The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  A state of affairs that perturbed Antony, particularly after he left Rome himself to deal with veteran land in Campania; the Samnite parts of that lush region were seething with talk of a new Italian War under the aegis of Brutus and Cassius. So Antony sent Brutus a stiff letter informing him that he and Cassius were, consciously or unconsciously, stirring up revolt and courting a trial for treason. Brutus and Cassius answered him with another public statement that implored the discontented parts of Italy not to offer them any troops, to leave things as they lay.

  Setting Samnite hatred for Rome aside, there were still nests of ardent Republicans who looked to the pair as to saviors, which was unfortunate for Brutus and Cassius, genuinely not interested in stirring up revolt. In one such nest sat Pompey the Great’s friend, praefectus fabrum and banker, Gaius Flavius Hemicillus, who approached Atticus and asked that canny plutocrat to put himself at the head of a consortium of financial magicians willing to lend the Liberators money for purposes Hemicillus left unspecified. Atticus courteously refused.

  “What I am willing to do privately for Servilia and Brutus is one thing,” he told Hemicillus, “but public odium is quite another.”

  Then Atticus informed the consuls of Hemicillus’s overtures.

  “That settles it,” said Antony to Dolabella and Aulus Hirtius. “I’m not governing Macedonia next year, I’m going to remain right here in Italy—with my six legions.”

  Hirtius raised his brows. “Italian Gaul as your province?” he asked.

  “Definitely. On the Kalends of June I’ll ask the House for Italian Gaul and Further Gaul apart from the Narbonese province. Six crack legions camped around Capua will deter Brutus and Cassius—and make Decimus Brutus think twice. What’s more, I’ve written to Pollio, Lepidus and Plancus and asked them if they’ll place their legions at my disposal if Decimus tries to raise rebellion in Italian Gaul. None of them will back Decimus, that’s certain.”

  Hirtius smiled, but didn’t voice his thought: they’ll wait and see, then back the stronger man. “What about Vatinius in Illyricum?” he asked aloud.

  “Vatinius will back me,” Antony said confidently.

  “And Hortensius caretaking in Macedonia? He has long-standing ties to the Liberators,” said Dolabella.

  “What can Hortensius do? He’s a bigger lightweight than our friend and Pontifex Maximus, Lepidus.” Antony huffed contentedly. “There’ll be no uprisings. I mean, can you see Brutus and Cassius marching on Rome? Or Decimus, for that matter? There’s not a man alive with the guts to march on Rome—except me, that is, and I don’t need to, do I?”

  To Cicero, the world had gotten ever crazier since Caesar’s death. He couldn’t work out why, except that he blamed the failure of the Liberators to seize government on their not taking him into their confidence. He, Marcus Tullius Cicero, with all his wisdom, his experience, his knowledge of the law, had not been asked for advice by one single man.

  That included his brother. Quintus, free of Pomponia but unable to pay back her dowry, had filched a solution from Cicero and married a nubile young heiress, Aquilia. That way he could pay off his first wife and still have something to live on. Which had outraged his son to the point of huge temper tantrums. Quintus Junior ran to Uncle Marcus for support, but was silly enough to declare to Cicero that he still loved Caesar, would always love Caesar, and would kill any of the assassins foolish enough to appear in his vicinity. So Cicero had had a temper tantrum of his own and sent Quintus Junior packing. Having nowhere else to go, the young man attached himself to Mark Antony, an even worse insult.

  All Cicero could do after that was write letter after letter, to Atticus (in Rome), Cassius (on the road), and Brutus (still in Lanuvium), asking why people couldn’t see that Antonius was a bigger tyrant than Caesar? His laws were hideous travesties.

  “Whatever you do, Brutus,” he said in one letter, “you must return to Rome to take your seat in the House on the Kalends of June. If you’re not there, it will be the end of your public career, and worse disasters will follow.”

  One rumored disaster had him ecstatic, however; apparently Cleopatra, her brother Ptolemy and Caesarion had been shipwrecked on the way home and had all drowned.

  “And have you heard,” he asked the visiting Balbus in his Pompeian villa—Cicero was an incessant villa-hopper—“what Servilia is doing?” He uttered a theatrical gasp, mimed horror.

