as if everyone around him emitted a slightly unpleasant smell.
Declaring himself the senior figure, he took charge of the arrangements for the conference.
Two temporary wooden footbridges from either shore led to the island, where a large tent had been erected. On the first morning, watched in silence by the armies, Lepidus walked over to it alone to check it for concealed weapons. He emerged and waved his cloak, the signal that the place was safe.
The three principals were each allowed to take four men.
Octavius chose me and Salvidienus and a couple of hefty officers who could serve as secretaries but whose muscle might prove useful in case of unarmed attack.
No personal weapons were permitted. Just to make sure, Lepidus searched Octavius and then Antony, and Octavius searched Lepidus, who only submitted to this indignity under protest. After everyone else had been patted down, Antony and Octavius nodded coolly to one another.
We took our places at a round table and the negotiations began.
The talks took three days, working from dawn to dusk.
At the end of each session we would all return to our respective camps for the night.
Neither Antony nor Lepidus could bring themselves to call Octavius by his legal name of Caesar.
He was young enough to be their son. But he ignored the insult, and once he had impressed them with his usual mastery of detail, they treated him almost as their equal.
The principals formed themselves into what they called a constitutional commission.
They haggled over who would receive which provinces, and in the end agreed that Octavius would take Africa, Sardinia and Sicily, Antony would have Nearer and Further Gaul, while Southern Gaul and Spain were awarded to Lepidus.
That deal was done on the first day. Next, the three swore a solemn pact to mount an expedition of revenge the following year against Brutus and Cassius.
What took most of the remaining time was deciding how the money was to be raised.
Antony and Lepidus also desperately needed funds to pay their legions.
They concluded that there was only one solution – proscriptions.
A large part of the senatorial and equestrian class would have to be put to death and their property confiscated.
Extensive lists of names were drawn up and argued over.
The richest men were automatically marked down to die, and it quickly became a chance to settle personal scores.
I remember Antony insisting that Caesetius Rufus be included.
When Octavius asked why, he replied that Fulvia wanted his house on the Palatine.
I would like to claim I was repulsed by this. But I was young, and cold, and hard. I had seen how much the poor suffered, in peacetime as well as war, and how often our soldiers had gone hungry. Let the rich who ordered them about now have a taste of it.
The only time I was shocked was at the end, when Antony said that the proscriptions might be more palatable to the people if it was seen that the three of them had also been prepared to sacrifice a wealthy friend in the interests of the state.
He proposed that each should deliver up one ally to be executed.
He went first and nominated his uncle, Lucius, even though Lucius had defended him in the Senate.
Lepidus thought for a few moments and chose his younger brother, the ex-consul Aemilius Paullus, against whom he had some grudge.
Then both men turned to Octavius and asked for the name of the friend he was prepared to give up. Octavius hesitated, whereupon Antony said that surely his sacrifice was obvious.
– And who would that be?
– Cicero.