Augustus

by Allan Massie

  Nevertheless, in a way, Octavia came to love him (as in a manner we all did). She said to me, 'He is a great child and so there is a sort of tenderness called forth; it is painful to watch him suffer the consequences of actions which are, I assure you, absolutely spontaneous.' Moreover, their daughter Antonia was a delight to them both, and Octavia, being kind and tactful as she was good and chaste, forebore to raise the matter of the twin children Cleopatra had borne, to whom she had given also the ridiculous names of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene - the sun and moon, I ask you, and even at the time asked myself if Antony had consented to these names; I wouldn't be surprised if he had, for his taste was lamentable.

  In Athens too, thanks to Octavia, they contrived to live, despite his habitual excess, with some decorum and restraint. Why, Antony even spent some time studying philosophy in the schools, though, as Maecenas said, he was probably the last Roman capable of benefiting from their subtle disquisitions.

  Then, as I have told you, Antony without warning sent Octavia back to Rome; for her health, he said. I questioned my sister closely. She was unable to give any other explanation, or perhaps still too loyal to her husband to advance one. Was he unkind to you? I asked. She denied the charge. Antony, she insisted, was a more complicated being than I imagined. I listened to her with great patience seeking understanding, though in fact none knew better than I the contradictions Antony contained. He was not a simple man of action; I knew that. I knew more than that: I knew that men of action, finding it difficult to articulate or order their thoughts, are indeed far more complicated than intellectuals and poets to whom words come easily. They lack the ability to explain themselves, for they have no power of introspection. (For this reason Pompey the Great was an enigma to all; he had no understanding of himself. For this reason too, your father Agrippa has always been harder to know than Maecenas.)

  'Have you quarrelled?' I asked.

  She shook her head. For the first time in my life I found myself unable to converse freely with my sister. I resented the influence Antony still exerted.

  I asked Livia to talk with Octavia, hoping that she might speak more openly to another woman. But Livia failed too. There was some barrier between my wife and sister. Perhaps Octavia was jealous of Livia's influence over me, as I was of Antony's. I consulted my mother. She merely reminded me that she had always opposed the marriage. I felt myself disappointed in my womenfolk. It was a relief when Octavia moved into her own house on the Palatine.

  * * *

  Of course I had agents in Antony's household as he had in mine. The elimination of Pompey and Lepidus made things more difficult between us. More important, Antony's long residence in the East corrupted his intellect; he began to forget that he was a Roman nobleman. Seduced by the absurd flattery of the inhabitants of his provinces, he came to see himself as king. And as a god.

  He broke his word to me. Within months of Octavia's departure, he was again living with Cleopatra.

  I made one more attempt to recall him to his proper path.

  Against my advice he embarked on his long-cherished campaign against Parthia. A better soldier than the wretched millionaire Marcus Crassus, whose legions had been cut to pieces in the desert, he took the northern route through Armenia. His marshal, P. Canidius Crassus, a man of the highest ability and most despicable character, had already subdued the tribes as far north as the fabled Caucasus. In the foothills of Erzerum he mustered a great army of sixteen legions, ten thousand Gallic and Spanish cavalry (whom I had sent to my colleague) and a host of Armenian horse under the native prince Artavasdes. No finer Roman force was ever assembled, and I had stripped my own resources to supply my colleague's needs.

