Exactly twenty years after his own memorable consulship, during which (as he would tell anyone prepared to listen) he had saved his country, Marcus Tullius Cicero found himself at the center of events again. Fear for his own safety had muzzled him many times over the course of those twenty years, and the one time he had desperately tried to save the Republic—when he had almost talked Pompey the Great out of civil war—he had failed, thanks to Cato. But now, with Marcus Antonius gone north, Cicero could look around Rome and see no one with the steel or the sinew to prevent his carrying all before him. At long last a golden tongue would prove more telling than military might and brute force!
Though he had hated Caesar and worked constantly to undermine him, a part of him had always known that Caesar was the phoenix—capable of rising from his own ashes. Ironically vindicated after he was physically burned, when that star had risen to tell all of Rome’s world that Caesar would never, never go away. But Antony was better to work against because Antony provided so much ammunition: coarse, intemperate, cruel, impulsive, thoughtless. And, swept away on the power of his own rhetoric, Cicero set out to destroy Antony in the sure knowledge that this was one target without the ability to rise again.
His head was stuffed with visions of the Republic restored to its old form, in the charge of men who revered its institutions, stood forth as champions of the mos maiorum. All he had to do was convince the Senate and People that the Liberators were the true heroes, that Marcus Brutus, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Cassius—the three Antony had singled out as Rome’s worst enemies—were in the right of it. That it was Antony in the wrong. And if, in this simplistic equation, Cicero neglected to incorporate Octavian, then he had good reason: Octavian was a nineteen-year-old youth, a minor piece to be used on the game board as a lure, carrying within him the seeds of his own destruction.
When Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius were inaugurated the new consuls on New Year’s Day, Mark Antony’s status shifted. He was no longer consul, but consular, and whatever powers he had accrued could be chipped away. Like others before him, he hadn’t bothered to obtain his governorship and imperium from the body constitutionally able to endow them, the Senate; he had gone to the Plebs in its tribal assembly. Therefore one could argue that the whole People had not consented because all patricians were excluded from the Plebeian Assembly. Unlike the other comitia and the Senate, the Plebs was not constrained by religious precursors; the prayers were not said, the auspices were not taken. A tenuous argument after men like Pompey the Great, Marcus Crassus and Caesar had obtained provinces and imperium from the Plebs, but one that Cicero used nonetheless.
Between the second day of September and New Year’s Day he had spoken against Mark Antony four times, to telling effect. The Senate, full of Antony’s creatures, was beginning to waver, for Antony’s own conduct made the position of his creatures difficult. Though not accompanied by tangible evidence, the allegation that Antony had conspired with the Liberators to kill Caesar held enough logic to damage him, and his rudeness to Caesar’s heir put his creatures in a cleft stick, as they were mostly Caesar’s appointees. Antony had come to power as Caesar’s heir, even if he wasn’t mentioned in Caesar’s will; a mature man, he was the natural inheritor of the staggering army of Caesar’s clients, and had walked off with enough of them to cement his position. But now Caesar’s real heir was wooing them to his service—from the bottom up. Octavian couldn’t say yet that the majority of senators rued their connection to Antony, but Cicero was intent upon helping him there—for the time being. Once the senators were detached from Antony, he, Cicero, would gradually swing them not to Octavian but to the Liberators. Which meant making it look as if Octavian himself preferred the Liberators to Mark Antony, so unacceptable was Mark Antony. In this, Cicero was immeasurably helped by the fact that Octavian wasn’t a senator, therefore found it hard to deny the attitude Cicero was bestowing upon him for Cicero’s ends.
The Great Advocate had embarked upon this tack at a meeting of the Senate held toward the end of December; a groundswell had developed against Antony that he couldn’t fight because he wasn’t in Rome. Which put both Octavian and Antony in the same bind, at the mercy of a master senatorial tactician.
