Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827)

by Strauss, Barry

  LOOK EASTWARD

  After Brutus and Cassius left Italy in August 44 B.C., only scattered reports of their activity reached the capital. Like a spymaster, Servilia sat in Rome and dished out news from the East. In October 44 B.C., she received a slave of Caecilius Bassus, the rebel governor of Syria. The slave told her that the legions in Alexandria were rioting, Bassus had been summoned, and meanwhile, Cassius was due to arrive in Syria. She was expecting a secret visit from Marcus Scaptius, who was Brutus’s long-standing agent in the East. When Servilia passed on the information to Cicero, he wrote to Atticus with a mix of excitement about the progress in the East and worry about the “villainy and madness” of Antony and his followers in the West.

  Meanwhile, Brutus was building up his power from a base in Athens. He was hailed as a hero there and his statue was put up next to the statues of famous Athenian tyrant slayers. He gathered supporters and potential officers, and made deals and threats. He talked his way into control of the provinces of Macedonia (roughly northern and central Greece as well as parts of Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and Illyricum (roughly modern Albania and much of the former Yugoslavia). He was a usurper at first with no legal authority until February 43 B.C., when the Senate confirmed him as legitimate governor of these provinces. Brutus captured Mark Antony’s brother, Gaius Antonius, who was supposed to be governor of Macedonia. Brutus was careful to treat Gaius Antonius well. Unlike Cicero, Brutus still hoped that it would be possible to reach agreement with Mark Antony, a follower of Caesar but a moderate. He had no faith in Octavian and he took Cicero to task for trusting him. “I only wish you could see how much I fear him!” Brutus wrote of Octavian to Cicero.

  Cassius, for his part, was even busier. By late February 43 B.C., the news reached Rome that he had taken over Syria as well as legions stationed there and nearby. Again, Cassius acted without legal authority.

  From her base in Egypt, Cleopatra watched with concern. Caesar had left four legions in Egypt, and both Dolabella and Cassius asked for them. The queen chose Dolabella and sent the legions, but Cassius captured them en route to Syria. He put together a twelve-legion army and defeated Dolabella, who committed suicide.

  But Cleopatra was not done. She decided to help the opponents of Brutus and Cassius, opponents who were then in western Greece. She equipped a fleet and took command of it herself, making her a female admiral like Artemisia of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey), who had fought at the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. or the pirate queen Teuta of Illyria (modern Montenegro and Albania), who battled the Romans in the 220s B.C. Cassius sent another supporter of the assassins, Murcus, to ambush Cleopatra off southern Greece, but the Egyptian fleet never got that far. A storm off Libya damaged it so badly that it had to turn back. Cleopatra herself had a bad case of seasickness. Cassius considered invading Egypt until Brutus reminded him that they needed to save their resources.

  From their base in the East, Brutus and Cassius put together the components of a Mediterranean-wide strategy. They would win by fighting the war in the empire, not in Rome or Italy. That had been Pompey’s strategy against Caesar and now they returned to it. Either they felt confident that this time things would be different or they accepted Pompey’s strategy as the best among several bad alternatives.

  In April 43 B.C., after the victory at Mutina, the Senate entrusted the Republic’s fate to three commanders in addition to Decimus. They confirmed Brutus as governor of Macedonia, Cassius as governor of Syria, and Sextus Pompey as admiral of the fleet.

  Cassius was a better strategist than Decimus. He planned to build up an army and navy in the east and to combine it with Sextus’s naval forces in the west. By the summer of 43 B.C., Sextus moved his base to Sicily.

  Sextus Pompey brought sea power. That was immensely useful but not decisive. As in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, so in the new struggle, strategists hoped to strangle the enemy by sea. They meant to cut off the enemy’s supplies of food and to cripple his transport of men. But with roads available along most of the coastline, a determined and supple enemy could travel overland. Sea power alone could not win the war; it would take an army to deliver the decisive blow. Cassius knew that, and he and Brutus worked mightily to build one.

  Brutus had no time to stop, even for grief. In the summer of 43 B.C., Porcia died after an illness; the details are unknown. She was in Italy, Brutus was in Greece, and the two had no chance for a last farewell. Cicero wrote a mourning Brutus to be strong. His country needed him, said the orator: “Not only your army but all citizens and nearly all people have their eyes on you.”

