Augustus

by Allan Massie

  'See here,' he said, 'it's simple. You all know what Antony is. I'm an ordinary man myself. I know you can't trust Antony. He'd make off with his granny's last sow. You know that fine. There's not one of you will feel safe if he wins. That's what this meeting's about. Now I know Octavian here better than any of you. You may think he's a bit on the young side. Well, just ask yourselves what sort of mess his elders have got us all in to. I tell you a pig in shit would find it stinking. What sort of future will they give you and your children? Maybe it's time they turned over and gave youth a chance. At least we don't have criminal records. We're not drunkards and we haven't murdered our benefactors. Octavian here's a good lad. All right, he's young, but he offers you all the chance of a decent future. You just think about that. If you've got any nerve at all, or anything but sawdust in your top storey, you'll back us. To the bloody hilt, if you've got your wits about you.'

  Maybe it didn't quite convince them, but it saved the day. The colour crept back into Maecenas' cheeks. He had really been afraid. Being what he was, he never trusted a crowd. It was his constant fear that one false word and they'd tear us apart.

  I learned a lot that day. Cicero's reaction was characteristic:

  'What a speech', he wrote to Atticus. 'Have I over-rated the boy's capacity, and underestimated his inheritance from Julius?'

  The tenth of November left me much to retrieve.

  Fortunately, when you let yourself down, you often find that your enemies make mistakes which allow you time to recover.

  We scurried out of the city that night, in a welter of baggage, recrimination, confusion and panic. Philippus, trembling like a man with fever, received us in his Sabine villa.

  'You've blundered terribly,' he said. 'What were you thinking of? Were you mad enough to attempt a coup? You've put yourself outside the pale, outside the law. No respectable man will dare work with you now. Even Publius Servilius Isauricus, who's been your best friend among the consulars, has got cold feet.'

  'He lent us Titus Cannutius,' I said. 'The tribune is his man, and it was with Publius Servilius' agreement that he led the attack on Antony.'

  'Quite, absolutely, but it failed. And Publius Servilius wants no more of you. Look, here's a letter to that effect. Why, he even urges me, for my own safety, to deny you my house. What will your mother say? Why, oh why, didn't you listen to me? This is the price you are paying for disregarding my advice

  I looked at his ignoble middle-aged terror, and turned to Agrippa.

  'You were wise,' I said, 'in what you told the crowd. We have stumbled, no more. Stepfather, believe me, the game is not lost. But what I must know is where Balbus can be found.'

  'He won't help you now either.'

  'I think he will,' I said, 'and we need money. Money. If Balbus will raise me another half-million we shall come through.'

  * * *

  I have hardly mentioned Balbus. Perhaps I hoped, with that vanity that never absolutely deserts us, to tell you my story without reference to him. Yet, if I wish to instruct you (and tell the truth), I cannot avoid doing so.

  Balbus was a phenomenon, a citizen of Gades in Spain, whom Julius had got to know in his first campaign in the country. His wealth, based on silver mines, great latifundia, and banking was enormous; it early became self-perpetuating. You will hardly understand that, my sons; indeed, despite my own banking blood, I do not know how it happens. There is, it seems, a law of the God Moneta: those who devote themselves to his service discover the secret of perpetual fertility. Beyond an indeterminate point money breeds money. Balbus early reached the stage when he could not consume the interest on his investments; before long he could not consume the interest on the interest which he laid out at interest. As long as he avoided injudicious investment, it seemed that his god had granted him a licence to coin his own money.

  When I arrived at Brindisi at the end of March, I had found a note from him: 'Draw on me for whatever you need from Anaxogoras the Greek at the sign of the Fish in this city,' it said. I had my friend Publius Salvidienus Rufus take the note thither for verification of the seal. Then, by night, accompanied by Rufus and Agrippa, cloaked and hooded, we slipped through the darkened town on slimy cobbles to the Greek's house. He had received his own instructions. It was then I first sensed what no born gentleman realizes: the occult expedition of money. There were chests waiting for us, loaded with gold pieces. Where they had come from, I do not know. It is a religious mystery. All I had to do was sign for the gold. I dispatched Agrippa to fetch Maco and his legionaries with carts. It was that gold which financed my first march on Rome.

  Now, in extremity, I said to Philippus: 'I am for Aretrium in Etruria. If Balbus will produce another half-million, we shall come through. Don't be afraid.'

  I named the sum at random. I had no idea what we would need.

  Balbus later said to me, 'I backed you the way I corner wheat when my agents get the first rumours of a bad harvest.'

  That is how money works, like all mysteries, through its initiates.

  * * *

  But not only Balbus saved me in this crisis, producing magic credit which enabled Agrippa to raise more troops, enabled me also to send out scores of agents into Antony's camp; Antony himself misplayed his hand.

