by Allan Massie
The second day it rained with a steady drab intensity. Mist had rolled in from the sea and the mouth of the valley was obscured. By late afternoon visibility was reduced to less than fifty paces; only the nearest olive trees emerged twisting grotesquely from the thin edge of the mist. In the morning Septimus had said to me, 'What we both need, General, is rest. Sleep, turn about, eh, and keep guard.' I nodded; it seemed natural to abdicate command to the boy.
By evening I was refreshed, but hardly more confident that we could escape. Yet the long sleeps had done something to calm my nerves. Septimus, perhaps sensing my change of mood, talked freely for the first time. His conversation was mostly about his family. His father's holding (he said) was small; it could not possibly support the seven grown sons. Three of his brothers had taken off for Rome; but not him. He had seen something of their life; it wasn't for him. There was no work for them in Rome. They depended on the corn dole, and spent their time hanging about taverns hoping someone would buy them a drink, and their chief interests were lottery tickets and the Games. Two of them were married; 'To foreigners, would you believe it, General; no, the city's no life for a man. I mean, it degrades him,' he said. 'On the other hand, I have to tell you, General, that my father's lot is hardly any happier. It's true he works his fields, and there's some satisfaction in that, and we grow our own grain for bread, and make our own wine from our own grapes, and my mother's brother supplies us with oil and olives in exchange for wine; and we do have a small flock of sheep that my elder brother takes to the summer pastures. All that may sound all right, but it gets more difficult every year. You see, my dad can't compete in the markets with the big landowners and their ranches with slave labour. None of the small farmers can. They undercut our prices all the time. All that's no good. He'll have to sell out if things don't get better. He's more and more in debt every year. So I saw no future, and joined the army. Join the army and see the world, they say. Some world, eh, we're seeing now?'
The next morning the sky cleared and the sun shone in a sparkling world. My spirits lifted with the mist. I began to feel for the first time that we might escape. I even hobbled (being still a little lame) out of the cottage to the corner of the olive grove, from where one could see beyond the mouth of the valley and down to the coast road.
I must set down baldly what followed. As I gazed down to the plain with a new peace in my heart in the brittle beauty of that October morning, I was suddenly chilled. A troop of horse turned off the coast road and up the valley track. It was impossible that they should miss our farm; it was impossible that they should not see us in flight. Our security had proved fool's gold. These were my immediate certainties: I had lost.
I called out to Septimus. He ran towards me. I indicated what it was hardly necessary to indicate. 'Bring my sword,' I said. 'There's no use in fighting,' he said. 'No,' I said, 'there's no use in fighting. Bring my sword.'
He looked at me, but did not obey. I hobbled into the hut, swearing at him, and seized my weapon. I took it by the point and held it out to him. His hand closed round the hilt, but he looked past me. I knelt down before him and pulled my tunic away at the neck… 'Strike,' I said. Still he looked past me and did not move.
'Strike,' I cried again, near tears. My heart beat fast and I could feel myself beginning to tremble all over. 'Strike in the name of the Gods. Let me at least die a Roman death. Do you not see that I have no wish to fall into Pompey's hands, to be made a fool of and a mockery for all time? Strike, if you love me…'
But he threw down the sword and knelt beside me, and put his arms round me… 'General,' he said, 'you're not yourself. Listen,' he spoke very gently, yet with an urgency that came from the heart, 'I have believed in you. That's why I've done what I've done these last days. When you came to us by the camp-fire and talked of your star and what you would do for Italy, I believed you, and loved you for it. Are you telling me now it was all a lie? That you and your star are cheats too, like everything else? I won't do it, even if you weep and beg me' -(and I was weeping, I was shaking with sobs). 'If you're determined to do so, you must kill yourself, but I'll not promise to follow. I'll leave the job of killing me to others. I'll cling on to life' (and he hugged me tighter as if I was life myself) 'though if they find me by your dead body they'll think I've done it, and either slay me too to give themselves the credit or, who knows, reward me? Only I'd not want that sort of reward. Do you hear me?' he was shouting now. 'Be a man, General. You say you're sent to save Rome, and I believe you, even if you're greeting like a bairn now…'
We knelt there a moment, joined together. Then the gentleness returned to his voice, and he said,
'Come now, General, on your feet. Let's meet whatever fortune brings us, whether it be ill or whether it be good, like men. What happens after death is known to none, but all men I have heard talk on the matter agree that it is better to face the prospect of death with a cheerful countenance.'
