Octavian had already recruited three thousand veterans of Caesar in Campania. This private army was illegal but that did not stop the young man whose name was now Caesar. Years later, Octavian boasted of his action, which he brilliantly rebranded as a way of saving the Republic:
At the age of nineteen I raised an army at my private initiative and private expense by means of which I set free the Republic that had been oppressed by the unrestricted power of a political faction.
In November, Octavian marched his new army to Rome but quickly left again as Antony approached. After regrouping, Octavian learned that two of the Macedonian legions had mutinied and would now join him. They were veterans, which made them valuable. Many of the legions of this period were inexperienced or undersized. Octavian mustered his army in a hill town in Central Italy. He promptly paid each man 500 denarii and promised them much more if they defeated Antony—an additional 5,000 denarii each, almost as much as Caesar had paid his men at his Triple Triumph in 46 B.C.
Decimus was bold, courageous, and stubborn. From his base in northern Italy he jeopardized Rome. Both Antony and Octavian knew it and they both courted Decimus. Either would be a dubious ally but Decimus chose Octavian, no doubt because the youth seemed less threatening than a senior leader like Antony. Cicero championed this course, risky though it was. Besides, Octavian was a very good salesman. And so Decimus stayed and fought, although many considered that a fool’s errand. Behind the heroics of Cicero’s Philippics lay a leap in the dark.
Antony now marched his men, including the remaining Macedonian legions, to Italian Gaul. He made a similar promise of booty in the event of victory. First, he had to deal with Decimus. It was late November in 44 B.C. Antony could count on four veteran legions as well as bodyguards, auxiliaries, and new recruits. In December, he demanded that Decimus surrender his province but Decimus refused. Cicero and other senators wrote to Decimus from Rome and urged him to resist. Finally, on December 20, Cicero managed to get the Senate to decree that Decimus and all governors should keep their provinces. The Senate sent ambassadors to Antony to negotiate his withdrawal from the province but he refused. Instead, he made ready for war with Decimus.
Safe in Greece, Brutus was not impressed—he feared Octavian, as he said, and he refused Cicero’s requests to come to Decimus’s aid with troops from Macedonia. Sextus Pompey also declined to come to Decimus’s aid, saying he didn’t want “to offend” Caesar’s veterans by the presence of their old enemy’s son. The smart money, in short, was on getting out of Italy. But Decimus stayed. If he wanted to be a leading figure in Rome he had no choice. Sextus Pompey had a base in Hispania and was able to find a second one in Sicily. Brutus and Cassius had long histories in the Roman East. Decimus had spent his career in Gaul and so it made sense to stay there. The rewards of victory south of the Alps were so great that he preferred to stay there and fight. There would be time later, if need be, to cross the Alps and seek refuge in his former province.
He went to Mutina (modern Modena), a wealthy agricultural city in the Padus (Po) River Valley of Italian Gaul. He occupied the place, closed the gates, confiscated the property of the inhabitants, slaughtered and salted all his transport cattle, and generally prepared for a long siege.
By now, Decimus had raised a third legion, but they were new recruits and inexperienced. He could put more trust in his gladiators. Like several other commanders of this era of civil war, Decimus used gladiators for his bodyguard. They replaced or formed a large part of the Roman general’s traditional bodyguard, the 500-man-strong praetorian cohort. Appian says that Decimus had “a large number of gladiators” with him in Mutina. Perhaps they—or at least some of them—were the same gladiators who had been with him on the Ides of March.
In December, Antony laid siege to the city. Decimus’s forces were no match for Antony, who would soon have six legions as well as a praetorian cohort and cavalry. Antony surrounded the city with a wall. It was like Caesar’s siege of Alesia, except that this time, the two generals who had served Caesar there were on opposite sides. In a poignant moment in Rome the next month, Decimus’s wife, Valeria Paula, asked Cicero to include her letter with his next one to her husband.