Cicero had a powerful ally in Vatia Isauricus, who blamed Antony for his father’s suicide, and implicitly believed that Antony was one of the assassination conspirators. Vatia’s clout was enormous, including on the back benches, for he had been, with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, Caesar’s staunchest aristocratic supporter.
Now, commencing on the second day of January, Cicero set out to discredit Antony so completely that the Senate would endorse Decimus Brutus as the true governor of Italian Gaul, vote to fire Antony and declare him hostis, a public enemy. After both Cicero and Vatia spoke, the senators were definitely wavering. All each really wanted was to hang on to what little power he had, and to stick to a lost cause would imperil that.
Were they ripe? Were they ready? Was this the moment to call for a division on the motion that Marcus Antonius be declared hostis, an official enemy of the Senate and People of Rome? The debate seemed to be over, and looking at the faces of the hundreds of pedarii on the top tiers, it was easy to see where the vote was going to go: against Antony.
What Cicero and Vatia Isauricus overlooked was the right of the consuls to ask others to speak before a division. The senior consul was Gaius Vibius Pansa, who therefore held the fasces for the month of January, and was chairing the meeting. He was married to the daughter of Quintus Fufius Calenus, Antony’s man to the death, and loyalty dictated that he should do what he could to protect his father-in-law’s friend Marcus Antonius.
“I call,” came Pansa’s voice from the chair, “upon Quintus Fufius Calenus for his opinion!” There. He had done what he could; it was up to Calenus now.
“I suggest,” said Calenus craftily, “that before the House sees a division upon Marcus Cicero’s motion, an embassage be sent to Marcus Antonius. Its members should be empowered to command Antonius to lift his siege at Mutina and submit to the authority of the Senate and People of Rome.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Lucius Piso, a neutral.
The pedarii stirred, started to smile: a way out!
“It is madness to send ambassadors to see a man whom this House declared an outlaw twelve days ago!” roared Cicero.
“That’s stretching it, Marcus Cicero,” said Calenus. “The House discussed outlawry, but it wasn’t formally implemented. If it were, what’s today’s motion all about?”
“Semantic quibbling!” Cicero snapped. “Did the House on that day—or did it not?—commend the generals and soldiers opposing Marcus Antonius? The men of Decimus Brutus, in other words? Decimus Brutus himself, in other words? Yes, it did!”
From there he launched into his usual diatribe against Mark Antony: he passed invalid laws, blocked the Forum with armed troops, forged decrees, squandered the public moneys, sold kingdoms, citizenships and tax exemptions, besmirched the courts, introduced bands of brigands into the temple of Concord, massacred centurions and troops at and near Brundisium, and threatened to kill anyone who stood up to him.
“To send an embassage to see such a man is only to delay the inevitable war and weaken the indignation rampant in Rome! I move that a state of tumultus be declared! That the courts and other governmental business be suspended! That civilians don military garb! That a levy to raise soldiers be instituted throughout the whole of Italy! That the welfare of the state be entrusted to the consuls by an Ultimate Decree!”
Cicero paused to wait out the hubbub this ringing peroration brought in its wake, shivering in exultation and oblivious to the fact that his oratory was thrusting Rome into yet another civil war. Oh, this was life! This was his own consulship all over again, when he had said much the same about Catilina!
“I also move,” he said when he could be heard, “that a vote of thanks be tendered to Decimus Brutus for his forbearance, and a second vote of thanks be tendered to Marcus Lepidus for making peace with Sextus Pompeius. In fact,” he added, “I think a gilded statue of Marcus Lepidus should be erected on the rostra, for the last thing we need is a double civil war.”
As no one knew whether he was serious or not, Pansa ignored the gilded statue of Marcus Lepidus and very shrewdly set Cicero’s motions aside.
“Is there any other business the House should consider?”
Vatia rose immediately and commenced a long speech in praise of Octavian that had to be adjourned when the sun set. The House would sit again on the morrow, said Pansa, and for however many days it took to settle all business.
