Antony and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  All Agrippa said in response to the news of his huge job was “As you wish, Caesar.”

  “However,” Octavian went on, “I would humbly ask that you find me a tiny fleet or a couple of legions to command. I want to serve in this war personally. Since I married Livia Drusilla I seem to have lost the asthma entirely, even around horses, so I ought to be able to survive without incurring a new lot of canards about my cowardice.” It was said matter-of-factedly, but a glassy look in his eyes betrayed his determination to scotch the slur of Philippi for good.

  “I had planned to do so anyway, Caesar,” Agrippa said, smiling. “If you have the time, I’d like to discuss war plans.”

  “Livia Drusilla should be here.”

  “I agree. Is she in, or out buying clothes?”

  Octavian’s wife had few faults, but a love of fine clothing was certainly one such. She insisted upon dressing well, had perfect taste, and her jewelry, augmented by her husband regularly, was the envy of every woman in Rome. That the habitually parsimonious Octavian didn’t object to her extravagance lay in the fact that he wanted his wife to be above all others in every way; she must look and conduct herself like an uncrowned queen, thus establishing her ascendancy over other women. One day that would be very important.

  “In, I think.” Octavian clapped his hands and told the man who answered to fetch the lady Livia Drusilla.

  In she came a moment later, clad in floating draperies of a very dark blue, sewn with an occasional sapphire that flashed when light caught it. Her necklace, earrings, and bracelets were of sapphires and pearls, and the buttons that pinched her sleeves together at intervals were also of sapphires and pearls.

  Agrippa blinked, dazzled.

  “Delicious, my dear,” said Octavian, sounding seventy years old; she had that effect on him.

  “Yes, I can’t understand why sapphires are so unpopular,” she said, settling herself in a chair. “I find their darkness subtle.”

  Octavian nodded to the scribes and clerks, lingering with ears flapping. “Go and have lunch, or count the fish in the one pond the Germans haven’t plundered,” he said to them. And to Agrippa, “Oh, not to live behind fortified walls! Tell me that this year I will be able to pull them down, Agrippa!”

  “This year, definitely, Caesar.”

  “Speak, Agrippa.”

  But first Agrippa spread out a big map on the large table that served as a culling area for the myriad papers a busy triumvir collected in the course of his duties: Italia from the Adriatic to the Tuscan Sea, Sicilia, and Africa Province.

  “I’ve just taken a count, and can tell you that we’ll have four hundred and eleven ships,” Agrippa said. “All but a hundred and forty of them are in Portus Julius, ready and waiting.”

  “Antonius’s hundred and twenty plus Octavia’s twenty, in Tarentum,” Octavian said.

  “Exactly. If they were intended to sail through the Straits of Messana, vulnerable, but they won’t go near the Straits. They will take a southward curve and make Sicilian landfall at Pachymus Cape, then creep northward up the coast to attack Syracuse. This fleet goes to Taurus, who will also have four legions of land troops. After he takes Syracuse he’s to set off across the slopes of Aetna, reducing the countryside as he goes, and bring his legions to Messana, where the strongest resistance is bound to be concentrated. But Taurus will need help, both in taking Syracuse and on his land march afterward.” The hazel eyes buried under Agrippa’s jutting forehead gleamed suddenly green. “The most dangerous task of all is a bait consisting of sixty big fives specially chosen to withstand a heavy sea battle—I’d prefer not to lose them, if possible, even though they are a bait. This fleet will sail from Portus Julius through the Straits to reinforce Taurus. Sextus Pompeius will do what he always does—lurk in the Straits. And he’ll pounce on our bait fleet like a lion on a deer. The aim is to keep Sextus’s attention riveted on the Straits and, by inference, Syracuse—why else would a fleet of stout fives be sailing south than to attack Syracuse? With any luck, my own fleet, following behind the bait fleet, will steal a march on Sextus and succeed in landing legions at Mylae.”

  “I’ll command the bait fleet,” Octavian said eagerly. “Give me that task, Agrippa, please! I’ll take Sabinus with me so he won’t feel passed over for an important job.”

  “If you want the bait fleet, Caesar, it’s yours.”