  The first reports that reached us in Rome spoke of triumph. Antony had advanced unchallenged beyond the frontier towards Phraspa, the capital of Media. The city buzzed with rumours of fabulous treasure and unparalleled achievement. Octavia's house was beset every morning by senators anxious to impress with their devotion to her husband. Agrippa was torn between jealousy and apprehension. He longed to achieve such glory himself; his own recent campaigns on our northern frontier seemed mere police work beside Antony's. At the same time he said to me, 'You do realize, don't you, that if Antony brings this off, we've lost the game? Once he's conquered Parthia and has annexed the treasures of that Empire, been given the chance to establish his dominance there, he is going to be absolutely invincible. Why, I tell you, Sulla's return from the war with Mithradates, which I've been reading about, will be absolutely nothing in comparison. And you know how Sulla destroyed Marius and the Popular Party then. He's really outsmarted us, and you were fool enough to send him help. You've dug your own grave, and mine too. Oh,' he went on, talking faster and faster as his excitement rose, 'it's no use you putting on that pussy-cat face of yours, or reminding me, as I see you're just about to, that, in your view, Italy is the key to power. Balls! Marius held Italy too, and look where that got him. Asia is the real key. Whoever holds Asia dominates Rome. Pompey did it too, remember. Well, we've got maybe a year to prepare. I tell you, when Antony comes back in triumph, he'll turn on us. Sure as eggs is eggs. Why, already these bastards in the Senate know which way the wind's blowing. Look at how they're crowding round Octavia and swearing they've always been Antony's men.' He went on in this vein, becoming more and more agitated.

  At last, I said, 'It's a long way across the desert to Phraspa. And I still say, Italy is the bedrock of power. Meanwhile - understand me well, Marcus - we are all delighted by the success of our colleague's campaign so far. He is winning glory and territory for Rome. I shall praise him in the Senate.'

  It was indeed a long way to Phraspa. Moreover, Antony's strategy depended for its success on the trust he had placed in Artavasdes. What a fool! You should no more trust an Oriental than rely on the wind to blow as you wish it to. Naturally, he deserted Antony, and betrayed him. Two legions under Oppius Statianus were cut to pieces. A large part of Antony's supplies was destroyed. Though he struggled on, late in the year, to Phraspa, he lacked the means to reduce the city, and was compelled to withdraw. All through the terrible retreat that followed, the Parthian cavalry snapped like wolves on his flanks. Even Armenia was deemed unsafe; thankfully Antony scrambled back to Syria. Much was later said of his exertions on the march, and I see no reason to disbelieve such accounts, for he was still a brave and resourceful fighting commander. Others however have assured me that the army was in fact only saved by the skill and courage of Canidius. I could not say, for Antony never allowed a full history of the campaign to be published; and it may be that this was indeed impossible, the materials being lost, with the legions I had sent, in the waste of sands.

  Of course reports at Rome for some time stressed the positive side of the campaign. We heard much of his achievement in reaching Phraspa. That aroused enormous wonder. It was only gradually that the reality percolated across the sea, and then I was amused to observe the morning crowds diminish at Octavia's residence.

  Antony wrote to me urgently begging for reinforcements. 'It only requires one more push,' he wrote, 'for the war to be won.' 'For the Gods' sake, kid (I was briefly, in his need, 'kid' to him again) remember what I did for you against Pompey, remember the love I have borne for you, remember Philippi and our common devotion to your father, remember the bond that our beloved Octavia forms between us, and send me twenty thousand men.'

  I replied imploring him to abandon his Parthian plans. 'There is a great desert,' I said, 'lies between the two empires, as you have discovered, my dear colleague and brother, to your cost. The desert ensures that Parthia will never endanger the true interest of Rome. The Republic needs peace. Thank the Gods that you did not incur Crassus' fate (which would have grieved me personally, torn the heart of Octavia, and deprived Rome of her greatest general). Take your honourable defeat as a warning from the Gods, that you should not repeat such rashness.'

  In return he sent me an incoherent outburst, full of insults and threats. ('He must hav
e been drunk to write this nonsense,' I said to Maecenas.) Again he demanded twenty thousand men.

  Agrippa exploded with fury. 'If we had them to spare,' he cried, 'he should not have them. But we need them in Gaul, in Illyricum, on the frontier of the Julian Alps. Caesar, you will not yield to this madness.'

  'Peace, Marcus,' I said.

  Instead, unwilling to give him the curt refusal that his insane and selfish request merited, I despatched seventy ships, as earnest of my good faith, while sending also two thousand crack troops, veterans of my war with Sextus Pompey. Octavia accompanied these men, and I urged her to persuade her husband to see reason.

