Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (44 page)

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Antonius in the East

After Philippi, Antonius left Italy for the East, to prepare for the invasion of Parthia. While the Romans were fighting with each other, the Parthians, led by T. Labienus, son of Caesar's former lieutenant, had taken over all of Syria except for Tyre and even threatened southern Asia Minor. It probably seemed an excellent idea for Antonius to go east and fight Parthia, for besides the obvious advantage and necessity of rescuing part of the empire, he would win wealth, fame, and glory: He would be fulfilling the dream of Caesar and he would get revenge for Crassus. Antonius' brother Lucius was consul in 41 and could control Octavian; since one of Octavian's tasks was to find land for the thousands of veterans, Antonius could be free of the whole mess. Yet leaving Italy and Rome turned out to be a terrible mistake for, absent from Rome and Italy, Antonius was able neither to see their transformation under Octavian nor to adapt himself to oppose the changes that Octavian was making.

Octavian had to find land for approximately one hundred thousand veterans. To do so, he took land from rightful owners. For this reason Octavian was hated by many Italians. One of the victims of the land confiscations was the young poet P. Vergilius Maro (called Vergil in English), whose ancestral farm near Mantua was awarded to a soldier. Vergil wrote a poem about losing his farm, the
First Eclogue
; his talent was noticed by friends of Octavian, and they restored the farm to him. Antonius' wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius tried to capitalize on Octavian's unpopularity, and the two sides even had a brief war at Perusia, which Octavian won. Fulvia died as Antonius was returning to Italy to fight Octavian; since she had instigated the conflict, the soldiers of the two sides insisted upon peace between the two men. They were reconciled in the Treaty of Brundisium of 40 and redivided the empire between them. Octavian took everything west of the Adriatic Sea, while Antonius took everything east of it. Lepidus retained Africa, while Sextus Pompey controlled Sicily and Sardinia. To cement the pact, Antonius married Octavian's sister, Octavia (the marriage was the inspiration for another poem by Vergil, the famous
Fourth Eclogue
).

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Antonius then went to Asia, where he started wearing eastern clothes and engaging in un-Roman practices. He had always been a heavy drinker (once while giving a speech as consul, he was so hung-over that he vomited into his toga), known for consorting with disreputable types. Golden drinking cups were carried before him when he left Rome, as if they were part of a religious procession, and he billeted prostitutes and musicians in the homes of respectable people. Antonius had also taken the modest house of Pompey the Great, and people were angry that Antonius closed the house to generals, magistrates, and ambassadors, and filled it instead with actors, jugglers, and drunken parasites, on whom he squandered vast amounts of money. He started calling himself ''the young Dionysus," and insisted that others call him that too. In Athens, the citizens betrothed the goddess Athena to him, and he in turn demanded a huge dowry.

Part of the problem was his new friend, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. While preparing for the Parthian expedition, Antonius summoned her to face charges that she had aided Cassius. Their meeting at the Cydnus River is famous:

She sailed up the Cydnus river on a barge with a golden stern, which had its purple sails spread wide, with rowers lifting up their silver oars to the sound of a flute, accompanied by a pipe and flute. Cleopatra, reclining beneath a canopy glittering with gold, was made up to look like Venus as seen in paintings, and her slaves, standing next to her, looked like Cupids. Likewise her most beautiful handmaids wore the clothing of Nereids and Graces, and were either at the rudder or the ropes. Marvelous odors from generous amounts of incense spread through the riverbanks. (Plutarch,
Antonius
26)

Antonius fell under her spell. Cleopatra saw what type of person he was and changed her behavior to please him. She played dice with him, drank with him, hunted and fished with him, and watched him as he exercised with his weapons. He liked also to wander around the city of Alexandria disguised as a slave and to stand outside the homes of ordinary people and make fun of them. So Cleopatra went with him, disguised as a maidservant.

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Back in the palace, however, their tastes were not so plebeian. They and their friends called themselves "the ones with the incomparable lifestyles" and gave banquets for each other. When warned of an upcoming banquet, the cook was expected to have the food ready and perfect at precisely the moment that it was called for, whenever that was. Since the guests would not want to wait for the food to finish cooking, or to eat food that had been ready long before and that had been reheated, the cook prepared many different banquets, at different stages of preparation, so that one of them would be ready and perfect when Antonius and Cleopatra and guests were ready.

While Antonius was preparing for the war (squeezing money from the provincials and partying with Cleopatra), his excellent lieutenant Ventidius drove the Parthians from Syria. Antonius finally left Cleopatra and invaded Parthia, but he was immediately deserted by his ally, the king of Armenia. Then, by marching quickly, Antonius allowed his siege-train to become separated from his army, thus giving the Parthians the opportunity to destroy the siege-train. Antonius and his soldiers had to cope with the hostile climate and lack of provisions, as well as the formidable Parthian army. Antonius' expedition against Parthia accomplished little. He returned to Syria after losing twenty thousand soldiers and four thousand cavalry. Eventually he got revenge on the king of Armenia and made his country briefly a province of Rome, but he soon lost it too.

