Augustus

by John Williams

  My auguries have been to no avail; he is married to Octavia, the sister of his enemy. It is the pledge that will satisfy the populace and the soldiers.

  I send you two waxen effigies. You are to find in your palace a remote room which has but one door. You are to place the effigy of Antonius on the side of the room where there is a door, the effigy of Octavia on the side where there is none. You are to do this with your own hands; let no one assist you. Then you are to have built between the figures a heavy wall, extending from the floor to the ceiling; there must be no fissure between the two. Each day, at sun’s rising and sun’s setting, you are to have my priest, Epiktetas, perform the spell outside the room. He will know what to do.

  We go to Athens with Octavia, who is now with child and will deliver within three months. I have presented to Antonius a pair of identical greyhounds, which he has raced and of which he has become inordinately fond. On the day that Octavia’s child is born, I shall cause the dogs to disappear. You must write him within the next few weeks of a dream that you had about the twins.

  The child that Octavia has delivered is a daughter; thus there is no potential heir to his name. The God of the Sun has bowed to our will and has heeded our demands.

  He quarrels with Octavius; they are reconciled by Octavia, who takes the part of her husband against her brother. Antonius’s suspicions of her are almost gone, and he seems grudgingly fond of her, though he is still made impatient by her quietness and calm. Does Epiktetas perform faithfully the spell, as you instructed him?

  He has had a dream of being bound to a couch while his tent burned around him. The soldiers of his army walked past the burning tent, and did not heed his calls, as if they did not hear him. Finally he burst his bonds, but the fire was around him so fiercely that he could not see which way to turn to escape. He awoke in fear, and called for me.

  I fasted for three days, and gave him the portents of the dream. I told him that the fire was the intrigue in Rome, heaped and kindled by Octavius Caesar. That he was in a tent, I said, revealed two things: his position (he has no secure and permanent place in the Roman world), and his nature (that he is a soldier). That he was bound to his couch, I said, signified that by his inactivity he had betrayed his nature and allowed himself to become weak and hence impotent to the intrigues against him and to the circumstance of fate. That his soldiers did not heed his calls revealed that by his betrayal of his nature, he had lost control of his men; that he is properly a man of action, not of words; that men would bend to his deeds, not his talk.

  He has become thoughtful, and he studies maps. I say nothing to him, but I believe he is again considering taking up arms against the Parthians. For this, he will come to know that he needs your aid. Discreetly, let him know that it is at his disposal. Thus, you may draw him again to our cause, and insure the future glory of Egypt.

  IV. Letter: Cleopatra to Marcus Antonius, from Alexandria (37 B.C.)

  My dear Marcus, you must forgive my long silence, as I have forgiven yours. And you must forgive me, too, if I write you now as a woman, rather than as the Queen who is your faithful ally and whose strength is ever at your disposal. For I have been most gravely ill these last few months, and have not wished to cause you concern for my infirmities; indeed, I should not write you now, had not my frailty and my heart overcome my Queenhood.

  Sleep is reluctant to cover my eyes; my strength is stolen by fevers that even the skills of my physician, Olympus, cannot allay; I take little food; and despair is like a serpent that creeps into the emptiness of my spirit.

  Oh, Marcus, how weary all this must make you! Yet I know your kindness, and know that you will indulge the weakness of an old friend, who thinks of you often and remembers many things.

  Perhaps it is that remembering, rather than the advice of Olympus, which has persuaded me to take the journey from Alexandria to Thebes. Olympus says that in the temple there, the Supreme God, Amen-Ra, will take away my illness and return my strength. You used to tease me about my regard for these Egyptian gods; perhaps you were right in that, as you were in so many things. For I almost refused him; and then I remembered (it seems so long ago) another spring, when you and I floated down the Nile and side by side lay on our couch and watched the fertile banks slip by and felt upon our bodies the cool river breeze; and the farmers and herdsmen knelt, and even the goats and cattle seemed to pause in obeisance to us, raising their heads to watch our passing. And Memphis, where they held the bullfights in our honor, and Hermopolis and Akhetaton, where we were God and Goddess, Osiris and Isis. And then the Thebes of the Hundred Gates, and the drowsy days and gay nights. . .