In January 43 B.C., things moved rapidly. There were two new consuls, Hirtius and Pansa. Although friends of Caesar, they were political moderates with respect for the Republic. Like Cicero, they had decided to throw in their lot with Octavian. The hope was that they could keep the young man under control. The Senate demanded that Antony withdraw from Italian Gaul; they gave Octavian the rank of substitute high official (proprietor) and sent him along with the consul Hirtius to help Decimus. The three men had seven legions among them.
While a private citizen Octavian raised an army. That was illegal but the Senate dealt with that by giving him a public office. Yet Octavian was not fooled. He knew that the Senate was using him only until Antony was defeated.
In February 43 B.C., news arrived in Rome from Asia that Dolabella had executed Trebonius the month before. Few people changed sides as often as Dolabella. A follower of Caesar in 45 B.C., he supported the assassins after the Ides of March but then turned against them. Now Dolabella killed Trebonius in Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey) and placed his head in the marketplace at the foot of a statue of Caesar. Trebonius had told Cicero that he was proud of his part in the death of Caesar but now he had to pay for it. He was the first of Caesar’s assassins to die. The Senate condemned Dolabella and named him an enemy of the state.
Like Decimus, Trebonius had been part of Caesar’s old guard and yet he had turned on his chief. He was enough of an old Roman that, like Cicero, with whom he corresponded, Trebonius couldn’t bear Caesar’s violence to the republican form of government and to the honor and power that senators like him possessed. On the Ides of March he had played the vital role of detaining Antony.
Back in Italy, Decimus became something of a legend for his masterful control of his army during the siege of Mutina. He and his allies carried out several grand gestures. Before Antony shut off the city he sent in spies to try to corrupt Decimus’s soldiers, but Decimus suspected this and managed to smoke them out. After Hirtius and Octavian approached Mutina, they made their presence known to Decimus by sending divers to swim across the river at night with messages on rolled-up lead tablets attached to their arms. Decimus got the messages and sent one back; the two sides continued to communicate this way. Hirtius and Decimus also communicated by carrier pigeon. In February, Decimus got word that a certain senator in Mutina had defected to Antony. Decimus magnanimously sent the man his baggage. This gesture supposedly convinced some of the neighboring towns supporting Antony to switch sides.
The main problem for the men in Mutina was food. At one point Decimus’s allies managed to float salt and sheep down the river to a place where they could be brought into the city undetected, but this was a one-time measure. Conditions in Mutina were, in general, dreadful. The remarkable thing is that nobody opened the city gates to Antony. That is surely a tribute both to Decimus’s vigilance and to his skill as a leader of men. He evoked loyalty, either to himself or to the cause, or both.
The fate of Mutina was decided in April 43 B.C. On April 14, Antony defeated the consul Pansa at the battle of Forum Gallorum (“Forum of the Gauls”), a small place on the Via Aemilia, the Roman road that ran from the Adriatic coast northwestward to Placentia (modern Piacenza) on the River Padus. If Appian is right about the battle, the veterans slammed into each other in silence, where they fought locked together like wrestlers. Galba, one of Caesar’s assassins and formerly a legionary commander in Gaul, commanded one of Pansa’s legions. Galba sent Cicero a memorable account of the fierce fighting where he was in the thick of things and barely escaped being killed mistakenly by his own men. This would not have surprised any reader of Caesar’s Commentaries, which chronicle Galba’s military missteps in Gaul.
Pansa was not as lucky and received a mortal wound. Still, Antony had no chance to savor his victory
. Reinforcements led by the other consul, Hirtius, arrived later in the day and crushed Antony’s troops, forcing him to retreat. A week later, on April 21, a second battle took place outside Mutina. Octavian was now present with his legions to reinforce Hirtius. Decimus too participated in the battle by sallying out from the city with at least some of his men. Mutina was free. Ironically, it was Decimus’s birthday.
The combined forces defeated Antony but at the cost of Hirtius’s life. Octavian survived. Antony claimed that Octavian ran from the battlefield at Forum Gallorum and lost his military cloak and his horse—to the Romans, a disgrace. Whether that was true or not, it appears that the sources agreed that Octavian was a hero at the second battle at Mutina. When the eagle-bearer of his legion received a bad wound, Octavian shouldered the eagle and carried it himself for a while.