Vatia resumed his panegyric of Octavian on the morrow. “I admit,” he said, “that Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is extremely young, but there can be no getting away from certain facts—first, that he is Caesar’s heir—secondly, that he has displayed maturity far beyond his years—thirdly, that he has the loyalty of a great many of Caesar’s veteran troops. I move that he be adlected into the Senate immediately, and that he be allowed to stand for the consulship ten years ahead of the customary age. As he is a patrician, the customary age is thirty-nine. That means he will qualify as a candidate ten years from now, when he turns twenty-nine. Why do I recommend these extraordinary measures? Because, conscript fathers, we are going to need the services of all Caesar’s veteran soldiers not attached to Marcus Antonius. Caesar Octavianus has two legions of veteran troops and a third legion of mixed troops. Therefore I further ask that Caesar Octavianus, in possession of an army, be given a propraetor’s imperium and assigned one-third of the command against Marcus Antonius.”
That set the cat among the pigeons! But it showed a great many of the backbenchers that they could no longer support Mark Antony in as whole a way as they hoped; the most they could do was refuse to declare him hostis. So the debate raged until the fourth day of January, on which date several resolutions were passed. Octavian was adlected into the Senate and given a one-third command of Rome’s armies; he was also voted the money he had promised his troops as bonuses. The governance of all Rome’s provinces were to remain as at Caesar’s dictate, which meant that Decimus Brutus was officially Italian Gaul’s governor, and his army the official one.
Matters on that fourth day were enlivened by the appearance of two women in the portico outside the Curia Hostilia doors: Fulvia and Julia Antonia. Antony’s wife and mother were dressed in black from head to foot, as were Antony’s two little sons, the toddler Antyllus holding his grandmother’s hand, the new babe Iullus in his mother’s arms. The four of them wept and howled without let, but when Cicero demanded that the doors be shut, Pansa wouldn’t allow it; he could see that Antony’s women and children were having an effect on the backbenchers, and he didn’t want Antony declared hostis, he wanted that embassage sent.
The ambassadors chosen were Lucius Piso, Lucius Philippus and Servius Sulpicius Rufus, three eminently eminent consulars. But Cicero fought the embassage tooth and nail, insisted that it go to a division. Whereupon the tribune of the plebs Salvius vetoed a division, which meant that the House had to approve the embassage. Mark Antony was still a Roman citizen, albeit one acting in defiance of the Senate and People of Rome.
Fed up with sitting on their stools, the senators disposed of the embassage swiftly. Piso, Philippus and Servius Sulpicius were instructed to see Antony at Mutina and inform him that the Senate wished him to withdraw from Italian Gaul, not to advance within two hundred miles of Rome with his army, and to submit to the authority of the Senate and People. Having delivered this message to Antony, the embassage was then to seek an audience with Decimus Brutus and assure him that he was the legitimate governor and had the Senate’s sanction.
“Looking back on it,” said Lucius Piso gloomily to Lucius Caesar, present in the House again, “I don’t honestly know how any of this has happened. Antonius acted stupidly and arrogantly, yes, but tell me one thing he’s done that someone else hasn’t?”
“Blame Cicero,” said Lucius Caesar. “Men’s emotions get the better of their good sense, and no one can stir the emotions like Cicero. Though I doubt that anyone reading what he says can have any idea what it’s like actually to hear him. He’s a phenomenon.”
“You would have abstained, of course.”
“How could I not? Here I am, Piso, between a wolfshead of a nephew and a cousin for whom I can find no comparison in the entire animal kingdom. Octavianus is a completely new creation.”
* * *
Knowing what was coming, Octavian marched north from Arretium to the Via Flaminia, and had reached Spoletium when the Senate’s commission caught up with him. The nineteen-year-old senator’s propraetorian imperium was right there for all his three legions to see: six lictors clad in crimson tunics, bearing the axes in their fasces. The two leading lictors were Fabius and Cornelius, and all had served Caesar since his days as a praetor.
