Augustus. Buchan John

imaginary decrees of Caesar to suit his convenience. The “liberators” were in a panic, and Cicero despaired of the state. A meeting of the Senate had been called for June 1, but few senators put in an appearance. Antony accordingly chose a simpler and more rapid procedure. He had a plebiscite carried extending the provincial commands of the consuls from two to five years. He secured for himself Macedonia and its legions, and Syria for Dolabella. Brutus and Cassius, to whom these provinces had been assigned by Caesar, were offered instead commissionerships of the corn supply, and, when this insulting offer was rejected, they were allotted the minor governments of Crete and Cyrene. Meantime he got his brother to introduce a new agrarian law to conciliate the veterans.

      For Octavius he professed only contempt. He spoke of him slightingly as the “boy” and sneered at his money-lending ancestry. He refused to hand over Julius’s fortune, so that the heir had to pay the legacies out of his own pocket. He blocked his candidature for the tribuneship, by insisting upon a legal objection which had been often disregarded. He granted him an interview in Pompey’s old house, but kept him waiting in an anteroom, and in his short talk treated him with studied discourtesy.¹ The young man was stirred to a carefully calculated energy. He had his own band of veterans, and in the streets of Rome he denounced Antony as a traitor to Julius’s memory, since he had done nothing to avenge him, and had embezzled the monies which should have gone to the people. He declared that he himself would pay the legacies if it cost him his last penny. With a view to the future he wrote to his friends in the Macedonian legions, telling them of his infamous treatment. The climax came in July when the games were celebrated in honour of Julius’s victories. Octavius tried again to introduce the gilded chair and was forbidden by Antony, though this time popular feeling was on his side. On the last day a comet appeared in the heavens, the sidus Julium, which the populace took as a sign of Julius’s reception among the gods, and which even the calm Octavius welcomed as a happy omen.¹ Antony at last awoke to the facts. This young man had a real following among the more ardent Caesarians, and it would be wise to conciliate him. His bodyguard had already remonstrated with him for his cavalier treatment of Julius’s heir. He had now secured by a plebiscite in exchange for Macedonia the command of Cisalpine Gaul,² together with the Macedonian legions, and, with this trump card in his hand, he could afford to be generous. He agreed to a formal reconciliation.³

      The friction with Antony had one good result; it strengthened the position of Octavius with the republicans. He had the wisdom to keep in close touch with Cicero, and the opinion of Cicero weighed heavily with the conservatives. The old statesman was now in a sad frame of mind, torn between duty and self-interest. He was making plans to return to Greece, and then hesitating to leave his native land. His mood was much that of the famous sentence written after his daughter’s death: “The long ages when I shall be no more are more important in my eyes than the brief span of present life, which indeed seems all too long.”⁴ His chief dread was Antony, and his chief hope, in spite of the doubts of Brutus, was now Octavius. He wrote of him to Atticus in June, calling him for the first time Octavianus, and thereby acknowledging Julius’s adoption:

      I see clearly that he has brains and spirit, and is as well disposed to our heroes as we could desire. But we must carefully consider the degree of reliance that can be placed on him, taking into account his age, his name, his position as Caesar’s heir, and his upbringing. He must be trained, and above all he must be alienated from Antony. . . . He has an excellent disposition, if it only lasts.¹

      After some months of doubt and waiting, Octavius, aided by the sagacity of Agrippa and Maecenas,² had devised a policy, a strategic plan which would permit of much opportunism in tactics. His main purpose was to avenge Julius and to carry on his work, which meant that sooner or later he would find himself in implacable opposition to the republican conservatives. Antony shared in the first part of his purpose; but it was now certain that Antony would not, if he could help it, admit him as an ally, but would labour to make himself de facto Julius’s heir and successor. To bring Antony to reason two things were needed. He must acquire an armed following of his own, by lavish expenditure and adroit propaganda, for after all his name, his adoption, and his heirship made a strong emotional appeal to the Caesarian veterans. In the second place he must keep on good terms with all who feared and distrusted Antony. To these he must appear as a young man seeking only his legal rights, an admirer of Julius but also imbued with a sober republican sentiment. He must continue to speak the “liberators” fair whatever he felt about them in his heart. His role must be that of a mild Caesarian, but a stout anti-Antonian. Gaius Marcellus, the husband of his sister Octavia, was a valuable trait d’union, and so was Cicero.

