The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “Philippus?” she suggested.

  Antony blew a derisive noise. “Not he! He’s too careful of his skin, and it runs in that family for generations. There’s no one, Fulvia, no one! The artfulness, the guile—they’re him! I don’t even understand how Caesar saw what he is!”

  “You’re boxing yourself into a corner, my love,” Fulvia said with conviction. “If you stay in Rome, you’ll end in massacring everyone from Cicero to Octavianus, and that would be your downfall. The best thing you can do is go and fight Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul. A victory or two against the prime mover among the Liberators, and you’ll retrieve your position. It’s vital that you retain control of the army, so put your energies into that. Face the fact that you’re not by nature a politician. It’s Octavianus who is the politician. Draw his fangs by absenting yourself from Rome and the Senate.”

  * * *

  Six days before the Ides of October, Mark Antony and a swollen Fulvia left Rome together to go to Brundisium, where four of the six crack Macedonian legions were due to land.

  Antony had at least a partial casus belli, for Decimus Brutus was ignoring the directives both of the Senate and the Plebeian Assembly by maintaining that he was the legal governor of Italian Gaul, and by continuing to recruit soldiers. Before he left Rome to go to Brundisium, Antony sent a curt order to Decimus Brutus to quit his province, as Antony was coming to replace him as the new governor. If Decimus refused to obey, then Antony had a complete casus belli. And Antony was sure Decimus had no intention of obeying; did he, his public career was over and the prospect of trial for treason inevitable.

  Not to be outmaneuvered, Octavian left Rome the day after Antony and Fulvia, bound for the legionary camps in Campania. A number of legions shipped from Macedonia were bivouacked there, as well as some thousands of veterans and young men now of age who had enlisted when Ventidius began to recruit.

  With him Octavian took Maecenas, Salvidienus and the Apennine-hopping Marcus Agrippa, recently returned with two wagons full of wooden planks. The banker Gaius Rabirius Postumus also tagged along, together with the most prominent citizen in Latin Velitrae, one Marcus Mindius Marcellus, an Octavian relative of huge wealth.

  They started in Casilinum and Calatia, two small towns on the Via Latina in northern Campania. Those in the area who had enlisted, be they veteran or youngster, received two thousand sesterces on the spot, and were promised twenty thousand more later if they swore to hew to Caesar’s heir. Within the space of four days, Octavian had five thousand soldiers willing to march anywhere with him. What a wonderful thing a war chest was!

  “I don’t believe,” he said to Agrippa, “that it’s necessary to recruit a whole army. I don’t have the experience or the talent to go to war against Marcus Antonius. What I’m doing is making it look to the rest of the legions as if I am in need of one legion to protect myself from Antonius. And that’s what Maecenas and his agents are going to be doing—spreading the word that Caesar’s heir doesn’t want to fight, he simply wants to live.”

  In Brundisium, Antony wasn’t faring nearly as well. When he offered the men of the four newly disembarked crack legions four hundred sesterces each as a bonus, they laughed at him and said that they could get more from young Caesar. To Antony, this came as a colossal shock; he had no idea that those two cohorts of troops under the centurion Marcus Coponius still encamped on Brundisium’s outskirts were fraternizing with the new arrivals—and talking big money from Caesar’s heir.

  “The little prick!” he said savagely to Fulvia. “I turn my back, and he’s buying my soldiers! Paying them hard cash, would you believe? Where did he get the money? I can tell you that—he did steal Caesar’s war chest!”

  “Not necessarily,” Fulvia answered reasonably. “Your courier says he has Rabirius Postumus with him, which means he must have access to Caesar’s money, even if the will hasn’t been probated.”

  “Well, I know how to deal with mutiny,” Antony snarled, “and it won’t be as gently as Caesar dealt with it!”

  “Marcus, don’t do anything rash!” she entreated.

  Antony ignored her. He paraded the Legio Martia, cut every tenth man out of its ranks, and executed every fifth one of them for insubordination. By no means a decimation, but twenty-five legionaries died, so randomly that all were innocent of troublemaking. The Legio Martia and the other three crack legions fell quiet, but Marcus Antonius was now loathed.