  “No, what?” asked Balbus, lips twitching.

  “She’s actually staying alone with Pontius Aquila in his villa down the road! Sleeping in the same bed, they say!”

  “Dear, dear. I heard that she’d broken with him after she found out he was a Liberator,” said Balbus mildly.

  “She did, but then Brutus threw her out, so this is her way of embarrassing him and Porcia. A woman in her sixties, and he’s younger than Brutus!”

  “More distressing by far is the declining prospect of peace in Italy,” Balbus said. “I despair of it, Cicero.”

  “Not you too! Truly, neither Brutus nor Cassius intends to start another civil war.”

  “Antonius doesn’t agree with you.”

  Cicero’s shoulders slumped, he sighed, looked suddenly eighty years old. “Yes, things are drifting warward,” he admitted sadly. “Decimus Brutus is the main threat, of course. Oh, why didn’t any of them seek counsel from me?”

  “Who?”

  “The Liberators! They did the deed with the courage of men, but about as much policy as four-year-olds. Like nursery children stabbing their rag doll to death.”

  “The only one who might help is Hirtius.”

  Cicero brightened. “Then let’s both see Hirtius.”

  3

  Octavian entered Rome on the Nones of May, accompanied only by his servants; his mother and his stepfather had declined to take any part in this insane venture. At the fourth hour of day he passed through the Capena Gate and commenced the walk to the Forum Romanum, clad in a spotless white toga with the narrow purple band of a knight on the exposed right shoulder of his tunic. Thanks to many hours of practicing how to walk in his high-soled boots, he made sufficient impression on the people he encountered to cause them to turn and watch his progress admiringly, for he was tall, dignified, and possessed of a straight-backed posture that forbade mincing or undulating; to do either would see him flat on his face. Head up, waving masses of golden hair gleaming, a slight smile on his lips, he proceeded along the Sacra Via with that easy mien of friendliness Caesar had made his own.

  “That’s Caesar’s heir!” one of his servants would whisper to a group of onlookers.

  “Caesar’s heir has arrived in Rome!” another would murmur.

  The day was fine and the sky cloudless, but the humidity was suffocatingly high; so much water vapor saturated the air that the vault was leached of its blueness. Around the sun but some distance from it was a brilliant halo that had people pointing and wondering audibly what this omen meant. Rings around the full moon everybody had seen at some time, but a ring around the sun? Never! An extraordinary omen.

  It was easy to find the spot where Caesar had burned, for it was still covered with flowers, dolls, balls. Octavian turned off the Clivus Sacer and went to its margin. There, while the crowd continued to gather, he pulled a fold of toga over his head and prayed silently.

  Beneath the nearby temple of Castor and Pollux lay offices used by the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. Lucius Antonius, who was a tribune of the plebs, came out of Castor’s basement door just in time to see Octavian tug the toga off his mop of hair.

  The youngest of the three Antonii was generally deemed the most intelligent of them, but he owned handicaps that militated against his ever standing as high in public favor as his eldest brother: he had a tendency to run to fat, he was quite bald, and he had a sense of the ridiculous that had gotten him into trouble with Marcus on more than one occasion.

  He stopped to watch the praying sprig, suppressing an urge to hoot with laughter. What a sight! So this was the fa
mous Caesar’s heir! None of the Antonii mixed in Uncle Lucius’s circle and he never remembered setting eyes on Gaius Octavius, but this was he, all right. Couldn’t be anyone else. For one thing, he knew that his brother Gaius, acting urban praetor, had received a letter from Gaius Octavius asking for permission to speak publicly from the rostra when he arrived in Rome on the Nones of May.

  Yes, this was Caesar’s heir. What a figure of fun! Those boots! Who did he think he was fooling? And didn’t he have a barber? His hair was longer than Brutus’s. A proper little dandy—look at the way he was primping the toga back into place. Is this the best you could do, Caesar? You preferred this perfect pansy to my brother? Then you were touched in the head when you made your will, Cousin Gaius.

  “Ave,” he said, strolling up to Octavian with his hand out.

