Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (43 page)

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wishes, transferred Macedonia from himself to his brother Gaius and Gaul from D. Brutus to himself. He planned to bring his four legions to Rome from Brundisium, where they were waiting to sail to Macedonia; Cicero says that Antonius intended to bring them to Rome to massacre the hostile senators and to make himself dictator.

Antonius, however, soon encountered unforeseen opposition. Before he died, Julius Caesar had adopted Gaius Octavius, the nineteen-year-old grandson of his sister, and in his will he awarded the young man three-quarters of his estate. Octavian (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus being his full name after his adoption by Caesar) had accompanied Caesar to Spain in 46 and had impressed Caesar with his character and energy. Octavian then had gone to school in Apollonia and was to accompany Caesar on the Parthian campaign. After hearing of Caesar's death and his own adoption, Octavian hurried to Rome to receive his inheritance, which Antonius controlled. Antonius, supposedly bitter because Caesar had omitted him from his will, treated Octavian with contempt; he called him "boy," tried to bar Octavian's adoption into Caesar's family, and tried to brush aside Octavian's attempts to gain his inheritance (Antonius was, in fact, holding back 25 million drachmas). Antonius believed that Octavian lacked the backing and experience to oppose him, a consul. He was not the only one to underestimate Octavian.

While waiting to receive his inheritance, Octavian, from his own pocket, paid for the games for the inauguration of the new Temple of Venus, which had been promised to Caesar. Despite Antonius' obstruction, Octavian succeeded in placing in the theater a golden chair in honor of Caesar, which the Senate had promised the dictator; seeing how popular the chair was with the common people, Octavian then had a bronze statue of Caesar, with a crown of stars, placed in the Temple of Venus, the founder of the Julian family. Shortly later Quintilis, the fifth month of the Roman year (which originally started on March 1), was renamed in Caesar's honor. After exhausting his ready cash, Octavian sold his estate and used the proceeds to satisfy the obligations he assumed in accepting Caesar's will.

Finally, Octavian, now calling himself Caesar and bearing generous cash gifts, made the rounds of Caesar's veterans in Campania,

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while his agents in Brundisium (before Antonius arrived) won over to his side still more of Caesar's veterans, who were angry that Caesar's assassins had never been punished: Antonius and Lepidus, Caesar's former lieutenants, had even sat down to dinner with the murderers, but here was Caesar's son, eager to avenge his father's murder. Octavian brought his private army back to Rome, to protect the city from Antonius, who was still on his way to Brundisium to bring the legions to Rome. After arriving in Brundisium, Antonius offered his soldiers only a small percentage of the cash Octavian had offered, which caused them to mutiny. Antonius then performed a
decimatio
on the army, in which one of every ten soldiers was chosen by lot and executed; his wife Fulvia looked on as three hundred men, many of them centurions, were executed. Later, when Antonius had stationed his small army in Tibur, just outside Rome, two of the four legions, at great peril to their lives, deserted their consul Antonius and joined Octavian in the defense of Rome.

Nor was Octavian alone in opposition to Antonius. Many members of the Senate feared that Antonius was trying to take Caesar's place as dictator. Antonius himself was consul and already had an army outside Rome; one of his brothers, Gaius, was praetor, and his other brother, Lucius, was tribune. Lucius could expect to be praetor the next year, since Antonius, as consul, would be overseeing the "elections." The Senate was right to be alarmed; Cicero had foreseen the danger that Antonius presented and, in a letter to Atticus, written in April 44, called the assassination of Caesar "a great and beautiful deed, but incomplete" (
Ep. ad Att
. XIV.12).

So Cicero came out of the semi-retirement he had been in since Pharsalus and took charge. He attacked Antonius in a series of speeches and political pamphlets called the
Philippics
. (These were named after the speeches that Demosthenes, the foremost Athenian orator, had delivered against Philip, king of Macedon, who was threatening Athens' sovereignty from 351 to 341
B.C.
In English, the term is used for a tirade against someone.) Cicero urged the Senate to declare war on Antonius:


He has drained Caesar's house of its furnishings, pillaged his gardens, and taken all the beautiful objects from them to his own house. He has

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used Caesar's death as an excuse for murder and mayhem. After passing two or three decrees of the Senate that were beneficial to the republic, he has made everything simply a matter of profit and loot. He has sold immunities from taxes, he has freed states, he has freed whole provinces from the rule of the Roman empire, he has brought back exiles. He has seen to it that false laws and decreespassed in the name of Caesarwould be engraved in bronze and set up on the Capitol. In his house he has established a market of all things, he has imposed his laws on the Roman people. With weapons and guards he has shut the people and magistrates out of the Forum. He has crowded the Senate with armed men and shut armed soldiers in the Temple of Concord, when he was presiding over the Senate. He has run down to the legions in Brundisium and cut the throats of centurions from those legions, despite their patriotism, and with that army, he tried to come to Rome to destroy us and to portion out the city. (Cicero,
Philippics
III.12.30-31)

Cicero spoke urgently and passionately, for Antonius at that time was marching to Cisalpine Gaul, to assume control of the province that he had had transferred to himself; D. Brutus, who was governor of Cisalpine Gaul in accordance with Caesar's acts, refused to relinquish his command to Antonius and shut himself and his small force inside the city Mutina. Antonius started the siege of Mutina.