  When another of the crack legions arrived from Macedonia, Antony sent the Legio Martia and two others up the Adriatic coast of the peninsula toward Italian Gaul. The remaining two, one of which was the Legio Alauda, Caesar’s old Fifth Legion, he marched up the Via Appia in the direction of Campania, hoping to catch Octavian in the act of suborning the consul’s troops.

  But the two legions were humming with stories about young Caesar and his audacity—also his stunning generosity. And they were more knowledgeable about young Caesar’s activities than Mark Antony was, for they knew that he wasn’t suborning the consul’s legions, he had contented himself with one legion of new troops in order to protect himself. Since Antony’s action with the Legio Martia, these two legions sympathized with young Caesar. So fresh trouble erupted not far up the Via Appia. Again, Antony’s way of dealing with it was to execute the hapless victims of a blind count, not the ringleaders. However, the dark looks which followed him as he rode at the head of his troops decided him that it was not wise to enter Campania. Instead, he turned and marched up the Adriatic coast.

  * * *

  It was, thought Cicero, a nightmare. So much happened during October and November that his head spun. Octavian was incredible! At his age, and without any kind of experience, he was dreaming of going to war against Marcus Antonius! Rome rumbled with rumors of approaching war, of Antonius heading for Rome with two legions, of Octavian and his unorganized troops, only a legion in number, milling around in northern Campania without a definite objective. Did Octavian actually think to oppose Antonius in Campania, or was he intending to march on Rome? Privately Cicero hoped that the boy would march on Rome: it was the smart thing to do. How did Cicero know so much? Because Octavian wrote to him constantly.

  “Oh, Brutus, where are you?” Cicero mourned. “What a golden opportunity you’re missing!”

  Word had come to Rome of disquieting events in Syria too, via a slave of the rebel Caecilius Bassus, still penned up in Apameia. The slave had traveled with Brutus’s director, Scaptius, and told Servilia, who went to see Dolabella. There were now six legions in Syria, she told Rome’s at-home consul, all concentrated around Apameia. First of all, she told Dolabella, they were disaffected, as were the four legions garrisoning Egyptian Alexandria. And, a second, more amazing fact, all these legions expected Cassius to arrive as the new governor! If Bassus’s slave were to be believed, said Servilia, all ten legions desperately wanted to see Cassius the governor of Syria.

  Dolabella panicked. Within the space of a day, he had packed up and set off for Syria, leaving Rome in charge of the urban praetor, Gaius Antonius, and without so much as bothering to write a note to Antony or tell the Senate that he was leaving. As far as Dolabella was concerned, Cassius must have been making secret overtures to the Syrian and Alexandrian legions, so it was vital that he reach his province ahead of Cassius. Servilia maintained that he was quite mistaken, that Cassius had voiced no desire to usurp governance of Syria illegally, but Dolabella refused to heed her. He sent his legate Aulus Allienus by separate ship to Alexandria with orders to bring him those four legions to Syria, and himself took ship from Ancona to western Macedonia; it was no time of year to sail the seas, so he would march overland.

  Cicero knew as well as Servilia that Cassius was not en route for Syria, but as October turned into November, he was far more worried about events in Campania. Octavian’s letters indicated that he was definitely thinking of marching on Rome, as they kept begging Cicero to remain in Rome. He needed Cicero in the Senate, he wanted to act constitutionally through
the Senate to depose Antony—please make sure that the moment he arrived outside the Servian Walls, the Senate convened so that he could address it and state his case against Antony!

  “I don’t trust his age and I don’t honestly know what kind of disposition he possesses,” Cicero said to Servilia, so frantic with worry that he could think of no better confidant than a woman. “Brutus couldn’t have chosen a less opportune moment to go to Greece—he should be here to defend himself and the rest of the Liberators. In fact, were he here, it’s possible that he and I together could swing the Senate and People right away from Antonius and Octavianus both, and restore the Republic.”

  Servilia eyed him a trifle cynically; her mood wasn’t the best because that sow Porcia was back in residence, and madder than ever. “My dear man,” she said wearily, “Brutus doesn’t belong to himself or to Rome. He belongs to Cato, though Cato’s been dead now for over two years. Reconcile yourself to the fact that Antonius has gone too far, and Rome has had enough of him. He hasn’t Caesar’s intelligence or charisma, he’s a bull charging blindly. As for Octavianus—he’s a nothing. Rat cunning, I give you, but not Caesar’s bootlace. I liken him to the young Pompeius Magnus, head full of dreams.”