Another fallen soldier at Mutina was Pontius Aquila, Decimus’s lieutenant. Earlier, when the city was still under siege, Pontius was in northwestern Italy, where he defeated one of Antony’s lieutenants. He came back to Mutina to fight. It was the end of a courageous man. Pontius was the second assassin of Caesar to die. As People’s Tribune in 45 B.C., he had defied Caesar during his triumphal reentry to Rome. Cicero moved successfully that a statue be erected in Pontius’s honor.
Although he had lost the battle, Antony still had most of his forces intact. He decided on an orderly retreat westward to meet up with his allies elsewhere in northern Italy and his potential allies over the Alps in Gaul. Lepidus was governor of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Hispania, Plancus was governor of Gallia Comata, and Pollio was governor of Further Hispania, with many legions among them. All had promised to support Decimus and the Senate, but all had been supporters of Caesar and none could be trusted not to switch to Antony.
Antony began his march almost immediately, on April 22. Decimus prepared to pursue him but his army was weak and depleted in numbers. He had no cavalry or pack animals. What he did have, however, was some of Hirtius’s and Pansa’s newly recruited legions; Octavian kept the rest, plus his veterans. Decimus had political capital, too, for what it was worth—the enthusiastic support of the Senate. It named Antony and his allies as public enemies.
HIS FATHER’S MURDERER
Octavian was a question mark. The death of Hirtius and Pansa, the two consuls, left him great freedom as a commander. It was a boon for his career but a blow for the republican form of government. The question was, how big a blow?
Now free from the siege, Decimus met with Octavian. It would be hard to imagine a less comfortable encounter. Two years earlier Decimus and Octavian had ridden together in Caesar’s victorious entourage. Since then, Decimus had become Caesar’s murderer while Octavian had become Caesar’s son. Now, according to Appian, Decimus tried to smooth the way by sending word to Octavian before the meeting. An evil spirit, said Decimus, had deceived him; others had led him into the conspiracy. The report is plausible but can’t be trusted because Appian also states that Octavian refused to meet Decimus—which was untrue—saying that it was unnatural for him even to look at his father’s murderer, let alone hold a conversation with him.
However Octavian might have felt about Decimus’s betrayal of Caesar, Octavian received him anyhow—and Octavian was more than civil. In a letter to Cicero on May 9, 43 B.C., Decimus states plainly that he met with Octavian and came away trusting him, although he hadn’t trusted Octavian before. Decimus told Octavian that he planned to cross the Apennines to pursue Antony and urged him to do the same, but Octavian refused to commit himself. He also refused to turn over the dead consuls’ legions that he still commanded.
Decimus was a powerful person, and Octavian wanted to be a player, so it makes sense that Octavian behaved as he did. It also makes sense that he later denied that the meeting ever happened. That is surely the reason why Appian states this denial as fact. Octavian did not agree to help Decimus against Antony because it served Octavian’s purpose to wound Antony but no more. Octavian did not want to help Decimus win.
A letter of Decimus to Cicero on May 5, 43 B.C. tells the tale. Decimus expressed frustration at Octavian’s inaction:
If Caesar [Octavian] had listened to me and crossed the Apennines, I would have forced Antony into such dire straits that he would have been destroyed by lack of supplies rather than by iron. But Caesar cannot be ordered about, nor can he get his own army to obey his orders—both of which are very bad things.
Better for Decimus to blame Octavian than himself. Proud Decimus was not the sort of man ever to blame himself.
Decimus worried about Octavian’s loyalty. He wrote to Cicero at the end of May with a report that the young man’s veterans were cursing Cicero and urging their commander to force him to give them a better deal. Decimus also wrote that Octavian had gotten wind of a remark by Cicero that angered him. Supposedly, Cicero had said “the young man should be complimented, honored and lifted up—and out.” Octavian had no intention of being forced out of power.
