The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “I want,” said Rhascupolis, introduced to Brutus, “independent status for my tribe and the title Friend and Ally of the Roman People. In return for that, I will help you conduct a successful war against the Bessi.”

  “But they’re fearsome warriors,” Brutus objected.

  “Indeed they are, Marcus Brutus. However, they have their weaknesses, and I know every one of them. Use me as your mentor, and I promise you victory over the Bessi within a single month, as well as plenty of spoils,” said Rhascupolis.

  Like other coastal Thracians, Rhascupolis did not look like a barbarian; he wore proper clothes, was not tattooed, spoke Attic Greek, and conducted himself like any other civilized man.

  “Are you the chieftain of your tribe, Rhascupolis?” Brutus asked, sensing that something was being withheld.

  “I am, but I have an older brother, Rhascus, who thinks he should be chieftain,” Rhascupolis confessed.

  “And where is this Rhascus?”

  “Gone, Marcus Brutus. He is not a danger.”

  Nor was he. Brutus led his legions into the heart of Thrace, a huge area of country between the Danubius and Strymon Rivers and the Aegean Sea, more lowland than highland, and, as he soon learned, capable of producing wheat even in the midst of this drought, which seemed to exist almost everywhere. Feeding his troops had become an expensive exercise, but with the Bessi grain in his enormous cavalcade of ox wagons, Brutus could look forward to winter in better spirits.

  The campaign had lasted throughout the month of Sextilis, and at the end of it Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar’s unmartial paper shuffler, had blooded his army with minimal losses. That army had hailed him imperator on the field, which entitled him to celebrate a triumph; King Sadala had made his submission, and would walk in his parade. Rhascupolis became undisputed ruler of Thrace, was assured that he would receive Friend and Ally status as soon as the Senate answered Brutus’s communication. It did not occur either to Rhascupolis or to Brutus to wonder what had become of Rhascus, the older brother ejected from the chieftainship. Nor, for the moment, did Rhascus, safe in hiding, intend to tell them that his mind was applied to the problem of how to become King Rhascus of Thrace.

  Brutus crossed the Hellespont for the second time that year around the middle of September, and picked up the legions he had left camped along the Granicus River.

  Then he heard that Octavian and Quintus Pedius were the new consuls, and wrote frantically to Cassius, urging him to abandon any campaigns against Egypt or the Parthians. What he had to do was march north and join their forces, said Brutus, for with the monstrous Octavian in control of Rome, everything had changed. A destructive child had been given the world’s biggest and most complex toy to play with.

  In Nicomedia, Brutus learned that the Liberator governor, Lucius Tillius Cimber, had marched from Pontus to join Cassius, but had left Brutus a fleet of sixty warships.

  So Brutus set out for Pergamum, where he demanded tribute, though he made no attempt to tamper with Caesar’s dispositions anent Mithridates of Pergamum, who was allowed to keep his little fiefdom provided that he made a hefty donation to Brutus’s hungry war chest. Caught, Mithridates gave the hefty donation.

  Brutus finally arrived in Smyrna in November, there to sit himself down and wait for Cassius. All the ready money in Asia Province had long gone; there remained only temple wealth in the form of gold or silver statuary, objects of arts, plate. Stifling his qualms, Brutus confiscated everything from everywhere, melted his loot down and minted coins. If Caesar, he thought, could put his profile on coins minted during his lifetime, so too could Marcus Brutus. Thus Brutus’s coins displayed his profile, with various laudations of the Ides of March on their reverse sides: a cap of liberty, a dagger, the words EID MAR.

  More and more men had joined his cause. Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus—a son of Messala Niger—arrived in Smyrna with Lucius Gellius Poplicola, once Antony’s intimate. The Casca brothers appeared; so did Tiberius Claudius Nero, Caesar’s least favorite incompetent, accompanied by a close Claudian relative, Marcus Livius Drusus Nero. Importantly, Sextus Pompey, who controlled the seas west of Greece, had indicated that he would not hinder the Liberators.

  The only staff problem Brutus had was Labienus’s son, Quintus, who bade fair to outdo his father when it came to barbaric savagery. What, asked Brutus of himself, am I to do with Quintus Labienus before his conduct ruins me? It was Hemicillus gave an answer:

  “Send him to the court of the King of the Parthians as your ambassador,” said the banker. “He’ll feel right at home there.”