While Antonius was living the life of luxury and decadence with Cleopatra, or failing in his Parthian campaign, Octavian was busy solving the many problems in Italy and Rome. One of the problems was S. Pompey. In 39 Octavian and Antonius reached peace with him by granting him Sicily, Sardinia, and part of Greece; they never intended to live up to the agreement, nor did he. Despite the treaty, he was still engaging in piracy and frequently attacking the Italian shores. With his control of Sicily, he had interrupted the flow of grain into Rome, causing a famine there.

Octavian was consequently forced to fight S. Pompey and his powerful navy. For that he needed ships, so he promised to deliver twenty thousand soldiers to Antonius in exchange for ships; at the same time, the triumvirate was renewed for another five years.

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(Octavian received the ships, but never delivered the soldiers to Antonius.) Agrippa, Octavian's admiral and righthand man, needed to train his crews, but S. Pompey's fleet was so powerful that Agrippa could not train them even in the waters off the Italian coast, for S. Pompey's fleet would destroy the new navy during its training. So Agrippa created a huge harbor (the Portus Iulius) by cutting a trench between Lake Avernus and Lake Lucrinus (famous for its oysters) and joining them with the open sea. In that harbor, safe from S. Pompey's fleet, Agrippa was able to train his men. Octavian and Agrippa then defeated S. Pompey in a hard-fought battle in 36. He fled to Asia, where he was caught and put to death, perhaps at Antonius' orders. Octavian also suspected his fellow triumvir Lepidus of collaborating with S. Pompey; when Lepidus was left defenseless by the desertion of his army, Octavian deposed him and banished him to the island Circei.

The Propaganda War

Since Lepidus and S. Pompey had been removed, only Antonius and Octavian remained. Octavian knew that war between them was inevitable; three times before they had been dissuaded from warring on each other, either by their soldiers or by Octavia. In preparation for the coming war, Octavian in 35-34 exercised his army with expeditions against the Dalmatians and Pannonians, tribes in Illyricum. More important were his efforts closer to home, for by them he united most Italians and Romans against Antonius.

Since Antonius was away from Rome, Octavian came to be seen as the source of good government in Italy and the West. The Romans and Italians wanted stability in the state after nearly a century of civil strife, and Octavian provided it. The hatred he had earned for the proscriptions and confiscations waned, and his popularity in the western provinces grew, as peace allowed them to return to prosperity. Octavian's zeal to earn the goodwill of his subjects can be seen in many other acts. For example, he and his friends supported poets whose verses glorified Rome and Italy, and reminded the audience of the good things that Octavian was doing; two of those poets were Vergil and Horace. In 33 Agrippa was aedile and at no cost to the treasury repaired public buildings

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and streets, and cleaned out and repaired sewers, even sailing through the Cloaca Maxima into the Tiber. Agrippa also distributed free olive oil and salt, charged no admission to the public baths for a year, provided free festivals and free barbers, and distributed coupons to the public, good for cash, clothes, and other useful commodities.

Octavian let the Italians know what Antonius was doing in the East: Antonius had gone to get revenge from Parthia, but had accomplished little in his battles there except for losing money and men; he had fallen in love with Cleopatra and was treating Octavia, his Roman wife and a wonderful woman, badly. When Antonius was short on supplies in Parthia, Octavia, using her own money and help she had begged from her brother, filled ships with clothing, food, and supplies for Antonius and his men, and paid for two thousand soldiers to be Antonius' praetorian guard; Antonius refused even to meet with her, but accepted all that she had bought. Antonius by now had fathered three children by Cleopatra: two sons named Alexander Helios (the Sun) and Ptolemy Philadelphus, and a daughter was named Cleopatra Selene (the Moon). The poses they assumed for statues and paintings portrayed Antonius as Osiris or Dionysus and Cleopatra as Selene or Isis. Meanwhile, back in Rome, Octavia was caring for her and Antonius' children, as well as for his children by his previous wife Fulvia, and was maintaining his house and loyally defending his interests. She inadvertently made Antonius even more detested, for what kind of man would treat such a womanespecially a Roman aristocratic matronin such a manner? In 32 Antonius sent men to turn Octavia out of his house, a formal declaration of divorce.

Antonius still had many friends and supporters in Rome, but he was not helping himself. News came to Rome of the "Donations of Alexandria":

He filled the exercise area with a crowd of people and, on a silver stage, put up two thrones, one for himself and the other for Cleopatra, and other lower thrones for his children. Then he proclaimed Cleopatra queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele-Syria, with Caesarion being co-ruler with her; he was thought to be Julius Caesar's son, since she was pregnant when he left her. Then he proclaimed his sons by Cleopatra

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