The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “Do we dare approach him?” Decimus Brutus asked warily. “He might run straight to Caesar.”

  Cassius looked astonished. “Brutus? No, never! Even if he decides not to join us, I’d stake my life on his silence.”

  “You will be,” said Decimus Brutus. “You will be.”

  * * *

  When the Dictator Perpetuus convened the Centuries on the Campus Martius to “elect” Publius Cornelius Dolabella the senior consul in Caesar’s absence, the voting went swiftly and smoothly; there was no reason why it should not, since there was only one candidate, but the vote of each Century still had to be counted, at least right through the First Class and as far into the Second Class as necessary to obtain a majority; the Centuries were very heavily weighted in favor of the First Class, so in an “election” like today’s, no one from the Third, Fourth or Fifth Classes even bothered to turn up.

  Both Caesar and Mark Antony attended, Caesar as supervising magistrate, Antony in his function as augur. It took the junior consul an inordinately long time to complete his auspication; the first sheep was rejected as unclean, the second had too few teeth. Only when he came to the third did he decide it met his purposes, which were to inspect the victim’s liver according to a strict protocol both written down and on display as a three-dimensional bronze model. There was no mystical element in Rome’s auguries, hence no need to find mystical men to act as augurs.

  Impatient as always, Caesar ordered the voting to proceed while Antony fussed and probed.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, coming to Antony’s side.

  “The liver. It looks terrible.”

  Caesar looked, turned it over with a stylus, counted the lobes and verified their shapes. “It’s perfect, Antonius. As Pontifex Maximus and a fellow augur, I declare the omens auspicious.”

  Shrugging, Antony walked away as the augural acolytes began to clean up, and stood staring into the distance. A smile playing about his lips, Caesar went back to supervising.

  “Don’t sulk, Antonius,” he said. “It was a good try.”

  About half the votes of the necessary ninety-seven Centuries had been registered when Antony suddenly jumped and squawked, then strode to the saepta side of the supervising tower, where he could see the long lines of white-clad figures filing to the baskets.

  “A fireball! The omens are inauspicious!” he bellowed in his stentorian voice. “As official augur on this occasion, I order the Centuries to go home!”

  It was brilliantly done. Caught unprepared, Caesar hadn’t time to start enquiring who else had seen this evanescent meteor before the Centuries, full of men who would rather be elsewhere, began to leave in a hurry.

  Dolabella came running from his constant soliciting of the Centuries lined up to vote, his face purple with rage. “Cunnus!” he spat at the grinning Antony.

  “You go too far, Antonius,” Caesar said, mouth thin.

  “I saw a fireball,” Antony maintained stubbornly. “On my left, low on the horizon.”

  “I presume that this is your way of informing me that there is no point in holding another election? That it too will fail?”

  “Caesar, I’m simply telling you what I saw.”

  “You’re an incontinent fool, Antonius. There are other ways,” Caesar said, turned on his heel and walked down the tower steps.

  “Fight, you prick!” Dolabella yelled, shaping up.

  “Lictors, restrain him,” Antony barked, following Caesar.

  Cicero scuttled up importantly, eyes sparkling. “That was so stupid, Marcus Antonius,” he announced. “You acted illegally. You should have watched the skies as consul, not as augur. Augurs must be formally commissioned to watch the skies, consuls not.”

  “Thank you, Cicero, for telling Antonius the correct way to screw up future elections!” Caesar snapped. “I would remind you that Publius Clodius made it illegal for consuls to watch the skies without commission too. Before you pontificate, look up the laws passed while you were in exile.”

  Cicero sniffed and marched off, mortified.

  “I doubt,” said Caesar to Antony, “that you’ll have the gall to block Dolabella’s appointment as suffect consul.”

  “No, I won’t do that,” Antony said agreeably. “As a suffect consul, he can’t outrank me.”