  He was in Rome a fortnight after I left the city. He left most of his troops at Tibur, but his bodyguard was still strong enough to overawe and frighten the disaffected. His temper was high, he arrived in liquor and stayed half-drunk for four days. He called a meeting of the Senate for the twenty-fourth, but failed to attend himself. Cicero (and others) let it be known that the consul was too drunk to be seen in public. As if that ever stopped Antony! I had better reason to know what prevented him. On the same day as he entered Rome my agents distributed leaflets among the men of the Martian legion; not only leaflets, as you may imagine. Maco himself had approached their camp and sought out old comrades among Antony's centurions. He dealt out gold and golden promises. Would they fight against Caesar's son? he asked those veterans of the Gallic War. Could they live with themselves if they destroyed their master's heir? He touched their hearts; he fed their appetites. The Martian legion declared for me and shut themselves up in Alba Fucens. With one stroke, while Antony dined in Rome, I had retrieved what seemed lost less than two weeks before.

  My position was still dangerous. All that year I diced with death and dishonour - which was worse. (Remember, my sons, that your actions must always be such as will permit you to live with self-approbation.) Antony let everyone know - he shouted it to the rooftops - that I had been guilty of what he chose to call illegality. I was innocent, for legality was nowhere to be found that year. Legality rests on the point of the sword; when swords are raised against each other, legality floats into the heavens to await the decision of the Gods. If no one can enforce the laws, all strong men assume the right to do so. It is inevitable. Antony however played high; I admired him for that. On the twenty-eighth the Senate at last met. His creature, Q. Rufius Calenus, was ready to bring in a bill denouncing me as a public enemy. Caesar himself had been so denounced - and had scattered his accusers before him. Conscious of the rediscovered loyalty of the Martian legion, of the success Agrippa was meeting in recruitment, I could afford to regard the threat with equanimity.

  Then Antony's nerve failed him. He dared not press the charge against me. That was prudent, for my agents were doing their work among his legions. They played on their natural reluctance to take up arms against me. Caesar, Caesar, Caesar . . . the magic word ran round the camp till Antony pressed his fingers in his ears against it. Yet he too was caught; he too aspired to share Caesar's legacy; he himself depended on my father's glory. We were linked in a dance to a ghostly tune.

  He marched against Decimus Brutus, determined to dislodge him from Cisalpine Gaul. I sighed in relief; he had turned to his true work. Meanwhile the IVth legion followed the example of the Martian and crossed to my side. I had got myself the most formidable army in Italy: five legions, two o
f Campanian veterans and one recruited in Etruria by Agrippa, as well as the IVth and the Martian. Now, with deliberation, hoping to avoid battle, ready to make a show of it, I marched northward, in Antony's wake.

  It was blue-cold in the mountains, a biting north wind. For a few days I felt I had no control over this force which I had called into being, and which was growing every day. (Two more legions were on their way to join me from Macedonia.) I caught a chill, fell into fever, was carried two days in a litter over the mountains, lay sweating and shivering in a mountain hut, while my disordered mind replayed the events of the last half-year. Yet, even so deranged by wild fancies and feverish dreams, I never doubted my future. The star I had seen rise over the mountains of Illyria beckoned me on. No man can hope to triumph unless he is willing to be the instrument of the divine powers that shape this world. Julius appeared to me in delirium, in a bloody and torn toga. He urged me on, applauded what I had achieved, and commended my decision (which Agrippa had so fiercely opposed) to acquiesce in the election of his vilest assassin, Casca, to the tribunate. 'Revenge is a meal to be eaten cold.' Casca's hour would strike when he felt more secure.

  * * *

  In Rome, as one year passed into another, Cicero addressed the Senate, unwearied. The body of his speech was devoted to my praise. The honey with which I had coated his vanity was well worth what it cost me.

  'I know intimately the young man's every feeling,' he said, lying. 'Nothing is dearer to him than the Free State, nothing has more weight with him than your influence, nothing is more desired by him than the good opinion of virtuous men, nothing more delightful to him than true glory ... I will venture even to pledge my word that Gaius Caesar will always be as loyal a citizen as he is to-day, and as our most fervent wishes and prayers desire.'

  In the midst of his self-deception he spoke truth. I have always been a loyal citizen.

  Cicero had lost all the discretion with which he had guarded his person for the last fifty years. He upbraided Antony in language that only victory could justify. He spoke warmly of me, but his praise was as insincere as his invective was heart-felt. My own heart responded less than it would now - youth is more impervious to approbation, which it takes as its due, than old age is - and my mind stood detached. But what Cicero said worked. The Senate clamoured to be permitted to honour me. They babbled in echo of Cicero: 'What godlike youth has come to save the Republic!' Maecenas said to me: 'There's not a man there would not slit your throat with a smile on his face.' I played my hand on his. They voted me a senator. (It is therefore, my sons, now forty years that I have been a member of the Conscript Fathers, the most noble assembly in the history of the world, even if its conduct and collective wisdom sometimes fall short of what they should be; never neglect to honour the Senate.) They associated me with the consuls Hirtius and Pansa in command of the army against Antony; they granted me the imperium of a pro-praetor.

  'So far, so good,' Maecenas said. 'We are no longer adventurers, my dear.' He poured me a cup of wine - I added water. 'Let us drink to what we have been.'

  'Let us drink rather to where we have arrived,' I said.

  Agrippa raised his goblet: 'The future'.