His words renewed me. I pulled myself up, and took the cloth he passed me, and wiped my eyes.
'And with your star,' he said, 'we may survive whatever is in store for us.'
'That's all right,' I said, 'I'm myself again. I'll not forget what you have done for me today.'
The horsemen were close enough now for us to hear the horses' hooves and the clatter of harness. The troop halted when they saw us standing there. Then three or four trotted forward and again paused about fifty yards distant. The man in front turned in his saddle and called out, 'It's him, it's the General himself,' and they broke ranks and in a moment surrounded me. I looked up and saw Agrippa's face.
'Where the devil have you sprung from?' I called out. 'How have you happened on me?'
'Soldier's instinct,' he said, looking smug for he had often told me he possessed this, and I didn't. 'Are you all right?'
I glanced at Septimus: 'We're all right,' I said, 'thanks to this man here…'
***
You may wonder, my sons, that I can bring myself to tell this story, and tell it in such detail. It would have been easy to ignore it. The skirmish in which we were defeated was an unimportant episode in the scrambling war with Sextus Pompey. It was a little setback in a contest we could hardly fail to win in the end. There is nothing in the story which redounds to my credit. I lost my nerve; I behaved like a poltroon. I was embarrassed to see Agrippa, and could not meet his eye.
Yet I would be dishonest to omit mention of my failure of nerve and resolution, and I am trying to tell you (and posterity) the truth about myself. This was the one occasion in my life when my certainty of victory evaporated, and I found no defences within myself against fear and despair. I really wanted Septimus to kill me, and I was saved only by this farmboy's confidence in me. His fortitude and the happy chance of Agrippa's discovery of our refuge (and the horsemen might not have been Agrippa's; they might indeed have been Pompey's for he still controlled by far the greater part of the island) together reassured me that the Gods favoured my cause. I had henceforth no doubts.
What could I do with Septimus? I could not keep him by me, for he was a perpetual reminder of my weakness, and I feared lest I should grow to hate him. I sent him first to Livia bearing a letter in which I said simply that he had saved my life -1 could not bring myself to reveal to Livia to what straits I had been reduced – and should be suitably rewarded. Eventually we granted him farmlands and olive groves near the spring of Clitumnus. For some years he sent us a gift of oil every winter. Then the gifts ceased. I made enquiries, discovered he had got into debt, had been too proud or too ashamed to seek the help which I should certainly have given. The first reports said he had drifted into the city; but when I gave orders that search should be made for him there, I had no success. Later reports contradicted the first: he had hanged himself from his own lintel rather than see his land pass to his creditors. Strange and disturbing symmetry of life.
***
The war with Pompey was a bore and a distraction. Gradually, thanks to Agrippa's genius for innovation
and the invention of a new device called a harapax – a grapnel shot from a catapult that enabled him to lock Pompey's ships to ours and deny him the advantages of mobility which his pirates' superior seamanship had hitherto given him – we wore him down. Pompey's heart gave way; he fled to the East and threw himself on Antony's mercy: a letter from Antony tells the rest:
Caesar: Pompey arrived here spluttering with fear and foaming at the mouth with indignation at what he called 'the barbarity of your methods'. I am sorry to say – you'll be heart-broken to hear it yourself, dear boy – that he regards you as a twister. I say 'regards' but I should really use the past tense. I've had enough of Pompey. We've tried everything in the way of co-operation, and it hasn't worked. Now you've beaten him and it really seemed to me that he had cumbered the earth long enough. So I had him dealt with, in the most gentlemanly way, you'll understand. The fact is, though, all Pompeys are losers. And what news of our colleague, the surely now truly superfluous man?
Look after Octavia, and see that the child is safely born. I can trust you for that, brother. I shall deal with the reference to Octavia in due course. Meanwhile I may as well wrap up this episode.