  So Brutus did, a decision that was to have far-reaching consequences in the fairly distant future.

  Of more concern was the news that the consuls in Rome had tried all the Liberators, who were now nefas, stripped of their citizenships and property; the Casca brothers had brought it. There could be no going back now, no hope of reaching an accommodation with Octavian’s Senate.

  2

  By the middle of January, Cassius owned six legions and the province of Syria save only for Apameia, wherein the rebel Caecilius Bassus was still holed up. Then Bassus threw open the gates of Apameia and offered Cassius his two good legions, which swelled Cassius’s army to eight. The moment each district in the province learned that the legendary Gaius Cassius was back, local faction fighting ceased.

  Antipater came hurrying from Judaea to assure Cassius that the Jews were on his side, and was sent back to Jerusalem under orders to raise money and make sure that no hostile elements among the Jews made trouble. They had always favored Caesar, a Jew lover; Cassius was no Jew lover, but intended to make full use of this awkward, fractious people.

  When news reached Antipater that Aulus Allienus, sent to obtain Alexandria’s four legions for Dolabella, was on the march north with these troops, he immediately couriered word to Cassius in Antioch. Cassius came south, met Antipater, and together they had no trouble persuading Allienus to surrender his four legions. Cassius’s army now held twelve experienced legions and four thousand horsemen, the best force in the Roman world. Did he have ships, his happiness would have been unalloyed, but he had no ships at all. Or so he thought.

  Unbeknownst to him, young Lentulus Spinther had met up with the admirals Patiscus, Sextilius Rufus and the Liberator Cassius Parmensis, and gone to war against the fleets of Dolabella, in full sail for Syria. Dolabella himself had marched overland through Cappadocia: when he crossed the Amanus and entered Syria, he had no idea that Spinther, Patiscus and the others were busy defeating his fleets, then commandeering most of the vessels for Cassius’s use.

  The horrified Dolabella found every hand in Syria turned against him; even Antioch shut its gates and announced that it belonged to Gaius Cassius, Syria’s true governor. Grinding his teeth, Dolabella flounced off to make an offer to the elders of the port city of Laodiceia: if Laodiceia gave Dolabella aid and sanctuary, he would make it Syria’s capital once he had taught Cassius a much-needed lesson. The elders accepted with alacrity. While he went to work fortifying Laodiceia, Dolabella sent agents to suborn Cassius’s troops—to no avail. Every soldier hewed stoutly to his hero, Gaius Cassius. Who was this Dolabella? Abrawling drunkard who had tortured a Roman governor, beheaded him.

  April saw Cassius still in ignorance of the maritime success Spinther and the others were enjoying. Sure that Dolabella would soon be possessed of hundreds of ships, Cassius sent envoys to Queen Cleopatra to demand a huge fleet of warships and transports from Egypt, to be delivered to Cassius yesterday. Cleopatra’s reply was in the negative: Egypt was in the throes of famine and pestilence, she said, therefore in no position to help. Her regent on Cyprus did send ships, as did Tyre and Aradus in Phoenicia—but not enough to content Cassius, who resolved to invade Egypt and show its Caesarean queen that a Liberator was not to be taken lightly.

  Sure that his fleets would arrive soon, and sure too that Mark Antony was even then sending him additional troops, Dolabella barricaded himself inside Laodiceia. He
had no idea that Antony was now inimicus rather than the proconsul of Italian Gaul.

  Laodiceia stood on the swollen end of a bulbous promontory connected to the Syrian mainland by an isthmus only four hundred yards wide. Which made the city extremely difficult to besiege. Dolabella’s legions were camped outside its walls, a section of which was torn down and re-erected across the isthmus. And by mid-May a few ships began to turn up, their masters assuring Dolabella that the great bulk of them weren’t far behind.

  But nobody really knew what anybody else was doing, which contributed as much to the fortunes of the war in Syria as any brilliant feats of command. Spinther had gone to the Pamphylian city of Perge to pick up the dead Trebonius’s cache of money for Cassius, while his colleagues Patiscus, Sextilius Rufus and Cassius Parmensis chased Dolabella’s fleets off the high seas. A state of affairs neither Dolabella nor Cassius knew about as Cassius brought a segment of his army up to Laodiceia; he went to work to build an awesome rampart across the isthmus just outside Dolabella’s wall, which it overlooked. That done, he put artillery atop it and bombarded Dolabella’s camp remorselessly.

