The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  Even without his hold on Gaul, Antony was still the stronger of the two rivals. However, his infantry was not strong enough to be sure of conquering Parthia and so he needed recruits from Italy in order to maximize his chances. In summer 37 he crossed to south Italy with a huge force of 300 ships, an advantage which Octavian would envy in his own struggles against Sextus. After threatening to fight, however, Antony was obliged to negotiate and at Tarentum, the rivals agreed yet another pact: Antony would give Octavian ships to conclude the war against Sextus, while Octavian would give him troops to use against Parthia. It was to be the last pact, but its outcome was not as Antony hoped. Both the main players had war in mind, but whereas Antony gave Octavian ships, he did not receive from Octavian most of the promised troops. There was also a female dimension: Octavia had helped the pact along by mediating between her husband and her brother. In only three years of marriage Antony had already fathered two healthy daughters on her (a third, perhaps, had been short-lived). But there would now be problems for her, too. She was not to go east with him: there were the girls, perhaps a pregnancy, and all the eastern dangers, but there was promptly something else. In winter 3 7/6 Antony had returned to Antioch, preparing for the Parthian War, and up to him came Cleopatra, his 'Egyptian dish'. She may not have been given all the new territory she wanted, but she certainly received significant swathes of it. She also became pregnant with yet another son.

  Like the Parthian venture, Cleopatra had Julius Caesar's imprint. Together, they would allow the 'new Dionysus' to counter Octavian's trump card, his name as the new 'Caesar': Cleopatra also had the little Caesarion, the son, they still said, of Julius Caesar's own blood. He also gave Cleopatra parts of Phoenicia, Syria and Judaea, rich gifts which would secure Egypt's eastern border: the Phoenician cities cele­brated a new calender era. Their twins were acknowledged; effectively, Octavia had now been repudiated. Seeing the chance and the danger, Octavian began the most overt war of spin-doctoring. He dismissed Antony as a drunk in thrall to a barbarous queen of Egypt: he would eventually even open Antony's will and allege that he planned to transfer the capital to Alexandria and be buried beside the Nile. Staid opinion in the towns of Italy might believe these shocking, but riveting, stories. At Rome, many senators were less bothered. Antony defended himself in a pamphlet 'On His Own Drunkenness' (sadly lost to us) and wrote an earthy letter, observing that Cleopatra was not his wife, that Octavian had all sorts of dreary little women on the side and that 'what did it matter where a man stuck his cock?'10 Octavian was also said to have a 'pretty boy', Sarmentus, presumably a slave.

  The year 36 nonetheless proved pivotal. In it, Octavian at last succeeded in defeating Sextus Pompeius at sea. The credit for the naval victory belonged to his officer Agrippa, but Octavian won popu­lar favour by having the prisoners executed in a show at Rome. Sextus did escape but only to be put to death in the East a year later. Instead, Octavian took the 'sacrosanct' protection of a tribune both for himself and for poor Octavia who could be cleverly represented as Antony's 'abandoned' wife: he vowed the spoils of victory to a massive new temple of Apollo in Rome beside which he would place his own house, not far from the supposed ancient 'hut of Romulus'." Antony, by contrast, had to cover up a campaign against Parthia which went badly wrong. After a change of direction, Antony had marched north from Syria, then east through Armenia, apparently hoping to win by a pitched battle. However, the Parthians were a mobile enemy who would keep retreating despite the loss of a fort or city. Antony was fighting a war as if it was the previous one, his campaign with Julius Caesar in the very different setting of Gaul.12 His army was huge, about two-thirds bigger than Alexander's in western Asia, and more than 30,000 of his soldiers died on their cold, hungry retreat during winter 36/5. Antony was left to celebrate a hollow victory. In 35 he prepared to invade Armenia again, but Octavian had cleverly compromised him: he sent him troops (a mere 2,000 of those promised in 37) and his Octavia as an envoy. Antony took the troops, but forbade Octavia to meet him: he was too involved with Cleopatra. In summer 34 he did regain Armenia, but reports of his celebration were alarming. He and Cleopatra sat on golden thrones in the gymnasium in Alexandria; he gave her yet more territory and named her 'queen of kings'. He gave royal titles to their young son and daughter (called the Sun and the Moon) and, above all, he named Caesarion, now seventeen years old, the 'king of kings'.13 What was his own role to be? Two contemporary coins suggest he kept his options open. One, very famous, is a silver denarius showing Cleopatra captioned in Latin 'queen of kings and of sons as kings': on the other royal side is Antony, uncaptioned. A separate gold coin-type, however, shows Antony with Latin titles ('commander', 'triumvir') and his young son Antyllus, born by his now dead Roman wife Fulvia. Certainly Antony had gone far with Cleopatra, to my mind in love and passion. But he had not closed off a Roman alternative or some blend, perhaps, of Roman and Cleopatran options.

