The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “How is Brutus?”

  Her black brows rose, she looked indifferent. “How would I know? He doesn’t write to me any more than he writes to you. He and Cicero dribble words to each other. Well, why not? Both of them are old women.”

  Cassius grinned. “I saw Cicero in Tusculum on my way, stayed with him overnight. He’s very busy writing a paean to Cato, if you like that idea. No, I thought you wouldn’t. However, the war looming in the Spains had him twittering and fluttering, which surprised me, given his detestation for Caesar. I asked him why, and he said that if the Pompeius boys beat Caesar, he thought they would be far worse masters for Rome than Caesar is.”

  “And what did you reply to that, Cassius dear?”

  “That, like him, I’d settle for the easygoing old master I know. The Pompeii hail from Picenum, and I’ve never known a Picentine who wasn’t cruel to the marrow. Scratch a Picentine, and you reveal a barbarian.”

  “That’s why Picentines make such wonderful tribunes of the plebs. They love to strike when the back is turned, and they’re never happier than when they can make mischief. Pah!” Servilia spat. “At least Caesar is a Roman of the Romans.”

  “So much so that he has the blood to be King of Rome.”

  “Just like Sulla,” she agreed. “However—and also like Sulla!—he doesn’t want to be the King of Rome.”

  “If you can say that so positively, then why are you and certain others trying very hard to make it seem as if Caesar itches to tie on the diadem?”

  “It passes the time,” Servilia said. “Besides, I must have a tiny bit of Picentine in me. I adore making mischief.”

  “Have you met her majesty?” Cassius asked, feeling his own Romanness expand. Oh, it was good to be home! Tertulla might be half Caesar’s, but the other half was pure Servilia, and both halves made for a fascinatingly seductive wife.

  “My dear, her majesty and I are bosom friends,” Servilia cooed. “What fools Roman women can be! Would you believe that most of my female peers have decided to label the Queen of Egypt infra dignitatem? Silly of them, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you find her beneath your dignity?”

  “It’s more interesting to stand on good terms with her. As soon as Caesar leaves for Spain, I shall bring her into fashion.”

  Cassius frowned. “I’m sure your motives aren’t admirable, Mama-in-law, but whatever they are, they elude me. You know so little about her. She might be a wilier snake than you.”

  Servilia lifted her arms above her head and stretched. “Oh, but there you’re quite wrong, Cassius. I know a great deal about Cleopatra. You see, her younger sister spent almost two years here in Rome—Caesar exhibited her as his captive in his Egyptian triumph. She was put to live with old Caecilia, and as Caecilia is a good friend of mine, I came to know Princess Arsinoë well. We chatted for hours about Cleopatra.”

  “That triumph’s almost three months into the past. Where’s Princess Arsinoë now?” Cassius peered about theatrically. “I’m surprised she isn’t living here with you.”

  “She would be, had I had half a chance. Unfortunately Caesar put her on a ship bound for Ephesus the day after his triumph. I hear she’s to serve Artemis in the temple there. The moment she escapes, she can be killed for a nice reward. Apparently he gave Cleopatra his word that he’d clip Arsinoë’s wings. Such a pity! I was so looking forward to reuniting the two sisters.”

  He shivered. “There are times, Servilia, when I am profoundly glad that you like me.”

  In answer, she changed the subject. “Do you really prefer Caesar as your master, Cassius?”

  His face darkened. “I would prefer to have no master. To acknowledge a master is an offense against Quirinus,” he snarled.

  *“Look behind thee, remember that thou art a mortal man!”

  VII

  The Cracks Appear

  From INTERCALARIS of 46 B.C.

  until SEPTEMBER of 45 B.C.

  1

  Caesar’s nephew Quintus Pedius and Quintus Fabius Maximus had marched four “new” legions from Placentia in western Italian Gaul during November, and arrived in Further Spain a month later. By the seasons it was late summer, very hot; to their delight, they found the province not entirely at the beck and call of the three Republican generals, so were able to make a good camp on the upper Baetis River and buy the harvest of the region. Caesar’s orders were to wait for him and use the time laying in supplies, even though he didn’t expect a long campaign. Better to be safe than sorry was always Caesar’s motto when it came to logistics.

