The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Octavian had no intention of fighting Antony when he came, and had formulated a plan he thought had a fair chance of success, depending upon how persuasively he could talk. What he knew was that it was up to him to unite all the factions of Caesar’s old civil war alliance; if he didn’t, Rome would go to Brutus and Cassius, now controlling every province east of the Adriatic. A state of affairs that had to be terminated, but impossible to terminate unless all Caesar’s adherents were united.

  Early in October, Mark Antony took seventeen of his legions out of camp in Forum Julii, leaving six behind with Lucius Varius Cotyla to garrison the West. After their halcyon summer the men were fit, well rested, and spoiling for some action. All three governors marched with him: Plancus, Lepidus and Pollio. But of master plans there were none. Antony was well aware of Brutus and Cassius in the East and understood that they would have to be put down, but his thinking lumped Octavian in with the two Liberators as yet another unacceptable, obnoxious player in the power game. He was not enamored of losing valuable troops in battle against Octavian, but saw no alternative. Once Octavian was knocked out of the game, he would pick up Octavian’s troops, but their loyalty would always be suspect, he knew. If the Martia and the Fourth could leave Marcus Antonius for a baby who reminded them of Caesar, what would they think of that self-same Marcus Antonius when their baby Caesar lay dead at Marcus Antonius’s hands?

  So he took the Via Domitia and crossed into Italian Gaul at Ocelum in a sour mood, not improved by his bedtime reading, the series of speeches Cicero had delivered against him. Though he despised Octavian, he hated Cicero. Were it not for Cicero, his position would be secure, his public enemy status would not exist, and Octavian wouldn’t be a problem. It had been Cicero who encouraged Caesar’s heir, Cicero who turned the Senate against him until even Fufius Calenus didn’t dare speak up for him. Confiscation of his property hadn’t been an issue, for though his debts were paid off, he had no money worth speaking of. Much as they might hunger to, the senators didn’t dare touch Fulvia or his palace on the Carinae—she was the granddaughter of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, and under the protection of Atticus.

  Fulvia. He missed her, and he missed his children by her. Full of news and well written, her letters had kept him informed of every event in Rome, and he had cause to be grateful to Atticus. Her hatred of Cicero was even greater than his own, if that were humanly possible.

  When Antony reached Mutina, twenty miles from Octavian’s camp on the outskirts of Bononia, he was met by the third tribune of the plebs, Lucius Cornificius. A holder of that office was the best of all envoys; even a Mark Antony had sufficient sense to understand that his cause would not be improved by the manhandling of a tribune of the plebs. They were sacrosanct and inviolate when acting for the Plebs, as Cornificius insisted he was, despite the fact that his boss belonged to the Patriciate.

  “The consul Caesar,” said Cornificius, twenty-one years old, “wishes to confer with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus.”

  “Confer, or surrender?” Antony sneered.

  “Confer, definitely confer. I bear an olive branch, not a reversed standard.”

  Plancus and Lepidus were very much against the idea of any meeting with Octavian, whereas Pollio thought it excellent. So, after thinking things over, did Antony.

  “Tell Octavianus that I’ll consider his proposal,” Antony said.

  Lucius Cornificius did a lot of galloping back and forth over the next several days, but eventually it was agreed that Antony, Lepidus and Octavian would meet to confer on an island in the middle of the swift, strong Lavinus River near Bononia. It was Cornificius named the site on his last mission.

  “All right, that will do,” said Antony after considering it from all sides, “provided that Octavianus moves his camp to the Bononian side of the river, while I move my camp to the Mutinan bank. If there’s any treachery, we can fight it out on the spot.”

  “Let Pollio and me come with you and Lepidus,” Plancus said, unhappy because he knew that whatever was discussed would affect his whole future. “It ought to be more public, Antonius.”

  Bright eyes twinkling, Gaius Asinius Pollio gazed at Plancus in amusement. Poor Plancus! A beautiful writer, an erudite man, but incapable of seeing what he, Pollio, saw plainly. What do men like Plancus and Pollio matter? What, really, does silly Lepidus matter? It’s between Antonius and Octavianus. A man of forty versus a man of twenty. The known versus the unknown. Lepidus is merely their sop to throw to good dog Cerberus, their way to enter Hades undevoured. How terrific it is to be an eyewitness of great events when one is an historian! First the Rubicon, now the Lavinus. Two rivers, and Pollio was there.