  At the end of 3 3 the triumvirs' second five-year term would expire. Back in Rome, 'Caesar' held his second consulship and was winning favour with the common people through the public works of his trusted lieutenant, Agrippa. The long-neglected drains and sewage were cleaned out in the city; Agrippa even travelled symbolically down the city's main sewer: he developed links with the chariot-racing factions in the Circus Maximus and there were plans to improve the Campus Martius, a popular open space. Nonetheless, in 3 z the consuls would be Antony's men and Antony himself could return, be consul for 31 and be voted a vast personal province, with a supposed Parthian triumph behind him. Octavian had to strike back. After a bad start to 3 2, he boldly called 'all Italy' to swear an oath of allegiance to him. The move had echoes of a military emergency, in which a Roman leader would traditionally call for men to band together and save their cause.14 Next, the oath was taken by the western provinces, Octavian 'Caesar's' second wing of support. He then declared war in public by re-enacting an ancient Roman rite, but cleverly declared war on Cleopatra only. Old Roman values, Italian steadiness against Egyptian corruption, the new 'Caesar's' care for his troops and for the Roman plebs: these were Octavian's public messages, but Antony still had more legions. More than three hundred senators fled Rome to join his side.

  With Cleopatra and his fleet beside him, Antony eventually took up his position around Actium on the north-west coast of Greece. However, important desertions from his camp began early, probably when the newly arrived senators saw that Cleopatra was indeed at large in their camp. A first-class general could have won the war, but, as the Parthian march had shown, Antony was only second class. Octavian's fleet was allowed to cross unopposed from Italy and then to blockade Antony's smaller fleet in the bay just north of the island of Leucas. Delay induced disease, hunger and desertion in Antony's camp. The obvious tactic, a difficult one, was for Antony to try to break through at sea and escape. Cleopatra was evidently alerted (she did not simply desert) because the fleet went into battle with their sails at the ready: when the battle began on 2 September she and her sixty ships escaped through a gap in Octavian's centre. Antony quickly sailed after her. Actium is the last major sea-battle in antiquity, but although Octavian won the campaign (actually, it was Agrippa again who won it for him), there was very little fighting. Cleopatra and Antony won their objective, by escaping.

  At first Antony fled to Greece and Cleopatra to Egypt. Finally the two were reunited in Alexandria, and as they waited for the follow-up, the club of 'Inimitable Lives' became refounded as 'Those about to Die Together'. Antony, the new Dionysus, even founded a shrine to the legendary Timon of Athens, the man without true friends.15 After a brief return to Italy, Octavian arrived in Egypt in the summer of 30 bc, but Antony's offers to fight a duel were not accepted. Deser­tions continued apace and despite a brief flurry by the cavalry, by 1 August 30 Octavian held Alexandria. Antony wounded himself almost fatally and the greatest death scene in history began.

  Detailed accounts of it were soon written by eyewitnesses, including the doctor Olympus."' It is probably
to him that we owe the account of Cleopatra's retreat into her Mausoleum, up to whose window the dying Antony was then hauled on ropes by herself and her maids. We are not sure what he said to her, but he certainly died in her company. When the new Caesar entered, he wept over his great rival, now dead before him. It was a customary emotion on these occasions, just as Antony had once wept over the corpse of Brutus the Liberator, a fellow Roman senator. The obvious plan was to retain Cleopatra for exhibition in the triumph at Rome, but nine days later she outwitted it. Some said she had hidden poison in a hairpin, but Octavian accepted the cause was snakebite. Either in a water-jar or a basket of figs, two Egyptian asps were smuggled to her. She held one to her arm, not to her breast, and her serving-maids Iris and Charmian died beside her. Young Caesarion was caught and killed.