      Antony was nervous about this silent, self-contained young man. It was true that Octavius had supported his claim to Cisalpine Gaul as against Decimus Brutus, but, since the latter was one of the principal assassins, he was bound to do so or lose caste with every Caesarian. But he feared his growing popularity with the extreme among the veterans. He was beginning also to lose his temper. Cicero came to Rome at the end of August, and delivered in the Senate the speech known as the First Philippic, which was a dignified criticism of his recent doings and did much to rally the conservatives. Antony showed his nervousness by a preposterous charge against Octavius of attempted murder, for which he could produce no evidence. The young man ridiculed the accusation, and presently all Rome joined in the laughter.¹

      Yet Antony’s position might well have seemed impregnable. He had ousted Decimus Brutus from Cisalpine Gaul and next year would also have Celtic Gaul. His friend Dolabella would have Syria, and, if Decimus received Macedonia, it would be without the legions. Brutus and Cassius were disconsidered wanderers. Most of the provincial governors, who had armies at their command, were Caesarians, and likely to be his friends—Plancus in Celtic Gaul, Asinius Pollio in Further Spain, and Lepidus who would presently have Hither Spain and the Narbonese. Things were moving towards a crisis, and the vital matter was the control of armies. His first business was to get one of his own. He had already his Campanian levies of veterans and condottieri, and four of the Macedonian legions assigned to him were on the sea. On October 9 he set out for Brundisium to meet them. His wife Fulvia went with him; she had once been the wife of the gangster Clodius, and was one of those terrible women produced now and then by the Roman stock, unsexed, implacable, filled with an insane lust of power. She and his brother Lucius, a feebler version of himself, were now his chief advisers.

      It behoved Octavius to act at once. His reconciliation with Antony had been shattered by the bogus assassination charge, and the two now stood in the public eye as declared enemies. He sent agents to negotiate with the Macedonian legions and distribute leaflets setting forth his case, and he himself made a tour of the colonies of old soldiers in Campania, summoning them in Julius’s name to re-enlist, and offering each man a bounty of twenty pounds sterling. He must have either retrieved some of the ready money which Antony had embezzled, or disposed of some of the real estate for cash, for it does not appear that he entrenched upon his own or his mother’s private fortune; from now onwards he never seems to have suffered from financial embarrassment. He raised three thousand troops, afterwards organized in two legions. It was a bold step, for he had no legal military command, and no mandate from Senate or people, and appropriately it is the first deed recorded in the Res Gestae, that summary of the main events in his life: “At the age of nineteen years, on my own authority and at my own cost, I raised the army by means of which I liberated the republic from the oppression of a tyrannical faction.” The army, the same army with which he was to triumph at Actium.¹ He had taken the first step in his campaign of vengeance.

      Antony was less fortunate. At Suessa he purged his levies by executing a number of soldiers whose loyalty he distrusted. At Brundisium he found that only three legions had arrived, the II, the IV and the Martian, and that Octavius’s propaganda had done its work among them. They were in a difficult temper, angry with Antony for his apparent supineness as Julius’s avenger, and contrasting his meagre bounty with the largesse of Octavius. Antony proceeded to put to death several officers and some three hundred men, and for a moment seemed to have quelled the mutiny. He selected a bodyguard with which he pushed on to Rome, picking up on the way the Lark,² that famous unit of the Gallic wars, and bidding his other legions follow by the coast road to Ariminum, which was the way to Cisalpine Gaul.

      Octavius