The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “Don’t you worry, little Gaius,” said the old retainer. “I’ll look after everything.”

  Convinced that Nonius would, Octavian backtracked to the junction of the Via Minucia and the Via Appia at Beneventum, picked up the Via Appia there and resumed his journey to Neapolis, where he arrived toward the end of April to find Philippus and his mother in a fever of worry.

  “Where have you been?” Atia cried, hugging him to her and watering his tunic with tears.

  “Laid low with asthma in some mean inn on the Via Minucia,” Octavian explained, removing himself from his mother’s clutches, feeling an irritation he was at some pains to hide. “No, no, leave me be, I’m well now. Philippus, tell me what’s happened, I’ve had no news since your letter to Brundisium.”

  Philippus led the way to his study. A man of high coloring and considerable good looks, he seemed to his stepson’s eyes to have aged a great deal in two months. Caesar’s death had hit him hard, not least because, like Lucius Piso, Servius Sulpicius and several others among the thin ranks of the consulars, Philippus was trying to steer a middle course that would ensure his own survival no matter what happened.

  “Gaius Marius’s so-called grandson, Amatius?” Octavian asked.

  “Dead,” said Philippus, grimacing. “On his fourth day in the Forum, Antonius and a century of Lepidus’s troops arrived to listen. Amatius pointed at him and screamed that there stood the real murderer of Caesar, whereupon the troops took Amatius into custody and marched him off to the Tullianum.” Philippus shrugged. “Amatius never emerged, so the crowd eventually went home. Antonius went straight to a meeting of the Senate in Castor’s, where Dolabella asked him what had happened to Amatius. ‘I executed him,’ said Antonius. Dolabella protested that the man was a Roman citizen and ought to have been tried, but Antonius said Amatius wasn’t a Roman, he was an escaped Greek slave named Hierophilus. And that was the end of it.”

  “Which rather indicates what kind of government Rome has,” Octavian said thoughtfully. “Clearly it isn’t wise to accuse dear Marcus Antonius of anything.”

  “So I think,” Philippus agreed, face grim. “Cassius tried to bring up the subject of the praetors’ provinces again, and was told to shut up. He and Brutus tried to occupy their tribunals several times, but desisted. Even after Amatius was executed, the crowd didn’t welcome them, though their amnesty holds up. Oh, and Marcus Lepidus is the new Pontifex Maximus.”

  “They held an election?” Octavian asked, surprised.

  “No. He was adlected by the other pontifices.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “There’s no definition of legal anymore, Octavius.”

  “My name isn’t Octavius, it’s Caesar.”

  “That is still undecided.” Philippus got up, went to his desk and withdrew a small object from its drawer. “Here, this has to go to you—for the time being only, I hope.”

  Octavian took it and turned it over between trembling hands, awed. A singularly beautiful seal ring consisting of a flawless, royally purple amethyst set in pink gold. It bore a delicately carved intaglio sphinx and the word CAESAR in mirrored capitals above the sphinx’s human head. He slipped it on to his ring finger, to find that it fitted perfectly. The bigger Caesar’s fingers had been slender, his own were shorter, thicker, more spatulate. A curious feeling, as if its weight and the essence of Caesar it had drawn into itself were suffusing into his own body.

  “An omen! It might have been made for me.”

  “It was made for Caesar—by Cleopatra, I believe.”

  “And I am Caesar.”

  “Defer that decision, Octavius!” Philippus snapped. “A tribune of the plebs—the assassin Gaius Casca—and the plebeian aedile Critonius took Caesar’s Forum statues from their plinths and pedestals and sent them to the Velabrum to be broken up. The crowd caught them at it, went to the sculptor’s yard and rescued them, even the two that had already been attacked with mallets. Then the crowd set fire to the place, and the fire spread into the Vicus Tuscus. A shocking conflagration! Half the Velabrum burned. Did the crowd care? No. The intact statues were put back, the two broken ones given to another sculptor to repair. Then the crowd started to roar, demanding that the consuls produce Amatius. Of course that wasn’t possible. A terrible riot erupted—the worst I ever remember. Several hundred citizens and fifty of Lepidus’s soldiers were killed before the mob was dispersed. A hundred of the rioters were taken prisoner, divided into citizens and non-citizens, then the citizens were thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, and the non-citizens were flogged and beheaded.”

