Chapter XIV
XIV
By nature I had always been wary of confiding much in other people. Now I became even more guarded.
Caecilia noticed the change in me. I assured her my silent mood was caused by grief at the loss of her father.
But she did not entirely believe me, and for the first time a slight distance opened up between us.
Looking back, I suppose I should have told her.
Yet the truth was, I trusted no one, not even my wife.
Thus does power warp us. The higher I climbed, the more I became like Octavius.
Now there was a man to whom the concealment of his true feelings came as naturally as breathing!
He went around that spring and summer telling everyone who would listen that he had no personal quarrel with Antony.
He blamed their breach solely on Cleopatra.
He said she had cast a spell upon his former colleague, and that her intention was to transfer the capital of the empire from Rome to Alexandria and rule it from there with Antony by her side, besotted and compliant like a potent eunuch.
The coming war would therefore not be a civil war, he declared, but a war against the Queen of Egypt. And even at this late stage, he claimed he still hoped Antony might renounce her and avoid the shedding of blood.
Like all the best lies, it contained a kernel of truth. And people wanted to believe it, so they did.
In June, he presided over a solemn ceremony in the Temple of Bellona to sanctify the conflict.
After the sacrifice of a black bull to the goddess of war, a spear was dipped in the victim’s blood and handed to Caesar.
He hurled it into a patch of earth at the base of the temple steps that symbolised the soil of Egypt.
It was a powerful throw – he had practised it the day before – and there it would remain like a flagstaff until Egypt was crushed.
He placed me in charge of the military preparations. I would command the navy, he the army. Maecenas would rule Italy while we were gone.
I threw myself once more into the world in which I was most at home. We assembled an expeditionary force of some eighty thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry. Our fleet would consist of four hundred warships.
Antony in the meantime had not been idle.
We learned that he had moved his army into Greece, presumably with the intention of striking first and invading Italy.
This would enable him to recall his veterans from their farms in the south, a disaster we were determined to prevent.
Our plan called for me to go ahead with the navy and five legions to locate Antony’s main force and harass his transports and supply lines along the Greek coast until Caesar was able to follow with the bulk of the army.
On the eve of my departure, I dined quietly with Caecilia.
We both knew I would be gone at least a year.
There was a good chance I might not return at all.
I fear I was poor company. My head was full of war.
That night I slept alone, and left before dawn while the rest of the household was still in bed.
Three weeks later, on a clear, smooth autumn morning, I led the fleet out of Brundisium. Once we were beyond the harbour mole, we hoisted sail and set a course due east across the Adriatic.
As soon as the land was out of sight, I felt the strains of recent months fall away and my spirits lift.
I relished the sea in all its aspects – the breeze in my face, the scent and taste of the salt spray, the freedom of the far horizon, the dolphins that followed us and played around the ships, the constant interplay of clouds and sunshine by day, and by night the glittering carapace of stars.
Its hardships did not trouble me. I was immune to seasickness.
Even the occasional storms I found exhilarating.
Once, we were struck by lightning, and a blue-white ball of fire travelled down the mast and exploded across the deck.
It left a scorch mark, nothing more. Doubtless Caesar would have called it an omen.
When we reached Dyrrachium, I found an intelligence report awaiting me. Antony’s army was occupying the island of Corfu, one hundred miles to the south. We sailed towards it immediately, keeping close to the shore.
Although by all accounts his force was much greater than mine, I made up my mind to attack him.
But when we landed on Corfu, we discovered the detritus of an abandoned camp.
Later, I learned that his spies who were watching our progress along the coast had exaggerated the size of our fleet, leading him to assume he was about to be confronted by Caesar’s entire army.
Not wishing to give battle until Cleopatra had brought her navy from Alexandria to support him, he had retreated to the Peloponnese peninsula for the winter.
I was greatly encouraged by this news. The old Antony would have relished a fight as soon as possible. This new one, soft and sybaritic from his years with Cleopatra, was plainly much more cautious.
