Augustus i-1

by Allan Massie

  'You'll produce Lepidus at that, will you?' Agrippa said; but there was really no question in his voice.

  The triumvir had retreated to a villa on the flank of the hill overlooking the camp, and I followed him there. It was a charming spot, a building of pale creamy stone, festooned with roses, wisteria and clematis, a place, I thought, in which to pass an idyllic retirement. It suited itself to my calm mood.

  Lepidus had made an effort to compose himself in order to receive me. He was still as handsome as ever, and self regard or self-consequence had not quite fled him. In his first sentences he sought the old tone of patronage; a tremor in the voice betrayed him. I asked that all attendants leave us, and led him out on to the terrace.

  The hum of the camp rose to us. Beyond it the great cornfields of the Sicilian plain extended to the mountains. If one made a half-turn, the sea sparkled with a docility I rarely experienced while campaigning. Alone, Lepidus' manner crumbled; he even knelt before me, and pawed the skirt of my tunic. I told him to get up, to remember that he was a Roman noble, a consul and my colleague. 'Though also,' I added, as I sat down, 'a fool.'

  There was no pleasure in this meeting. I have never been other than embarrassed by the sight of humiliation. That day at Philippi, when the defeated cursed me as they marched by, killed all delight in victory that I might ever have had. Yet things have to be wound up.

  'I could charge you with treason,' I said. 'I could have you named an enemy of the Republic, a public enemy and outlaw. There would be no difficulty in doing so. Antony would support me, and I doubt if you would find any to speak for you. Even your own nephew Paullus urges me to do this.'

  He whimpered excuses. He had been ill-advised. I had misunderstood his letter. He had merely been putting in a claim for the governorship of Sicily. It was a long broken speech, and the remnants of that oily ingratiating manner irritated me. I stopped him short and told him what I required in order to display my clemency.

  The last act was played out before the army. Agrippa had organized the parade, and they looked unexpectedly smart. A good deal of polishing and burnishing had taken place. They were out to do me and themselves honour, to prove, in the manner of soldiers, that they were worthy of respect, and, at the same time, to express their gratitude and loyalty to me. It may also be that they wished to shame Lepidus.

  I inspected the troops, with the usual pauses before individuals whom the centurions had recommended for my attention.

  Then we waited for Lepidus. He rode in on a grey horse. That was a mistake for he had never had a good seat, and, now in his agitation, he was bouncing all over the place. However he managed to dismount without too much awkwardness, and only a small stumble. He looked round wildly, having been too occupied in managing the horse (which was, as a matter of fact, absolutely placid) to make sure of his bearings before he was on foot. It disturbed him to see that I was waiting on a dais some ten feet off the ground, so that he had to climb a flight of steps to reach me. Unobtrusively, my guard detained his attendants so that he mounted alone. I remained seated on a golden chair. Courtesy urged me to rise of course, but I had decided that the effect of my superiority would be more effectively marked if I remained seated.

  Lepidus was sweating. He halted before me. I looked him in the eye but said nothing. Silence quivered in the air. I sensed the intensity of the soldiers' gaze. I waited.

  Compelled by my silent eye, Lepidus sank to his knees before me. He held out both hands, the wrists together and fingers extended. 'Caesar,' he said.

  Behind me, my guards placed their right hands on their sword-hilts. Lepidus gulped. 'Caesar,' he said again, 'I have come to ask for mercy…'

  'Lepidus,' I said, 'we came together, with Mark Antony, to restore the Republic, to avenge my murdered father and to bring peace to the Empire. But you have tried to steal my glory and my victory; you have planned to make war against me. My grievances are deep, and they are not mine alone. I am ready to forgive your offences against myself, but your offence against the Republic is rank…'

  I paused, and then raised my voice to make sure that all the soldiers heard.

  'Nevertheless,' I said, 'since you have been rejected by the soldiers whom you thought yours, but who have all instead recognized and obeyed their higher loyalty to the Republic, I shall practise that clemency on you which was ever my father's watchword. You will be stripped of your dignities; the triumvirate is dissolved. Yet you shall be left with one office, and that the highest of all. You succeeded my father in the office of Pontifex Maximus. Though you have discharged it unworthily, yet my reverence for the Gods is so great that I shall not presume to dismiss their unworthy priest. Remain therefore what you have been; but, from now on you must discharge your duties by deputy, for you are banished from Rome and sentenced to perpetual exile.'