  “So to demand justice for Caesar is treason,” Octavian said, drawing in a breath. “Our Antonius is showing his true colors.”

  “Oh, Octavius, he’s just a brute! I don’t think it occurs to him that some might interpret his actions as anti-Caesar. Look at what he did in the Forum when Dolabella was deploying his street gangs. Antonius’s answer to public violence is slaughter because it’s his nature to slaughter.”

  “I think he’s aiming to take Caesar’s place.”

  “I disagree. He abolished the office of dictator.”

  “If ‘rex’ is a simple word, so too is ‘dictator.’ So I take it that no one dares to laud Caesar, even the crowd?”

  Philippus laughed harshly. “Antonius and Dolabella should hope! No, nothing deters the common people. Dolabella had the altar and column removed from the place where Caesar burned when he discovered that people were openly calling Caesar ‘Divus Julius.’ Can you imagine that, Octavius? They started worshiping Caesar as a god before the very stones where he burned were cold!”

  “Divus Julius,” Octavian said, smiling.

  “A passing phase,” said Philippus, misliking that smile.

  “Perhaps, but why can’t you see its significance, Philippus? The people have started worshiping Caesar as a god. The people! No one in government started it—in fact, everyone in government is doing his best to stamp it out. The people loved Caesar so much that they cannot bear to think of him gone, so they have resurrected him as a god—someone they can pray to, look to for consolation. Don’t you see? They’re telling Antonius, Dolabella and the Liberators—pah, how I hate that name!—and everyone else at the top of the Roman tree that they refuse to be parted from Caesar.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head, Octavius.”

  “My name is Caesar.”

  “I will never call you that!”

  “One day you will have no choice. Tell me what else goes on.”

  “For what it’s worth, Antonius has betrothed his daughter by Antonia Hybrida to Lepidus’s eldest boy. As both children are years off marriageable age, I suspect it will last only as long as their fathers are holding each other’s pricks to piss. Lepidus went to govern Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul over two nundinae ago. Sextus Pompeius is now fielding six legions, so the consuls decided that Lepidus had better contain his Spanish province while he could. Pollio is still holding Further Spain in good order, so we hear. If we can believe what we hear.”

  “And that wonderful pair, Brutus and Cassius?”

  “Have quit Rome. Brutus has given the urban praetor’s duties to Gaius Antonius while he—er—recovers from severe emotional stress. Whereas Cassius can at least pretend to continue his foreign praetor’s duties as he wafts around Italy. Brutus took both Porcia and Servilia with him—I hear that the battles between the two women are Homeric—teeth, feet, nails. Cassius gave out that he needs to be nearer to his pregnant Tertulla in Antium, but no sooner did he leave Rome than Tertulla arrived back in Rome, so who knows what the true story is in that marriage?”

  Octavian cast his stepfather an unsettlingly shrewd glance. “There’s trouble brewing all over the place and the consuls aren’t handling it skillfully, are they?”

  A sigh from Philippus. “No, they’re not, boy. Though they’re getting along better together than any of us believed possible.”

  “And the legions, with regard to Antonius?”

/>   “Are being brought back from Macedonia gradually, I hear, apart from the six finest, which he’s keeping there for when he goes to govern. The veterans still waiting for their land in Campania are growing restless because the moment Caesar died—”

  “—was murdered—” Octavian interrupted.

  “—died, the land commissioners stopped allocating the parcels to the veterans and packed up their booths. Antonius has been obliged to go to Campania and get the land commissioners back to work. He’s still there. Dolabella is in charge of Rome.”

  “And Caesar’s altar? Caesar’s column?”

  “I told you, gone. Just where is your mind going, Octavius?”

  “My name is Caesar.”

  “Having heard all this, you still believe you’ll survive if you take up your inheritance?”

  “Oh, yes. I have Caesar’s luck,” said Octavian with a very secretive smile. Enigmatic. If one’s seal ring bore a sphinx, to be an enigma was mandatory.

