by Jack Lindsay
*
To hell with Fulvia! Antonius was still resentfully shaken by her attitude. The more he considered the situation, the more advisable it appeared to cease fighting. No one would wish to harm him. He had his province of Macedonia for the next two years; surely it was best for the distracted State to have a lull? Only then would the overcharged, yet wearied conflict of forces find a solution. Caesar hadn’t solved the problem; how then was Antonius to do it, with no more lead than the goaded appetite of a fierce-hearted woman? The stout opposition of the senators, whom he had looked on as mere fair-weather politicians, had destroyed his optimism; and how could he lose the memory of Caesar slaughtered by his friends? Never would he lose it. Ah god ...
He forced himself to consider the chances. Say that he threw in his lot with the mob and roused them to final insurrection: what would happen? He would own Rome; but the senators would disperse and patch up treaties with Sextus Pompeius in Spain and Bassus in Syria — the remnants of the Pompeian armies. They would gain the whole of the rich resources of Asia; Africa would join them; the burghers of the Italian communities would be on their side. And even if Antonius started a bloody civil war all over the exhausted empire and won it, what a horrifying prospect. He would rule only as a merciless tyrant; he would have no executive class at his disposal; the Empire would split to pieces. Gaul would revolt; so would Spain; Parthia would invade Asia; the Jews would revolt; Dacians and other savages would come swarming down into Greece; the Germans would move once more ... Every Roman instinct in Antonius shrank from that picture of the dismembered Empire. Yet that was where Fulvia would drive him.
He was in this mood when a slave announced that two messengers from Queen Cleopatra wished to see him. He ceased striding about the room, put down his wet tankard on the top of a priceless citron-table, and, after a moment’s thought, said, “Send them in.” The deputation would at least take his mind away from its doubts; something was wanted by these agile Egyptians, of course; but they’d get nothing.
Sara entered, respectfully making short, ducking bows. Behind him came a youth in long cloak and mitella, bearing a small casket.
Two soldiers guarded them in. “They haven’t been searched,” said one of the soldiers as the group halted before Antonius.
Antonius gave the men a quick look, and grasped the youth. Holding him with an arm round the waist, he pushed him backwards and ran a hand rapidly over his body. The casket dropped on the floor. At the same moment the soldiers grabbed Sara and began searching him.
“It’s all right,” said Antonius, suddenly, dropping the youth, who staggered back, drawing the cloak closer about him. The soldiers left Sara, saluted, and retired from the room. Sara gave Antonius a knowing grin, ducked with another humped bow, and without a word went to the further end of the room, stopping at the curtained doorway through which the soldiers had gone.
“What is the reason for this visit, your Majesty?”
Cleopatra plucked at the string under her chin and lifted off the mitella, a flapped cap which came down over the cheeks. Her golden hair fell in waves on her shoulders. Throwing back her head to remove some stray tresses from her eyes, she approached Antonius.
“I wished to see you, and there was no other way.”
“There was certainly no other way; and if my wife enters, you will perhaps doubt if it was a way at all.”
“Is the consul Marcus Antonius so very much afraid of his wife?”
“He is. Afraid of being unfairly suspected.”
Cleopatra came closer still and spoke quickly. “I want only my dues. You know that Caesar agreed to the legitimisation of his son. He meant to have the legal details finished before he left for Parthia. I want justice, and no one can give it to me but you.”
Antonius was in no mood to be beguiled by a woman. He took up the tankard and drank noisily. Let the fastidious Queen think him a Roman vulgarian, and be damned to her opinion!
“You wish me to bear false witness of some kind, I take it — to please my wife perhaps, since she knows Caesar gave no such instructions.”
“Yet I am speaking the truth, and you know it. He accepted the child as his. He was a just man. He would have completed that acceptance by a legalised statement.”
“Caesar would have done exactly what suited him. But what is it you want me to do?”
“Only one thing can serve now. An adoption of the child by his will — or by a codicil to the will.”
“So it’s forgery you suggest.”
