Augustus. Buchan John

      To Puteoli he journeyed by the Appian Way, receiving on the road embarrassing attentions from colonists and veterans, some of whom continued in his train. He was obliged to allow himself to be addressed as Caesar. He reached his stepfather’s villa about the 18th, and found that, though Philippus was still opposed to his course, his mother’s heart was with him. Next day he met Balbus and told him his intentions; that loyal Caesarian was the first outside his family circle to know of them. That day, too, he called upon Cicero, and the statesman of sixty-two and the stripling of nineteen delicately manœuvred for position, and sought to read each other’s minds.

      Cicero was the last of the philosophic republicans. For a time he had been Julius’s friend; had he not once written, “I burn with love for him”? In the final struggle he had half-heartedly gone over to Pompey, because his cause was more or less the cause of the Senate.: but after Pharsalus Julius had treated him kindly, and the old man had turned to letters in a new fever of composition. Julius’s death had opened vistas to a mind which had little contact with reality. He had passionately approved the murder, made gods of Brutus and Cassius, and laboured to stiffen the purpose of the bewildered conspirators. But Antony’s sinister figure had blocked the road to a restored republic, and now he sat in his country villa, hurling letters at a multitude of friends, sometimes buoyant with hope, oftener shrill with despair, striving to steady his thoughts by writing his treatise on “Old Age,” planning with his inexhaustible zest a new work on “Duty,” a philosopher who had lost all philosophic balance. He was consumed with most human hates, and tantalized by dreams of being once again, as in Catiline’s day, his country’s saviour. Octavius had known him slightly in Rome, had studied his de Republica and his de Legibus, and had learned from them certain doctrines which he was always to remember.¹ As a student himself of Panaetius and Posidonius, he revered a master in their craft. There was much in Cicero’s creed with which he agreed, and he hoped to get from him some notion of the purpose and strength of the faction which had been the death of Julius.

      So, as a respectful youth who had no thought beyond his family duties, he approached the old statesman. He addressed him as “father,” avoided all controversial matters, sadly declared that the present situation was intolerable, and humbly sought guidance. He made a favourable impression, which was somewhat lessened by his entourage of noisy Caesarians. Cicero wrote to Atticus that the young man seemed quite devoted to him, though he could not see how it was possible for one with such antecedents to be a good citizen. He considered him harmless and colourless; it maddened him to think that this youth could go to Rome in safety while his heroes, Brutus and Cassius, dare not show their faces there: but he found a slightly malicious comfort in the thought that he would have a tussle with Antony before he got his inheritance.¹

      From Cicero Octavius got more enlightenment than he gave. He realized that he himself was still an inconsiderable person, a mere claimant who had to translate his rights into facts. The republicans were not greatly concerned about him; the humbler Caesarians might crowd around him, but the Caesarian leader, Antony, was plundering his heritage. Cicero had been cordial, because he saw in this stripling a wedge which might split the faction of his enemies. The task which he had entered upon had suddenly taken on a new magnitude. He would have to fight, not only the assassins, but the friends of Julius. Wariness was more than ever his duty. In the long run he must range himself implacably against the “liberators” but first he had to checkmate Antony, and for that the republicans might be useful temporary allies. Therefore he must keep close to Cicero, in whom new qualities seemed to have been born. The latter’s conservatism, partly a lawyer’s reverence for ancient things, partly the sentiment of a provincial for the old aristocracy, had become a fighting creed. He had lost his former dream of a concordia ordinum, and had become a furious partisan. His personal vanity had been transmuted into something nobler, an ambition to save the state a second time from brigandage, and for that end to face the uttermost risks. Courage, a desperate courage, was already, in spite of temporary hesitations and fears, becoming the breath of the old man’s being. Beyond doubt Cicero must not be neglected.

      Octavius went on to Rome, which he reached by the end of the first week of May. He found the city quiet for the moment, and was warmly greeted by the mob, who were beneficiaries under Julius’s will and who looked to his heir for the money, and by old soldiers of the Gallic wars. A halo round the sun, as he entered the city, seemed to promise the favour of the gods. There were three Antonies in office, Marcus the consul, Gaius the praetor, and Lucius the tribune. To Gaius he formally announced his acceptance of the adoption, while Lucius introduced him to the statutory public meeting. There he made a discreet speech, promised to pay every citizen at once the bequest of Julius, and to celebrate, if necessary at his own expense, the games in July appointed for Julius’s victories. On the amnesty to the murderers he was silent, thereby grievously disappointing Cicero.¹ Nothing untoward occurred except that at some games postponed from April he was forbidden by a tribune to use Julius’s gilded chair, and the applause of the middle-class spectators told him that the republicans had still many well-wishers in Rome. Lucius Antonius, too, proved curiously obstructive in the matter of the law required to ratify his adoption.

      But it was the conduct of Mark Antony that gave him concern. The consul had shown his view of the unimportance of Octavius by leaving the city in the last week of April² before his arrival. He was now busy in Campania, recruiting a bodyguard of veterans and Syrians, some of whom he was sending on in batches to Rome. Octavius must await his return to get cash to pay Julius’s legacies. He had a large fortune of his own, and he could also draw upon his mother, but in view of what the future might require he was not inclined to deplete his private account. He was now the owner of the bulk of his great-uncle’s estate, but most of it was in real property and slaves and threatened, too, with many claims at law. The ready money was that deposited in the temple of Ops, and the big sum which Calpurnia had handed over on the night of the murder; the latter Antony had annexed, and the former he was using to pay his debts and purchase partisans. He must have an early settlement with this man who now straddled his path like a Colossus.

      The character of Mark Antony is no easier for the historian to assess than it was at that moment for Octavius. The latter had met him often, for Antony had patched up his quarrel with Julius, had ridden by the conqueror’s side after Munda, had been his colleague in the consulship, and had been often spoken of as his destined heir. Handsome in the heavy Roman way, gross in habit, inordinate in appetites, through a youth of debt and debauchery he had preserved what Shakespeare makes Brutus call his “quick spirit.” As a soldier he had not the professional talents of Labienus or Quintus Cicero, but he had something of the “Caesariana celeritas.”¹ He had a hasty temper, but it was easily appeased, and his humour, good fellowship and zest for life gave him a ready popularity and a genuine power of leadership. Octavius had neither trusted nor liked him. He suspected, as many did, his loyalty to Julius. This magnificent blustering human animal made no appeal to a fastidious youth in delicate health. To him Antony seemed the faux bonhomme; he was not a great soldier, he had not the rudiments of culture,² though he had a kind of rough eloquence, and no one had hitherto suspected him of statecraft. But now, within sight of his fortieth year,³ he seemed to have changed his character. As Octavius reviewed what he had been told of his recent doings, he must have reflected that he had played his part with notable moderation and skill. He had kept his hold on the Caesarians without breaking finally with the republicans, and had made himself the first power in the state. He had used Julius’s money to buy himself allies, and now he was in Campania recruiting a bodyguard from Julius’s old soldiers. Rumour spoke of him as showing the effect of his past in a violent irritability and bouts of neurotic excitement, and of exhibiting a novel anxiety about his personal safety.⁴ However that might be, he had so far made no mistakes. What he had won he would not readily let go. The one hope was that in the long game a cooler head and a more disciplined mind might outplay this brilliant creature of temperament.

      Antony returned to Rome about May 20, with his bodyguard of armed veterans who would also vote in any popular assembly. He had purchased with Octavius’s money the alliance of Cicero’s son-in-law, the ruffianly Dolabella. At once the city became a hot-bed of rumours. Antony meant to disregard the amnesty to the murderers; he was hoping to make himself dictator; he meant to juggle