  “Is it Lucius Antonius?” Octavian asked with Caesar’s smile—un-settling, that—and enduring the bone-crushing handshake with no change of expression.

  “Lucius Antonius it is, Octavius,” Lucius said cheerfully. “We’re cousins. Has Uncle Lucius seen you yet?”

  “Yes, I visited him in Neapolis some nundinae ago. He’s not well, but he was glad to see me.” Octavian paused, then asked, “Is your brother Gaius on his tribunal?”

  “Not today. He awarded himself a holiday.”

  “Oh, too bad,” said the young man, still smiling for the crowd, oohing and aahing. “I wrote to ask him if I might speak to the people from the rostra, but he didn’t answer.”

  “S’all right, I can give you permission,” Lucius said, his brown eyes sparkling. Something in him was loving this poseur’s gall, a typically Antonian reaction. Yet looking into those big, long-lashed eyes revealed nothing whatsoever; Caesar’s heir kept his thoughts to himself.

  “Can you keep up with me in those brothel pounders?” Lucius asked, pointing to the boots.

  “Of course,” said Octavian, striding out beside him. “My right leg is shorter than my left, hence the built up footware.”

  Lucius guffawed. “As long as your third leg measures up is the important thing!”

  “I really have no idea whether it measures up,” Octavian said coolly. “I’m a virgin.”

  Lucius blinked, faltered. “That’s a stupid secret to blurt out,” he said.

  “I didn’t blurt it out, and why should it be a secret?”

  “Hinting that you want to throw your leg over, eh? I’ll be happy to take you to the right place.”

  “No, thank you. I’m very fastidious and discriminating, is what I was implying.”

  “Then you’re no Caesar. He’d hump anything.”

  “True, I am no Caesar in that respect.”

  “Do you want people to laugh at you, coming out with things like that, Octavius?”

  “No, but I don’t care if they do. Sooner or later they’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces. Or crying.”

  “Oh, that’s neat, very neat!” Lucius exclaimed, laughing at himself. “You’ve turned the table on me.”

  “Only time will prove that, Lucius Antonius.”

  “Hop up the steps, young cripple, and stand midway between the two columns of beaks.”

  Octavian obeyed, turned to stand confronting his first Forum audience: a considerable one. What a pity, he was thinking, that the way the rostra is oriented prevents a speaker from standing with the sun behind him. I’d dearly love to be standing with that halo around my head.

  “I am Gaius Julius Caesar Filius!” he announced to the throng in a surprisingly loud and carrying voice. “Yes, that is my name! I am Caesar’s heir, formally adopted by him in his will.” He put his hand up and pointed to the sun, almost overhead. “Caesar has sent an omen for me, his son!”

  But then, without pausing to endow the omen with a ponderous significance, he went smoothly to discuss the terms of Caesar’s bequest to the people of Rome. This he dwelled upon at length, and promised that as soon as the will was probated, he would distribute Caesar’s largesse in Caesar’s name, for he was Caesar.

  The crowd lapped him up, Lucius Antonius noted uneasily; no one down on the flags of the Forum cared about the high-soled right boot (the left was quite hidden by a toga cut so that it fell just short of the ground), and no one laughed at him. They were too busy marveling at his beauty, his manly bearing, his magnificent head of hair, his startling likeness to Caesar from smile to gestures to facial expressions. Word must have spread very quickly, for a great many of Caesar’s old, faithful people had appeared—Jews, foreigners, Head Count.

  Not only his appearance helped Gaius Octavius; he spoke very well indeed, indicating that in time to come he would be one of Rome’s great orators. When he was done, he was cheered for a long time; then he walked down the steps and into the crowd fearlessly, his right hand out, that smile never varying. Women touched his toga, almost swooned. If he really is a virgin—I am beginning to think he was just taking the piss out of me—he can alter that state with any female in this crowd, thought Lucius Antonius. The cunning little mentula pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully.

  “Off to Philippus’s now?” Lucius Antonius asked Octavian as he began to move toward the Vestal Steps up on to the Palatine.

  “No, to my own house.”

  “Your father’s?”

  The fair brows rose, a perfect imitation of Caesar. “My father lived in the Domus Publica, and had no other house. I’ve bought a house.”