Decimus was right to worry. Far from helping Decimus destroy Antony, Octavian adopted a position of neutrality. Was he thinking of changing sides and joining Antony? That would have been a cold-blooded move but it suited an unfeeling era. Even Shakespeare’s hero, Brutus, was a serial betrayer—of his father’s memory; his chief, Pompey; his uncle, Cato; and his patron, Caesar. Besides, the Senate had made its opinion of Octavian clear. Not only did it refuse to grant him equal power or honor to Decimus, but it also cut the payments it had promised to Octavian’s troops. Decimus was voted a triumph while Octavian had to settle for the lesser distinction of an ovation. Decimus was put in charge of the war against Antony and given the dead consuls’ troops. But Octavian had no intention of dancing to the Senate’s tune.
Octavian knew that as soon as the threat of Antony was removed, the Senate would drop him altogether. Although it was risky for him to support Antony, it was certain failure to continue supporting the Senate. And so Octavian stayed out of the fight against Antony and contemplated a change of course. Like Caesar before him, he savored risk.
In early May, three legions recruited in Central Italy by one of Antony’s associates joined Antony in northwestern Italy, not far from today’s Genoa. Antony and Decimus each now had seven legions, but Antony’s were veterans and he had five thousand cavalry to boot. Decimus could not compete, especially because he had run out of money. He wrote Cicero that, to feed his troops he spent not only his own fortune but asked his friends to lend him money.
Cicero was not impressed. He criticized Decimus for failing to pursue a wounded enemy and letting Antony escape. That hardly seems fair, not with Decimus’s troops exhausted and inexperienced and with him lacking cavalry and pack animals, and not with Octavian refusing to fight further against Antony.
Antony planned to cross the Alps, after which, as Decimus feared, he would join forces with Lepidus and Pollio—a prospect that Lepidus vehemently denied, not that Decimus believed him. He thought that Lepidus was unreliable.
Another man might have given up the chase, but not Decimus. He was very ambitious and he wanted nothing less than to rid himself of his greatest military threat in Italy—that is, to rid himself of Antony. At stake was the future of Italy. Defeat Antony and the Senate would rule Rome again and Decimus would be a prince of the Senate.
Decimus knew that the only way to defeat Antony was to cross the Alps himself and to meet up with the forces of Plancus in Gallia Comata. Plancus had four legions and allied cavalry but Decimus and Plancus could not defeat the combined forces of Antony and Lepidus. Still, Decimus plunged ahead, reckless and fearless, just as Caesar might have done. Decimus did not lack self-confidence. Gaul was his comfort zone, the area of his past military triumphs. So he took a pass through the Graian Alps (today’s Little St. Bernard Pass), somehow coming up with the money for the tolls demanded by the local inhabitants.
Decimus might also have expected to find native allies in Gaul. Around June 10, he met Plancus at Cularo (Grenoble), a town of the Allob
rogian Gauls—the same tribe that had allied with Catiline twenty years earlier. Decimus’s mother, Sempronia, had opened her house to a group of Allobroges during the revolutionary days of 63 B.C. Decimus was in contact with the Allobroges so he might have had reason to think they could provide men, money, and supplies.
Although Decimus and Plancus had a large number of troops—but few veterans—bad news from southern Gaul kept them from acting and surely discouraged any Allobrogian support, if that had ever been possible. Antony had arrived in Narbonese Gaul (modern Provence) in mid-May. He borrowed several leaves from Caesar’s book by camping near Lepidus’s army, allowing the men to fraternize, and growing a beard in mourning for his fallen men—all ploys that Caesar had used. Lepidus’s men were charmed and defected as a group, and Lepidus soon followed. On May 29, the two armies were one.
They had as many legions as Decimus and Plancus, more veterans, more cavalry, and better equipment. Cicero asked Brutus and Cassius to send help to Decimus but none came. For more than two months, the armies of Decimus and Plancus stayed put. Then, disaster struck.
At the end of August, first Pollio and then Plancus deserted Decimus, announcing for Antony. By then, a revolution had shaken Rome.
12
VENGEANCE
IN SUMMER 43 B.C. WHILE Decimus camped west of Gaul’s Alps and trained his men to work with Plancus’s troops, he was suddenly outflanked. Antony and Lepidus had just combined forces. Beyond the Alps, in Rome, an even more dangerous beast was stirring.
Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827) Page 22