  The island was small and grassy, shaded by several lofty poplars; there had been some willows too, but a party of sappers hauled them out so that the observers on each bank could have an unimpeded view of proceedings. The meeting place for the three negotiators—marked by three curule chairs beneath a poplar—was far enough away from the bevy of servants and secretaries who occupied the island’s far end, there to distribute refreshments or wait to be summoned to take something down in writing.

  Antony and Lepidus were rowed across from their bank, both clad in armor, whereas Octavian chose his purple-bordered toga and maroon senatorial shoes with consular crescent buckles rather than his special boots. The audience was vast, for both armies lined the banks of the Lavinus and watched raptly while the three figures sat, stood, paced, gesticulated, looked at each other or stared pensively at the swirling waters.

  The greetings were typical: Octavian was suitably deferential, Lepidus amiable, Antony curt.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Antony said, and sat.

  “What do you think our business is, Marcus Antonius?” asked Octavian, waiting until Lepidus sat before taking his own chair.

  “To help you crawl out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself,” said Antony. “You know if it comes to battle you’ll lose.”

  “We each have seventeen legions, and mine contain quite as many veterans, I believe,” Octavian said coolly, fair brows up. “However, you have the advantage of a more experienced command.”

  “In other words, you want to crawl out of that hole.”

  “No, I’m not thinking of myself. At my age, Antonius, I can afford to suffer an occasional humiliation without its coloring the rest of my career. No, I’m thinking of them.” Octavian indicated the watching soldiers. “I asked for this conference to see if we can work out a way to avoid shedding one drop of their blood. Your men or mine, Antonius, makes no difference. They’re all Roman citizens, and all entitled to live, to sire sons and daughters for Rome and Italy, which my father believed were the same entity. Why should they have to shed their blood simply in order to decide whether you or I is the leader of the pack?”

  A question so unanswerable that Antony shifted uncomfortably, spoke uncomfortably. “Because your Rome isn’t my Rome,” he said.

  “Rome is Rome. Neither of us owns her. Both of us are her servants, we can’t be her master. Everything you do, everything I do, should go to her greater glory, enhance her power. That is equally true of Brutus and Cassius. If you, and I, and Marcus Lepidus, vie for anything, it should be for the distinction of contributing the most to Rome’s greater glory. We ourselves are mortal, whether we die here on a field of battle, or later, at peace with each other. Rome is eternal. Rome owns us.”

  A grin showed. “I’ll say this for you, Octavianus, you can talk. A pity you can’t general troops.”

  “If talk is my specialty, then I chose my field of action very well,” said Octavian, smiling Caesar’s smile. “Truly, Antonius, I do not want bloodshed. What I want is to see all of us who followed Caesar united again under one banner. The assassins did us no favor in murdering our undisputed leader. Since his death, we’ve split asunder. I blame no small part of it on Cicero, who is every Caesarean’s enemy, just as he was Caesar’s enemy. To me, if we spill blood here, we will have betrayed Caesar. And
betrayed Rome. Rome’s real enemies are not here in Italian Gaul. They’re in the East. The assassin Marcus Brutus holds all of Macedonia, Illyricum, Greece, Crete, and through minions Bithynia, Pontus and Asia Province. The assassin Gaius Cassius holds Cilicia, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Syria, perhaps even Egypt by now.”

  “I agree with you about Brutus and Cassius,” said Antony, who was visibly relaxing. “Continue, Octavianus.”

  “What I am asking for, Marcus Antonius, Marcus Lepidus, is an alliance. A reunification of all Caesar’s loyal adherents. If we can sort out our differences and achieve that, then we can deal with the real enemies, Brutus and Cassius, from a position of power equal to theirs. Otherwise, Brutus and Cassius will win, and Rome will pass away. For Brutus and Cassius will hand the provinces back to the publicani and squeeze the socii so tightly that they will prefer barbarian or Parthian rule to Roman rule.”

