The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Gaius Octavius…Latium, for sure. There were plenty of Octavii in the Senate, even among the consuls. Agrippa shrugged and went back to checking his list of the executed.

  “Come,” said Caesar’s voice when Octavius knocked.

  The face Caesar turned to the door was flinty, but softened when its eyes took in who stood there. The pen went down, he rose. “My dear nephew, you lasted the distance. I’m very glad.”

  “I’m glad too, Caesar. I’m just sorry I missed the battle.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t one of my tactical finest, and I lost too many men. Therefore I hope it isn’t my last battle. You seem well, but I’ll have Hapd’efan’e see you to make sure. Much snow in the passes?”

  “Mons Genava, yes, but the Pyreneae Pass was fairly good.” Octavius sat down. “You were looking particularly grim when I came in, Uncle.”

  “Have you read Cicero’s ‘Cato’?”

  “That piece of spiteful twaddle? Yes, it enlivened my sickbed in Rome. I hope you’re answering it?”

  “That was what I was doing when you knocked.” Caesar sighed. “People like Calvinus and Messala Rufus don’t think I should deign to answer. They believe anything I write will be called petty.”

  “They’re probably right, but it still has to be answered. To ignore it is to admit there’s truth in it. The people who will call it petty won’t want to believe your side anyway. Cicero has charged you with permanently killing the democratic process—a Roman’s right to run his own life without interference of any kind—and Cato’s death. Later on, when I have the money, I’ll deal with it by buying up every copy of the ‘Cato’ in existence and burning the lot,” said Octavius.

  “What an interesting ploy! I could do that myself.”

  “No, people would guess who was behind it. Let me do it at some time in the future, after the sensation has died down. How are you approaching your refutation?”

  “With a few well-aimed barbs at Cicero to begin with. From them, I pass to assassinating Cato’s character better than Gaius Cassius did Marcus Crassus’s. From the stinginess to the wine to the tame philosophers to the disgraceful way he treated his wives, it will all be there,” said Caesar, a purr in his voice. “I am sure that Servilia will be happy to furnish me with the less well-known incidents that have dotted Cato’s life.”

  Which was the commencement of a cadetship for Gaius Octavius that was far removed from the usual. Hoping that he would have an opportunity to further his acquaintance with the fascinating Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Octavius discovered the day after he arrived that Caesar had other ideas than permitting this contubernalis to associate with his fellows.

  Once Fortuna landed Caesar in a place, he refused to quit it until it was properly organized. In the case of Further Spain, long a Roman province, the work Caesar undertook was mostly the establishment of Roman colonies. Save for the Fifth Alauda and the Tenth, all the legions he had brought with him to Spain were to be settled in the Further province on generous allotments of very good land taken from Spanish owners who had sided with the Republicans. A colony for Rome’s urban poor was to be founded at Urso, rejoicing in the name Colonia Genetiva Julia Urbanorum, but the rest were for veteran soldiers. One was near Hispalis, one near Fidentia, two near Ucubi, and three near New Carthage. Four more were to the west in the lands of the Lusitani. Every colony was to have the full Roman citizenship, and freedmen were to be allowed to sit on the governing council, the latter provision very rare.

  It became Octavius’s job to accompany Caesar in his galloping gig as he went from one site to the next, supervising the division of land, making sure that those who would carry on with the work knew how to do it, issuing the charters outlining colonial laws, bylaws and ordinances, and personally choosing the first lot of citizens who would sit on each governing council. Octavius understood that he was on trial: not only was his competence under review, so too was his health.

  “I hope,” he said to Caesar as they returned from Hispalis, “that I’m of some help to you, Uncle.”

  “Remarkably so,” said Caesar, sounding a little surprised. “You have a mind for minutiae, Octavius, and a genuine pleasure in what many men would deem the more boring aspects of this work. If you were lethargic, I’d call you an ideal bureaucrat, but you aren’t a scrap slothful. In ten years’ time, you’ll be able to run Rome for me while I do the things I’m better suited for than running Rome. I don’t mind drafting the laws to make her a more functional and functioning place, but I fear I’m not really very suited for staying in one place for years at a time, even if the place is Rome. She rules my heart, but not my feet.”