  “The young Pompeius Magnus,” Cicero said dryly, “bluffed Sulla into the co-command and went on to become Rome’s undisputed First Man. Caesar was a late bloomer, when you think about it. Never did anything remarkable until he went to Long-haired Gaul.”

  “Caesar,” Servilia snapped tartly, “was a constitutional man! Everything in suo anno, everything according to the Law. When he did act unconstitutionally, it was only because not to do so would have seen the end of him, and that patriotic he wasn’t.”

  “Well, well, let’s not argue about a dead man, Servilia. His heir is very much alive, and a mystery to me. I suspect he is to everyone, even Philippus.”

  “The mystery boy is busy in Campania organizing his soldiers into cohorts, so I’m told,” said Servilia.

  “With other children as his helpers—I ask you, whoever heard of Gaius Maecenas or Marcus Agrippa?” Cicero chuckled. “In many ways, all three remind me of absolute yokels. Octavianus firmly believes that the Senate will meet at his command if he marches on Rome, though I keep telling him in my letters that it cannot meet without either consul in Rome to head it.”

  “I confess I’m dying to meet Caesar’s heir.”

  “Apropos of nothing, have you heard—well, you must have, as the wife of the new Pontifex Maximus is your daughter!—that poor Calpurnia has bought a little house on the outer Quirinal and is living there with none other than Cato’s widow?”

  “Naturally,” said Servilia, whose hair was now a fascinating mixture of jet-black and snow-white stripes; she smoothed it with one beautiful hand. “Caesar left her well provided for, and Piso can’t persuade her to remarry, so he’s washed his hands of her—or rather, his wife has. As for Marcia, she’s another of the faithful widow, Cornelia-the-Mother-of-the-Gracchi breed.”

  “And you’ve inherited Porcia.”

  “Not for very long,” Servilia said cryptically.

  When Octavian learned that Antony had changed his mind about driving for Rome through Campania and turned to follow his first three legions up the Adriatic coast to Italian Gaul and Decimus Brutus, he decided to march on Rome. Though everyone from his stepfather, Philippus, to his epistolary adviser, Cicero, deemed him a feckless youth without any comprehension of reality, Octavian was well aware how perilous was this alternative. It was not undertaken with any illusions, nor was he sure what its outcome would be. But long hours of thought had convinced him that the one fatal mistake was to do nothing. If he remained in Campania while Mark Antony drove north on the wrong side of the Apennines, both the legions and Rome would conclude that Caesar’s heir was a talker rather than a doer. His model was always Caesar, and Caesar dared everything. The last thing Octavian wanted was a battle, for he knew he didn’t have the manpower or the skill to defeat a seasoned campaigner like Mark Antony. However, if he moved on Rome, he was telling Antony that he was still very much a player in the game, that he was a force to be reckoned with.

  No army lying in wait to oppose him, he marched up the Via Latina, took the diverticulum that led around the outside of the Servian Walls to the Campus Martius, set up a camp there, put his five thousand men into it, then led two cohorts into Rome and peacefully occupied the Forum Romanum.

  There he was greeted by the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, who welcomed this new patrician on behalf of the Plebs and invited him to mount the rostra, speak to the very thin crowd.

  “No Senate?” he asked Cannutius.

  Cannutius sneered. “Fled, Caesar, every last one of them, including all the consulars and senior magistrates.”

  “So I cannot appeal for a legal deposition of Antonius.”

  “They’re too afraid of him to do it.”

  After a word to Maecenas to send out his agents and try to drum up a decent audience, Octavian went to his house and changed into his toga and high-soled boots, then returned to the Forum to find about a thousand hardened Forum frequenters assembled. He climbed on to the rostra and proceeded to give a speech that came as a gratifying surprise to the audience; it was lyrical, precise, structured, delivered with every rhetorical gesture and device perfect—and a treat to listen to. He began by praising Caesar, whose exploits he lauded for what they were—done for the greater glory of Rome, ever and always for the greater glory of Rome.