  “Thus far, a two-pronged attack directed at the eastern end of the island,” said Livia Drusilla. “You’ll move from the west toward Messana, Agrippa, while Taurus approaches Messana from the south. But what about the western end of Sicilia?”

  Agrippa’s face took on an unhappy expression. “For that, lady, I am afraid we have to use Marcus Lepidus and some of the too many legions he has accumulated in Africa Province. It’s a short sail from Africa to Lilybaeum and Agrigentum, one better undertaken by Lepidus. Sextus may have his headquarters in Agrigentum, but he won’t linger in that neighborhood with so much going on around Syracuse and Messana.”

  “I never thought he would linger there, but his money vaults will,” Livia Drusilla said, and looked steely. “Whatever we do, we can’t let Lepidus make off with Sextus Pompeius’s hoard. Which he will try to do.”

  “Absolutely,” Octavian said. “Unfortunately he was privy to our dickerings with Antonius, so he knows full well that Agrigentum is vital. And that militarily it’s not a first target. We’ll have to beat Sextus around Messana, separated from Agrigentum by half the island and several mountain ranges. But I see Agrigentum as another bait. Lepidus can’t afford to confine his activities to the western end if he’s to preserve his status as Triumvir and a major contributor to victory. So what he’ll do is garrison Agrigentum with several legions until he can return to empty the vaults. Therefore we don’t let him return.”

  “How do you plan to do that, Caesar?” Agrippa asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. Just take my word for it, that’s what will happen to Lepidus.”

  “I believe you,” said Livia Drusilla, looking smug.

  “And I,” said Agrippa, looking loyal and devoted.

  Unwilling to run the risk of equinoctial gales, Agrippa didn’t mount his attack until early summer, after word had come from Africa and Lepidus that he was ready and would sail on the Ides of Julius. Statilius Taurus, who had by far the longest voyage to make, was to sail from Tarentum fifteen days earlier, on the Kalends, while Octavian, Messala Corvinus, and Sabinus set off from Portus Julius the day before the Ides, and Agrippa, the day after the Ides.

  It had been agreed that Octavian would land in Sicilia just south of the toe of the Italian boot, at Tauromenium, and have the bulk of the legions in his charge; Taurus was to join up with him there after crossing Mount Aetna. Octavian’s friend Messala Corvinus was to march the legions through Lucania to Vibo, from which port they would cross to Tauromenium.

  All of which would have been fine, had it not been for an unseasonal storm that did more damage to Octavian’s bait fleet than Sextus Pompeius did in pouncing. Octavian himself was stranded on the Italian side of the Straits together with half his legions; the other half, having landed at Tauromenium, waited for Taurus to come up and Octavian to come over. A long wait. Even after the storm blew itself out two nundinae later, Octavian and Messala Corvinus were frustrated by the damage done to their troop transports. By the time they were repaired, it was well into Sextilis, and the whole island was involved in land fighting.

  Lepidus had no troubles at all. He landed in Lilybaeum and Agrigentum on time, disembarked twelve legions, and struck both north and east across the mountains, aiming for Messana. Just as Octavian had predicted, he garrisoned Agrigentum with four more legions, sure that it would be he and no one else who returned to pick over the contents of Sextus Pompey’s vaults.

  But it was Agrippa who won the campaign. Knowing the size of Taurus’s Tarentum fleet and overestimating the size of Octavian’s bait fleet, Sextus Pompey pulled in every ship he owned and concentrated them in
the Straits, determined to hold Messana and therefore the eastern end of the island. With the result that Agrippa’s two hundred and eleven quinqueremes and triremes sent a small Pompeian fleet to the bottom off Mylae, and landed the four legions in his wake there, safe and sound. Agrippa then raided far along the north coast in a westerly direction before rallying his warships and lurking offshore at Naulochus.

  It seemed not to have entered Sextus Pompey’s mind that the despised Octavian would—or could—gather so many ships and troops against him. Bad news followed bad news: Lepidus was reducing the western end of Sicilia, Agrippa was reducing the north coast, and Octavian himself had finally made it across the Straits. Sicilia swarmed with soldiers, but few of them belonged to Sextus Pompey. Filled with dread and despair, Pompey the Great’s younger son decided to stake everything on a huge naval engagement, and sailed to meet Agrippa.