  Brutus was active in Thrace (modern Bulgaria) and western Anatolia. Deiotarus sent him troops. Brutus extorted money here and there, winning a minor victory over a Thracian tribe, which earned him an acclamation as imperator by his troops. He put the title on his official statements and his coins.

  Like a lioness, Servilia defended Brutus’s and Cassius’s interests in Rome while they were away. Or like a senator, since Servilia ran her family conferences like a Senate meeting. On July 25, 43 B.C., she convened a meeting at one of her houses. Cicero was there as well as Casca and Labeo, two of the assassins on the Ides, and Marcus Scaptius, Brutus’s agent in the east, first in 50 B.C. and now again. Servilia asked if they should send for Brutus now or tell him to stay where he was. Send for him now, said Cicero, but Brutus stayed put. Servilia no doubt kept Brutus informed about the meeting, as she did about her grandchildren. That same summer, Cicero spoke up in the Senate for them, the children of Lepidus, who was married to another one of Servilia’s daughters. Now that Lepidus had defected to Antony, Brutus worried about the children as well as their mother and Servilia.

  Servilia worried in turn about Brutus and her son-in-law Cassius but they were doing well on their own. Most of the Roman commanders of the East came over to them. Some of those commanders were convinced opponents of Caesar or believers in the Republic, some were repelled by the brutal methods that Antony and Octavian would each soon employ. Some reasoned that anyone who managed to kill Caesar was an effective soldier indeed—and they wanted to be on the winning side. And some liked the jingle of the assassins’ money.

  Meanwhile, in Italy the world was about to turn upside down. Soon it was Servilia who was in danger, not Brutus or Cassius.

  ELECTED BY THE SWORD

  In July 43 B.C., Octavian made his move. He demanded that the Senate give him one of the two vacant consulships. It was a disrespectful demand on the part of a nineteen-year-old, especially since the Senate had already knocked ten years off the minimum age requirement of forty-three for consul and said he could hold the position at age thirty-three. But Octavian did not lack gall. He sent an embassy of soldiers to the Senate but the senators refused his request. As he left the chamber, one of the soldiers retrieved the sword he had left outside and angrily said, “This will make him consul, if you won’t.” And so it did. Octavian crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome, using the same road that Caesar had taken six and a half years earlier. He had eight legions, including new recruits.

  Octavian had himself and his cousin Quintus Pedius named co-consuls. The senators acquiesced and the people held elections to rubber-stamp the choices. Then he had Pedius pass a law to rescind the amnesty for Caesar’s killers. The Lex Pedia, as it was called, set up a special court that promptly condemned the assassins and many of their associates. Even Sextus Pompey, who sympathized with the assassination but had had nothing to do with it, was condemned. Only one judge voted to acquit Brutus. Just like that, the compromise hammered out by the Senate in the days following the Ides of March was abolished.

  When it came to Antony and his allies, however, peace was the order of the day. Octavian lifted the decree outlawing Antony and began negotiations. In September 43 B.C., Antony reentered Italian Gaul with about eighteen or nineteen legions. The next month, Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian met near Bononia (modern Bologna) and formed a triumvirate, a three-man commissio
n with dictatorial powers for five years. They had over forty legions. They divided up the western part of the empire among them, with Antony taking most of Gaul, Lepidus taking Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Hispania, and Octavian taking Sicily, Sardinia, and Roman Africa. They were the supreme authority in the state.

  On November 27, 43 B.C., a law was passed to make the triumvirate legal. If that wasn’t the death notice of the Roman Republic, it was a declaration that only heroic measures could save it.

  Blood, money, and real estate were the first orders of business for the triumvirs. They had no interest in the clemency that, in their judgment, had killed Caesar. Instead, like Sulla, they chose proscription, that is, a purge—the public decree of enemies condemned to death and property confiscation. Three hundred senators and two thousand Roman knights were on the list. One of the senators executed was the judge who had voted to acquit Brutus earlier that year. Gangs of executioners now fanned out in search of loot and bounties. Most of the victims escaped by fleeing Italy but they lost their property nonetheless. It was confiscated and sold. Like so much of Rome’s violent politics in these years, much of the action came down to real estate.