  “For what is Rome’s greatest man, if he is not the glory of Rome herself? Until the day he was murdered he remained Rome’s most faithful servant—the bringer of riches, the enhancer of empire, the living personification of Rome!”

  After the hysterical cheers died down, he went on to discuss the Liberators and demanded justice for Caesar, struck down by a paltry group of little men obsessed with their perquisites of office and their First Class privileges, not with the greater glory of Rome. Proving himself as good an actor and impersonator as Cicero, he went through them one by one, starting with Brutus and miming his cowardly behavior at Pharsalus; talked of the ingratitude of Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, who owed all that they were to Caesar; imitated Minucius Basilus in the throes of torturing a slave; told how he himself had seen the amputated head of Gnaeus Pompeius after Caesennius Lento had done that deed. Not one of the twenty-three assassins escaped his merciless derision, his razor wit.

  After which he asked the crowd why Marcus Antonius, who was Caesar’s close cousin, had been so compassionate, so tolerant of the Liberators? Hadn’t he, Caesar Filius, seen Marcus Antonius huddled with Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus in Narbo, where the plot was hatched? Wasn’t it true that Marcus Antonius again had huddled with Gaius Trebonius outside the Curia Pompeia while the rest went inside and used their daggers on Caesar? Hadn’t Antonius murdered hundreds of unarmed Roman citizens in the Forum? Hadn’t Antonius accused him, Caesar Filius, of attempted murder without a shred of proof? Hadn’t Antonius thrown Roman citizens from the Tarpeian Rock without trial? Hadn’t Antonius abused his office by selling everything from the Roman citizenship to tax exemptions?

  “But I have bored you for long enough,” he concluded. “All I have left to say is that I am Caesar! That I intend to win for myself the public standing and legal offices that my beloved father won! My beloved father, who is now a god! If you do not believe me, look now to the spot where Caesar was burned and see that Publius Dolabella admitted Caesar’s godhead by re-erecting his altar and column! Caesar’s star in the heavens said everything! Caesar is Divus Julius, and I am his son! I am Divi Filius, and I will live up to everything that the name Caesar embodies!”

  Drawing a long breath, he turned amid the cheering and walked from the rostra to Caesar’s altar and column, there to pull a fold of toga over his head and stand praying to his father.

  It was a memorable performance, one that the troops he had brought into the city never forgot, and were assiduous
in spreading to every soldier they came into contact with in later times.

  That was the tenth day of November. Two days later, word came that Mark Antony was fast approaching Rome on the Via Valeria with the Legio Alauda, which he put into camp at Tibur, not far away. Hearing that all Antony had was one legion, Octavian’s men started hoping for battle.

  That was not to be. Octavian went to the Campus Martius, explained that he refused to fight fellow Romans, pulled stakes and marched his troops north on the Via Cassia. At Arretium, the home of Gaius Maecenas, who belonged to its ruling family, he went to earth among friends and waited to see what Mark Antony would do.

  Antony’s first move was to summon the Senate, intending to have Octavian declared hostis—a formal public enemy who was stripped of citizenship, was not entitled to trial, and could be killed on sight. But the meeting never took place; he received horrific news that forced him to leave the city immediately. The Legio Martia had declared for Octavian, had turned off the Adriatic road and was heading for Rome on the Via Valeria, thinking that Octavian was still in Rome.

  Having acted so precipitately that he had brought no soldiers with him, when Antony met the Legio Martia at Alba Fucentia he was in no condition to punish them as he had in Brundisium. No mean orator, he was obliged instead to try to make the legionaries see reason, talk them out of this mutiny. To no avail. The men apostrophized him as cruel and stingy, said flatly that they would fight for Octavian and no one else. When Antony offered them two thousand sesterces each, they refused to take the money. So he contented himself with informing them that they weren’t worth a legionary’s pinch of salt and returned to Rome thwarted, while the Legio Martia hied itself off to join Octavian at Arretium. The one thing Antony had learned from the Legio Martia was that none of the soldiers on Octavian’s side or on his side would fight each other if he tried to bring on a battle. The little snake who was now openly calling himself Divi Filius could sit in Arretium inviolate.