  It is easy to say that the 'right man won', steady Octavian against flamboyant Antony. Certainly no issue of principle, no notion of greater freedom or fairer justice divided the two. It was a straight power struggle between rivals, in which respected Romans had remained on terms with both sides, men like the rich, civilized Atticus, who stayed a friend of both. Others had simply done something Mast minute' and changed sides, like Plancus or Ahenobarbus or Dellius, known as the 'circus-rider' of the Civil Wars. At Rome, on the Capitol, there was even said to have been a man with two crows on his arm, one of which he had trained to say 'Hail, Caesar, Victorious Commander', one 'Hail, Antony, Victorious Commander', as the circumstances required.17

  Nonetheless, Antony had had his aims and a style to match them. The great campaign in the East had been a disaster, but the subsequent appointment of a friendly king in Armenia was to be a long-running Roman solution to the Parthian question. His other choices as 'friendly kings' in the East were successful too. Had Antony won, Rome would have had a very special tie with Egypt and Alexandria. Unlike Octavian, Antony had no need to compensate for military mediocrity and to seek glory by conquering in Europe. Thousands of barbarian lives might have been spared during the next fifty years, while a regeneration of the ravaged Greek cities could have been brought forward. There would also have been no shortage of heirs. Cleopatra already had two sons by the triumvir (whose paternity-rate, at least, was so much higher than Octavian's). As for the 'Augustan' poets of the future, they need not have lost their Italian voices. Patronage had won them over to Octavian in the 30s, but patronage would certainly have won them back to Antony.'8 Horace would then have been spared the need to write morally correct public poetry: there was so much for him to enjoy in Antony's less reputable entourage. Propertius retained a soft spot for it anyway,19 and as for Virgil, his masterpiece, the Georgics, was already finished. Dionysus, surely, would have been much more exciting to him than his next obligatory hero, the tongue-tied Aeneas. Through Virgil's genius, Bacchus would somehow have flowered poetically at Rome. The winner would have been Ovid. The wit and the polished detachment of his poetry would have found a real centre in Rome's flamboyant couple, Antony and Cleopatra. They would have lived out his themes of love and myth, bringing his life and poetry into harmony. But members of the senatorial order still had their 'moral' values and loved 'liberty', not eastern queens: they would have had them murdered first.

  40

  The Making of the Emperor

  On fifty-five occasions the Senate decreed that thanksgivings should be offered to the immortal gods on account of the successes on land and sea gained by me or my legates under my auspices. The days on which thanksgivings were offered according to the decree of the Senate numbered eight hundred and ninety. In my triumphs nine kings or children of kings were led before my chariot. As I was writing this, I had been consul thirteen times and I was in the thirty-seventh year of tribunician power.

  Augustus, in The Achievements of the Divine Augustus (Res Gestae), in the edition of ad 14

  The new 'Caesar's' victory at Actium was represented as the welcome triumph of sober values. In fact it was followed promptly by reports of a conspiracy at Rome. The son of the third triumvir, Lepidus, is said to have had plans to assassinate Octavian and he had to be put down by Octavian's man on the spot, the obliging non-senator Maecenas.1 The plot, if genuine, was perhaps associated with that long-running trouble, the settlement of so many veteran soldiers. After Actium it was the reason why Octavian had had to return briefly to Italy in case the protests became too serious.

  After the further victory in Egypt, in August 30, the immense riches of the country were brought under Roman 'domination', as the new rule was called. After Antony's example, it was obviously too risky to entrust Egypt to a senator. Octavian chose a knight as governor, Cornelius Gallus, who had distinguished himself in the recent fighting;

  he was also a noted poet, which Alexandrians would like. The prov­ince was actually called 'Alexandria and Egypt' and Alexandrians were to be important in administering it. Octavian would never use the equestrian order as a whole as a counterweight to the more political Senate, but in this exceptional case he realized that a knight was a safer bet.2 The precedent persisted and senators were banned (as were important knights) from visiting Egypt without the emperor's permission. These decisions were ratified at Rome, presumably in 30/ 29. Treasure in Egypt vastly increased Octavian's capacity for gifts to the Roman public. Its grain was also crucial for Rome's food-supply: after fifty years, the 'Egyptian question' was settled in one player's favour, thanks to civil war.