The Senate declared war on Antonius. Octavian was granted a propraetorship by the Senate, and with Pansa and Hirtius, the two consuls of 43, he marched to the aid of D. Brutus in Mutina. There they fought a battle with Antonius, defeated his army, and put him to flight; he found safety nearby in Lepidus' camp and convinced the governors of other provinces to support him. In the battle, however, Hirtius was killed, and Pansa mortally wounded. (D. Brutus was later deserted by his army and killed.) Octavian was left alone with the republic's army. He then returned to Rome, expecting to be treated with deference by the Senate for having freed Rome from the menace of Antonius. "This is for certain," writes Cicero to his friend Trebonius, a conspirator who was killed by Dolabella in Asia. "If he [Octavian] had not quickly enlisted the veterans, if two legions from Antonius' army had not brought themselves under his leadership, and if Antonius had had nothing

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to fear, he would not have stopped short of any crime and bloodshed" (
Ep. ad familiares
X.28). Instead of being grateful, the Senate, freed of immediate danger, wished to be rid of him too and refused his request of a consulship, even though he promised to take Cicero as his colleague. Upon the Senate's refusal, he brought his troops into the city, and secured for himself a consulship for the rest of 43, to replace one of the consuls killed at Mutina. He chose for his colleague Q. Pedius, also an heir in Caesar's will. One of his acts as consul declared Caesar's assassins outlaws.

When Octavian entered the Campus Martius on election day, he is said to have seen six vultures, and later twelve, just as Romulus had.

The Second Triumvirate

Octavian soon understood that he needed the cooperation of Antonius and Lepidus more than he needed Cicero and the Senate. Accordingly, after secretly meeting with Antonius and Lepidus in Bononia, he deserted his former allies and joined the two in an alliance that we call the Second Triumvirate. (The refusal to allow Octavian to run for the consulship shows that Cicero and the Senate fully intended to desert Octavian once he had defeated Antonius; they too underestimated him.) The agreement between these three differed from the First Triumvirate because this alliance was publicly known and legalized by the Lex Titia. In legal terms, Octavian, Antonius, and Lepidus were "tresviri reipublicae consti-tuendae causa" (three men for reestablishing the republic). For five years, the length of the triumvirate, they would be superior to all magistrates and governors, and they would have the power to make laws. They agreed on the following allotment of the provinces: Antonius received Cispadane and Transpadane Gaul; Octavian received Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia; Lepidus got Gallia Nar-bonensis and all Spain. To cement the deal, Octavian married Clodia, the daughter of Antonius' wife Fulvia by her first husband, Clodius the tribune.

Soon the three embarked on the proscriptions, in which they not only raised the money to finance the purchase of land for the veterans and the pay of their forty-five legions, but also got revenge

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on theft enemies, some of whom were even members of their family. Antonius, for example, let his uncle; L. Caesar, be killed, while Lepidus proscribed his own brother, Paullus. Antonius became as monstrous as Cicero had portrayed him, as the triumvirs killed more than three hundred senators and two thousand knights and confiscated their estates. Antonius insisted upon the death of Cicero, who had insulted him repeatedly in his
Philippics
. Cicero was killed by a man he had once defended in court, and at Antonius' orders the head and hands were cut off his corpse and nailed to the rostrum in the Forum; Cicero's son was safe, being at school in Athens, but Cicero's brother Quintus and his son were killed. The triumvirs were hated because of the proscriptions. Those fleeing the proscriptions joined either Brutus and Cassius in Asia or Sextus Pompey, the last son of Pompey the Great, who with his powerful fleet was harassing Italian shipping and controlling the seas around Italy.

After fleeing Rome, Brutus and Cassius had proceeded to Crete and Cyrene, the provinces allotted to them by Caesar. The two men nonetheless managed to take control of Macedonia, Syria, and Asia. They even captured G. Antonius, Marcus' brother, who had been sent to secure Macedonia; he was later killed, supposedly to avenge the murder of Cicero. Brutus and Cassius were amassing a large army and supplies to rescue the republic, and they established a base in Greece, at Philippi. Their forces were soon augmented by fugitives from the proscriptions. Among the soldiers joining them were M. Cicero, the son of the orator, and Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace). (Horace became a better poet than soldier; in the one battle he saw in his brief military career, he threw down his shield and fled.)

In 42 Antonius and Octavian sailed to Greece to have a battle with the remaining republicans. Octavian was sick in bed on the day of the battle and narrowly escaped death, as his camp was taken by Brutus' victorious army; nonetheless, Antonius' army defeated that of Cassius. Cassius, thinking Brutus conquered and dead, committed suicide; Brutus then collected his and Cassius' army and faced Antonius and Octavian in a second battle, which he lost to Antonius. Brutus too committed suicide.

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