  Lepidus listened while Octavian expatiated upon his theme and Antony interpolated an occasional comment. Somehow it all sounded so reasonable and logical when Octavian explained it, though quite why that was, Lepidus didn’t know, since nothing the young man said was novel or extraordinary.

  “It isn’t that I’m afraid to fight, rather that I plain don’t want to fight,” Octavian reiterated. “We should conserve every bit of our combined strength for the real adversaries.”

  “Hit them so hard that they don’t have a chance to do what happened after Pharsalus,” said Antony, getting into stride. “What exhausted Rome was the prolongation of the struggle against the Republicans. Pharnaces, then Africa, then Spain.”

  And so it started, though it took the rest of that day to reach wholehearted agreement that all the factions of Caesar’s adherents should reunite, for there were more men to please than the three who conferred. Both Antony and Octavian knew full well that if Antony had grown tired of being dominated by Caesar, then he had already passed the mark whereat he might agree to share leadership with a twenty-year-old newcomer whose only assets were his relationship to Caesar and the power stemming out of it. The best that might be accomplished was a temporary cessation in the contest for ultimate supremacy. What Octavian could do, and did on the island in the Lavinus River, was to give Antony the impression that Caesar’s heir would yield supremacy until Antony’s age negated it. If he thinks that, said Octavian to himself, it will sustain both of us until Brutus and Cassius are crushed. After that, we shall see. One thing at a time.

  “Of course my legions won’t consent to a settlement that looks as if you’ve won,” said Antony when discussions resumed on the second day.

  “Nor mine a settlement that looks as if I’ve lost,” Octavian riposted, looking rueful.

  “And my legions, and Plancus’s, and Pollio’s,” said Lepidus, “will want us to have a share of the leadership.”

  “Plancus and Pollio will have to be content with consulships in the near future,” said Antony harshly. “The stage is populated enough by the three sitting here.” He had spent most of the night thinking, and he was far from stupid; his chief intellectual disabilities lay in his impulsiveness, his hedonism and his lack of interest in the art of politics. “How about,” he asked, “if we split the leadership of Rome more or less equally between the three of us?”

  “That sounds interesting,” said Octavian. “Do go on.”

  “Um—well…None of us should be consul, yet all of us should be something better than consul. You know, like three to share the dictatorship.”

  “You abolished the dictatorship,” Octavian said gently.

  “True, and I don’t mean to imply that I regret that!” Antony snapped, bristling. “What I’m trying to say is that Rome can’t be run by a succession of mere consuls until the Liberators are finished, yet a genuine dictator is too offensive to everyone who believes in democracy. If three of us share the control by having partial dictatorial powers, then we exert a measure of control over each other as well as running Rome the way she needs to be run for the time being.”

  “A syndicate,” said Octavian. “Three men. Triumviri rei publicae constituendae. Three men forming a syndicate to set the affairs of the Republic in order. Yes, it has a good ring to it. It will soothe the Senate and appeal to the People enormously. All of Rome knows that we embarked on military action. Imagine how splendid it will look when the three of us return to Rome the best of friends, our legions safe and unharmed. We’ll show everybody that Roman men can sort out their differences without resorting to the sword—that we care more about the Senate and the People than we do about ourselves.”

  They sat back in their chairs and stared at each other with huge content. Yes, it was splendid! A new era.

  “It also,” said Antony, “shows the People that we are their true government. There won’t be any grumbling about civil war for the sake of civil war when we go east to fight Brutus and Cassius. That was a good idea to try and condemn the Liberators for treason, Octavianus. We can say that we’re not fighting other Romans, we’re fighting men who abrogated their citizenship.”

  “We do more than that, Antonius. We keep agents circulating throughout Italy to reinforce indignation about the murder of their beloved Caesar. And when prosperity declines, we can blame Brutus and Cassius, who have appropriated Rome’s revenues.”

  “Prosperity declines?” asked Lepidus in dismay.

  “It is already declining,” Octavian said flatly. “You’re a governor, Lepidus. You must surely have noticed that the crops in your provinces haven’t come in this year.”

  “I haven’t been in my provinces since early summer,” Lepidus excused himself.