  Having won, how was the new 'Caesar' to rule? Nobody could have imagined that he would dominate for forty-four years and that the powers which he assumed by stages would become the mainstays for those we call the 'Roman emperors' for the next three centuries. Like Augustus, all emperors would refer to their consulships, their 'tribunician power', their role as Commander (Imperator) of the armies. Hadrian would have a particular respect for Augustus, who was his role-model in so many ways. He had a portrait-head of Augus­tus on his seal-ring and he kept a bronze bust of the boy Octavian among the household gods in his bedroom. But we can see, as Hadrian perhaps could not, how Augustus' years as 'First Citizen' (Princeps) had been a bumpy ride. They marked a fundamental change in free­dom and justice, with attempted consequences for luxury too.

  In 30 and 29 one side of 'Caesar's' position was made clear to him. Ever since Alexander the Great, cities and individuals in the Greek-speaking East had become used to negotiating personally with kings and princes. They had no interest whatsoever in the arcane details of the old Roman constitution and had already regarded Roman commanders of the late Republic as personal dynasts. Octavian stepped easily into this role. He personally wrote to cities in the East and praised personal friends in them who had helped him in the recent troubles. He even referred to his wife Livia's keen efforts on behalf of the island of Samos:' Greeks were used to royal families and helpful queens, although royalty was anathema to Roman tra­ditionalists. Greeks were also used to offering living rulers 'godlike

  honours'. The new 'Caesar' drew a cautious line here. Temples to 'Rome and Deified Julius' could be put up by Roman citizens in places like Ephesus: cult for himself while alive was un-Roman. Greeks, however, could put up temples to himself and Rome in the central cities of their provincial assemblies. Other cities would simply pay him cult outside Rome without asking permission.

  When he returned to Rome in 29, the obvious first move was celebration. In mid-August Octavian held a magnificent triple triumph for three victories, those in 35-33, the win at Actium and the fol­low-up in Egypt. Gladiatorial shows accompanied it, always a great attraction for the people, together with magnificent gifts of money to each member of the Roman plebs and two and a half times as much to each discharged soldier. All around them grand new monuments were being built in the city, arising from Octavian-Caesar's personal exploits. His own Mausoleum was already under construction, a type of building which Hadrian would later imitate. A great temple to the Deified Julius Caesar was being finished in 29, and a huge new temple was being finished on the Palatine hill beside his house. In Octob
er 28 it would be dedicated to Apollo, his patron-god at Actium. A big arch to commemorate Actium was begun in the Forum, where columns were to be made of bronze from the prows of Cleopatra's ships. The face of Rome was being changed by its despot's career, but he could not continue in this personal style on the path of his adopted father. Prolonged dictatorship, 'kingship' or cult as a god inside Rome would be fatal. Although many of the great families of the Republic had been diminished in the Civil Wars, they had not died out. Members of them were among the senators of the moment and would be the provincial army-commanders of the future, yet some of them had hoped with Cicero for a restored Republic as recently as spring 43 bc. They had to be reconciled to a new 'order'. It was a mixed blessing that house prices were rising sharply in Rome, propelled by the spending of the captive spoils from Egypt.

  Peace, at least, was a blessing, and it came at an apt moment. Since the 50s bc a new confidence had been spreading in many areas of intellectual life at Rome, as if Romans could at last measure up to the feats of the Greeks. After so much civil war, there were hopes for a return from army service to 'life on the land'. After all the devastation, there was a pride in the special qualities of Italy, potentially such a blessed country. Augustus' scholarly freedman, Hyginus, would even write a book on the origins and sites of Italian cities. In 30/29 bc these themes came together in Virgil's marvellous poem, the Georgics. The 'best poem by the best poet' combined praises of Italy and country living with tributes (often playful) to the new Caesar. A virtuoso ending blended Greek myths into a new, entrancing whole. As such a poem proves, there was hope and also confidence after so much terror. It was up to the new 'Caesar' to harness them, for they underlie what he was to make into a classicizing age.