I could feel no grief at Pompey's execution. We had really indulged him absurdly.
It happened however that, by one of those quirks of military fortune, many of Pompey's legions surrendered to Lepidus who had played a minor part in the last weeks of the campaign. This might have been awkward, if Lepidus had been another man, for he now found himself as he thought in command of twenty two legions – say a hundred thousand men, an enormous force.
Now over the years of the triumvirate Lepidus had grown resentful; he felt his inferiority and declined to admit its cause. I was breakfasting in Syracuse, after doing sacrifice to the Gods in that city of a thousand cults, when Agrippa stormed into the room, his face the colour of a winter sunset. At first I could make no sense of what he said, for in his fury he gobbled his words. At last however, I compelled him to sit down and relax. 'Now,' I said, 'let's start again.' 'That's just what the bloody hell we'll have to,' he cried. 'That bugger Lepidus.' 'Oh Lepidus,' I said, 'Lepidus is nothing.' 'Nothing is he? He's only setting up to be bloody Pompey.' 'What do you mean?'
'Ah, I've got your interest, have I? Well, that's something. I thought you were so taken up with these Greek cults – or Greek cunts for all I know – that you'd no time left for simple things like war and politics…' 'Come on then,' I said, 'I'm all ears, like a donkey.'
My little joke fell flat. Agrippa looked even blacker than ever. Your father never understood the frivolity of serious moments, I'm afraid. But at last he came to the point: Lepidus had suffered an attack of the delusion of greatness.
'Here's the bugger's letter,' Agrippa shouted. 'He announces, with no end of flowery whatsits, that, Pompey's legions having surrendered to him, he must now regard Sicily as his Province and he therefore commands you to get yourself and your legions out of the island. How's that for brass neck?'
'Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,' I said. 'What the hell do you mean? What do we do?' 'Nothing'
'Nothing? Are you going to take this lying down? Let me, for Jupiter's sake, march on his camp. I'll string him high as the Colossus at Rhodes…' 'Nothing,' I said again. 'We shall sit where we are. However, let Lepidus' communication be generally known. Then let us see its effect'
Agrippa drew his brows together. I took hold of his arm, and felt it tense beneath my grip. 'There will be no need of war,' I said. 'Wait and see.'
It was fine weather, I remember, though I was little able to enjoy it, for there was a mass of administrative work to see to. We were engaged throughout the civil war, you must remember, in the task of re-animating Rome's government throughout the Empire. True, at this time, I was nominally responsible only for the Western half of that Empire; but that itself entailed a deal of work. Gaul, for example, though conquered by my father, had hardly yet been brought within our administrative sphere. In Rome itself, I had already embarked on my great building programme, restoring damaged temples and public buildings, erecting new ones, and bringing some order to the irregular and haphazard provision of housing for the poor. Much of my work throughout my life has been of this nature. I do not grumble. Indeed, I have always found pleasure in the establishment of order and orderly procedure. My greatest pride has been to serve my fellow-citizens.
But I became aware of an unusual gaiety in our camp, a feeling of irresponsible high humour. Lepidus' command had become known; and all took it as the best of jokes that 'the distinguished donkey' should take it on himself to speak with authority. Then, day by day, the drift from his camp to ours quickened. The army itself was sick of war. It was now eight years since my father's murder, and in that time, none of us had known peace. Now Lepidus would stir us up again, break the fragile balance we had achieved; and he found no takers. He was indeed laughed out of his armour. Within a week of his 'command' his army had begun to desert. I called one distinguished deserter to me. This was Lepidus'own nephew, Paullus. I questioned him closely anent his uncle's state of mind. He was loud in contempt. I resolved the time had come to act and invited him to accompany me.
The next morning, taking with me only a personal guard of a dozen men, I rode out of our camp, flanked by Agrippa and Paullus. We crossed the plain in the cool before the sun rose high. Dew sparkled on the young corn, and the breeze from the south-west gently caressed our faces.
We traversed the five miles that separated the two camps without incident, and were not challenged till we reached Lepidus' outposts. Even then the challenge was half-hearted. The guard was ill turned out, the centurion a little drunk and unsteady.
