Antony and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Agrippa gaped. “Twenty-five percent?”

  “That’s what a quarter is.”

  “There’d be blood on the streets,” said Maecenas.

  “Tax the women too,” Agrippa said. “Attica has an income of two hundred talents a year. Once his cancer carries Atticus off—that can’t be too far away—she’ll go up to five hundred talents. And I’m his major heir, so his money is safely for you.”

  “Oh, come, Agrippa! Don’t you remember what the women did when the Triumvirs tried to tax them eleven years ago? Hortensia is still very much alive, she’d lead another revolt. And do you fancy giving women the vote? Because we’d have to.”

  “I don’t see what difference there is between being ruled by Cleopatra and by Rome’s own women,” Agrippa said. “You’re right, Caesar. It will have to be men only.”

  Now owning an impressive majority in the House, Octavian had Lucius Cornelius Cinna and a cousin of Messala Corvinus’s, Marcus Valerius Messala, appointed the new consuls. Rather than appoint new praetors, he closed the courts. By no means all of the remaining seven hundred senators were his creatures, but Octavian behaved as if they were, announcing that he himself would be senior consul next year, with Messala Corvinus as his junior. If war was to come on next year, Octavian needed all the authority he could muster.

  “Democracy is a hollow word as long as Cleopatra and her minion Marcus Antonius threaten Rome, I am aware of that,” Octavian said to the House, “but I pledge you my oath, conscript fathers, that as soon as this threat from the East evaporates, I will return proper government to the Senate and People of Rome. For Rome herself comes first, far ahead of mere men, no matter what their names or political viewpoints. I govern at the moment because someone has to! Though my triumvirate has lapsed, it is some years since the Senate and People have had experience in government, whereas I have never been out of it these eleven years.”

  He drew a breath, surveyed the tiers to either side of the curule dais, upon which he had replaced his ivory chair. “What I wish to emphasize this morning is that I do not blame Marcus Antonius for the present situation. I blame Cleopatra—her, and her alone! It is she who marches steadily westward, not Antonius, who is her puppet, her marionette. The jig he dances is Egyptian! What have I or Rome done to deserve the threat of an army, a navy? Rome and I have acquitted ourselves of our duty without ever once menacing Antonius in the East! So why does he menace the West? The answer is, he doesn’t! Cleopatra does!”

  And so on, and so forth. Octavian said nothing new, and in saying nothing new, failed to carry a hundred of the neutrals as well as the hundred Antonians left. Nor, when he announced that he would impose a twenty-five percent tax upon the incomes of all Roman men, could he carry the House. It erupted into fury, spilled into the streets and gratified the knight-businessmen by personally leading the bloody riots that ensued. Having no choice, Octavian went on to proscribe the three hundred and four members of Antony’s anti-Senate in Ephesus. That gave him sufficient funds from the auction and sale of their Italian property to pay the Illyrian legions.

  Agrippa, much richer after Atticus cut his terminal illness short by falling on the sword he had never used in life, insisted on commissioning two hundred ships.

  “But not clumsy big fives,” he said to Octavian. “I’m going to use Liburnians, none but Liburnians. They’re small, maneuverable, swift, and cheap. Naulochus showed how good they are.”

  A small man, Octavian wasn’t quite convinced by this argument.

  “Doesn’t size matter in any way?” he asked.

  “No,” said Agrippa flatly.

  Midsummer saw a slight reversal of the eastward traffic in senators when some returned to Rome full of tales of That Woman and her pernicious influence over Antony; they did Octavian’s cause more good than all his own oratory could. However, none of these refugees could offer ironbound proof that the coming war was Cleopatra’s idea. All of them had to admit, when pressed, that Antony still occupied the command tent ahead of the Queen. It really did seem as if it were Antony intent upon civil war.

  Then came the sensational news that Antony had divorced his Roman wife. Octavia sent immediately for her brother.

  “He has divorced me,” she said, handing Octavian the curt note. “I am to quit his house and take the children with me.”

  Her eyes were tearless, but they held the stricken expression of a dying animal; Octavian’s hand went out to her.