  Believe it or not, the disgusting object crawled forward and embraced my knees. He even licked the dust from my feet in his abject relief. I drew back, and ordered him to be led away. The troops parted and watched him go in silence. I am sorry to say that some of the men spat on his shadow.

  'It's the first time he hasn't provoked laughter,' Agrippa said later.

  Lepidus' behaviour cast a gloom over us. We would not have thought a Roman noble capable of such degradation. The soldiers too were ashamed to have accepted him as commander.

  My sentence of exile was not strictly legal of course. But it was necessary. Anyway I had it confirmed and ratified by the courts as soon as I returned to Rome.

  I was sincere in my decision to leave him as Pontifex Maximus. It was not for me to disturb the formalities of religion.

  EIGHT

  There is hardly one moment in a political life when you can relax and enjoy what you have achieved. (In this politics resembles marriage.) I had restored order in the West, planted the seeds of fruitfulness in Italy, commenced the long task of embellishing Rome. Virgil had already sung the promise of a new Age of Gold; a benign sun ripened the cornfields and empurpled the grapes of plenty. But Antony…

  For three years, while he made Athens his headquarters, he lived agreeably with my sister. She had no more to complain of than drunkenness. Of course, there was also a certain absurdity. It was not seemly for a Roman noble to preface his public announcements with the words: 'Antony the great and inimitable'; and it did make him a figure of some fun to the rest of us. It was impolitic too for him to advertise the favours he enjoyed from Dionysus, when he so often made it clear that he was enslaved to the God; and perhaps it was not in the best taste to claim descent from Heracles – hardly a model husband or father, you will remember. However such excesses could be easily forgiven; after all, everybody knows that Greeks and Orientals like high-flown language, and indeed make a cult of insincerity. (This is why Romans find it so difficult to come to a true measure of Easterners; we do not realize that for them rhetoric is an end and pleasure in itself, frequently quite unrelated to action, never moving beyond a purely verbal significance; I do not think that Antony understood this himself, I believe he was seduced by his own propaganda.)

  Nevertheless, in a way, Octavia came to love him (as in a manner we all did). She said to me, 'He is a great child and so there is a sort of tenderness called forth; it is painful to watch him suffer the consequences of actions which are, I assure you, absolutely spontaneous.' Moreover, their daughter Antonia was a delight to them both, and Octavia, being kind and tactful as she was good and chaste, forebore to raise the matter of the twin children Cleopatra had borne, to whom she had given also the ridiculous names of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene – the sun and moon, I ask you, and even at the time asked myself if Antony had consented to these names; I wouldn't be surprised if he had, for his taste was lamentable.

  In Athens too, thanks to Octavia, they contrived to live, despite his habitual excess, with some decorum and restraint. Why, Antony even spent some time studying philosophy in the schools, though, as Maecenas said, he was probably the last Roman capable of benefiting from
their subtle disquisitions.

  Then, as I have told you, Antony without warning sent Octavia back to Rome; for her health, he said. I questioned my sister closely. She was unable to give any other explanation, or perhaps still too loyal to her husband to advance one. Was he unkind to you? I asked. She denied the charge. Antony, she insisted, was a more complicated being than I imagined. I listened to her with great patience seeking understanding, though in fact none knew better than I the contradictions Antony contained. He was not a simple man of action; I knew that. I knew more than that: I knew that men of action, finding it difficult to articulate or order their thoughts, are indeed far more complicated than intellectuals and poets to whom words come easily. They lack the ability to explain themselves, for they have no power of introspection. (For this reason Pompey the Great was an enigma to all; he had no understanding of himself. For this reason too, your father Agrippa has always been harder to know than Maecenas.) 'Have you quarrelled?' I asked.

  She shook her head. For the first time in my life I found myself unable to converse freely with my sister. I resented the influence Antony still exerted.