  Octavian went to his old room to find that he had been promoted to a suite. Even if Philippus did intend to talk him out of taking up his inheritance, that arch-fence-sitter was clever enough to understand that one didn’t put Caesar’s heir in accommodations fit for the master’s stepson.

  His thoughts were disciplined, even if they were fantastic. The rest of what Philippus had had to say was interesting, germane to how he conducted himself in the future, but paled before the story of Divus Julius. A new god apotheosized by the people of Rome for the people of Rome. In the face of obdurate opposition from the consuls Antonius and Dolabella, even at the cost of many lives, the people of Rome were insisting that they be allowed to worship Divus Julius. To Octavian, a beacon luring him on. To be Gaius Julius Caesar Filius was wonderful. But to be Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius—the son of a god—was miraculous.

  But that is for the future. First, I must become known far and wide as Caesar’s son. Coponius the centurion said I was his image. I am not, I know that. But Coponius looked at me through the eyes of pure sentiment; the tough, aging man he had served under—and probably never seen at really close quarters—was golden-haired and light of eye, was handsome and imperious. What I have to do is convince people, including Rome’s soldiers, that when he was my age, Caesar looked just like me. I can’t cut my hair that short because my ears are definitely not Caesar’s, but the shape of my head is. I can learn to smile like him, walk like him, wave my hand exactly as he used to, radiate approachability and careless consciousness of my exalted birth. The ichor of Mars and Venus flows in my veins too.

  But Caesar was very tall, and in my heart I know that I have scant growing left to do. Perhaps another inch or two, but that will still fall far short of his height. So I will wear boots with soles four inches thick, and to make the device look less obvious, they will always be proper boots, closed at the toe. At a distance, which is how the soldiers will see me, I will tower like Caesar—still not nearly as tall, but close enough to six feet. I will make sure that the men around me are all short. And if my own Class laughs, let them. I will eat the foods that Hapd’efan’e said elongate the bones—meat, cheese, eggs—and I will exercise by stretching. The high boots will be difficult to walk in, but they will give me an athletic gait because walking in them will require great skill. I will pad the shoulders of my tunics and cuirasses. It’s Caesar’s luck that Caesar was not a hulk like Antonius; all I have to be is an actor.

  Antonius will try to block my inheriting. The lex curiata of adoption won’t come quickly or easily, but a law doesn’t really matter as long as I behave like Caesar’s heir. Behave like Caesar himself. And the money will be difficult to lay my hands on too because Antonius will block probate. I have plenty of my own, but I may need far more. How fortunate that I appropriated the war chest! I wonder when that oaf Antonius will remember that it exists, and send for it? Old Plautius lives in blissful ignorance, and while Oppius’s manager will say that Caesar’s heir collected it, I shall deny that. Protest that someone very clever impersonated me. After all, the appropriation happened the day after I arrived from Macedonia—how could I have done it so swiftly? Impossible! I mean, an eighteen-year-old think of something so audacious, so—breathtaking? Ha ha ha, what a laugh! I am an asthmatic, and I had a sick headache too.

  Yes, I will feel my way and keep my counsel. Agrippa I can trust with my very life; Salvidienus and Maecenas, less so, but they’ll prove good helpmates as I tread this precarious path in my high-soled boots. First and foremost, emphasize the likeness to Caesar. Concentrate on that ahead of anything else. And wait for Fortuna to toss me my next opportunity. She will.

  Philippus moved to his villa at Cumae, where the seemingly endless stream of visitors began, all anxious to see Caesar’s heir.

  Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major came first, arrived convinced that the young man would not prove up to the task Caesar had given him, and departed in a very different frame of mind. The lad was as subtle as a Phoenician banker, and did have an uncanny look of Caesar despite the manifest discrepancies in features and stature. His fair brows were mobile in Caesar’s exact fashion, his mouth had the same humorous curve, his facial expressions echoed Caesar’s, so did the way his hands moved. His voice, which Balbus remembered as light, had deepened. The only concrete information Balbus prised out of him was that he definitely intended to be Caesar’s heir.

  “I was fascinated,” Balbus said to his nephew and business partner, Balbus Minor. “He has his own style, yes, but he has all Caesar’s steel, never doubt it. I am going to back him.”