  “Oh, my dear!”

  “I had two years, the happiest of my life. My only trouble now is that I don’t have enough money to settle the family somewhere else, unless I jam us into Marcellus’s house.”

  “You’ll come to my house,” he said instantly. “It’s vast enough to provide a whole wing for you and the children. Besides, it will please Tiberius and Drusus to have their playmates living under the same roof. With a more motherly person than Livia Drusilla to supervise all our children, I think I’ll take Julia from Scribonia and install her too.”

  “Oh! Ah—um—if I’m to have Julia as well as Tiberius and Drusus, I’ll need another pair of motherly hands—Scribonia’s.”

  Octavian looked wary. “I doubt Livia Drusilla would approve.”

  Privately Octavia thought Livia Drusilla would approve of any measure that meant she wouldn’t be bothered by a tribe of young children. “Ask her, Caesar, please!”

  Livia Drusilla saw Octavia’s point at once. “An excellent idea!” she said, smiling the sphinx’s smile. “Octavia can’t take the burden alone, but it’s no use looking at me. I fear mine is not a maternal nature.” She looked delicately deferrring. “Ah—unless, that is, you don’t wish to set eyes on Scribonia?”

  “I?” He looked astonished. “Edepol, what does she matter to me? After Clodia, I quite liked her. Then she turned shrewish, I don’t know why. Age, probably. But I see her every time I visit Julia, and we get along together splendidly these days.”

  Livia Drusilla giggled. “The domus Livia Drusilla seems like to be a harem! How wonderfully eastern. Cleopatra would approve.”

  Pouncing on her, he bit her neck playfully, then forgot all about Scribonia, Octavia, children, and harems.

  The fly in the ointment came from a different source: Gaius Scribonius Curio, aged eighteen, announced that he wouldn’t be moving house; he was going east to join Mark Antony.

  “Oh, Curio, must you?” Octavia asked, dismayed. “It will grieve Uncle Caesar dreadfully.”

  “Caesar’s no uncle of mine!” the youth said scornfully. “I belong in Antonius’s camp.”

  “If you go, how can I persuade Antyllus not to go?”

  “Easily. He’s not yet a man.”

  “But that’s easier said than done,” she said to Gaius Fonteius, who had volunteered to help her move house.

  “When does Antyllus turn sixteen?”

  “Not forever. He was born the year Divus Julius died.”

  “Then he’s barely thirteen.”

  “Yes. But oh, so wild and impulsive! He’ll run away.”

  “At thirteen, he’ll be caught. For young Curio, it’s a very different matter. He’s of age and master of his own fortune.”

  “How can I tell Caesar?”

  “You won’t have to. I will,” said Fonteius, who would have done anything to spare his Octavia pain.

  Her divorce made her eligible—theoretically—but Fonteius was too wise to speak of his own love. As long as he said nothing, his place in her life was secure; the moment he voiced what he felt, she would send him away. Better then to wait for time to cure her malady. If even time had that power. He didn’t know.

  The defection of Saturninus, Arruntius, and Atratinus, among others, did not make huge inroads into Antony’s band of followers, but when Plancus and Titius deserted, they left a noticeable gap.

  “It’s Pompeius Magnus’s war camp all over again,” said Plancus to Octavian once he reached Rome. “I wasn’t with Magnus, but they say everyone had a different opinion, a
nd Magnus couldn’t control them. So that by the time Pharsalus happened, he was powerless to enforce the Fabian tactics he favored. Labienus generaled, and lost. No one could beat Divus Julius, though Labienus thought he could. Oh, the quarrels and squabbles! As nothing compared to the goings-on in Antonius’s war camp, believe me, Caesar. That Woman insists on having her say, airs her opinions as if they had more weight than Antonius’s, and thinks nothing of deriding him in front of his legates, his senators—even his centurions. He takes it all! Fawns on her, runs after her—she lies on his couch in the locus consularis, if you please! How Ahenobarbus hates her! They scrap like a pair of wildcats, spitting, snarling—yet Antonius won’t put her in her place. One day at dinner she got a cramp in her foot, and would you believe that Antonius fell on his knees before her to rub the foot better? You could have heard a moth land on a down pillow, the dining room was so silent and still. Then he resumed his place as if nothing had happened! I think that episode was what made Titius and me decide the time had come to depart.”