“You have been given the power by the Senate to deal with Caesar’s papers. I suggest that you find among them what Caesar would have wished you to find there.”
“And what do I get? Egypt ... or another bastard that would need legitimisation?”
Cleopatra recoiled at the crudeness of the thrust. She paled and said nothing. Antonius, for all his wish to hurt, was in a fury at himself, but could only bluster on, “And what if someone else was already adopted?”
Having said that, he was in a worse fury for being lured into exposing his own ambitious hope — a hope so much repressed in his heart that he had blurted it thus unexpectedly. Now he would appear utterly ridiculous if Caesar had not adopted him in the will.
Cleopatra said nothing, but he saw from the momentary gleam of her eyes that she had understood. She turned away. Something in the melancholy gesture revealed her beauty, the queenly carriage of her limbs, a powerful grace entirely itself in the moment of resignation. He stepped forward, unwilling that she should go with so bad an impression of his manners, and caught her hands where they were pressed together under her breasts in a fold of the cloak. She tugged her hands away; and the action, throwing her arms up and away suddenly from his grip, lifted the sleeveless sides of her paenula. The loose cloak swung back over her shoulders, hanging only by the section where it was sewn together under her chin.
He saw her glistening body, proudly arching away from him; then, with another single gesture, she stooped, reached up, and drew down the cloak again over her nakedness.
But it was more than Antonius could bear with its suggestions of what she had been willing to offer if he had listened more readily. Half-drunk, full of resentment against Fulvia, regretting his two years of fidelity, he felt a violent desire rise choking in the throat, tearing at his hands so that they closed and unclosed, darkening his eyes so that he could scarcely see. He took her in his arms.
“Let me go,” she said in a tense whisper, commanding, without surprise or anger.
Antonius laughed, a deep throat-laugh, and crushed her back under his embrace. Her body collapsed against his, and he gripped her tightly across the small of the back.
But she spoke again, “Sara,” still hardly raising her voice above a whisper. “Kill him, Sara.”
Antonius looked up to see Sara close beside him, a thin dagger lifted in his hand. He dropped Cleopatra, who fell to the floor, and turned to face Sara, crouching like a wrestler, meaning to catch and break the man’s arm at the first movement.
Cleopatra rose from the floor wearily. “That will do. Come now, Sara.”
Sara grinned, lowered the dagger, and slipped it back into his left sandal, where a groove received its flat blade and handle. Then he humped his back, bowing first to Cleopatra and then to Antonius.
Antonius said nothing. He resisted his first impulse to call in the soldiers and have Sara whipped to death. At all costs Fulvia must hear nothing of what had happened.
Cleopatra tied down the mitella over her hair and wrapped the paenula about her. Then, followed by Sara, she walked from the room, her queenly walk again rousing Antonius against his will to a hungry admiration.
She was gone. Antonius felt the room queerly empty, himself somehow sadly poorer. But, noticing on the floor the small chest which she had carried in order to keep up the pretence of attending Sara, he relieved his feelings by kicking it under the couch. What did she mean by leaving evidence about to awaken the suspicions of Fulvia? Hadn’t he somethi
ng to think about better than Caesar’s numerous bastards?
Edepol! Those days in Gaul had been good. Think of the captive Gaulish women, big-hipped, sulky-mouthed, deep-breasted, their faces buried in a pillow of hair. He had been in Egypt too, in the army of Gabinius, in days when Cleopatra was hardly out of her nursery; and had drunk with flat-bodied Alexandria girls, eyes painted on their nipples; girls with long thin necks and swaying lily-heads, brown heads with square heavy mouths, a marmoset chained to their wrists. God, what a fine world it was. One day he had ridden with Cytheris in a chariot drawn by four tame lions into an Italian town. Ah, the merry eyes of Cytheris, and the gaping country-wives. He had bribed the priests of Venus at Pompeii to let him embrace Cytheris on the very altar of the goddess, and no Venus had appeared in the incense-glowing darkness, unless Cytheris herself had been sufficient Venus. Ah, what a fine world he had abandoned.