  “Antonius, Antonius, your law is as bad as your arithmetic! Of course he can, if the consul he replaces is the senior consul. Why do you think I went to the trouble of having a suffect consul appointed for a few hours when Fabius Maximus, the senior consul, died on the last day of last December? Law is not only what is written on the tablets, it is also valid on uncontested precedents. And I set the precedent a little over a month ago. Neither you nor anybody else objected. You may think you caught me out today, but, as you now know, I am always one step ahead of you.” Caesar smiled sweetly and went to join Lucius Caesar, glaring fiercely at Antony.

  “What can we do with my nephew?” Lucius asked in despair.

  “In my absence? Sit on him, Lucius. He’s actually well contained, if you think about it. Dolabella’s dislike for him won’t diminish after today, will it? Calvinus as Master of the Horse, the Treasury completely in the hands of Balbus Major and Oppius—yes, Antonius is well contained.”

  * * *

  Quite aware that he was effectively muzzled, Antony stalked home in a towering rage. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right! The cunning old fox was master of every trick in the political and legal manuals, plus a few tricks he’d invented. Soon every last senator would be compelled to swear a mortal oath to uphold all of Caesar’s laws and dictates in his absence. It would be administered under the open sky of the temple of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius, and as Pontifex Maximus the old boy had gotten around things like holding a stone in the hand to negate the oath—Caesar had been around too long to be fooled by anything.

  Trebonius. I need to talk to Gaius Trebonius. Not Decimus Brutus, but Trebonius. Somewhere very private.

  He made contact after the Senate met to appoint Dolabella the suffect consul after Caesar stepped down. Suffect, but senior.

  “My horse has arrived from Spain. Want to take a walk out to the Campus Lanatarius and see him?” Antony asked jovially.

  “Certainly,” said Trebonius.

  “When?”

  “There’s no time like the present, Antonius.”

  “Where’s Decimus Brutus?”

  “Keeping Gaius Cassius company.”

  “That’s an odd friendship.”

  “Not these days.”

  They walked on in silence until they passed through the Capena Gate, heading for the area which contained Rome’s stables, as well as the stockyards and slaughterhouses.

  The day was cold, a bitter wind blowing; inside the Servian Walls they hadn’t felt it as much, but once beyond the city, their teeth began to chatter.

  “Here’s a nice little tavern,” said Antony. “Clemency can wait, I need wine and a warm fire.”

  “Clemency?”

  “My new Public Horse. After all, I am the flamen of the new cult of Caesar’s Clemency, Trebonius.”

  “Oh, he was angry when we gave him the silver tablets!”

  “Don’t remind me. The first time I ever met him, he kicked my arse so hard I couldn’t sit down for a nundinum.”

  The few occupants of the tavern looked at the newcomers and gaped; never in all the place’s history had two men in purple-bordered togas walked through the door! The landlord rushed to escort them to his best table, evicting three merchants who were too awed to protest, then hunted for his best amphora of wine, put bowls of pickled onions and plump olives down for them to munch.

  “We’ll be safe here, this lot’s as Latin as Quirinus,” said Trebonius in Greek. He sipped experimentally at his beaker of wine, looked surprised, and waved his approval at the beaming landlord. “What’s on your mind, Antonius?”

  “Your little plot. Time’s running out. How’s it going?”

  “Well in one way, not so
well in another. There are enough of us at twenty-two, but we lack a figurehead, which is a worry. There’s no point in doing this particular deed if we can’t survive it in an odor of sanctity. We’re tyrannicides, not murderers,” said Trebonius, uttering his favorite sentence. “However, Gaius Cassius has joined us, and he’s going to try to persuade Marcus Brutus to be the figurehead.”

  “Edepol!” Antony exclaimed. “He’d be all of that.”

  “I’m not sanguine about Cassius’s chances of success.”

  “How about,” said Antony, pulling layers off an onion, “some additional guarantees in case you don’t get your figurehead?”

  “Guarantees?” Trebonius asked, looking alert.