  “I hear all kinds of weird rumors in Rome, Plancus, so many that I don’t know what to believe,” Octavian said, wondering what Plancus’s price was going to be.

  “Believe the worst of them and you won’t go far wrong.”

  “Then how can I convince these donkeys here in Rome that it’s Cleopatra’s war, not Antonius’s?”

  “You mean they still think Antonius commands?”

  “Yes. They simply can’t stomach the idea that a foreign woman is capable of dominating the great Marcus Antonius.”

  “Nor could I, until I saw it for myself.” Plancus tittered. “Perhaps you ought to arrange for tours to Samos—that’s where they are at the moment, en route to Athens—for the unbelievers. Once seen, never forgotten.”

  “Levity, Plancus, does not become you.”

  “Seriously, then, Caesar. I could perhaps offer you better ammunition, but there is a price.”

  Dear, unapologetic Plancus! Straight out with it, no dancing around. “Name your price.”

  “A suffect consulship next year for my nevvy, Titius.”

  “He’s none too popular in Rome since he executed Sextus.”

  “He did the deed, yes, but the order came from Antonius.”

  “I can certainly procure him the job, but I can’t protect him from his detractors.”

  “He can afford bodyguards. Is it a done deal, then?”

  “Yes. Now what can you offer me in return?”

  “When Antonius was in Antioch, still in the last stages of his recovery from wine, he made his will. Whether it remains his last, I don’t know, but Titius and I witnessed it. I believe he took it off to Alexandria with him when he went—Sosius presented it in Rome, at any rate.”

  Octavian frowned. “What has Antonius’s will to do with it?”

  “Everything,” said Plancus simply.

  “Not an adequate answer. Expatiate.”

  “He was in a good mood when we witnessed it, and passed a few remarks that made both Titius and me think it was a highly suspect document. Treasonous, in fact, if a document not seen until after its author’s death can be held treasonous. Antonius clearly didn’t think posthumous treason exists, hence his unguarded comments.”

  “Be more specific, Plancus, please!”

  “I can’t. Antonius was too obscure. But Titius and I think it would profit you to take a look at Antonius’s will.”

  “How can I do that? A man’s will is sacrosanct.”

  “That’s your problem, Caesar.”

  “Can’t you tell me anything about its contents? Exactly what remarks did he make?”

  Already standing, Plancus twitched folds of toga into place, apparently absorbed. “We really ought to design a garment more suitable for sitting in than the toga…. How he loved Alexandria and That Woman…. Yes, togas are a nuisance…. How her son ought to have his rights…. Oh, bother! There’s a mark on it!” And out he sailed, still primping.

  Not so treasonous, then. Except that Plancus had genuinely seemed to think Antony’s will would help him. Since any suffect consulship for Titius was many months into the future, Plancus would surely have known that, if he dangled a false bait under Octavian’s nose, Titius would never sit on the curule dais. But how to gain access to Antony’s will? How?

  “I remember that Divus Julius told me the Vestals held over two million wills—upstairs, downstairs, part of the basement,” he said to Livia Drusilla, the only one to whom he could confide such incendiary news. “They have a system. Wills from provinces and foreign countries in one area, Italian wills in another, and Roman wills somewhere else. But Divus Julius didn’t elaborate on the system, and at the time I wasn’t to know how important the subject would become, so I didn’t push him to elaborate. Stupid, stupid!” He thumped a fist on his knee.

  “Don’t worry, Caesar, you’ll attain your ends.” Livia Drusilla’s large, stripey navy-blue eyes turned contemplative; she sat thinking, then chuckled. “You might begin by doing something nice for Octavia,” she said then, “and since I am a notoriously jealous wife, you will have to do it for me too.”

  “You, jealous of Octavia?” he asked incredulously.

