The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Once back in Rome, Antony proceeded to do something unconstitutional yet again: he summoned the Senate to a night meeting in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol. The Senate was forbidden to conduct a meeting after sundown, but it went ahead anyway. Antony forbade the three tribunes of the plebs Tiberius Cannutius, Lucius Cassius and Decimus Carfulenus to attend, and moved once more to have Octavian declared hostis. But before he could call for a division, more horrific news arrived. The Fourth Legion had declared for Octavian too, and with it went his quaestor, Lucius Egnatuleius. For a second time he was unable to outlaw Caesar’s heir, and to rub that in, Tiberius Cannutius sent him a message that, in the event of a bill of attainder against Octavian, he would have great pleasure in vetoing it when it came before the Plebs for ratification.

  So, while the Fourth Legion marched for Octavian in Arretium, Antony’s meeting of the Senate ended in discussing petty subjects. Antony praised Lepidus lavishly for reaching an agreement with Sextus Pompeius in Nearer Spain, then took the province of Crete off Brutus and the province of Cyrenaica off Cassius. His own ex-province of Macedonia (now minus most of its fifteen legions) he gave to his praetor brother, Gaius Antonius.

  Worst of all, Antony didn’t have Fulvia to advise him. She had gone into labor while he spoke in the House, and for the first time in a laudably large number of births, she suffered badly. Antony’s second son by her was eventually born, leaving Fulvia seriously ill. He decided to call the boy Iullus, which was a direct slap at Octavian, as it emphasized the Julian blood in the Antonii. Iullus (or Iulus) was Aeneas’s son, the founder of Alba Longa, the Roman people—and the Julians.

  All his self-serving cronies had gone into hiding, abandoning Antony to the counsel of his brothers, no help or consolation. Events had become so complex and unnerving that he just couldn’t handle them, especially now that that dog Dolabella had deserted his post to rush off to Syria. In the end Antony decided that the only possible thing to do was to march for Italian Gaul to eject Decimus Brutus, who had replied to his order to quit the province with a curt refusal. That was what Fulvia had always suggested, and she had a habit of being right. Octavian would just have to wait until he had defeated Decimus; it had occurred to him that the moment Decimus was crushed, he would inherit Decimus’s legions, who would feel no loyalty to Caesar’s heir. Then he’d act!

  He hadn’t had the wisdom or the patience to behave as he ought when Octavian had come on the scene—welcome him and get to know him. Instead he had rebuffed the boy, who had turned nineteen on the twenty-third day of September. So now he found himself with an adversary whose quality was as unproven as it was unguessable. The best he could do before he left for Italian Gaul was to issue a series of edicts denouncing Octavian’s army as a private one, therefore treasonous, and calling it Spartacist rather than Catilinarian, thus deriding Octavian’s thoroughly Roman men as a rabble of slaves. The edicts also contained juicy canards about Octavian’s homosexuality, his stepfather’s gross gluttony, his mother’s unchastity, his sister’s reputation as a whore, and his blood father’s puerile ineffectuality. Rome read them and laughed in disbelief, but Antony was not present to witness how they were received. He was on his way north.

  Once Antony was gone, Cicero embarked on his second attack against Antony. It could not be called a speech, because he never delivered it; he published it instead. But it answered all the charges against Octavian, and went on to feed its avid readers with a mountain of dirt about the senior consul. His intimates were gladiatorial stars like Mustela and Tiro, freedmen like Formio and Gnatho, actress-whores like Cytheris, actors like Hippias, mimes like Sergius, and gamblers like Licinius Denticulus. He made very serious allegations that Antony had been a part of the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, hence his reluctance afterward to prosecute them. He accused Antony of stealing Caesar’s war chest as well as the seven hundred million from the temple of Ops, and stated that it had all gone to pay his debts. After that, he detailed the wills of men who had left Antony everything, and paid Antony back for calling Octavian a homosexual by describing in lavish detail his years-long affair with Gaius Curio, later one of his wife’s husbands. The carousing was dwelled upon lovingly, from the litterloads of mistresses to the lion-drawn chariot to the vomiting upon the rostra and in other public places. Rome had a field day reading it.