  Then at the beginning of the sixty-seven days of Intercalaris which followed the end of December, this comfortable situation changed; Labienus appeared with two legions of well-trained Roman men and four legions of raw local troops, and proceeded to besiege the camp. In a pitched battle Caesar’s legates Pedius and Fabius Maximus would have fared well, but in a siege situation Labienus could use his superior strength to best advantage, and did. Safe was definitely preferable to sorry; besieged or no, Caesar’s troops could still eat. Unsure of the water from the stream that ran through the camp, the four penned-up legions dug wells for groundwater and settled down to wait for Caesar and rescue.

  With the Tenth, the Fifth Alauda and two fresh legions largely made up of bored veterans, Caesar set out from Placentia at the same moment as his two legates in Further Spain came under siege. The distance to Corduba on the Via Domitia was one thousand miles, and it was a typically Caesarean march: it took twenty-seven days at an average of thirty-seven miles a day, assisted by the fact that it was no longer necessary to build a camp each night. Gaul of the Via Domitia was so pacified that even Caesar could see no need for a camp with walls, ditches and palisades. That changed when they came down through the pass from Laminium in Nearer Spain to Oretum in Further Spain, but by then there were only a hundred and fifty miles to go.

  The moment Caesar appeared, Labienus vanished.

  Sextus Pompey was holding the heavily fortified capital of Corduba while older brother Gnaeus took the bulk of the army and went to besiege the town of Ulia, defiantly anti-Republican. But the moment Labienus sent word that Caesar was already marching to take Corduba before Sextus could bring up reinforcements, Gnaeus Pompey packed up his siege to return to Corduba. Just in time!

  “We have thirteen legions, Caesar eight,” said Gnaeus Pompey to Labienus, Attius Varus and Sextus Pompey. “I say we face him now and beat him for once and for all!”

  “Yes!” cried Sextus.

  “Yes,” said Attius Varus, though less eagerly.

  “Absolutely not,” said Labienus.

  “Why?” asked Gnaeus Pompey. “Let’s finish it, please!”

  “At the moment Caesar can eat, but winter’s on the way, and according to the locals, it’s going to be a hard one,” Labienus said, tones reasonable. “Leave Caesar to face that winter. Harry him, prevent his foraging, make him use up his supplies.”

  “We outnumber him by five legions,” Gnaeus said, unconvinced. “Four of our thirteen are veteran Roman troops, another five are almost as good, which leaves four only of recruits, and they’re not all that bad—I’ve heard you say so yourself, Labienus.”

  “What you don’t know and I do, Gnaeus Pompeius, is that Caesar also has eight thousand Gallic cavalry. They were some days behind him through the pass, but they’re here now. The year’s been dry, the grazing isn’t wonderful, and if the upper Baetis gets snow this winter, Caesar will lose them. You know Gallic cavalry—” He stopped, grunted, looked wry. “No, of course you don’t. Well, I do. I worked with them for eight years. Why do you think that Caesar came to prefer Germans? When their precious horses start to suffer, Gallic cavalry ride home. Therefore we leave Caesar alone until spring. Once the horses begin starving, it’s goodbye to Caesar’s cavalry.”

  The news broke on the two Pompeys as a bitter disappointment, but they were their father’s sons; Pompey the Great had never fought unless his forces heavily outnumbered the enemy�
�s. Eight thousand horse meant Caesar outnumbered them.

  Gnaeus Pompey sighed, banged a frustrated fist on the table. “All right, Labienus, I see your point. We spend the winter denying Caesar any chance to work down out of the Baetis foothills to find snowless grazing.”

  “Labienus is learning,” Caesar remarked to his legates, now augmented by Dolabella, Calvinus, Messala Rufus, Pollio, and his admiral, Gaius Didius. Inevitably, he also had Tiberius Claudius Nero, whose only value was his name; Caesar needed all the old patricians he could find to dignify his cause. “It’s going to be hard finding sufficient fodder for the horses. They’re such a wretched nuisance on any campaign, but with Labienus in the field, we’re going to need them. His Spanish cavalry are excellent, and he has several thousand at least. He can also get more.”

  “What do you intend to do, Caesar?” Quintus Pedius asked.