  ('Oh dear,' Maecenas sighed, 'crowsfeet, the failure of performance before the death of desire, yes, ducky, the future.')

  'To our glorious leader', said P. Salvidienus Rufus. Is it hindsight that lets me believe I cast him a look pregnant with scepticism and irony?

  * * *

  Antony sent me a letter:

  Octavius: what fool's game are you playing? I don't know whether to be more amazed by your rash folly or by your ability to persuade these deluded half-witted soldiers to follow you. I don't ask for gratitude, but I must point out to you that you have chosen to associate yourself with those who murdered Julius (whom you now call your father) in the vilest way imaginable, against me, who served Julius loyally and serve his memory and his cause still. Don't you realize, you poor boy, that your new chums are as twisted as a dragon's tail? They approached Caesar pretending to be friends; I have held his blood-stained toga in my hand. Some of them owed everything, including their lives, to Caesar. Yet they did for him. They owe nothing to you. What sort of fate do you imagine they are cooking up? Haven't you heard what the old verbal balloon Cicero is crowing? The kid must be flattered, decorated . . . and bumped off? And I hear you address that old goat as Father too, you must be out of your mind. If you don't get yourself out of that galley bloody well straightaway, I'll think you a half-wit yourself and will offer thanks to Mars and Bacchus that I had sense enough to have nothing to do with you. But if you do get shot of them and bring your legions back to me, I'll see you're all right. As it is, laddie, you're in the minestrone, and it's beginning to bubble.

  'In character,' I said, 'spluttering, bombastic and on edge.' 'What'll you say to him?' 'Oh, I shan't reply.'

  * * *

  War engages the full faculties of man, but in memory only odd discordant moments emerge. Of that sharp scrambling campaign to which historians give the name Mutina, I remember very little. Decimus Brutus was shut up in the town. He sent us news, by carrier-pigeon, that his garrison was near exhaustion ... it behoved us therefore to force the passes to relieve him. Hirtius and Pansa met me to dictate the strategy; I listened, impressed by neither. I had only one fear and generals could not alleviate it. I therefore called Maco to my tent. I gave him wine, to set him at ease and persuade him to speak the truth, not what he thought I might wish to hear.

  'We have come a long way,' I said, 'in a short time, and I don't suppose either of us thought it would come to this.'

  'No sir, can't say as I did, sir.'

  'This army, these allies, they must seem an odd mixture to a veteran like yourself. You can't have bargained for it.' 'Well, no, sir.'

  I drew my fur cloak about me. The candle sputtered in a gust of wind. A screech-owl cried out, hunting in the valley.

  'That cloak, sir,' Maco said, 'pardon my asking, was it his ... ?'

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He put out his hand and touched it. 'Do you mind, sir? I remember him wearing it, that dawn we crossed the river into Italy. You've heard tell of that morning, I'm sure, sir, how we were drawn down to the river bank by this figure that was piping. Some said it was the God Pan, sir. I wouldn't know. I just know we felt - well - obliged somehow. Sir.'

  His hand rested on the cloak. 'Sit down,' I said, 'and have some wine ... tell me, Maco, how do the men feel about our friends . . . and enemy?'

  'Some of them trust you, sir. We're none of us that happy, but that's not exactly because of just who they each are. Fact is, sir, we none of us like fighting fellow-citizens. Well, you never know which old mates may be marking you in the other side's line-up. Mind you, if it was my brother-in-law I wouldn't mind taking a swing at him. Proper little bugger he is, sir, if you don't mind me saying so, excuse my language.

  But in general, sir, it's awkward and makes the men uneasy. Himself understood that, sir. He knew it wasn't like lining us up against Gauls. The more of those painted buggers you can bump off, the better, but fellow-citizens, that's a different kettle of fish.'

  'And when my father's legions are on either side?'

  'Well, sir, we don't like it. But then you know, there's the other side of the coin. The obverse, they call it, don't they? Antony's boys are going to feel the same way. They're not going to be clapping their tiny hands with glee to be lined up against us. And don't forget, sir, they know who you are, they know you're Himself s son.'

  'I hadn't thought of that,' I said. 'So what would you recommend?'

  'Well, discretion, sir, but not despair, and be bloody sure to let the other chaps know who we are. Let them bump off your allies, right lot of treacherous and degenerate sods, if you don't mind my saying so. What we want, sir, is a cushy billet and the fruits of victory.'

  And that is just what I contrived to get us. I was therefore able to bear with absolute equanimity the reports spread by many old
Pompeians that I had shown the white feather during the battles. My men knew just what colour of feather we had sported. Maco told me they were saying they'd got a proper card running things now, chip off the old marble block, sir. Even Agrippa admitted I'd made a good impression on the troops. Antony was driven over the Alps. I was master of Italy, for the Gods willed that both Hirtius and Pansa should be killed. Neither had been of much account, but their departure certainly cleared the air and opened an avenue to power.

  * * *

  1 wrote formally to the Senate requesting that they appoint me consul in the place of Hirtius or Pansa. I informed them of what I had achieved for the Republic. I scrupled to point out that I commanded the only army south of the Alps.