  “Don’t forget I’ll be consul—and don’t think for a moment that Dolabella’s going to be a problem, because I won’t let him. If You-know-who is dead, he’ll lie down, roll over, and present me with his belly,” said Antony. “What I’m proposing is to smooth things over for you with the Senate and People. My brother Gaius is a praetor and my brother Lucius is a tribune of the plebs. I’m happy to guarantee that none of the participants will be brought to trial, that none will be deprived of his magistracy, province, estates or entitlements. Don’t forget that I’m Caesar’s heir. I’ll control the legions, who love me a great deal more than they do Lepidus or Calvinus or Dolabella. No one will dare to go against me in the Senate or the Assemblies.”

  The ugly, attractive face turned feral. “I’m not nearly as big a fool as Caesar deems me, Trebonius. If he’s killed, why not kill me—and Uncle Lucius—and Calvinus—and Pedius? My life is in jeopardy too. So I’ll make a bargain with you—with you, and you alone! It’s your scheme, and you’re the one who’ll hold the rest together. What I’m saying to you is between you and me, it’s not for dissemination to the others. You make sure that I’m not a target and I’ll make sure that no one suffers for the deed.”

  Moist grey eyes reflective, Trebonius sat and thought. He was being made an offer too good to spurn. Antonius was an administrative sloth, not a maniac for work like Caesar. He’d be content to let Rome slide back into her old ways as long as he could strut around calling himself the First Man in Rome—and as long as he had Caesar’s staggering fortune to spend.

  “It’s a deal,” said Gaius Trebonius. “Our secret, Antonius. What the rest don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  “That goes for Decimus too? I remember him from Clodius Club days, and he’s maybe not as stable as most people think.”

  “I won’t tell Decimus, you have my oath on it.”

  Early in February, Caesar got his casus belli. News came from Syria that Antistius Vetus, sent to replace Cornificius, had blockaded Bassus inside Apameia thinking it would be a short, swift siege. But Bassus had fortified his Syrian “capital” very efficiently, so the siege became protracted. Worse than that, Bassus had sent to King Orodes of the Parthians for help, and help had arrived; a Parthian army under Prince Pacorus had just invaded Syria. The whole of the northern end of the province was being overrun, and Antistius Vetus was penned up in Antioch.

  Since no one could now possibly argue that Syria ought not to be defended or the Parthians contested, Caesar rifled the Treasury for a great deal more than he had originally intended, and sent the war chest to Brundisium to await his arrival; for safety, it was stored in the vaults of his banker Gaius Oppius. He issued orders that all the legions were to assemble in Macedonia as fast as the transports could ferry them there from Brundisium; his cavalry were shipped from Ancona, the closest port to Ravenna, where they were camped. Legates and staff were told to get to Macedonia yesterday, and he informed the House that he would step down as consul on the Ides of March.

  A startled Gaius Octavius suddenly found himself served a curt notice from Publius Ventidius to go to Brundisium, where he was to embark at the end of February with Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus. The order was a welcome one, for his mother was weeping and wailing that she would never see her beloved only son again, and Philippus was, thanks to her dramatics, unusually testy. Deliberately abandoning two-thirds of what she had put together for him, he hired three gigs and two carts with a view to setting off down the Via Latina immediately. Freedom! Adventure! Caesar!

  Who managed to see him for a very brief farewell the evening before he departed.

  “I expect you to continue your studies, Octavius, because I don’t think your destiny is a military one,” said the Great Man, who seemed tired, unusually harassed.

  “I will, Caesar, I will. I’m taking Marcus Epidius and Arius of Alexandria to polish my rhetoric and knowledge of the law, and Apollodorus of Pergamum to keep me struggling with my Greek.” He pulled a face. “It is improving a little, but no matter how hard I try, I still can’t think in it.”

  “Apollodorus is an old man,” said Caesar, frowning.

  “Yes, but he assures me that he’s fit enough to travel.”

  “Then take him. And start educating Marcus Agrippa. That’s one young man I’m anxious to see capable of a public career as well as a military one. Has Philippus arranged for you to stay with someone in Brundisium? The inns will be overflowing.”

  “Yes, with his friend Aulus Plautius.”

  Caesar laughed, looked suddenly boyish. “How convenient! You can keep an eye on the war chest, young Octavius.”

  “The war chest?”