  Remembering this, I felt the beginnings of strength return to me; and I told Olympus that I would make the journey and enter the temple of Amen-Ra. But if I am returned to health, it will be from the nourishment I take from these memories along the way, which I hold as dear as my life.

  V. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Octavius Caesar (37 B.C.)

  You have broken our treaty with Sextus Pompeius, a treaty to which I pledged my word; it is rumored that you intend war upon him, though you have not consulted me in the matter; you intrigue against my reputation, though I have done neither you nor your sister any harm; you seek to subvert from me the little strength I have in Italy, though I have given you, out of my loyalty, much of the power you now have; in short, you have repaid my loyalty with betrayal, my honor with your treachery, my generosity with your self-interest.

  You may do what you want in Rome; I will no longer be concerned. When we agreed to extend the triumvirate earlier this year, I hoped that we might, at last, work together. We cannot.

  I send your sister and her children to you. You may inform her upon her arrival that she is not to return to me. Though she is a good woman, I want no tie with your house. As for divorce, that I will leave entirely to your discretion. I know that you will decide that matter in terms of your own interest. I do not care.

  I shall not dissemble with you; I have no need to; I fear neither you nor your intrigues.

  I shall begin my Parthian campaign this spring, without the legions you promised and did not deliver to me. I have summoned Cleopatra to Antioch. She will supply the troops that I need.

  If Rome is dying in the web that you weave around her, Egypt will thrive in the power that I will give her. I bequeath the corpse to you; for myself, I prefer the living body.

  VI. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra (37 B.C.)

  Empress of the Nile, Queen of the Living Suns, and my beloved friend—take this letter from Fonteius Capito; I have asked him to deliver it into your hands alone. You may trust him as you have trusted me, and question him about all those matters upon which this letter does not touch. I am—as you have so often and wisely observed—a man of action, not of words.

  Thus my words cannot tell you of the despair I felt when I learned you were ill, nor of the joy that overwhelmed sorrow when I learned that on the journey back from the Thebes that we both remember, your health was returning, like a bird returning home. You wonder how I know this? I must confess—I have had my benevolent spies in your midst, who, out of love for us both and out of respect for my deep solicitude, have kept me informed of your welfare. For despite the circumstances that have kept us apart, my concern for you has never wavered; and if sometimes I have not written, it is for the reason that such a reminder of our past happiness would give me a pain of loss I could not bear.

  But as Fonteius will tell you, I have awakened as if from a dream. Oh, my little kitten, who are a Queen, do you know the bitter cost to me of our long separation? Of course you do— and I know you understand. I remember your telling me of your unhappiness when, as a young girl, for reasons of dynasty, your father would have wed you to your young brother so that you might have begotten children to continue the line of the Ptolemies. Yet your womanhood prevailed; and even as an Isis must become a woman, so must a Hercules become a man. It is too burdensome always to remain God and Goddess, King and Queen.


  Will you let Fonteius bring you to Antioch, where I will be awaiting you? Even if your love for me has gone, I must see you again, so that I may see for myself that you are well. And there are matters of state that we may discuss, even if you are to refuse the matters of the heart. Come to me, if only out of respect for what we both must remember.

  VII. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B.C.)

  After the battle of Philippi, the triumvir Antonius being occupied with his adventures in the Eastern world, it remained for Caesar Augustus to repair the harms of the civil wars, and to bring order into the Italy of Rome. He walked among the treasons of his colleague, Antonius, and did not falter; at Perusia, the armies under my command quieted the insurrection raised by Antonius’s brother Lucius; and Caesar Augustus, in his mercy, spared his life, though his crime had been grave.