  With Antony absent—he was investing the town of Mutina, in which Decimus Brutus had barricaded himself—and Octavian still in Arretium, Rome now belonged at last to Cicero, who continued to deliver his diatribes against Antony with increasing baldness and savagery. A tinge of admiration for Octavian began to creep into them: if Octavian hadn’t marched on Rome, Antony would have massacred every consular left and set himself up as an absolute ruler, so Rome owed Octavian a great debt. As with all Cicero’s rhetoric, written or spoken, the facts were inaccurate if that served his purposes, and the truth elastic.

  The influence of the Catonians and the Liberators had quite disappeared from the Senate, which was now splitting into two new factions—Antony’s and Octavian’s. This, despite the fact that one was senior consul, and the other not even a junior senator. To be neutral was becoming extremely difficult, as Lucius Piso and Philippus were finding out. Naturally a major part of Rome’s attention was focused on Italian Gaul, where a hard winter was descending; military action was therefore going to be slow and indecisive until spring.

  Toward the end of December, his three legions comfortably camped in the neighborhood of Arretium, Octavian returned to Rome, where his family greeted him with uneasy gladness. Philippus, who steadfastly refused to commit himself to Octavian in public, was not so behindhand in private, and spent hours and hours with his wayward stepson, telling him that he must be cautious, that he mustn’t ever commit himself to a civil war against Antony, that he mustn’t keep insisting that he be called Caesar, or—horrors!—Divi Filius. Octavia’s husband, Marcellus Minor, had come to the conclusion that young Octavian was a major political force who was not about to wait for maturity to claim high office, and started cultivating him assiduously. Caesar’s two nephews, Quintus Pedius and Lucius Pinarius, indicated that they were firmly on Octavian’s side. There were also three more men on the fringes of the family, for Octavian’s father had been married before he married Atia, and had a daughter, also named Octavia. This older Octavia had espoused one Sextus Appuleius, and had two adolescent sons, Sextus Junior and Marcus. The Appuleii too began to nose around the nineteen-year-old who had assumed family leadership.

  Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Gaius Rabirius Postumus had been the first of Caesar’s bankers to take up Octavian’s cause, but by the end of the year the rest were in his camp too: Balbus Minor, Gaius Oppius (who was convinced Octavian had stolen the war chest), and Caesar’s oldest friend, the plutocrat Gaius Matius. As well as his blood father’s relative, Marcus Mindius Marcellus. Even that cagey individual Titus Atticus was taking Octavian very seriously, warned his colleagues to be nice to Caesar’s heir.

  “The first thing I have to do,” said Octavian to Agrippa, Maecenas and Salvidienus, “is get myself adlected to the Senate. Until I am, I have to operate as a complete privatus.”

  “Is it possible?” asked Agrippa dubiously. He was enjoying himself immensely, for upon him and Salvidienus devolved the army duties, and he was discovering in himself a competence quite the equal of the older Salvidienus. The troops of the Fourth and the Legio Martia had taken a strong fancy to him.

  “Oh, very possible,” said Maecenas. “We’ll work through Tiberius Cannutius, even though his term as a tribune of the plebs is finished. We’ll also buy a couple of the new ones. Additionally, Caesar, you have to go to work on the new consuls the moment they step into office on New Year’s Day. Hirtius and Pansa belong to Caesar, not to Antonius. Once Antonius ceases to be consul, they’ll get up more courage. The Senate has reinforced their appointment—and stripped Macedonia off Gaius Antonius. All promising for you, Caesar.”


  “Then,” said Octavian, smiling Caesar’s smile, “we’ll just have to wait and see what the New Year brings. I have Caesar’s luck, so I’m not about to go down. The only direction I’m going is up, up, up.”

  6

  When Brutus reached Athens at the end of Sextilis, he finally found the adulation he had expected for assassinating Caesar. The Greeks had a very soft spot for a tyrannicide, and so they regarded Brutus. Much to his embarrassment, he discovered that statues of himself and Cassius were already under construction, and would go up on imposing plinths in the agora right next to the statues of the great Greek tyrannicides, Aristogeiton and Harmodius.

  With him he had taken his three tame philosophers, Strato of Epirus, Statyllus and the Latin Academic, Publius Volumnius, who wrote a little and sponged a lot. The four of them entered into Athenian intellectual life with enthusiasm and delight, spent their time going from this talk to that, and sitting at the feet of the current philosophical idols, Theomnestus and Cratippus.