  “It takes many millions of sesterces to keep an army eating, marching and fighting,” Caesar said gravely. “A prudent general takes his funds with him when he goes—if he has to send back to Rome for more money, the Senate can prove very difficult. So my war chest of many millions of sesterces is sitting in Oppius’s vaults right next door to Aulus Plautius’s house.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on the war chest, Caesar, I promise.”

  A quick handshake, a light kiss on the cheek, and Caesar was gone. Octavius stood staring at the empty doorway with an ache in his heart he couldn’t define.

  One more little King of Rome ploy, thought Mark Antony on the day before the festival of the Lupercalia. This year three teams would participate, with Antony leading the Luperci Julii.

  The Lupercalia was one of the oldest and most beloved feast days Rome owned, its archaic rituals fraught with sexual overtones that the prudish segment of the Roman upper classes preferred not to see.

  In the cliff on the corner of the Palatine Mount that faced the end of the Circus Maximus and the Forum Boarium was a small cave and spring called the Lupercal. Here, adjacent to the shrine of the Genius Loci and under an aged oak tree (though in her time it had been a fig tree), the she-wolf had suckled the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus. Romulus had gone on to found the original city on the Palatine, and executed his brother for some peculiar treason described as “jumping over the walls.” One of Romulus’s oval thatched huts was still preserved on the Palatine, just as the people of Rome still reverenced the Lupercal cave and prayed to Rome’s spirit, the Genius Loci. It had all happened over six hundred years ago, but it continued to live, never more so than on the feast of Lupercalia.

  The men of the three colleges of luperci met at the cave, and there outside it, all stark naked, killed sufficient billy goats and one male dog. The three prefects of Luperci Julii, Fabii and Quinctilii supervised their teams as they cut the victims’ throats, then stood while the bloody knives were wiped across their foreheads, roaring with obligatory crazy laughter. Neither of the other two prefects laughed as loudly or as crazily as Mark Antony, blinking the blood out of his eyes until the members of his team cleaned the blood away with hanks of wool dipped in milk. The goats and dog were skinned and the gory hides hacked into strips which all the luperci then wrapped around their loins, making sure that a section of this gruesome drape was long enough to use as a flail.

  Few of the many thousands who came to Lupercalia were able to see this part of the ceremony, between the piers of houses above and the roofs of temples and shrines below; the Palatine had become too built up. Once the luperci were dr
essed, they offered little salt cakes called mola salsa to the faceless deities who safeguarded the People of Rome. The cakes were made by the Vestal Virgins from the first ears of the last Latin harvest, and constituted the real sacrifice; the goats and dog were killed to provide luperci apparel, albeit ritually. After which the three dozen fit, athletic men lay on the ground and ate a “feast” washed down by watered wine—a sparse meal, actually, for as soon as it concluded the luperci commenced a run over two miles long.

  With Antony in their lead, they came down the Steps of Cacus from the Lupercal to plough into the huge throng below, laughing as they grasped the long pieces of their drapes and whipped them about. A path was cleared for them; they began their run up the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine, around the corner into the wide avenue of the Via Triumphalis, down to the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae, then up the hill to the Velia at the top of the Forum Romanum, down the Forum to the rostra on the Sacra Via, then ended by backtracking a short distance to Rome’s first temple, the tiny old Regia. Every foot of the way, the run was made more difficult because the path through the crowd was barely wide enough to give one man passage at a time, and hordes of people dashed across it constantly, presenting themselves to be flailed.

  There was solemn purpose in the flail; whoever it struck was assured of procreating, so those who despaired of having children—men as well as women—implored to be let through the crush so that one of the luperci would lash them with his bloody whip. To Antony it was a simple fact of life; Fulvia’s mother, Sempronia the daughter of Gaius Gracchus, had reached thirty-nine years of age without conceiving. Not knowing what else was left to do, she went to the Lupercalia and was struck. Nine months later she gave birth to Fulvia, her only child. So Antony swished and lashed his flail generously despite the additional labor it involved, roaring with laughter, pausing to drink water some kind soul in the press offered, thoroughly enjoying himself.