'Have you come to see the General?' he called out, and then, recognizing who we were, made a visible effort to assemble his wits.
'Stand easy, man,' I said. 'Your discipline seems to leave something to be desired.'
'Sir.' He tried to come to attention and salute. I have rarely seen anything sloppier. We nodded and rode past into the heart of the camp.
The army's demoralization was evident. You would not have thought they had taken part in a great victory only weeks before. There were soldiers in various states of undress everywhere, and women too. One African girl bared her breasts and cried out to us that we could have her for free, any time we wanted, whoever we were. 'As long as you're not Lepidus himself,' she cried, 'I'd make him pay through his pompous nose.' And the soldiers standing round her laughed, to hear their General insulted.
Keeping together, though I had no fear of any danger, we rode into the parade ground. One troop – defaulters perhaps -was being put through a desultory drill by a bored centurion. They halted – without command – when they saw us, and I mounted the rostrum. Agrippa roared out to the centurion, commanding him to have his fellow-centurions assemble. This they did more quickly than I had expected, and very soon the parade square was full of men – ordinary soldiers as well as centurions – and some officers as well. Agrippa called them to silence, and I stood forward.
'Fellow-Romans,' I called out, 'many of you will know who I am. For those who don't, I am Caesar.' At the mention of the name, a great shout was raised and the crowd surged forward. 'I come to you,' I said, 'disdaining to wear any protection,' and, saying this, I tore off my breastplate and stood with my chest exposed.
'Will any man here strike Caesar?' I cried out. For a moment there was complete stillness in the crowd, and then this was overtaken by a babble of cheering. I raised my right hand. 'Well, you're better than senators then,' and they laughed in agreement. 'But,' I said, 'I'm sorry to tell you your general is of a different mind.' I produced the letter and waved it above my head. 'See here. I've a letter from him. He tells me to get out of Sicily. It's not a friendly letter, though Lepidus has no cause for complaining against me. So I've come here to ask your advice. Should I obey your general?'
Soldiers like irony. It is their own natural mode of expression, and they are pleased when it is e
mployed by men like us at the expense of our social equals. This is not to be wondered at. Irony is after all an invitation to enter a conspiracy with the speaker.
'I confess,' I went on, 'I was in a sad state when I got this letter. Knowing Lepidus as I do, I was really alarmed. So were all my staff. Agrippa here – you won't believe this – was all for packing our bags and baggage and hot-footing it for Rome. But then, we had two thoughts. The first was: what if Lepidus follows us to Rome and tells us to get out of the city also? The second was: I wonder if his soldiers, those brave legions which have won glorious victories even under Lepidus' command, agree with their noble general. (Where is he by the way?) So I came to ask you…'
Well, you can imagine the response. I knew I was running no danger. There have never been Roman legionaries who would prefer Lepidus to me (I don't say I could have played the same game with Antony's troops – or even Pompey's). So I was quite safe and I had calculated correctly. They cheered me and roared with laughter, and crowded round the rostrum, stretching up their hands to shake mine or touch me. I let the euphoria develop, then stepped back and held up my hand again…
'Thank you, soldiers, thank you, comrades. This is a great day for all of us. We have peace in the Roman world. The Republic is no longer tormented by civil wars that have now lasted since the Senate's threats to his life and liberty compelled Caesar to lead his legions across the Rubicon. I am glad to know that you will not let Lepidus' little ambition disturb that peace. You have done nobly. It is now time to reward you. All those who wish to leave the service in the next months will be rewarded with farms and an end-of-service payment. Those who choose to remain in the colours will receive a cash bounty – as soon as I can get the Treasury clerks to disgorge one. If there is a long delay, and you all know what they can do to tie you up with red tape while they sit pretty themselves, why then, I shall advance the money out of my own pocket, I'll borrow from my own bankers if I have to. And then try to screw it back from the Treasury. And now, let me thank you formally and finally for the courage you have shown and for what you have done for Rome, for peace and for the well-being of the Republic of your fellow-citizens…' Meanwhile there was no sign of Lepidus. I consulted a moment with Agrippa, and left him to bring the camp back to order and discipline. We agreed that there should be a parade in the late afternoon.