  Which puzzled Athens very much. Here was the tyrannicide behaving like any other Roman with intellectual pretensions, skipping from theaters to libraries to lectures. For Athens had assumed that Brutus was there to raise the East and throw Rome out. Instead—nothing!

  A month later Cassius too reached Athens, and the pair moved into a commodious house; of Brutus’s vast fortune, hardly any was left in Rome or Italy. It came east with him, and Scaptius was every bit as good a manager as Matinius. In fact, Scaptius intended to be better than Matinius. Thus there was no shortage of money, and the three tame philosophers lived terrifically well. For Statyllus, used to Cato, a welcome change.

  “The first thing you have to do is come and see our statues in the agora,” Brutus said eagerly, almost pushing Cassius out the front door. “Oh, I am awed! Such wonderful work, Cassius! I look like a god. No, no, I’m not suffering from Caesar’s complaint, but I can tell you that a good Greek statue of oneself is far superior to anything the Velabrum workshops can produce.”

  When Cassius set eyes on them, he fell on the ground laughing, had eventually to move to a place from which he couldn’t see them before he could regain his equanimity. Both statues were full length, and absolutely nude. The spindling, round-shouldered, unathletic Brutus looked like a Praxiteles boxer, bulging with muscles, and suitably endowed with an imposing penis, plump long scrotum. No wonder he thought it marvelous! As for himself—well, maybe he was as well endowed as his effigy—and as splendid in body—but to see himself there for all homophilic Athens to drool over was just terribly, terribly funny. Brutus flew into a huff and marched them home without saying another word.

  One day in Brutus’s company told Cassius that his brother-in-law was idyllically happy living the life of a wealthy Roman in this cultural capital of the world, whereas Cassius itched to do something, get on with something significant. Servilia’s news that Syria expected him as its governor had given him his idea; he would go to govern Syria.

  “If you have the sense you’re born with,” he told Brutus, “you’ll go to Macedonia and govern it before Antonius finishes pulling all its legions out. Grab the legions still there, and you’ll be inviolable. Write to Quintus Hortensius in Thessalonica and ask him what’s happening.”

  But before Brutus could, Hortensius wrote to him and told him that as far as he, Quintus Hortensius, was concerned, Marcus Brutus was welcome to come and govern Macedonia. Antonius and Dolabella weren’t true consuls, they were wolfsheads. With a prod from Cassius, Brutus wrote back to Hortensius and said yes, he would come to Thessalonica, bringing a couple of young men who could act as legates—Cicero’s son, Marcus, and Bibulus’s young son, Lucius. Plus others.

  Within a nundinum Cassius had taken ship to island-hop the Aegean to Asia Province, leaving the hesitant Brutus hovering between what he saw as his duty, to go to Macedonia, and his true inclination, to stay in Athens. So he didn’t hurry north, as he should have, especially after he heard that Dolabella was rushing through the province on his way to Syria.

  And, of course, he had to write letters from Athens before he started out; the proximity of Servilia and Porcia worried him. So he wrote to Servilia and warned her that from this time on he would be difficult to contact, but that whenever he could, he would send Scaptius to see her. Writing to Porcia was far harder; all he could do was beg her to try to get along with her mother-in-law, and tell her that he loved her, missed her. His pillar of fire.

  Thus it was the end of November before Brutus arrived in Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia; Hortensius greeted him ecstatically, and promised that the province would stand by him. But Brutus quibbled. Was it right to take Hortensius’s place before the New Year? Hortensius was due to step down then, but if he acted prematurely, the Senate might decide to send an army to deal with a usurping quasi-governor. Four of Antony’s crack legions were gone, but the other two, said Hortensius, seemed likely to remain in Dyrrachium for some time to come. Even so, Brutus procrastinated, and a fifth crack legion left.

  The one fascinating piece of news from Rome was Octavian’s march on the city, which puzzled Brutus greatly. Who was this extremely young man? How did he think he could get away with defying a boar like Marcus Antonius? Were all the Caesars cut from the same cloth? In the end he decided that Octavian was a nonentity, that he would be eliminated by the New Year.