And all for Fulvia, for a woman who gave him no peace, mastering him because of the ghosts of Clodius and Curio — the gay adventurous lads who had died under the swords after possessing her — his own wild youth, gone in fretting schemes, in petty hatreds that could lead nowhere.
Miserably he strode up and down the room once more.
*
The dinners of reconciliation took place without much success of amiability. Brutus was suffering; for the wound in Porcia’s thigh had bled badly, and he felt guilty, though she had merely smiled, and said, “Dearest, what does it matter?” Reclining now at the table of Lepidus, he scowled at his half-sister Iunia, who passed in and out and sometimes sat on a chair nearby. Lepidus, though genuinely shocked at Caesar’s death, yet liked to be friendly with all the world and felt uncomfortable in the presence of his gloomy brother-in-law.
“I don’t think you ought to have done it,” he said. “But tears won’t heal a wound that’s a foot deep. Live and let live.”
“You were in a fearful temper,” said Iunia, accusingly.
“Not at all. I simply cursed. Why can’t you sit still, woman? And don’t betray your husband.”
“He said he was going to do awful things to you,” she persisted, turning to Brutus her large, restless, blue eyes.
Brutus frowned. Lepidus reached out for her, and she ran from the room.
“I can’t manage women,” said Lepidus. “I admit it. If I’m strong-handed, they bite me. If I’m kind, they laugh at me. Where’s that woman gone now?”
He rose and hastened to look behind the screen, where Iunia smacked his face. He returned, red-cheeked and grumbling.
“Look here, Brutus, I’ll divorce her, sister or no sister of yours, if ever I find her out again with that waster Vedius.”
“Vedius has sound political views” began Brutus, crumbling a piece of bread.
“Shall I go and pack up now?” called Iunia, from behind the screen.
“You’ll do what you’re told,” replied Lepidus. “Behave yourself. The guests can’t hear themselves talking through all these family scandals.”
Brutus stirred, irritably. As he moved, a sinew in his thigh pulled and snapped, leaving a hot, numbed sensation. A gush of horror came over him: the sinew had snapped in exactly the same place as Porcia had stabbed herself, the place where Brutus had stabbed Caesar. And Porcia had bled again this afternoon, bled under his touch.
“I’ve invited Vedius to dine with us tomorrow,” remarked Iunia, still behind the screen.
*
Cassius was at the house of Antonius. The two men were little acquainted, but had a certain respect for one another as tried soldiers.
“Have you still a dagger under your armpit?” Antonius asked, remembering Sara, and smiling to think how none of those about him could guess his thoughts.
“Of course,” replied Cassius. “For all aspirants to the tyranny. I trust that doesn’t affect you.”
He was feeling as nervous as Brutus, for his arrival home had been greeted by an hysterical outburst from Tertulla. She had called for her jewel-case as soon as Servilia left, and discovered that her pearl was missing; after interrogating the slaves, she had rightly blamed her husband, and waited in a raging temper for his release from the Capitol. He had forgotten all about the pearl, which had dropped from his Toga during the struggle in the Curia; and she refused to listen to his explanations. He must have acted out of malice; what right had he to steal her property? He must have been jealous, listening to the filth of liars; she wouldn’t bear his child; she’d stab herself in the navel with a bodkin and kill the brat.
She had indeed fallen into trembling convulsions, and he feared a miscarriage; but at last she had been carried weeping to bed.
So Cassius did not feel happy; and yet under the influence of the wine and the food he warmed towards Antonius. What a pity he didn’t have such a hearty colleague, though Antonius was a rogue. For a moment the gorge of Cassius rose against all his own convictions, and he wanted to suggest that he and Antonius should join in a coup. The Empire must have its boundaries firmly established; Caesar had been right enough about that. Let Antonius take over the West, while Cassius beat back his old enemies the Parthians. Rome needed a strong hand, a soldier’s.