  “Sit tight here in the upper Baetis for the moment. Once winter really cracks down, I have a few ideas. First, we have to convince Labienus that his tactics are working.” Caesar looked at Quintus Fabius Maximus. “Quintus, I want your junior legates to fill in their idle moments by finding trustworthy men among my centurions, and use them to monitor feelings in my legions. I’ve sensed no mutinous rumbles, but the days when I believed in my troops are over. Most of the men Ventidius enlisted in Placentia are veterans, and he sifted them thoroughly for malcontents, I know. Be that as it may, everyone keep his ear to the ground.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell. How terrible to realize that Caesar, the soldier’s general, thought that way these days! Yet he was right to think that way. Mutiny was insidious. Once the men who manipulated the ranks learned that it was possible, it became a way to control the general. Things military had been in a state of flux since Gaius Marius admitted the propertyless Head Count to the legions, and mutiny was just a new symptom of that state of flux. Caesar would find a solution.

  At the beginning of January, calendar and seasons now in perfect step, Caesar implemented one of his ideas when he moved to besiege the town of Ategua, a day’s march south of Corduba on the river Salsum. Right into the lion’s jaws. Ategua contained a huge amount of food, but more important, it held Labienus’s winter fodder for his horses.

  The weather was bitter, Caesar’s march as secret as unexpected; by the time that Gnaeus Pompey found out and moved his troops from Corduba to prevent Ategua’s capture, Caesar had circumvallated the town in the style of Alesia: a double ring of fortifications, the inner one surrounding the town, the outer one keeping Gnaeus Pompey’s relief force at bay. Caesar’s eight legions sat within the ring, while his eight thousand Gallic cavalry harassed Gnaeus Pompey continuously. Titus Labienus, who had been absent on a mission, arrived and looked dourly at Caesar’s circumvallation.

  “You can’t assist Ategua or break into the ring, Gnaeus,” Labienus said. “All you’re doing is losing men to Caesar’s cavalry. Withdraw to Corduba. Ategua’s a lost cause.”

  When the town fell despite heroic resistance, it was a blow to the Republicans in more ways than one. Not only did Caesar feed his horses, but Labienus now had to move closer to the coast to graze his, and the Spanish locals began to lose faith. Desertions in the Spanish levies increased dramatically.

  For Caesar, what ought to have been a great satisfaction was blighted by a letter and a book bucket from Servilia.

  I thought you’d get as big a kick out of the enclosed, Caesar, as I did. After all, you’re the only other person I know whose loathing of Cato rears as high as Mount Ararat. This gem has been authored by that utter peasant, Cicero, and published, naturally, by Atticus. When I chanced to meet the hypocritical plutocrat who manages to stay on good terms with you and your enemies, I served him a tongue-lashing he won’t forget in a hurry.

  “You’re a parasite as well as a hypocrite, Atticus!” I said. “The quintessential middleman who makes all the profits without owning any personal talents. Well, I’m delighted that Caesar’s put one of his biggest colonies for the Roman Head Count on your latifundium in Epirus—that will teach you to start a business on public land! I hope you rot while you’re still alive, and I hope Caesar’s poor wreck your latifundium!”

  I couldn’t have found a better way to alarm him than that. Apparently he and Cicero thought they’d deflected your colony to somewhere farther from Atticus’s cattle and tanneries than Buthrotum. Now they find out that it’s still Buthrotum. Caesar, don’t you dare let Atticus talk you out of that site for your colony! Atticus doesn’t own the land, he doesn’t pay rent on the land, and he deserves everything he gets from you and the Head Count! Publishing this revolting paean of praise for the worst man who ever sat in the Senate! I am livid! When you read Cicero’s “Cato,” you’ll be livid too. Of course my idiot son thinks it’s just wonderful—it seems he’d written a little pamphlet extolling Uncle Cato, but tore it up after he read Cicero’s panegyric.

  Brutus says he’s coming back to Rome as soon as Vibius Pansa arrives to govern Italian Gaul in his place. Honestly, Caesar, where do you find these nobodies? Still, Pansa’s rich enough to have married Fufiius Calenus’s daughter, so I dare-say Pansa will go far. There are a number of your old legates from Gaul in Rome at the moment, from praetor Decimus Brutus to ex-governor Gaius Trebonius.