His departure from Corfu left me free to range up and down the Ionian Sea for the next six months.
I enjoyed acting like a pirate. Every day brought some fresh adventure.
I chased down his supply ships from Africa and Asia.
I raided the garrisons he had left in various ports and harbours.
I even made a surprise attack on the stronghold of Methone, at the very southern tip of the Peloponnese, ruled by Antony’s great ally Bogud, the Berber king of Mauretania.
I captured it, killing the king during the siege.
In the spring, Caesar left Brundisium with the army and crossed the Adriatic unopposed. He established his camp on Corfu, where I joined him.
There I was able to report that Antony, accompanied by Cleopatra, had left his winter quarters and that their combined fleet was in the large natural harbour of the Gulf of Ambracia, guarded by his army in its camp on the southern promontory overlooking the bay, close to a small hamlet called Actium.
I conferred with Caesar and we agreed our strategy.
The Gulf of Ambracia is a large expanse of water, some twenty-five miles long and nine across, entirely enclosed by land, apart from a narrow strait less than a mile wide that opens onto the Ionian Sea.
I would blockade the entrance a little way offshore while Caesar crossed from Corfu to the mainland and marched fifty miles along the coast to occupy the northern promontory of the gulf, opposite Antony and Cleopatra.
This we accomplished by the end of June.
Antony’s tactics were a mystery to me. Either he should have tried to break out from the gulf with his fleet and escape to Egypt, or moved his army to intercept Caesar on his approach. He did neither, but stayed put for month after month as the summer heat began to build.
After repeated attempts by Caesar to goad him into battle, both sides dug in.
The temperature at that time of year in that part of Greece is like a furnace.
The site Antony had chosen for his camp was a flat expanse next to the Temple of Apollo.
It must have seemed ideal. But it proved to be surrounded by marshland, and soon reports began to reach us that his soldiers were dying in their hundreds of malaria and dysentery.
Our blockade was also causing starvation.
The situation became so critical that one night, in the distance, part of the gulf was lit up by what appeared to be giant torches.
According to our spies, Antony had been obliged to burn sixty Egyptian ships because he no longer had the crews to man them.
His followers began to defect.
Most notable of these was Domitius Ahenobarbus, the consul who had left Rome the previous year to join him.
He was a brave and honourable soldier who had fought with Pompey at Pharsalus.
He was rowed over to our side of the straits in a small boat under cover of darkness, suffering so badly from fever he had to be carried up to our camp.
The moment Caesar and I learned of his arrival, we hurried to the tent in which he had been laid out under heavy guard.
We thought he might have been sent as a peace emissary.
Instead, he sweated and trembled and raved with all the fury of his illness about Cleopatra and the treatment he had received from the Egyptians.
He said she had brought with her all her state’s treasure and dreaded the thought of losing it.
It was she who had persuaded Antony not to fight on land.
Her view was that the two of them should break through the blockade and escape to Egypt, leaving their soldiers behind to confront our forces.
Antony was so besotted with her he was minded to agree.
After a bitter military conference, during which both had roundly abused him, Ahenobarbus had decided he could stand it no longer, and so he had come over to us.
This conversation was the last time he was lucid. The fever took hold of his body with renewed ferocity and he lapsed into unconsciousness. A few days later, he died.
Now we knew the enemy’s intention, it was clear that the outcome of the war would be determined not on land but at sea.
Given his detestation of everything nautical, this prospect filled Caesar with unease.
Despite my two naval victories over Sextus, I had been impressed by the speed and manoeuvrability of his small liburnians, which I had been unable to pursue into their harbour after the battle at Mylae because the water was too shallow for our large triremes.
I had therefore altered the configuration of our fleet by building more liburnians.
Antony, on the other hand, after studying my report of the battles, had drawn the opposite conclusion.
The core of his navy was huge fighting platforms capable of carrying many more soldiers than ours.