Augustus. Buchan John

in command of the army, with the “imperium” of a pro-praetor. His position was now regularized, though, since he had the consuls as colleagues, he had not the chief authority for which he had hoped. On January 7 he assumed the fasces, the symbol of his command.³ He had already been offered them by his troops, but had prudently declined, preferring to wait for the Senate’s grant.¹

      II

      The first months of the year 43 B.C. were full of feeble manœuvring for position. The Senate, in spite of Cicero, was unwilling to declare Antony an enemy of the state and so formally embark upon war. Antony, though he could beyond doubt have crushed Decimus had he acted at once, was anxious to strengthen his forces and make certain of the western proconsuls, so he was very willing to protract negotiations; Mutina he must have believed that he could take whenever he pleased. He replied to the senatorian embassy by announcing his willingness to give up Cisalpine Gaul, if he were given Celtic Gaul with six legions till the end of the year 39, if his veterans were rewarded, all his decrees confirmed, and no question raised about the monies he had taken from the state treasury. When this reply was received, the Senate, under the compulsion of Cicero, decreed on February 2 a state of war. But the Antonians managed to protract proceedings, and Pansa, the other consul, did not march till March 19.

      Octavius during these weeks had grave cause for anxiety. His colleague Hirtius was a sick man, and wholly supine. He was not too certain of the loyalty of his own command. While Antony was jeering at his youth,² he was also writing to him privately, warning him that Cicero would play him false, and that no anti-Caesarian could ever be his friend.³ On this latter point Octavius had much confirmatory evidence. Their negotiations with Antony showed how half-hearted the conservatives were in the cause in which he had become their ally. Cicero’s burning Philippics were proof of his detestation of Antony, but remarks of his were now being circulated which showed his lukewarmness towards Octavius. Moreover, the news from overseas was putting a new complexion on affairs. Brutus and Cassius had been assigned Macedonia and Syria; the former province Brutus had occupied and had got himself a formidable army, while Cassius was on his way to do the same thing with Syria, and he had been entrusted with the punishment of Dolabella, who had murdered the governor of Asia. With these new senatorial armies in the East the conservatives might soon be in a position to dispense with himself. Further, though Lepidus spoke with an uncertain voice, Plancus in Celtic Gaul seemed to be firmly on the Senate’s side. There was every reason to fear that presently he, who had been only accepted as a weapon, would be discarded. Octavius never showed more notably his amazing self-command than in this difficult time. He took no hasty step; he realized that his first business was to clip Antony’s wings and make himself formidable. So he behaved as a dutiful servant of the state, waiting on orders, and occupied his too ample leisure in improving his literary and oratorical style.¹

      But the march northward of Pansa towards the close of March put an end to the time of waiting. Decimus in Mutina informed Octavius by carrier pigeons² that his garrison was starving, and, unless at once relieved, must surrender. We need not linger over the details of the slipshod campaign which followed. Mutina, on the Aemilian Way, was about equidistant from Parma in the west and Bononia (Bologna) in the east, towns now in Antony’s hands. Hirtius lay eleven miles east of Bononia, with Octavius some nine miles off on his right flank. Ventidius Bassus, the praetor, a supporter of Antony, was enrolling three legions of veterans, and Antony awaited their arrival. But the news of Pansa’s march northward on March 19 stirred him to action, for he was in danger of being outflanked and surrounded. He left Bononia, and drew his lines closer to Mutina, placing at the same time two legions, the II and the XXXV, at Forum Gallorum in the swampy country between the two towns, in order to hold up Pansa’s approach. His mistake lay in permitting the latter with his raw recruits to debouch unhindered from the Apennine passes. For on April 14 Pansa reached Bononia. He moved at once to join Hirtius, and on the 15th fell in with Antony’s ambuscade at Forum Gallorum. It was a fight principally between Antony’s veterans and the Martian, and at first the former’s superior numbers told. But Hirtius from nearer Mutina moved east in support, and, as Antony’s troops retired in undisciplined triumph, he attacked them with twenty veteran cohorts, while Octavius defended the camp. Antony was checked, and fell back in the direction of Mutina; Pansa was fatally wounded; he and Hirtius and Octavius were hailed as Imperatores by their troops. A week later, on April 21, Antony again offered battle, for his opponents were threatening to raise the blockade. Decimus sallied from Mutina, while Octavius routed two of Antony’s legions and drove them back to their camp, into which Hirtius penetrated and died on the ramparts. Antony, decisively beaten and in grave peril, took the Lark and the remnants of his other legions and fled by the Aemilian Way to Transalpine Gaul. On the 22nd, Pansa died of his wounds at Bononia. Decimus’s starving garrison was too weak to pursue, and the men of Octavius had been roughly handled, so Antony, now joined by Ventidius Bassus and his new legions, was left unmolested. He showed again the old Caesarian “celeritas,” and by the middle of May he was beyond the mountains and safe in Forum Julii (Fréjus).¹