  I know that Cleopatra writes to you about four times a day, but I thought you might like a more dispassionate tone from someone else. She’s managing to survive, but she’s so utterly miserable without you. How dared you tell her it would be a short campaign? Rome won’t see you for a year, is my estimate. And why on earth did you put her in that marble mausoleum? The poor creature is permanently frozen! This winter is cold and early—ice on the Tiber, snow in Rome already. I gather that the Alexandrian winter is about like late spring in Rome. The little boy fares better, thinks that playing in the snow is the best fun ever invented.

  Now to gossip. Fulvia is with child by Antonius, looks her usual glowing self. Imagine it! Issue, probably male, for the third of her bully-boy rowdies! Clodius, Curio, and now Antonius.

  Cicero—oh, I cannot get away from that man!—married his seventeen-year-old ward, Publilia, the other day. What do you think about that? Disgusting.

  Read the “Cato.” Cicero badly wanted to dedicate it to Brutus, by the by, but Brutus declined this signal honor. Why? Because he knew that if he accepted, I’d murder him.

  He read the “Cato” with at least as much rage and indignation as Servilia, his fury white-hot by the time he finished it. Cato, said Cicero, was the noblest Roman who ever lived, the loyalest and most unswerving servant of the extinct Republic, the enemy of all tyrants like Caesar, the constant protector of the mos maiorum, the hero even in his death, the perfect husband and father, the brilliant orator, the frugal master of his bodily appetites, the true Stoic to the end, and more, and more, and more. Perhaps had Cicero gone no further, Caesar might have stomached the “Cato.” But Cicero had gone much further. The entire emphasis of the work was on the contrast between the superlative virtues of Marcus Porcius Cato and the unspeakable villainies of Caesar Dictator.

  Trembling with anger, Caesar sat stiffly in his chair and bit his lips until they bled. So that is what you think, Cicero, is it? Well, Cicero, your day is done. Caesar will never ask anything of you ever again. Nor will you ever sit in Caesar’s Senate, even if you beg on your knees. As for you, Atticus, the publisher of this unjust piece of malice, Caesar will do as Servilia suggests. The immigrant poor will flock into Buthrotum!

  Caesar had whiled away the time on his march to Further Spain by writing a poem. It was titled “Iter”—“The Journey”—and, on rereading it, he had found it far better than he had originally thought. The best thing he’d written in years. Good enough to warrant publication. Of course he had intended to send it to Atticus, whose small army of copy scribes did beautiful work. But now “Iter” would go to the Brothers Sosius for publication. Nor would Atticus receive any dictatorial favors in future. It wasn’t necessary to be K
ing of Rome to exact reprisals. Dictator of Rome was quite sufficient.

  Rage not cooled but rather gone to icy determination, Caesar began to write a refutation of Cicero’s “Cato” that would take every point Cicero made and turn it on its head. Couched in prose that would have Cicero squirming at his own inadequate talents. The “Cato” could not be ignored. Those who read it would deem Caesar worse than any Greek tyrant, yet it was a warped, one-sided piece of rubbish. It must be answered!

  Usually it was Caesar who looked for a pitched battle to end a war quickly, but in Spain it was the Republicans; Caesar was too involved in his “Anti-Cato” to think about battles.

  Sextus Pompey had hugely relished Cicero’s “Cato,” though he was very disappointed that it had nothing to say about Cato’s march, which to Sextus Pompey represented the last time he had been truly happy. Africa Province had been detestable, and Spain was worse. He couldn’t like Titus Labienus, and found Attius Varus a venal nonentity. Only poor Gnaeus was worth fighting for, yet Gnaeus seemed to have lost his old zest for the Republican struggle.

  “I’m no good on land, Sextus, and that’s the truth,” Gnaeus said gloomily as they walked to a meeting with Labienus and Attius Varus. It was the first day of March; Corduba was thawing, the Spanish sun had some warmth again. “I’m an admiral.”

  “I find I’m more comfortable on the sea too,” Sextus said. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Oh, we’ll try to force a battle with Caesar as soon as we possibly can.” Gnaeus stopped, grasped his young brother’s wrist strongly. “Sextus, make me a promise?”

  “Anything, you know that.”

  “If I should fall on the field, or meet some other sticky end, will you marry Scribonia?”

  Skin tight and prickling, Sextus broke free of the grip and reversed it. “Ny-Ny!” he cried, a small child again. “That’s absolutely ridiculous! Nothing is going to happen to you!”