  Next came Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, destined to be consuls next year if Antonius and Dolabella didn’t decide that Caesar’s appointments should be overturned. Knowing this, both were worried men. Both had met Octavian: Hirtius in Narbo, Pansa in Placentia. Neither had thought much about him, but now their eyes rested on him in puzzled wonder. Had he reminded them of Caesar then? He definitely did now. The trouble was that the living Caesar cast all others in the shade, and the contubernalis had been self-effacing. Hirtius ended in liking Octavian greatly; Pansa, remembering that dinner in Placentia, reserved judgement, convinced that Antonius would cut the boy’s ambitions to ribbons. Yet neither man thought Octavian afraid, and neither man thought that his lack of fear was due to ignorance of what lay in store. He had Caesar’s unswerving determination to see things through to the end, and seemed to contemplate his probable fate with a quite unyouthful equanimity.

  Cicero’s villa, where Pansa and Hirtius were staying, was right next door. Octavian did not make the mistake of waiting for Cicero to call on him. He called on Cicero.

  Who eyed him rather blankly, though the smile—oh, so like Caesar’s!—tugged at his heart. Caesar had possessed an irresistible smile, therefore resisting it had been a hard business. Whereas when it came from such an inoffensive, likeable boy as Gaius Octavius, he could respond to it without reserve.

  “You are well, Marcus Cicero?” Octavian asked anxiously.

  “I’ve been better, Gaius Octavius, but I’ve also been worse.” Cicero sighed, unable to discipline that treacherous tongue into silence. When one was born to talk, one would talk to a post, and Caesar’s heir was no post. “You’ve caught me in the midst of personal upheavals as well as upheavals of the state. My brother, Quintus, has just divorced Pomponia, his wife of many years.”

  “Oh, dear! Isn’t she Titus Atticus’s sister?”

  “She is,” Cicero said sourly.

  “Acrimonious, was it?” Octavian asked sympathetically.

  “Dreadfully so. He can’t pay her dowry back.”

  “I must offer my condolences for the death of Tullia.”

  The brown eyes moistened, blinked. “Thank you, they are most welcome.” A breath quivered. “It seems half a lifetime ago.”

  “Much has happened.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” Cicero shot Octavian a wary look. “I must offer you condolences for Caesar’s death.”

  “Thank you.”


  “I never could like him, you know.”

  “That’s understandable,” said Octavian gently.

  “I couldn’t grieve at his death, it was too welcome.”

  “You had no reason to feel otherwise.”

  So when Octavian took himself off after a properly short visit, Cicero decided that he was charming, quite charming. Not at all what he had expected. Those beautiful grey eyes held no coldness or arrogance; they caressed. Yes, a very sweet, decently humble young fellow.

  So when Octavian paid several more visits to Cicero, he was received warmly, allowed to sit and listen to the Great Advocate talk for some time on each occasion.

  “I do believe,” Cicero said to his newly arrived houseguest, Lentulus Spinther Junior, “that the lad is really devoted to me.” He preened.

  “Once we’re all back in Rome, I shall take Octavius under my wing. I—ah—hinted that I would, and he was enraptured. So different from Caesar! The only similarity I find is the smile, though I’ve heard others call him Caesar’s living image. Well, not everyone is gifted with my degree of perception, Spinther.”

  “Everyone is saying that he means to take up his inheritance,” said Spinther.

  “Oh, he will, no doubt about that. But it doesn’t worry me in the least—why should it?” Cicero asked, nibbling a candied fig. “Who inherits Caesar’s vast fortune and estates doesn’t matter a”—he brandished his snack—” fig. Who matters is the man who inherits Caesar’s far vaster army of clients. Do you honestly think that they will cleave to an eighteen-year-old as raw as freshly killed meat, as green as grass, as naive as an Apulian goatherd? Oh, I don’t say that young Octavius doesn’t have potential, but even I took some years to mature, and I was an acknowledged child prodigy.”

  The acknowledged child prodigy was invited, together with Balbus Major, Hirtius and Pansa, to dinner at Philippus’s villa.