  The proscriptions served several purposes, from settling scores to instilling obedience to the new regime, but the main one was raising money. War was expensive and a new conflict loomed against Brutus, Cassius, and Sextus Pompey. The proscriptions could not raise enough money, though, so the triumvirs instituted new taxes as well.

  The triumvirs also announced their decision to confiscate the land of eighteen of the richest cities of Italy in order to settle their soldiers. For the inhabitants of those towns, it was a virtual declaration of war. For Brutus and Cassius, it was a recruiting tool.

  Caesar’s assassin Galba was one of the senators whose name appeared on the proscription list. We don’t know if he was killed, but in any case he did not survive the wars of these years.

  Servilia fared better. She found asylum with Atticus. The careful Atticus had friends in every faction, and earlier he had helped Antony’s wife, Fulvia. Servilia made it through the storm. Not so Cicero. He was the most famous victim of the terror.

  On December 7, 43 B.C., Cicero was caught trying to escape from his villa on the coast north of Naples to a ship waiting to take him to safety in the East. He could have escaped earlier but he waited too long. Cicero died with dignity and without offering resistance. His head was brought to Rome and nailed to the Speaker’s Platform in the Roman Forum, echoing Marius’s and Sulla’s treatment of their victims. But Cicero’s hands were cut off and displayed as well in vengeance for the bitter denunciations of Antony that he had written in his Philippics. One source claims that Antony’s wife, Fulvia, pulled out Cicero’s tongue and stabbed it with a hairpin.

  Cicero’s death is not just an event in Roman politics but a milestone in Western civilization, of which he is one of the founders. Our purview is narrower; we esteem Cicero as the most famous, the most eloquent, and the most entertaining observer of politics in the age of Caesar. Indeed, no one in all of ancient history has left such a quantity of political commentary. He was also a key actor in the events of 44 B.C. and 43 B.C.

  Cicero survived the Ides of March by twenty months. During that time he became the heart and soul of what might be called the Italy First policy. Others fought for the Republic but they did so from abroad. Not Cicero. He was vigorous and courageous, but he was wrong. Octavian was unreliable. Octavian agreed to proscribe his ally Cicero as a favor to Antony. Antony was unbeatable—not by the scanty forces available to the anti-Caesar faction in Italy. The Republic would be saved from outside Italy or not at all. If not for Cicero, Decimus might have evacuated Italy and any remaining republicans might have evacuated Rome to join the armies in the East. A good general like Decimus could have made a major contribution to the republican cause there.

  After Cicero’s death, a friend of Antony’s was allowed to buy Cicero’s town house on the Palatine Hill on Rome. It was none other than Censorinus, who had tried to save Caesar in the Senate on the Ides of March.

  While Cicero was killed, Caesar’s memory was exalted. The triumvirs passed a law to build a temple and institute the public worship of divus Iulius, the Deified Julius Caesar. Within a few years, when Antony accepted consecration as High Priest of the cult, Caesar’s deification was official. This entitled Octavian to call himself divi filius, the Son of a Man Made God. Acclaimed as an Imperator, Octavian became IMPERATOR CAESAR DIVI FILIUS.

  THE END OF DECIMUS

  Meanwhile, Decimus decided to save his army and join Brutus in Macedonia. The easiest route, through northern Italy, was closed because of the presence of Octavian and his army. Decimus proposed to his men a much more difficult route, a journey through the Alps. His legions immediately deserted—the veterans and auxiliaries went to Antony while the new recruits went home to Italian Gaul and Octavian. After Mutina, we hear nothing more of Decimus’s gladiators but he still had a bodyguard of Gallic horsemen, perhaps dating back to his days as governor of Gaul. He let those who wanted to go home do so with generous pay for their services while he headed for the Rhenus (Rhine) River with three hundred followers. They probably skirted the Iura Mountains to the east and south, reaching the river in the vicinity of today’s Basel, Switzerland. But the sight of the mighty Rhenus frightened most of them away. Decimus was left with only ten men, of whom at least two were Romans.