  Very much out of things, Publius Vatinius the governor of Illyricum sat in Salona with his two legions and waited for news from Mark Antony that the drive into the lands of the Danubius River was to take place. Finally late in November he received a letter from Antony that ordered him to take his men and march south to assist Gaius Antonius in taking charge of western Macedonia. Unaware of the degree of Antony’s unpopularity, Vatinius did as he was told, alarmed by Antony’s insistence that Brutus was aiming to snatch Macedonia, and that Cassius was on his way to Syria to snatch it from Dolabella.

  So Vatinius marched south to occupy Dyrrachium at the very end of December, his progress an ordeal of snow and ice; winter was early and unusually severe. He found all but two legions gone, one crack and one not so crack, but at least Dyrrachium was a comfortable base. He settled down to wait for Gaius Antonius, as far as he knew the legitimate governor of Macedonia.

  * * *

  Brutus still waited for news from Rome, which Scaptius brought midway through December. Octavian had gone to earth in Arretium, and a bizarre situation was developing. Two of Antony’s legions had mutinied in favor of Octavian, yet nobody’s troops would fight, not Octavian’s against Antony, or Antony’s against Octavian. Caesar’s heir, said Scaptius, was now called plain Caesar by almost everyone, and he had a distinct look of Caesar about him. Two attempts by Antony to have Octavian declared hostis had failed, so Antony had gone off to Italian Gaul to invest Mutina, where Decimus Brutus was holed up. How extraordinary!

  More to the point for him, he learned that the Senate had stripped him of Crete, and Cassius of Cyrenaica. They were not yet declared public enemies, but Macedonia had been given to Gaius Antonius to govern, and Vatinius was ordered to help him.

  According to Servilia and Vatia Isauricus, Antony’s intentions were grandiose. Armed with a five-year imperium maius, he would crush Decimus Brutus, then sit north of the Italian border with Rome’s very best legions for five years, having guaranteed himself a continuous frontier westward through Plancus and Lepidus to Pollio, plus eastward through Vatinius to Gaius Antonius. He had ambitions to rule Rome, yes, but understood that the presence of Octavian meant that he couldn’t for perhaps another five years.

  Finally Brutus acted. He left Hortensius in Thessalonica and marched west on the Via Egnatia with Hortensius’s one legion and a few cohorts of Pompey the Great’s veterans who had settled in the country around the capital. Young Marcus Cicero and Lucius Bibulus went with him; so did the tame philosophers.

  But the weather was appalling, Brutus’s progress painfully slow. He battled on at a snail’s pace, and was still in the Can
davian highlands at the end of the year Caesar died.

  Cassius got to Smyrna in Asia Province early in November, to find Gaius Trebonius in residence and well ensconced as governor. With him was another of the assassins, Cassius Parmensis, who was serving as Trebonius’s legate.

  “I make no secret of it,” Cassius said to them. “I intend to beat Dolabella to Syria and take the province off him.”

  “Good for you,” said Trebonius, beaming approval. “Have you any money?”

  “Not a sestertius,” Cassius confessed.

  “Then I can give you some to start off your war chest,” said Trebonius. “What’s more, I can give you a small fleet of galleys, and I’ll donate you the services of two handy legates, Sextilius Rufus and Patiscus. Both good admirals.”

  “I’m a good admiral too,” said Cassius Parmensis. “If you can use me, I’ll go with you as well.”

  “Can you really spare three good men?” Cassius asked Trebonius.

  “Oh, yes. Asia Province is nothing if not peaceful. They’ll be glad of some activity.”

  “I have less palatable information, Trebonius. Dolabella is going to Syria by land, so you’re bound to see him.”

  Trebonius shrugged. “Let him come. He has no authority in my province.”

  “Since I’m going on as soon as possible, I’d be grateful if you could round up those war galleys,” said Cassius.

  They appeared at the end of November. Cassius sailed with his three admirals, determined that he was going to acquire more ships en route. With him went a cousin, one of the many Lucius Cassiuses, and a centurion named Fabius. No tame philosophers for Gaius Cassius!

  In Rhodes he had no luck whatsoever. True to form, the city of Rhodus refused him ships or money, explaining that they wanted no part of internecine Roman strife.