  Her eyes filled with tears. 'Do you know what you are doing to me?' she asked. 'Do you realize to what you are exposing your sister?'

  I affected not to understand, but when I came to kiss her good-bye, the tenderness of my embrace could not but disclose the pity and guilt which I felt.

  Her husband received her brutally. He was dressed more as an Oriental potentate than a Roman general, and he refused to see her alone. Instead, speaking from a throne of carved ebony, embellished with amethysts, topaz and rubies, he treated her to a long speech of complaint in which he denounced my ingratitude and faithlessness.

  'You were,' he said, 'in our marriage, the mark of my friendship with Caesar. But he himself has torn up that contract. Return to Rome that all the world may see the shameless manner in which he has treated me.'

  Was there ever such despicable behaviour?

  'Our marriage,' he said, 'must be considered at an end.'

  Octavia wept, but tears which would have melted the coldest heart could not unfreeze his demented arrogance.

  When I heard the news I wept too: first for Octavia's shame; second, for the import of Antony's actions. I looked over the city and saw war and pestilence again. My heart ached as with the pain of seeing a boat carry a loved one into the wastes of the grey seas.

  NINE

  It is time now to speak of Cleopatra, and I find it hard to do so. It would be as easy to speak of snakes.

  When I wrote to Antony, rebuking him for resuming his affair with her in breach of his promise to me at the Treaty of Brindisi, he replied with something of his old jocular insincerity. This is what he wrote:

  What on earth has come over you? What if I am sleeping with the Queen? She's my woman. Besides, it's nothing new. The thing started years ago, as you know, nine or ten I daresay. What about you? You're not really faithful to Livia, are you? I bet you're not. My congratulations - or commiserations - if between the time I write this and the time you get it, you haven't been to bed with Tertullia or Terentia or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia - or the whole bloody shooting-match. For heaven's sake, I ask you of all people, does it matter a legionary's oath (and we know what that's worth, don't we?) who or what, with, or where, or when, or how often you do it? Sex, dear boy, can be over-rated, take it from me . . .

  Such a defence was hardly defence at all. But that he should write in such terms to his wife's brother shows his state of mind. That was the effect Cleopatra had.

  She had seduced my father when she was hardly more than a child. He refused to see her when he occupied Egypt because his plans for the kingdom did not include the Ptolemy family. So she had herself delivered to him wrapped up in a carpet. It was unfolded in his presence and all her charms were exposed, because, not unnaturally, though with some art, her scanty costume was agreeably disarranged, and she lay there giggling before him, mischievous as a kitten. (He called her 'kitten'.) Well, you may say - and you would be right - that it was about as difficult to seduce Julius Caesar as it is to eat the first strawberries of the season. Nevertheless, mark the sequel. She not only popped into his bed quicker than boiled asparagus; he popped her on to the throne of Egypt, having her brother (with whom she should have shared the kingdom) disposed of, at her request. What sort of a girl was it who at fourteen would sacrifice her brother for the sake of power? I find that much more remarkable than her ability to fascinate my father.

  It wasn't her beauty. Oh, she was pretty, very pretty, as a young girl; small, sinuous, active, with dancing eyes and mobile features, and a voice that always seemed to be choking back a laugh. They talked Greek of course - you do know that the Egyptian royal family are Greeks, and no more Egyptian than, well, your father Marcus Agrippa, don't you? Her Greek was quaint and provincial - Alexandrian Greeks swallow up consonants and run their words together so that their conversation sounds like the chattering of sparrows under the eaves. She made a great many grammatical mistakes. As you know correct Greek prescribes that neuter plural subjects take singular verbs; Cleopatra ignored this. Of course only a pedant concerns himself with grammatical niceties, and it is quite gentlemanly to make the occasional error. Still, our Roman ladies take pride in speaking correct Latin. Cleopatra didn't care; she disregarded the subjunctive whenever she felt like it, for instance. She never troubled herself, by the way, to learn even a little Latin, for there is no doubt that from the start, despite her affairs with my father and Antony, her hatred and resentment of Rome ran deep.