  Undaunted, Decimus decided to travel through Italian Gaul after all, but in disguise as a Gaul. He knew the language. In hooded coats, breeches, and clogs, he and the non-Gauls among them could look the part. Decimus was not the first Roman to go native, but it was rare to see one in such extreme conditions.

  The desperate men probably retraced their steps toward Vesontio (Besançon, France), and then they possibly took the narrow Jougne Pass through the Iura Mountains from today’s France to Switzerland. This was the territory of the Sequani Gauls. Armed locals policed the pass and collected tolls. Their suspicious eyes noted Decimus and his party and arrested them. Decimus was relieved to learn that their leader was a local bigwig named Camilus. As governor, Decimus had done many a favor for Camilus, so he demanded to be taken to him. Camilus fawned over Decimus, apologizing for the mistaken imprisonment, but he secretly sent word to Antony. There was a reward for capturing Decimus, and besides, Antony, and not the former governor, was the man who mattered now.

  The sources agree that Antony ordered Decimus’s death. They disagree as to how Decimus died. Some say that Camilus carried out the execution while others say that a group of knights sent by Antony did the job. Several sources claim that, at the end, Decimus forgot about his vaunted prowess and started bemoaning his fate. But Decimus was never anything but brave and this sounds like slander put out later by his enemies. In any case, a sword blow to the neck killed Decimus. Camilus sent his head to Antony, who then had it buried. It was about mid-September 43 B.C.

  So died one of the three main conspirators against Julius Caesar. In the last fifteen months of his life, Decimus displayed courage, leadership, determination, energy, and suppleness. He raised new troops and held his army together through a siege. He led his men over the Alps but he could not talk them into trusting their lives to a nearly trackless wilderness. To save the Republic and advance his career, he flouted the law and he was rewarded with the glittering, long-sought prize—a triumph. But he never lived to celebrate it. Had he defeated Antony he would have been one of the very top figures in the Roman state. He would have been the military hero of reestablishing the Republic. For that matter, he would have been in a position to undermine it and make himself the next Caesar, if he so chose.

  Decimus demonstrated a taste for risk taking that would have put Caesar to shame, except that Caesar usually took only carefully calculated risks. By choosing to defend Italian Gaul instead of retreating to Macedonia while there was still time, Decimus took as big a gamble as Caesar did by going into the Senate House without a bodyguard on the Ides
of March. Decimus displayed everything, in short, except strategic caution.

  No doubt Decimus would have preferred a hero’s death in battle to his execution, but on one thing he might have been satisfied. He died on the scene of nearly all his military triumphs—in Gaul.

  THE SINEWS OF WAR

  Money, said Cicero, is “the sinews of war.” He made this remark in his Fifth Philippic, delivered in the Senate on January 1, 43 B.C. It might have served as a mission statement for Brutus and Cassius in the East. They committed themselves to fighting for the freedom of the Roman people, but the people of the empire were another matter. They squeezed the provincials very hard indeed in order to raise money, but they knew as well as anyone that war was expensive.

  At the news from the west, Brutus ordered the execution of his prisoner, Antony’s brother Gaius, in revenge for the deaths of Cicero and Decimus—the latter his kinsman, said Brutus, and the former his friend. As often, Brutus mixed his sentiment with steel and ice; he said that he felt more shame at the cause of Cicero’s death, which he blamed on Roman softness, than he felt grief at the event itself.

  In the spring of 42 B.C., the two leaders attacked various centers of resistance. Cassius made war on the island of Rhodes, a small naval power that had supported Dolabella. After two naval defeats and a threatened siege, some Rhodians opened the gates of their city to the Romans. Cassius had fifty leading men put to death and plundered the town’s gold and silver.

  For his part, Brutus assaulted the cities of Lycia in southwestern Anatolia. He laid siege to the well-fortified city of Xanthus. When the Romans finally broke in, large numbers of citizens preferred suicide to surrender. Plutarch tells a pretty story about how Brutus cried tears over them, but that sounds unlikely. Next, a neighboring city preferred to accept Brutus’s terms and give up all their coin and treasure. Liberty might have been Brutus’s motto, but it meant the free exercise of Rome’s republican government, not freedom for the cities of the empire.