Chapter VIII #3
Strange to relate, but I had found at Bononia that I got on well with Antony.
He remembered my name and treated me as if I was one of his young officers.
He would throw playful punches at my stomach and ruffle my hair.
I could see why men were willing to follow and even die for him.
Now he listened to what I had to say, then called for a staff officer and crossed Atticus’s name off the proscribed list. He added his seal next to the amendment and told the officer to see it was widely circulated.
– I should never have let him be marked down in the first place. He helped Fulvia when I was outlawed by the Senate. Tell his daughter he should stay in hiding for another day or two, and then it should be safe for him to return. Let me know if there is a problem.
He poured some wine, and we drank to the health of Atticus.
– I like you, young man. You’re a proper soldier, not like Octavius. He’s a name and nothing more. If ever you get tired of him, come and see me.
Near the end of the year, Atia died, and Octavius staged a public funeral.
He wept as he delivered the eulogy, praising her virtues as an ideal Roman matron – modesty, gentleness, loyalty, and patriotism above all.
I am sure the terrible scenes of the proscriptions, when many of her old friends were killed, must have hastened her end.
Why would she wish to live on into this new world her son was creating?
As the flames consumed her body at her cremation, Octavius observed that we were both orphans now.
A week later, he invited me to join him at a dinner Antony was holding in his honour.
The purpose of the meal, he said, was to celebrate his betrothal to Antony’s stepdaughter, Clodia.
When I started to congratulate him, he laughed.
He assured me it was no love match. Indeed, this would be the first time he had ever met the girl, who was only fourteen.
The marriage was purely political, to strengthen his alliance with Antony.
She was the child of Fulvia and her first husband, Clodius.
He suspected the arrangement was Fulvia’s idea.
– Imagine having Fulvia as your mother-in-law!
I remember only six of us around the table, although there may have been others whom I have forgotten – myself and Octavius, Antony and Fulvia, the bride-to-be, Clodia, and Antony’s brother Lucius, who was said to be twice as wild as him and half as clever.
The brothers were both already drunk when we arrived.
Octavius shared a couch with Clodia. He attempted to make polite conversation, but she barely spoke. She looked younger than her years, childlike, unformed. After the first couple of courses, Fulvia sent her off to bed. The meeting had not gone well.
It was Fulvia who dominated the evening.
I was impressed by her shrewdness. Her assessment of Lepidus, for example – that he was both hugely ambitious and too arrogant to realise his limitations, and that the combination was a recipe for disaster – was exactly right.
She said that sooner or later Antony and Octavius would have to get rid of him and rule the empire between them.
Octavius was taken aback by her outspokenness about matters that in his opinion were not a woman’s business. He took issue with her. He said that recent history suggested a triumvirate was more stable than a duumvirate.
– When Caesar, Pompey and Crassus ruled the state together, there was peace between them. Whereas after Crassus was killed in Parthia, Caesar and Pompey quarrelled.
– That is why you are marrying Clodia, to ensure that does not happen.
– Well, Pompey was married to Caesar’s daughter, and that did not prevent a civil war!
– Yes, but it was only after she died that they fell out. If she had lived, it might have been a different story. You are too young to remember it all. I was there!
I had seldom seen Octavius silenced in an argument, and I could see he did not care for the experience, especially when the person beating him was a woman, and one who had trapped him into a marriage he resented. He announced that he had work to do, and it was time for him to leave.
Fulvia seized his arm.
– Wait, young man. You cannot go yet. We have something to show you.
She nodded to Antony, who made a signal to his attendant, and a slave came in carrying a sack.
Antony laid the sack on the table, untied the drawstring and lifted out a pair of severed hands, and afterwards, the head of Cicero, which he set beside his plate.
The eyes were wide open, the mouth agape, as if he had been interrupted mid sentence.
Afterwards, it was said that Fulvia pierced the orator’s tongue with her hairpin in revenge for the insults he had directed against her and Antony.
I did not witness that, although she was certainly capable of it.
Presumably the couple’s intention was to shock, or shame, or intimidate Octavius.
If so, they had misjudged him. He gave no reaction, except to raise his eyebrows and call for his cloak.
His coldness must have made an impression, for as he was leaving, Antony called after him.
– Goodnight, Caesar.
It was the first time he had ever used the name, but from that night onwards, despite his contempt, he never called him anything else.