  Nothing could have been more deliberate than her assault on Antony. Its blatancy surpassed even her first meeting with Julius, which could be explained as a sort of childish prank and had certainly a childish charm. (As he said himself, 'Well, the last thing you expect from a carpet is to unroll a gorgeous piece of that sort of muslin.') I have already quoted to you one version of that encounter. Whose was it? Salvidienus's, I think. It was,

  I suppose, accurate enough. The arrival in the barge made an enormous impression and curiously most versions which I have heard agree. Certainly nobody who saw it forgot. Cleopatra was not really beautiful - her legs were too short for one thing (Livia always used to point that out, and add that, according to her information, she had very thick ankles too). But she was quite amazingly made up; her appearance when she set out to captivate Antony represented a superb triumph of art, if not of nature. Everyone agrees on that. What is often ignored is the extraordinary vulgarity of the spectacle. I admire the theatre myself, and I recognize that theatre is an indispensable part of politics too; but private life should eschew theatre, and, anyway, there should be a measure in all things. I really find it impossible to distinguish between Cleopatra's vulgar exhibitionism and the sort of disgusting spectacle put on for tourists in the red light district of Corinth; the only difference I can discern is that her show cost more. Morally, it was just the same sort of whore-display.

  Antony succumbed of course, for his own taste was ever deficient. He couldn't see how essentially comical the spectacle was - all the more comical because Cleopatra's very real intelligence allowed for a degree of self-parody. She was playing a part. She knew it. And she enjoyed it. She was the kind of woman who cannot help despising the men she deceives and, from that first meeting, she always retained a certain contempt for Antony. She had not despised Julius because she saw that he approached sex in the same spirit of irony as she did herself. Besides, she was then a child; he was the greatest man in the world; it is possible that even Cleopatra was dazzled by him. She did not love him, for that was not her nature. She was incapable of the dependency without which real love is impossible; she could not lose anything of herself in another.

  Antony was a different matter. True, at first he preserved some detachment. When he told me at Brindisi that it was politics - 'politics and sex, boy - she's a great lay, the Queen' - I believe he was speaking the truth. He was overwhelmed in the first days, but his intelligence and will reasserted themselves. The proof of that is that he was able for three years to abide by the agreement we made; in that time he never once saw Cleopatra alone.

  She didn't resent this. Why should she? She was vain (she would spend three hours a day before her looking-glass) and self-absorbed; but she was without that peculiarly feminine emotional vanity which demands a man's total surrender and is piqued when it is refused. You may find this surprising, but I believe it to be true. Their first affa
ir had achieved her purpose. She had guaranteed her continued control of Egypt; she had placed Antony in her debt. Power was her chief interest, not love.

  Yet Antony never quite escaped her. I have talked of this with Octavia. She said, 'Of course I never truly loved Antony. I married him because you asked me to. I could not love him, for I could not respect him. I admired much. Who could fail to? I responded to the grandeur of his gestures. I came close, I confess, to loving the little boy in him; that is something which women find appealing in a man till one day, quite unexpectedly, it revolts us. He was kind to me, and considerate, and gentle; he made love with unexpected gentleness and took pleasure in doing what pleased me. Yet I knew all the time that I never possessed his heart. There was a part in him that always lusted after Cleopatra. Of course, there was another part that was grateful to me for protecting him from the Queen, for I am quite clear that deep down he feared her. What was it he said? "No Roman can stand without Rome." He knew that Cleopatra would lure him to disaster. He knew too that there was something in himself that welcomed that prospect. He feared it. He could never quite deny it. You see, Antony was far more complicated than people realized. They saw the bluff soldier; that was no more than a part of him, perhaps no more than a facade.'