  By this time they stood on very comfortable terms, and had quite forgotten that more than thirty years lay between them. So Octavius’s luminous grey eyes lit with laughter, and he said, “I know, Caesar. Your feet have to march. Can’t you postpone the Parthian expedition until I’m a little further along the way to being of real use to you? Rome wouldn’t lie down under a mere youth, but I doubt that those you’ll have to depute to govern in your absence will lie down either.”

  “Marcus Antonius,” said Caesar.

  “Quite so. Or Dolabella. Calvinus perhaps, but he’s not an ambitious enough man to want the job. And Hirtius, Pansa, Pollio and the rest don’t have good enough ancestors to keep Antonius or Dolabella in their place. Must you cross the Euphrates so soon?”

  “There are only two places with the wealth to drag Rome out of her present precarious financial position, nephew—Egypt and the Kingdom of the Parthians. For obvious reasons I can’t touch Egypt, therefore it has to be the Kingdom of the Parthians.”

  Octavius put his head back against the seat and turned his face toward the flying countryside, unwilling to let Caesar see it in case it betrayed his inner thoughts. “In that respect, I understand why it has to be the Kingdom of the Parthians. After all, Egypt’s wealth can’t possibly compete.”

  A statement which caused Caesar to laugh until he wiped away tears of mirth. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, Octavius, you couldn’t say that.”

  “What have you seen?” Octavius asked, looking like a boy.

  “The treasure vaults,” said Caesar, still chuckling.

  And that would do for the moment. Hasten slowly.

  “What a weird job you’ve got,” said Marcus Agrippa to Octavius later that day. “More a secretary’s than a cadet’s, isn’t it?”

  “To each his own,” said Octavius, not resenting the comment. “My talents aren’t military, but I think I do have some gifts for government, and working with Caesar so closely is an education in that respect. He talks to me about everything he does, and I—why, I listen very hard.”

  “You never told me he’s your real uncle.”

  “Strictly speaking, he isn’t. He’s my great-uncle.”

  “Quintus Pedius says you’re his favorite of favorites.”

  “Then Quintus Pedius is indiscreet!”

  “I dare-say he’s your first cousin or something. He mutters to himself sometimes,” Agrippa said, trying to patch up his own indiscretion. “Are you here for a while?”

  “Yes, for two nights.”

  “Then come and mess with us tomorrow. We don’t have any money, so the food’s not much good, but you’re welcome.”

  “Us” turned out to be Agrippa and a military tribune named Quintus Salvidienus Rufus, a red-haired Picentine in his middle to late twenties.

  Salvidienus eyed Octavius curiously. “Everybody talks about you,” he said, making room for the guest by shoving various bits of military impedimenta off a bench on to the floor.

  “Talks about me? Why?” asked Octavius, perching on the bench, an item of furniture he had had little acquaintance with before.

  “You’re Caesar’s favorite, for one thing. For another, our boss Pedius says you’re delicate—can’t ride a horse or do proper military duty,” Salvidienus explained.

  A noncombatant brought in the food, which consisted of a tough boiled f
owl, a mush of chickpea and bacon, some reasonable bread and oil, and a big dish of superb Spanish olives.

  “You don’t eat much,” Salvidienus observed, wolfing food.

  “I’m delicate,” said Octavius, a little waspishly.

  Agrippa grinned, slopped wine into Octavius’s beaker. When the guest sipped it, then abandoned it, his grin grew wider. “No taste for our wine?” he asked.

  “I have no taste for wine at all. Nor does Caesar.”

  “You’re awfully like him in a funny way,” Agrippa said.

  Octavius’s face lit up. “Am I? Am I really?”

  “Yes. There’s something of him in your face, which is more than I can say for Quintus Pedius. And you’re slightly regal.”

  “I’ve had a different upbringing,” Octavius explained. “Old Pedius’s father was a Campanian knight, so he grew up down there. Whereas I’ve been brought up in Rome. My father died some years ago. My stepfather is Lucius Marcius Philippus.”