  But of all the impediments that lay between Caesar Augustus and the order that was necessary for the salvation of Rome, the gravest was that raised by the traitor and pirate, Sextus Pompeius, who unlawfully governed the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and whose ships roamed the seas at will, plundering and destroying those merchant vessels that supplied the grain for Rome’s survival. So serious were the depredations of Sextus Pompeius that the city came to be in danger of famine; and in their desperation and fear, the people rioted in the streets, to no end save to relieve themselves of a creeping despair. Caesar Augustus, in his pity for the people, offered Pompeius terms; for we had not the strength to meet him in battle. A treaty was signed, and for a period grain flowed back into Rome; and I was sent by Caesar Augustus to Transalpine Gaul as governor, where I was to organize the Gallic legions against the growing hostility of the barbarian tribes before returning to Rome the following year as consul.

  But hardly had the treaty been signed before Sextus Pompeius began conspiring with Antonius, and soon the treaty was broken, and Sextus resumed his piracy and plunder. Caesar Augustus recalled me to Rome before the year was out; for the sake of starving Rome, we had no choice but to prepare for war.

  The genius of Rome is in its land, its soil; it has never felt at home upon the sea. And yet we knew that if we were to overcome Sextus Pompeius, we must do so upon the sea; for like all unnatural creatures, that was his habitat, and there he would lurk, even if we drove him off the land he held. Caesar Augustus and the Senate appointed me admiral of the Roman navy, and gave to me the charge of establishing for the first time in our history a formidable Roman fleet. I commissioned to be built some three hundred vessels, to augment those few already under the command of Caesar Augustus; and to man these vessels, Augustus gave freedom to twenty thousand slaves in exchange for their faithful service. And since we could not train upon the open sea —for sometimes the vessels of the pirate Pompeius sailed within easy sight of the Italian shore—I made to be cut a deep channel between the lakes of Lucrine and Avernus at Naples, so that they became one body of water; and by reinforcing the Via Herculeana (said to have been built by Hercules himself) with concrete, and opening it at either end to the sea, I caused to be formed that which is now called the Bay of Julius, in honor of my commander and my friend.

  And in that bay, protected by land on all sides from the weather and from unfriendly ships, for the year of my consulship, and into the year beyond, I trained the navy that was to confront the seasoned veterans of the pirate Pompeius. And in the summer we were ready.

  On the first day of that month which had recently been named in honor of the Divine Julius, we set sail southward for Sicily, where we were to be joined by the auxiliary fleets of Antonius from the east and those of Lepidus from the north. Unseasonable and violent storms met us, and we suffered losses; and though the fleets of Antonius and Lepidus sought shelter, the Roman fleets of Augustus, under his command and my own, sailed through the storms; and though we were delayed, we met the enemy ships at Mylae, on the northern shore of Sicily, and so severely punished them that they were forced to withdraw to the shallow waters where we could not follow; and we invested the town of Mylae, whence the pirate forces had drawn many of their supplies.

  Unprepared for our strength, the ships of Pompeius broke before our assault; with the aid of a grappling hook that I had devised, we were able to board many of the ships, and we captured more than we sank, adding them to our growing fleet. And we captured the coastal fortresses of Hiera and Tyndarus, and it seemed to Pompeius that unless he could conclude a decisive victory, and destroy our ships, all the coastal strongholds from which he drew his supplies would fall into our hands; and he would be lost.

  Thus he hazarded his fleet in all its strength, in waters favorable to his own ships, to defend the port city of Naulochus, which we would have to take before we could secure Mylae, a few miles to the south, the first stronghold we had captured.

  Skilled as he was, Pompeius was unable to prevail against our heavier ships; though he could outmaneuver us, he was reduced at last to attempting to sweep away the banks of oars by which we were moved, though by this effort he lost more ships than he disabled. Twenty-eight Pompeian vessels were sunk with all their crews; the rest were captured, or suffered such damage as to make them inoperable. Only seventeen ships of the entire fleet escaped our assault, and they sailed eastward, with Sextus Pompeius aboard and in pitiful command.