  I asked Livia to talk with Octavia, hoping that she might speak more openly to another woman. But Livia failed too. There was some barrier between my wife and sister. Perhaps Octavia was jealous of Livia's influence over me, as I was of Antony's. I consulted my mother. She merely reminded me that she had always opposed the marriage. I felt myself disappointed in my womenfolk. It was a relief when Octavia moved into her own house on the Palatine.

  ***

  Of course I had agents in Antony's household as he had in mine. The elimination of Pompey and Lepidus made things more difficult between us. More important, Antony's long residence in the East corrupted his intellect; he began to forget that he was a Roman nobleman. Seduced by the absurd flattery of the inhabitants of his provinces, he came to see himself as king. And as a god.

  He broke his word to me. Within months of Octavia's departure, he was again living with Cleopatra. I made one more attempt to recall him to his proper path.

  Against my advice he embarked on his long-cherished campaign against Parthia. A better soldier than the wretched millionaire Marcus Crassus, whose legions had been cut to pieces in the desert, he took the northern route through Armenia. His marshal, P. Canidius Crassus, a man of the highest ability and most despicable character, had already subdued the tribes as far north as the fabled Caucasus. In the foothills of Erzerum he mustered a great army of sixteen legions, ten thousand Gallic and Spanish cavalry (whom I had sent to my colleague) and a host of Armenian horse under the native prince Artavasdes. No finer Roman force was ever assembled, and I had stripped my own resources to supply my colleague's needs.

  The first reports that reached us in Rome spoke of triumph. Antony had advanced unchallenged beyond the frontier towards Phraspa, the capital of Media. The city buzzed with rumours of fabulous treasure and unparalleled achievement. Octavia's house was beset every morning by senators anxious to impress with their devotion to her husband. Agrippa was torn between jealousy and apprehension. He longed to achieve such glory himself; his own recent campaigns on our northern frontier seemed mere police work beside Antony's. At the same time he said to me, 'You do realize, don't you, that if Antony brings this off, we've lost the game? Once he's conquered Parthia and has annexed the treasures of that Empire, been given the chance to establish his dominance there, he is going to be absolutely invincible. Why, I tell you, Sulla's return from the war with Mithradates, which I've been reading about, will be absolutely nothing in comparison. And you know how Sulla destroyed Marius and the Popular Party then. He's really outsmarted us, and you were fool enough to send him help. You've dug your own grave, and mine too. Oh,' he went on, talking faster and faster as his excitement rose, 'it's no use you putting on that pussy-cat face of yours, or reminding me, as I see you're just about to, that, in your view, Italy is the key to power. Balls! Marius held Italy too, and look where that got him. Asia is the real key. Whoever holds Asia dominates Rome. Pompey did it too, remember. Well, we've got maybe a year to prepare. I tell you, when Antony comes back in triumph, he'll turn on us. Sure as eggs is eggs. Why, already these bastards in the Senate know which way the wind's blowing. Look at how they're crowding round Octavia and swearing they've always been Antony's men.' He went on in this vein, becoming more and more agitated.

  At last, I said, 'It's a long way across the desert to Phraspa. And I still say, Italy is the bedrock of power. Meanwhile – understand me well, Marcus – we are all delighted by the success of our colleague's campaign so far. He is winning glory and territory for Rome. I shall praise him in the Senate.'

  It was indeed a long way to Phraspa. Moreover, Antony's strategy depended for its success on the trust he had placed in Artavasdes. What a fool! You should no more trust an Oriental than rely on the wind to blow as you wish it to. Naturally, he deserted Antony, and betrayed him. Two legions under Oppius Statianus were cut to pieces. A large part of Antony's supplies was destroyed. Though he struggled on, late in the year, to Phraspa, he lacked the means to reduce the city, and was compelled to withdraw. All through the terrible retreat that followed, the Parthian cavalry snapped like wolves on his flanks. Even Armenia was deemed unsafe; thankfully Antony scrambled back to Syria. Much was later said of his exertions on the march, and I see no reason to disbelieve such accounts, for he was still a brave and resourceful fighting commander. Others however have assured me that the army was in fact only saved by the skill and courage of Canidius. I could not say, for Antony never allowed a full history of the campaign to be published; and it may be that this was indeed impossible, the materials being lost, with the legions I had sent, in the waste of sands.