  At which moment Cassius finally discovered that he owned all the fleets. Cassius Parmensis arrived with a flotilla of quinqueremes, broke the chain on Laodiceia’s harbor, entered, and sent every ship of Dolabella’s moored inside to the bottom. Blockade was now complete. No supplies could reach Laodiceia.

  Starvation set in, as did disease, but the city held out until the beginning of Julius, when the day commander of Dolabella’s wall opened the doors and gates in it to admit Cassius’s troops. By the time they reached Laodiceia itself, Publius Cornelius Dolabella was dead by his own hand.

  Syria now belonged to Cassius from the Egyptian border to the Euphrates River, beyond which the Parthians skulked, unsure what was going on, and unwilling to invade with Cassius around.

  Amazed at his good fortune—but positive that it was well deserved—Cassius wrote to Rome and to Brutus, his mood soaring until he felt himself invincible. He was better than Caesar.

  Now, however, he had to find the money to keep his enterprise going, not an easy matter in a province denuded first by Pompey the Great’s Metellus Scipio, then by Caesar in retaliation. He adopted Caesar’s technique, demanding the same sum from a city or district as it had paid to Pompey, knowing very well that he was not going to get anything like the amounts stipulated. However, when he settled for less, he appeared a merciful, temperate man.

  Having been so loyal to Caesar, the Jews were hit hardest. Cassius demanded seven hundred talents of gold, which the people of Judaea just didn’t have. Crassus had stolen their gold from the Great Temple, and no Roman since had given them the chance to accumulate more. Antipater did what he could, dividing the task of obtaining the bullion between his sons Phasael and Herod, and one Malichus, a secret supporter of a faction determined to rid Judaea of King Hyrcanus and his Idumaean sycophant Antipater.

  Of the three collectors, Herod did best. He took one hundred talents of gold to Cassius in Damascus, presenting himself to the governor in a humble, charming fashion. Cassius remembered him well from his earlier days in Syria; then a youth, Herod had nonetheless made an impression, and Cassius was fascinated now to see how the ugly young man had turned out. He found he liked the wily Idumaean, doomed never to qualify as king because his mother was a gentile. A pity, thought Cassius. Herod was an ardent advocate of Rome’s presence in the East, and would have made loyal allies out of the Jews did he rule them. For at least Rome was akin to Judaea; the alternative, rule by the King of the Parthians, was more hideous by far.

  The other two gold raisers did poorly. Antipater was able to scrape together enough to make Phasael’s contribution look respectable, but Malichus failed miserably because Malichus wasn’t about to give the Romans anything. Determined to show that he meant business, Cassius summoned Malichus to Damascus and condemned him to death. Antipater came hurrying with a further hundred talents and begged Cassius not to carry out the sentence; the mollified Cassius spared Malichus, whom Antipater bore back to Jerusalem, unaware that Malichus had wanted to be a martyr.

  Some communities, like Gompha, Laodiceia, Emmaus and Thamna were sacked and razed to the ground, their peoples sent to the slave markets of Sidon and Antioch.

  All of which meant that Cassius now had the leisure to think about invading Egypt. This was not merely to punish its queen; it was also due to the fact that Egypt was said to be the richest country on the face of the globe, except perhaps for the Kingdom of the Parthians. In Egypt, thought Cassius, he would find the funds to rule Rome. Brutus? Brutus could be the head of his bureaucracy. Cassius no longer believed in the Republican cause, he deemed it deader than Caesar. He, Gaius Cassius Longinus, would be the King of Rome.

  Then he got Brutus’s letter.

  Terrible news from Rome, Cassius. I am sending this at the gallop in the hope that it reaches you before you set out to invade Egypt. That is now quite impossible.

  Octavianus and Quintus Pedius are consuls. Octavianus marched on Rome and the city gave in without a murmur. It seems likely that there will be civil war between them and Antonius, who has allied himself with the governors of the western provinces. Antonius and Lepidus are both outlawed, and the Liberators tried and condemned nefas in Octavianus’s court. All our property is forfeit, though Atticus writes assuring me that he is looking after Servilia, Tertulla and Junilla. Vatia Isauricus and Junia will have nothing to do with them. Decimus Brutus is defeated in Italian Gaul and has fled, no one knows where.