      The two consuls were dead—“good men,” Cicero wrote, “but no more.” To the Senate, Forum Gallorum and Mutina seemed final victories, and it summoned confidence to disclose its true prepossessions. Antony was at last declared a public enemy. Decimus was made the hero of the northern battles and voted a triumph. Sextus Pompeius, Pompey’s son, was summoned from Marseilles to be head of the navy and warden of the coasts of Italy. Brutus and Cassius were confirmed in their provinces, and given an over-riding command in the empire east of the Adriatic. The Senate believed itself triumphant. It was confident of the loyalty of the western governors, Lepidus and Plancus and Pollio, and with their help, leaving Octavius out of account, it could number over twenty legions against Antony’s handful, while Brutus and Cassius held the East with seventeen. The Republic on the old lines seemed already restored.

      To Octavius, waiting at Bononia while Decimus toiled painfully across the mountains on Antony’s track, it was very clear that presently he would be set aside. An epigram of Cicero’s came to his ears, that he was to be “lauded, applauded and discarded,”¹ and the discarding seemed to have begun. He was ordered to hand over Pansa’s legions, and his own IV and the Martian, to Decimus Brutus. He was not mentioned in the vote of thanks to the army. He was given no place on the commission appointed to revise Antony’s decrees. He was refused a triumph and even an ovation. The conservatives were circulating all manner of rumours about him, such as that at Mutina he had shown the white feather, and was responsible for Pansa’s death. Moreover, the Senate was attempting to treat with his troops behind their general’s back. It was all very well for Cicero to write of the young Caesar’s “wonderful natural strain of virtue,”² but the old man was clearly his friend only so long as he was content to be his tool.

      Octavius, casting up his accounts, realized that he had now achieved one-half of his purpose. Out of the scrambling Mutina campaign he alone had won benefits. He had made himself sufficiently formidable for Antony to treat him with respect. He held Cisalpine Gaul and led the only army in Italy. Nothing stood between him and Rome. If Julius was to be avenged, if he was to have a hand in remaking the empire, the time had come to sever the unnatural alliance with the republicans and make peace with Antony. So he declined to hand over his legions to Decimus, and he refused to join in Antony’s pursuit. He sat still and waited. One thing he had yet to get before he broke with the Senate. To meet Antony on equal terms, he must be consul and legally head of the state. Therefore for a month or two he continued to negotiate, using as his medium the half-distraught Cicero.

      The key of the situation lay with the western proconsuls and their armies, Lepidus in the Narbonese, Plancus in Celtic Gaul, and Pollio in Spain. The Senate believed them to be loyal to its interests; Antony was convinced that he could certainly win over the first and probably the other two, and that was why he was now north of the Alps. These three we shall meet again in this narrative. No one of them was a commanding character. Lepidus, “that weathercock of a man,”¹ now Pontifex Maximus by Antony’s favour, was vain, unstable, self-indulgent, a lesser Antony. Plancus was a selfish time-server, “afflicted with a chronic disease of treachery,”² whose only creditable achievement was the founding of Lyons. Pollio, a more reputable figure, was petit maître rather than soldier. Octavius believed that they would be