  “Not a palace?”

  “My needs are simple, Lucius Antonius. The only art I fancy, I would dower on Rome’s public temples, the only food I fancy is plain, I do not drink wine, and I have no vices. Vale,” Octavian said, and began to climb the Vestal Steps lithely. His chest was tightening, the ordeal was over and he had done well. Now the asthma would make him pay.

  Lucius Antonius made no move to follow him, just stood frowning.

  “The cunning little fox, he pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully,” Lucius said to Fulvia a little later.

  She was with child again, and missing Antony acutely, which made her short-tempered. “You shouldn’t have let him speak,” she said, her face somber enough to reveal a few unflattering lines. “Sometimes you’re an idiot, Lucius. If you’ve reported his words accurately, then what he said when he pointed to the ring around the sun implied that Caesar is a god and he the son of a god.”

  “D’ you really think so? I just thought it was crafty,” said Lucius, still chuckling. “You weren’t there, Fulvia, I was. He’s a born actor, that’s all.”

  “So was Sulla. And why inform you he’s a virgin? Youths don’t do that, they’d rather die than admit that.”

  “I suspect he was really informing me that he’s not a homosexual. I mean, he’s so pretty any man would get ideas, but he denied having any vices. His needs are simple, he says. Though he’s a good orator. Impressed me, actually.”

  “He sounds dangerous to me, Lucius.”

  “Dangerous? Fulvia, he’s eighteen!”

  “Eighteen going on eighty, more like. He’s after Caesar’s clients and adherents, not after noble colleagues.” She got up. “I shall write to Marcus. I think he ought to know.”

  When Fulvia’s letter about Caesar’s heir was followed two nundinae later by one from the plebeian aedile Critonius telling Antony that Caesar’s heir had tried to display Caesar’s golden curule chair and gem-studded gold wreath at the games in honor of Ceres, Mark Antony decided it was time to return to Rome. The little mongrel hadn’t gotten his way—Critonius, in charge of the ludi Ceriales, had forbidden any such displays. So young Octavius had then demanded that the parade show the diadem Caesar had refused! Another no from Critonius saw him defeated, but not penitent. Nor cowed. What’s more, said Critonius, he insisted on being addressed as “Caesar”! Was going all over Rome talking to the ordinary people and calling himself “Caesar”! Wouldn’t be addressed as “Octavius,” and even declined “Octavianus”!

  Accompanied by a bodyguard of veterans several hundred st
rong, Antony clattered into Rome upon a blown horse twenty-one days into May. His rump was sore and his temper the worse for a grueling ride, not to mention that he had had to interrupt vitally important work—if he didn’t keep the veterans on his side, what might the Liberators do?

  One other item dumped a colossal amount of fuel on his rage. He had sent to Brundisium for the tributes from the provinces and Caesar’s war chest. The tributes had duly arrived in Teanum, his base of operations—a great relief, as he could go on buying land and paying something off his debts. Antony wasn’t fussy about using Rome’s moneys for his private purposes. As consul, he simply sent Marcus Cuspius of the Treasury a statement saying he owed that establishment twenty million sesterces. But the war chest didn’t come to Teanum because it wasn’t in Brundisium. It had been commandeered by Caesar’s heir in Caesar’s name, the bewildered bank manager informed Antony’s legate, the ex-centurion Cafo. Aware that he couldn’t go back to Campania armed with no more than this, Cafo made extensive enquiries all over Brundisium and its suburbs, even the surrounding countryside. What he learned amounted to nothing. The day the money disappeared had been one of torrential rain, no one had been out and about, two cohorts of veterans in a camp said no one in his right mind would have been out in that kind of weather, and no one had seen a train of sixty wagons anywhere. Aulus Plautius when applied to looked utterly blank and was prepared to swear on his family’s heads that Gaius Octavius had had nothing to do with any thefts from the bank next door. He had only arrived from Macedonia the day before, and was terribly ill in the bargain—blue in the face. So Cafo rode back to Teanum after deputing several of his men to start asking after a train of wagons north to Barium or west to Tarentum or south to Hydruntum, while others enquired if any laden ships had put out to sea as soon as the gale eased.