  Of course reports at Rome for some time stressed the positive side of the campaign. We heard much of his achievement in reaching Phraspa. That aroused enormous wonder. It was only gradually that the reality percolated across the sea, and then I was amused to observe the morning crowds diminish at Octavia's residence.

  Antony wrote to me urgently begging for reinforcements. 'It only requires one more push,' he wrote, 'for the war to be won.' 'For the Gods' sake, kid (I was briefly, in his need, 'kid' to him again) remember what I did for you against Pompey, remember the love I have borne for you, remember Philippi and our common devotion to your father, remember the bond that our beloved Octavia forms between us, and send me twenty thousand men.'

  I replied imploring him to abandon his Parthian plans. 'There is a great desert,' I said, 'lies between the two empires, as you have discovered, my dear colleague and brother, to your cost. The desert ensures that Parthia will never endanger the true interest of Rome. The Republic needs peace. Thank the Gods that you did not incur Crassus' fate (which would have grieved me personally, torn the heart of Octavia, and deprived Rome of her greatest general). Take your honourable defeat as a warning from the Gods, that you should not repeat such rashness.'

  In return he sent me an incoherent outburst, full of insults and threats. ('He must have been drunk to write this nonsense,' I said to Maecenas.) Again he demanded twenty thousand men.

  Agrippa exploded with fury. 'If we had them to spare,' he cried, 'he should not have them. But we need them in Gaul, in Illyricum, on the frontier of the Julian Alps. Caesar, you will not yield to this madness.' 'Peace, Marcus,' I said. Instead, unwilling to give him the curt refusal that his insane and selfish request merited, I despatched seventy ships, as earnest of my good faith, while sending also two thousand crack troops, veterans of my war with Sextus Pompey. Octavia accompanied these men, and I urged her to persuade her husband to see reason.

  Her eyes filled with tears. 'Do you know what you are doing to me?' she asked. 'Do you realize to what you are exposing your sister?'

  I affected not to understand, but when I came to kiss her good-bye, the tenderness of my embrace could not but disclose the pity and guilt which I felt.

  Her husband received her brutally. He was dressed more as an
Oriental potentate than a Roman general, and he refused to see her alone. Instead, speaking from a throne of carved ebony, embellished with amethysts, topaz and rubies, he treated her to a long speech of complaint in which he denounced my ingratitude and faithlessness.

  'You were,' he said, 'in our marriage, the mark of my friendship with Caesar. But he himself has torn up that contract. Return to Rome that all the world may see the shameless manner in which he has treated me.' Was there ever such despicable behaviour? 'Our marriage,' he said, 'must be considered at an end.'

  Octavia wept, but tears which would have melted the coldest heart could not unfreeze his demented arrogance.

  When I heard the news I wept too: first for Octavia's shame; second, for the import of Antony's actions. I looked over the city and saw war and pestilence again. My heart ached as with the pain of seeing a boat carry a loved one into the wastes of the grey seas.

  NINE

  It is time now to speak of Cleopatra, and I find it hard to do so. It would be as easy to speak of snakes.

  When I wrote to Antony, rebuking him for resuming his affair with her in breach of his promise to me at the Treaty of Brindisi, he replied with something of his old jocular insincerity. This is what he wrote: What on earth has come over you? What if I am sleeping with the Queen? She's my woman. Besides, it's nothing new. The thing started years ago, as you know, nine or ten I daresay. What about you? You're not really faithful to Livia, are you? I bet you're not. My congratulations – or commiserations – if between the time I write this and the time you get it, you haven't been to bed with Tertullia or Terentia or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia – or the whole bloody shooting-match. For heaven's sake, I ask you of all people, does it matter a legionary's oath (and we know what that's worth, don't we?) who or what, with, or where, or when, or how often you do it? Sex, dear boy, can be over-rated, take it from me… Such a defence was hardly defence at all. But that he should write in such terms to his wife's brother shows his state of mind. That was the effect Cleopatra had.