  It is said by some that Pompeius sailed eastward in the hope of joining the absent triumvir Antonius, whom he wished to incite anew against Caesar Augustus; it is said by others that he wished to join with Phraates, the barbarian king of Parthia, who warred against our Eastern provinces. In any event, he made his way to the province of Asia, and resumed his occupation of robbery and pillage. There he was captured by the centurion Titius, whose life Pompeius himself once had spared, and was put to death like a common bandit. Thus was the devastation of piracy at last put down in the seas that surrounded the Italy of Rome.

  Weary from battle, our forces yet had to invest the other coastal cities of Sicily which had supplied Pompeius, the chief of which was Messina, where most of Pompeius’s land armies were stationed. According to the orders of Caesar Augustus, we were to blockade this city, and await his arrival to meet the battle, if there were to be one. But at this time, and at last, the vessels commanded by the triumvir Lepidus, who had joined in none of the battles at sea, met our ships at Messina; and despite my deliverance to him of the orders of Caesar Augustus, he entered into negotiations with the local commander; and refreshed by his peaceful cruise from Africa, he informed me that by his own authority he relieved me of my command; and he received the surrender of all the Pompeian legions in Messina, requiring pledges of fealty to his own authority, and added those legions to those that he already commanded. In our weariness and pain, we awaited the arrival of Caesar Augustus.

  VIII. Military Order (September, 36 B.C.)

  To: L. Plinius Rufus, Military Commander of the Pompeian Legions at Messina

  From: Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Imperator and Triumvir of Rome, Ruler of Africa and Commander in Chief of the African Legions, Consular and Pontifex Maximus of the Senate of Rome

  Subject: The Surrender of the Pompeian Legions in Sicily

  Having this day surrendered to my sole authority the legions of the defeated Sextus Pompeius, you are to inform the officers and soldiers formerly under your command of the following:

  (1) That they are granted amnesty for all crimes committed before this day against the legitimate authority of Rome, and will suffer no punishment either from my hands or from the hands of any other.

  (2) That they are to have neither negotiation nor converse with the officers or men of any legion not under my command.

  (3) That their safety and well-being is assured under my responsibility, and that they are to obey no commands from any other than myself or my appointed officers.

  (4) That they are to mingle freely with the legions under my command, and are to consider themselves as brothers-in-arms, not as enemies.

  (5) That the city of Messina, as a co
nquered city, is open to them for their enrichment as equally as it is to my own soldiers.

  IX. Letter: Gaius Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B.C.)

  My dear Livy, I got the news just this morning—Marcus Aemilius Lepidus is dead at Circeii, where he has been living in his retirement and, I suppose, shame, for the past twenty-four years. He was our enemy—yet after so long, the death of an old enemy is curiously like the death of an old friend. I am saddened, as was our Emperor, who informed me of the death and told me that he will allow a public funeral in Rome, a funeral in the old style, if his descendants wish it. And so, after all these years, Lepidus returns to Rome and to the honor that he forsook that day in Sicily, nearly a quarter of a century ago....

  It occurs to me that that is one of the things that I have not written to you about. Had I done so a week ago, I would no doubt have gone about it rather lightly; it would have seemed to me one of those half-humorous memories out of the past. But this death has cast a different light upon that memory, and it seems to me now oddly sad.

  After a long and disheartening and bloody struggle, the pirate Sextus Pompeius was defeated—by the fleet and legions under the command of Marcus Agrippa and Octavius, and supposedly with the aid of Lepidus. Lepidus and Agrippa were to blockade the city of Messina on the Sicilian coast, so that the scattered fleet of Sextus Pompeius would have no safe harbor to repair the damages done by Agrippa and Octavius. But the commander of the city, one Plinius, having heard of the defeat suffered by Sextus, and at the behest of Lepidus, surrendered the city and eight Pompeian legions without a fight. Lepidus accepted the surrender, and, despite Agrippa’s remonstrances, put the legions under his own command; and he allowed the Pompeian as well as his own fourteen legions to plunder and sack the city which, by its surrender, had put itself under his protection.