  A very well-known name; the other two looked impressed.

  “An Epicure,” said Salvidienus, more knowledgeable than young Agrippa. “Consular too. No wonder you have enough gear for a senior legate.”

  Octavius looked embarrassed. “Oh, that’s my mother,” he said. “She’s always convinced I’m going to die, especially when I’m away from her. I don’t honestly need it or use it. Philippus may be an Epicure of the Epicures, but I’m not.” He gazed about at the untidy, impoverished room. “I envy you,” he said simply, then sighed. “It’s no fun being delicate.”

  “Did you have an enjoyable time?” Caesar asked when his contubernalis returned, aware that he gave the lad little chance to mingle with his fellows.

  “Yes, I did, but it made me realize how privileged I am.”

  “In what way, Octavius?”

  “Oh, plenty of money in my purse, everything I need, your favor,” said Octavius frankly. “Agrippa and Salvidienus have neither money nor favor, yet they’re two very good men, I think.”

  “If they are, then they’ll rise under Caesar, rest assured. Ought I to take them on the Parthian campaign?”

  “Definitely. But on your own staff, Caesar. With me, since I won’t be old enough to run Rome in your absence.”

  “You really want to come? The dust will be frightful.”

  “I still have much to learn from you, so I’d like to try.”

  “Salvidienus I know. He led the cavalry charge at Munda, and won nine gold phalerae. A typical Picentine, I suspect—very brave, a superior military mind, capable of plotting. Whereas Agrippa I can’t place. Tell him to be present when we leave in the morning, Octavius,” said Caesar, curious to see what kind of confrere Octavius would choose as a friend.

  Meeting Agrippa was a revelation. Privately Caesar thought him one of the most impressive young men he had ever seen. Had he been homelier, there was a great deal of Quintus Sertorius in him, but the good looks put him in a category all his own. If he had gone to a big Roman school for the sons of knights, he would inevitably have been the head prefect. The sort you could trust always to give of his best—infinitely reliable, utterly devoid of fear, athletic, and extremely intelligent. A stalwart. A pity his education hadn’t been better. Also his blood, very mediocre. Both would retard any hope of a public career in Rome. One reason why Caesar was determined to change Rome’s social structure sufficiently to permit the rise of men as eminently capable as the seventeen-year-old Agrippa promised to be. For he wasn’t a prodigy like Cicero, nor did he have the ruthlessness of a Gaius Marius, two New Men who had gotten there. What he would need was a patron, and that Caesar himself would be. His great-nephew had an eye for choosing good men, a comfort.

  While Agrippa stood stiffly to attention and answered Caesar’s pleasant but probing questions, Octavius, observed Caesar out of the corner of his eye, stood and stared at Agrippa adoringly. Not the same kind of adoring looks he gave Caesar by any means. Hmmm.

  Sometimes a secretary traveled with them in their gig, but this morning Caesar elected that he and Octavius should be alone. Time for that talk, postponed because Caesar wasn’t looking at all forward to it.

  “You like Marcus Agrippa very much,” Caesar commenced.

  “Better than anyone I’ve ever met,” said Octavius instantly.

  When you have to lance a boil, cut deep and cruelly. “You’re a very pretty fellow, Octavius.”

  The startled Octavius didn’t take that as a compliment. “I hope to grow out of it, Caesar,” he said in a small voice.

  “I see no evidence that you ever will, because you can’t exercise long enough and hard enough to develop Agrippa’s kind of physique—or mine, for that matter. You’re always going to be much as you look now—a very pretty fellow, and rather willowy.”

  Octavius’s face was growing red. “Do you mean what I think you mean, Caesar? That I appear effeminate?”

  “Yes,” Caesar said flatly.

  “So that’s why men like Lucius Caesar and Gnaeus Calvinus eye me the way they do.”

  “Quite so. Do you cherish any tender feelings toward your own sex, Octavius?”