  The two fleets met at Naulochus, Sextus convinced that, as well as having the numbers, he also had the skill. More than three hundred galleys admiraled and crewed superbly, with himself in overall command—what did an Apulian lout like Marcus Agrippa think he was doing, to take on Sextus Pompeius, unbeaten at sea for ten long years? But Agrippa’s ships were more aggressive, and armed with a typically Agrippan secret weapon—the harpax. He had taken an ordinary tossing grapnel and turned it into something that could be fired from a scorpion at a much longer distance than an arm’s throw. The enemy vessel was then winched in, all the while bombarded with scorpion darts, boulders, and flaming bundles of hay. As this was going on, the Agrippan ship turned bow on and ran down the enemy vessel’s side to shear off its oars. That done, the marines boarded across corvus gangplanks and finished the process by killing everyone who hadn’t leaped into the water, there to drown or be fished out as a prisoner of war. According to Agrippa’s way of thinking, beaks for ramming were all very well, but they rarely sank a ship and mostly allowed it to get away. The harpax, sheared oars, and marines to follow invariably meant a doomed quarry.

  Tears streaming down his face, Sextus Pompey watched his combined fleets destroyed. At the very last moment he turned his flagship into the south and ran, determined that he wouldn’t be led in chains through the Forum Romanum to be tried for treason in secret in the Senate, like Salvidienus. For he knew well that his status would protect him from the usual fate of one declared hostis: to be killed by the first man who saw him. That, he could have borne.

  He hid in a cove and negotiated the Straits during darkness, then set his course eastward to round the Peloponnnese and seek shelter with Antony, who he knew was absent on his campaign; he would go to earth somewhere sympathetic until Antony returned. Mitylene on the island of Lesbos had let his father have asylum; it would do the same for the son, Sextus was sure.

  Land resistance was negligible, especially after the third day of September, the day on which Agrippa won at Naulochus. Sextus’s “legions” were made up of brigands, slaves, and freedmen, poorly trained and not valorous. All Sextus had used them for was to terrorize the local populace; against true Roman legions they stood no hope of winning. Most surrendered, crying for mercy.

  Lepidus reveled in his superiority, and took his time crossing the island. Even so, he arrived before Messana ahead of Octavian, encountering the most determined resistance on the straight coast north of Tauromenium. When Lepidus reached Messana, he found its Pompeian governor, Plinius Rufus, offering to surrender to Agrippa. An insult Lepidus would not brook. He sent to Plinius Rufus at once, demanding that the surrender be to him, not to Agrippa the low-bred nobody. That might have passed muster, save that he accepted the submission in his own name, not Octavian’s.

  When Octavian arrived in Agrippa’s camp, he found Agrippa seething: a new experience! In all their years together, he never remembered Agrippa in a towering rage.

  “Do you know what that cunnus did?” Agrippa roared, lashing a metaphorical tail. “Said he was the victor over Sicilia, not you, the Triumvir of Rome, Italia, and the Islands! Said—said—oh, I can’t think for the life of me, I am so furious!”

  “Let’s go and see him,” Octavian soothed, “sort our differences out, and get an apology. How’s that?”

  “Nothing short of his head will satisfy me,” Agrippa muttered.

  Lepidus, however, was not in a conciliatory mood. He received Octavian and Agrippa wearing his scarlet paludamentum and a pretty set of gold armor, its cuirass tooled to show Aemilius Paullus on the battlefield at Pydna, a famous victory. At fifty-five, Lepidus wasn’t young, and felt his eclipse by mere youths acutely. It was now or never, as far as he was concerned; time to make that bid for power, which always seemed to elude him. His rank was equal to Antony’s and Octavian’s, yet no one took him seriously, and that had to change. Every “legion” of Sextus’s troops he found was incorporated into his own army, with the result that Messana saw his tally stand at twenty-two legions—and that didn’t even include the four guarding Agrigentum and the ones he had left to police Africa Province. Yes, time to act!

  “What do you want, Octavianus?” he asked haughtily.

  “My due,” Octavian said quietly.

  “You’re due nothing. I beat Sextus Pompeius, not you or your low-bred minions.”