  “I’ve noticed that it’s suddenly very expensive to feed my legions,” said Antony. “Drought?”

  “Everywhere, including the East. So Brutus and Cassius must be suffering too.”

  “What you’re really saying is that we’re going to run out of money,” snarled Antony, glaring at Octavian. “Well, you pinched Caesar’s war chest, so you can fund our campaign in the East!”

  “I did not steal the war chest, Antonius. I spent my entire patrimony on bonuses for my legions when I arrived in Italy, and I’ve had to take money from the Treasury to part-pay the bonuses I still owe my men. I’m in debt to them, and will be for a long time. I’ve no idea who took the war chest, but don’t blame me.”

  “Then it has to be Oppius.”

  “You can’t be sure. Some Samnite might as easily have done it. The solution doesn’t lie in the past, Antonius. It’s vital that we keep Rome and Italy fed and entertained, two very pricey undertakings, and we also have to keep a great number of legions in the field. How many do you think we’ll need?”

  “Forty. Twenty to go with us, twenty more for garrison duty in the West, in Africa, and for dropping in our wake as we march. Plus ten or fifteen thousand cavalry.”

  “Including noncombatants and horse, that’s over a quarter of a million men.” The big grey eyes looked glassy. “Think of the quantities of grain, chickpea, lentil, bacon, oil—a million and a quarter modii of wheat a month at fifteen sesterces the modius is seven hundred and fifty talents a month for wheat alone. The other staples will double it, perhaps more in this drought.”

  “What a fantastic praefectus fabrum you’d make, Octavianus!” said Antony, eyes dancing.

  “Joke if you must, but what I’m saying, Antonius, is that we can’t do it. Not and feed Rome, feed Italy as well.”

  “Oh, I know a way,” Antony said too casually.

  “I’m all ears,” said Octavian.

  “That you are, Octavianus!”

  “Are you done with the jokes?”

  “Yes, because the solution’s no joke. We proscribe.”

  The last word fell into a silence broken only by the faint rushing of the river, the rattle of golden poplar leaves waiting for the winter winds to blow them down, the far-off murmur of thousands of troops, the whinnying of horses.

  “We proscribe,” Octavian echoed.

  Lepidus looked ready to fa
int—pale, shaking. “Antonius, we daren’t!” he cried.

  The reddish-brown eyes stared him down fiercely. “Oh, come, Lepidus, don’t be a bigger fool than your mother and father made you! How else can we fund a state and an army through a drought? How else could we fund them even if there wasn’t a drought?”

  Octavian sat looking thoughtful. “My father,” he said, “was famous for his clemency, but it was his clemency killed him. Most of the assassins were pardoned men. Had he killed them, we would have no need to worry about Brutus and Cassius, Rome would have all the eastern revenues, and we’d be free to sail into the Euxine to buy grain from Cimmeria if we could get it nowhere else. I agree with you, Marcus Antonius. We proscribe, exactly as Sulla did. A one-talent reward for information from a free man or a freedman, a half-talent reward plus his freedom for a slave. But we don’t make the mistake of documenting our rewards. Why give some aspiring tribune of the plebs of the future the chance to force us to punish our informants? Sulla’s proscriptions netted the Treasury sixteen thousand talents. That’s our target.”

  “You’re a perpetual surprise, my dear Octavianus. I thought I’d have a long job talking you into it,” said Antony.

  “I’m first and foremost a sensible man.” Octavian smiled. “Proscription is the only answer. It also enables us to rid ourselves of enemies, real or potential. All those with Republican sentiments or sympathy for the assassins.”

  “I can’t agree!” wailed Lepidus. “My brother Paullus is a die-hard Republican!”

  “Then we proscribe your brother Paullus,” said Antony. “I have a few relatives of mine who’ll have to be proscribed, some in conjunction with cousin Octavianus here. Uncle Lucius Caesar, for example. He’s a very rich man, and he’s been no help to me.”

  “Or to me,” said Octavian, nodding. He frowned. “However, I suggest that we don’t render ourselves odious by executing our relatives, Antonius. Neither Paullus nor Lucius is a threat to our lives. We’ll just confiscate their property and money. I think we’ll both have to sacrifice some third cousins.”