Then the complete unreason of such a suggestion startled him; he had killed Caesar because he stood for those very aims. And Cassius, feeling press hard upon him the constitutional safeguards and complications that he had fought to preserve, sympathized overwhelmingly for the first and last time with the impatience of Caesar. The old squabbles and rivalries would begin anew, and Cassius would never get the commands that he alone could use adequately. Already routine, the need for legal formulae, had smudged all the clarity of the gesture of the Liberators.
Cassius threw off his emotion, looked on Antonius with hatred and suspicion, and begun to joke and jeer and encourage horseplay around the table.
A thoroughly good fellow, thought Antonius; he’s more dangerous than I realised; he must be watched.
*
Thus a compromise was arranged, and the State restored to its old balance; and the work of Caesar was as if it had never been. For not one member of the governing classes was concerned to break the arranged compromise, not even Antonius, lounging with a wine-cup and bellowing at the jokes of Cassius. Caesar was dead.
VI — WHERE A TESTAMENT IS, THERE MUST ALSO OF NECESSITY BE THE DEATH OF THE TESTATOR
Next day, the 19th, the Senate met again, to confirm Caesar’s provincial appointments and his nominations for the chief offices at Rome for the next two years. The Liberators took their seats, and no one doubted that a stable settlement had at length been found. Nothing remained but to wear out the mob’s lungs; and the last few decades had seen so many passing insurrections that no one now feared the mob’s power to keep shouting beyond a point. The diehards had already decided to move a measure confiscating Caesar’s property; but this was thwarted by Piso, Calpurnia’s father, who suggested that Caesar’s will should be opened and read, and that, since no condemnation had been passed against Caesar, the Senate could not deny him the rights of even the humblest citizen.
But a more contentious point was whether Caesar should have the public funeral usual for an illustrious man. It was hard for the diehards to oppose, since Caesar, though struck down for exercising the powers of his dictatorship, could not be described as having exceeded the powers legally conferred upon him. The inherent contradictions of the amnesty were already appearing.
Cassius, however, strongly opposed the public funeral. In times of disorder nothing must be done to cause unrest; the question of Caesar’s services or disservices to the State did not arise.
It did not suit Antonius for the diehards to have their way wholly; and if he lost his grip on the veterans he would soon find himself jostled out of the area of importance. He consequently delivered a placatory speech, in which he stressed the dilemma of the position. Caesar could not be denied a funeral altogether; that would be as inflammatory an action as naming him tyrant. Yet any funeral he was given would be attende
d by the populace, who would be more riotous if they imagined Caesar was being denied his dues even in death.
Finally, Antonius appealed to Brutus as a man of strong common sense and civic probity. Let Brutus decide.
Brutus declared that it would be unwise to annoy the people with prohibitions needlessly liable to look like insults to Caesar. He agreed with the consul.
Antonius smiled. He had discovered how to defeat Cassius; he had only to appeal to Brutus.
The Senate voted that a public funeral be accorded to Caesar.
*
That afternoon all the relations of Caesar assembled at the house of Antonius. Calpurnia was there with her father; she had not wanted to come but could think of no excuse; she sat with her eyes fixed on the floor and never raised them. The Abbess of the Vestals had been asked to bring the will in person. Antonius refused to touch the will till the assembly was complete; then he asked all present to satisfy themselves as to the state of the bound and sealed tablets; then only did he break the seals and hand the will to a slave, a litteratus, who read out the contents.
Caesar’s three nephews were appointed his heirs. Gaius Octavius was given three-quarters of the property, Pinarius and Pedius were to share the remaining quarter. Provision was made for the birth of a son. (This it was that Calpurnia had been dreading; she was rigid with agony.) Several of the murderers were named as guardians of that unconceived child; Decimus Brutus, Antonius, and others were named as joint-legatees in case one of the nephews was unable to inherit. A vast legacy was left to the people: 300 sesterces to each citizen, and the large garden-estate beyond the Tiber with all its art-collections.
No mention yet of an adoption. Antonius listened with a feeling of heavy sadness. What did it all matter? Life had uttered itself magnificently in Caesar, but that was all over now. That was the real property of Caesar, and how could he bequeath it?