  “How odd, Lepidus. Why did I think it was Marcus Agrippa who beat Sextus Pompeius? He staked his all on a sea battle at which you were not present.”

  “You can have the seas, Octavianus, but you can’t have this island,” said Lepidus, drawing himself up. “As Triumvir with equal powers to yours, I declare that henceforth Sicilia is a part of Africa, and will be ruled from Africa by me. Africa is mine, apportioned out to me at the Pact of Tarentum for another five years. Except,” Lepidus went on with a smirk, “that five years are not sufficient. I’m taking Africa, including Sicilia, in perpetuity.”

  “The Senate and People will deprive you of both if you’re not careful, Lepidus.”

  “Then let the Senate and People go to war against me! I have thirty legions under my command. I order you to take yourself and your minions to Italia, Octavianus! Quit my province now!”

  “Is that your final word?” Octavian asked, his hand clenched on Agrippa’s forearm to make sure he didn’t draw his sword.

  “It is.”

  “Are you truly prepared for another civil war?”

  “I am.”

  “Thinking that Marcus Antonius will back you when he returns from the Kingdom of the Parthians. But he won’t, Lepidus. Believe me, he won’t.”

  “I don’t care whether he does or not. Now leave while you still have life in your body, Octavianus.”

  “I have been Caesar for some years now, but you’re still just—Lepidus Turpis—Lepidus the Ignominious.”

  Octavian turned and walked out of Messana’s best mansion, his hand still keeping Agrippa’s from his sword.

  “Caesar, how dare he! Don’t tell me we have to fight him!” Agrippa cried, prising Octavian’s fingers from his arm at last.

  His most beautiful smile curved Octavian’s lips; the eyes he directed at Agrippa looked luminous, innocent, endearingly young. “Dear Agrippa! No, we won’t have to fight, I promise.”

  More than that, Agrippa couldn’t learn. Octavian simply said there would be no civil war, not even a tiny warlet, a skirmish, a duel, a drill.

  Next morning at dawn Octavian disappeared; by the time a frantic Agrippa found him, it was all over. Alone and togate, he had entered Lepidus’s enormous encampment and gone among the many thousands of soldiers smiling at them, congratulating them, and making them his own. They swore mighty oaths to Tellus, Sol Indiges, and Liber Pater that Caesar was their only commander, that Caesar was their darling, their gold-haired mascot, divi filius.

  Sextus Pompey’s eight legions of motley recruits were disbanded that same day, and milled under heavy guard speculating about their fate in a fairly complacent mood; from Lepidus they had been promised freedom, and as they knew little of Octavian, they fully expected the same kind of treatment.<
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  “Your race is run, Lepidus,” Octavian said when the astounded Lepidus stormed into his tent. “Because you are related by blood to my divine father, I will spare your life and not subject you to a treason trial in the Senate. But I will have that selfsame body strip you of your triumvirate and all your provinces. You will retire to private life and never again leave it, even to seek the censorship. However, you may retain your role as Pontifex Maximus. It is given for life, and it will remain yours while you live. I require you to sail aboard my ship with me, but you will be put off at Circeii, where you have a villa. You will not enter Rome for any reason, nor will you be allowed to tenant the Domus Publica.”

  Face drawn, Lepidus listened, his throat working convulsively. When he could find nothing to say in reply, he sagged onto a chair and covered his face with a fold of toga.

  Octavian was as good as his word. Full of Antony’s cliental adherents it might be, but the Senate enacted the decrees asked of it about Lepidus without a murmur. Lepidus was forbidden to enter Rome, and stripped of all his public duties, honors, provinces.

  The harvest that year sold for ten sesterces the modius, and Italia rejoiced. When the vaults in Agrigentum were breached by Octavian and Agrippa, they yielded the staggering sum of a hundred and ten thousand talents. Antony’s forty percent, forty-four thousand talents, were divided off and sent to him at Antioch the moment his Athenian fleet was free to sail. To prevent theft, it was locked in metal banded oak chests, each nailed shut and sealed with a dollop of lead that bore a replica of Octavian’s sphinx signet, IMP. CAES. DIV. FIL. TRI. Each ship carried six hundred and sixty-six chests, one fifty-six-pound talent to a chest.