  The red was fading, the skin now too pale. “Not that I have noticed, Caesar. I admit that I might look at Marcus Agrippa like a ninny, but I—I—I admire him so.”

  “If you cherish no tender feelings, then I suggest that the ninny looks cease. Make sure you never do develop tender feelings. Nothing can retard a man’s public career more effectively than that particular failing, take it from one who knows,” said Caesar.

  “The accusation about King Nicomedes of Bithynia?”

  “Precisely. An unjustified accusation, but unfortunately I hadn’t endeared myself to my commanding officer, Lucullus, or to my colleague Marcus Bibulus. They took great delight in using it as a political slur, and it was still haunting me at my triumph.”

  “The Tenth’s song.”

  “Yes,” said Caesar, lips thin. “They have paid.”

  “How did you counter the accusation?” Octavius asked, curious.

  “My mother—a remarkable woman!—advised me to cuckold my political rivals, the more publicly, the better. And never to befriend any among my colleagues with that rumor around them. Never, she said, give anyone the tiniest particle of evidence that the accusation was more than spite,” said Caesar, looking straight ahead. “And don’t, she said, spend time in Athens.”

  “I remember her very well.” Octavius grinned. “She terrified the life out of me.”

  “And out of me too, from time to time!” Caesar reached to take Octavius’s hands, clasp them strongly. “I am passing her advice on to you, though in a different vein, as we are very, very different sorts of men. You don’t have the kind of appeal to women that I did when I was young. I made them yearn to tame me, to capture my heart, while making it all too plain to everyone that I could not be tamed and had no heart. That you can’t do, you don’t have the arrogance or self-assurance. Deservedly or not, you do exude a slight air of effeminacy. I blame it on your illness, which has worried your mother into cosseting you. It has also prevented your attending the boys’ drills regularly enough to permit your peers to know you well. In every generation there are individuals like your cousin Marcus Antonius, who deem all men effeminate if they can’t lift anvils and sire a bastard every nundinum. Thus Antonius actually got away with kissing his boon companion Gaius Curio in public—no one could ever credit that Antonius and Curio were genuine lovers.”

  “And were they?” Octavius asked, fascinated.

  “No. They just liked to scandalize the stuffy. Whereas if you did that, the response would be very different, and Antonius would be your first accusator.”

  Caesar drew a breath. “Since I doubt you have the stamina or the physical presence to make a reputation as a great philanderer, I recommend a different ploy. You should marry young, and build a reputation as a faithful husband. Some may deem you a dull dog, but it works, Octavius. The worst that will be said of you is that you are un-
adventurous and under the cat’s foot. Therefore choose a wife with whom you can enjoy domestic peace, yet a woman who gives onlookers the impression that she rules the roost.” He laughed. “That’s a tall order and one you may not be able to fill, but keep it in mind. You’re far from stupid, and I’ve noticed that you usually manage to get your own way. Are you following me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Octavius. “Oh, yes.”

  Caesar released his hands. “So no looking at Marcus Agrippa with naked adoration. I realize why you do, but others won’t be so perceptive. Cultivate his friendship, by all means, but always remain a little aloof. I say cultivate his friendship because he is exactly your own age, and one day you’ll need adherents like him. He shows great promise, and if he owes his advancement to you, he’ll give you his complete loyalty because that’s the kind of man he is. I say remain at a slight distance from him because he should never gain the impression that he is an intimate of yours on equal terms with you. Make him fides Achates to your Aeneas. After all, you have the blood of Venus and Mars in your veins, whereas Agrippa is a Messapian Oscan of no ancestry. All men should be able to aspire to be great and do great things, and I would build a Rome that allowed them to fulfill their destinies. But some of us have the additional gift of birth, which endows us with an additional burden—we must prove ourselves worthy of our ancestors, rather than found an ancestry.”

  The countryside was rolling by; shortly they would cross the Baetis River on their long journey to the Tagus River. Octavius stared out the window, not seeing a thing. Then he licked his lips, swallowed, and turned to look directly into Caesar’s eyes, which were kind, sympathetic, caring.