  This is our best opportunity to win Rome. If Antonius and Octavianus should patch up their differences (though I admit that does not seem likely), then we will spend the rest of our lives outlawed. Therefore I say that if you haven’t yet started for Egypt, don’t. We have to stick together and make a move to take Italy and Rome. We might have been able to conciliate Antonius one day, but Octavianus? Never. Caesar’s heir is obdurate, all the Liberators must die disenfranchised and poverty-stricken.

  Leave what legions you deem necessary to garrison Syria in your absence and march to join me as soon as you can. I conquered the Bessi and have a great quantity of grain and other foodstuffs, so our combined army will eat. Some parts of Bithynia and Pontus have also produced crops, which will belong to us, not to Octavianus to keep Rome pacified. I hear that Italy and the West are as dry as all Greece, Africa and Macedonia. We must act now, Cassius, while we can feed our men—and while we still have money in our war chests.

  Porcia is dead. My mother says suicide. I am desolate.

  Cassius wrote back immediately. Yes, he would march for Asia Province, probably inland through Cappadocia and Galatia. Was it Brutus’s intention to go to war against Octavianus and then hope to make a deal with Antonius?

  An answer came swiftly: yes, that was what Brutus hoped to do. March at once, we will meet in Smyrna in December. Send as many ships as possible.

  Cassius picked his two best legions and sat them down, one in Antioch, one in Damascus, then appointed his loyalest follower, an ex-centurion named Fabius, as temporary governor. Leaving noblemen to govern, in Cassius’s experience, only meant trouble. A sentiment Caesar would have echoed heartily.

  Just before he left the vicinity of Antioch to head north, he learned from Herod that the ingrate Malichus had poisoned his benefactor Antipater in Jerusalem, and rejoiced in his deed.

  “I have him prisoner,” wrote Herod. “What shall I do?”

  “Have your revenge” was Cassius’s answer.

  Herod did. He took the fanatically Judaic Malichus to Tyre, home of the purple-dye industry and home of the hated god Baal. Therefore a religiously anathematic place to a Jew. Two of Cassius’s soldiers led the naked and barefoot Malichus out into the middle of a stinking mass of putrefying shellfish carcasses, and there very slowly killed him while Herod watched. The body was left to rot among the murex.

  Learning of Herod’s revenge on Malichus, Cassius laughed softly. Oh, Herod, yo
u are a very interesting man!

  At the pass through the Amanus range called the Syrian Gates, Tillius Cimber, the Liberator governor of Bithynia and Pontus, joined Cassius with a legion of Pontic troops. That brought the army up to eleven legions, plus three thousand cavalry—as many horses as the practical Cassius thought the countryside would bear this side of grassy Galatia.

  Cimber and Cassius agreed that their progress would have to be leisurely enough to squeeze as much money as possible out of every land they traversed.

  In Tarsus they fined the city the fantastic sum of fifteen hundred gold talents, and insisted that it be paid before they left. The terrified city councillors melted down every precious object in the temples, then sold the free Tarsian poor into slavery; even that didn’t begin to approach the sum, so they went on selling Tarsians into slavery, ascending the social ladder. When they managed to gather five hundred gold talents, Cassius and Cimber pronounced themselves satisfied and departed up through the Cilician Gates to Cappadocia.

  They had sent their cavalry on ahead to demand money from Ariobarzanes, who said flatly that he had none, and pointed to the holes in his doors and window shutters where once golden nails had resided. The old king was killed on the spot and his palace plus the temples of Eusebeia Mazaca plundered to little effect. Deiotarus of Galatia donated infantry and cavalry as his share, then stood aside and watched his temples and palace pillaged. You can tell, he thought wearily, that Brutus and Cassius are in the moneylending business. Nothing is sacred except money.

  At the beginning of December, Cassius, Cimber and the army entered Asia Province through the wild and beautiful mountains of Phrygia, then followed the course of the Hermus River down to the Aegean Sea. Reunion with Brutus was only a short ride down a good Roman road. If everyone they encountered looked poor and down-trodden, if every temple and public building looked shabby and neglected, they chose not to notice. Mithridates the Great had made a far worse chaos of Asia Province than any Roman.