  “But people outside our intimate circle of friends aren’t to know how matters stand between Octavia and me, are they? All Rome is indignant over the divorce—silly man! He ought never to have evicted her and the children, it damages him more than all your canards about Cleopatra’s influence over him.” The beautiful face took on a soft, dreamy expression. “It would be splendid if your agents could tell the people of Rome and Italia how much you love your sister and your wife, with what tender consideration you regard them. I am sure that if you were to let Lepidus take up residence in the Domus Publica, Lepidus would be so grateful that he would propose a tiny honor for Octavia and me as a thank-you.”

  He was staring at her with that dazzled air she could provoke when the subtlety of her mind outstripped his. “I wish I knew where you’re going, my dearest one, but I don’t.”

  “Think of the hundreds of statues of Octavia you’ve erected throughout Rome and Italia, and the statues of me that have joined them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a line could be added to their inscriptions? Some stunning new honor?”

  “I’m still in the dark.”

  “Persuade Lepidus Pontifex Maximus to award Octavia and me the status of Vestal Virgins in perpetuity.”

  “But you’re not Vestals! Or virgins, for that matter!”

  “Honorary, Caesar, honorary! Announce it with fanfares of trumpets in the marketplaces from Mediolanum and Aquileia to Rhegium and Tarentum! Your sister and your wife are exemplary beyond description, so much so that their marital chastity and conduct put them in the same league as the Vestals.”

  “Go on!” he said eagerly.

  “Our Vestal Virgin status will permit us to come and go in the Vestal side of the Domus Publica at—pardon my pun—will. There’s no need to involve Octavia if I have that privilege too, because I can find out for you exactly where Antonius’s will is stored. Appuleia won’t suspect my motives—why should she? Her mother is your half sister, she dines with us regularly, she likes me very much. I can’t steal the will for you, but if I find out where it is, you can lay your hands on it quickly.”

  His hug left her crushed and breathless, but she didn’t mind being crushed and breathless. Nothing pleased Livia Drusilla more than being able to suggest a course of action that Caesar had not thought of for himself.

  “Livia Drusilla, you’re brilliant!” he cried, releasing her.

  “I know,” she said, giving him a little push. “Now start the business, my love! It’s going to take a few nundinae, and we can’t afford to wait too long.”

  The heartache of losing his triumviral status wasn’t nearly as painful to Lepidus as his exile from the city of Rome, so when he had a visit from Octavian and heard what he had to do in order to move back into the Domus Publica, he agreed without hesitation to elevate Octav
ia and Livia Drusilla to Vestal Virgin rank. This was not a hollow honor. It endowed both women with sacrosanctity and inviolability; they could walk anywhere without threat, as no man, be he the lowest and most predatory, would dare to touch a Vestal Virgin. If he did, he was doomed for all eternity—he would be sacer—unholy, stripped of his citizenship, flogged, and beheaded, and all his property down to the meanest pottery beaker would be confiscated. His wife and children would starve.

  All Rome and Italia rejoiced; if their approval was more on Octavia’s behalf than on Livia Drusilla’s, the latter lady did not care a rush. Instead, she invited herself to dinner in the Vestals’ dining room to meet her fellow priestesses.

  Appuleia the Chief Vestal was a cousin of Octavian’s, and knew Livia Drusilla well, starting with the time when, young and pregnant, she had been sheltered in the Atrium Vestae before her marriage to Octavian.

  “An omen,” Appuleia said to her as the seven settled to eat on chairs around a table. “I was so worried, I can confess that now. Oh, the relief when your stay didn’t have any religious consequences! It was an omen of this, I’m sure.”

  Not a clever woman, Appuleia, yet the terrific reverence in which she was held had molded her into much of what was expected from a Chief Vestal. She was clad in pure white, a long-sleeved dress overlaid with a tunic slit up each side, the bulla medal on a chain around her neck, her hair hidden by a crown of seven rolled coils of wool atop each other, and the whole rounded off by a veil so fine it floated. She ruled her little flock with a rod of iron, mindful of the fact that Vestal chastity was Rome’s luck. From time to time a man (like Publius Clodius) had impugned some Vestal’s chastity and brought her to trial, but that wasn’t going to occur under the reign of Appuleia!