“Not bad, eh?” he asked Agrippa, Salvidienus and Maecenas, sounding complacent.
Agrippa grinned proudly, Salvidienus began to plan military action, and Maecenas asked a question.
“How did you manage it, Caesar?”
“With Vatia Isauricus, you mean?”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.”
“I asked to marry Vatia’s eldest daughter as soon as she’s of age,” said Octavian blandly. “Luckily that won’t happen for several years, and a lot can happen in several years.”
“You mean you don’t want to marry Servilia Vatia?”
“I don’t want to marry anyone, Maecenas, until I’m smitten, though it mightn’t work out that way.”
“Will it come to a battle with Antonius?” Salvidienus asked.
“I sincerely hope not!” Octavian said, smiling. “And most definitely not while I’m the senior magistrate in the neighborhood. I’m perfectly happy to defer to a consul. Hirtius, I imagine.”
Aulus Hirtius had commenced his junior consulship a sick man, had struggled through the inauguration ceremony and then retired to his bed to recover from a lung inflammation.
So when the Senate notified him that he was to lead three more legions in Octavian’s wake, catch the new young senator up and assume the co-command of their combined forces, Hirtius was in no fit condition to take the field. Which didn’t stop this loyal and selfless man; he wrapped himself up in shawls and furs, chose a litter as his conveyance, and commenced the long journey north on the Via Flaminia into the teeth of a bitter winter. Like Octavian, he didn’t want a battle against Antony, was determined to pursue any other course that presented itself.
He and Octavian joined forces on the Via Aemilia inside the province of Italian Gaul, southeast of the big city of Bononia, and went into camp between Claterna and Forum Cornelii, much to the delight of these two towns, assured of fat army profits.
“And here we stay until the weather improves,” said Hirtius to Octavian through chattering teeth.
Octavian eyed him in concern. It was no part of his plans to let the consul die; the last thing he wanted was too high a profile. So he agreed to this ultimatum eagerly, and proceeded to supervise Hirtius’s nursing, armed with the knowledge of lung ailments which he had soaked up from Hapd’efan’e.
Mobilization in Italy proper was going ahead at full speed; hardly anyone in Rome had realized the enmity Antony had generated among large elements of the Italian communities, which had suffered more at his hands than Rome herself had. Firmum Picenum promised money, the Marrucini of northern Adriatic Samnium threatened to strip Marrucine objectors of their property, and hundreds of rich Italian knights subsidized the equipping of troops. The groundswell was greater outside Rome than inside.
A delighted Cicero took the opportunity to speak out against Antony again at the end of January, when the House met to discuss trivia. By this time, the betrothal of Octavian and Vatia’s eldest daughter was generally known, and heads nodded while lips smirked. The fine old custom of making political alliances through marriage still flourished, a cheering thought when so much had changed.
Word had traveled ahead of the returning embassage that it had gotten nowhere with Antony, though just what Antony had told it wasn’t known. Which didn’t deter Cicero from delivering his seventh oration against Antony. This time he attacked Fufius Calenus and other Antonian partisans savagely for manufacturing reasons why Antony couldn’t possibly agree to the Senate’s terms.
“He must be declared hostis!” roared Cicero.
Lucius Caesar objected. “That’s not a word we should bandy about lightly,” he said. “To declare a man hostis is to deprive him of his citizenship and offer him up as sword fodder to the first patriotic man who sees him. I agree that Marcus Antonius was a bad consul, that he did many things that disadvantaged and disgraced Rome, but hostis? Surely inimicus is punishment enough.”
“Naturally you’d think so! You’re Antonius’s uncle,” Cicero retorted. “I won’t permit the ingrate to retain his citizenship!”
The argument raged on into the next day, Cicero refusing to back down. Hostis it must be.
At which moment two of the three ambassadors returned; Servius Sulpicius Rufus had succumbed to the freezing weather, and died.
“Marcus Antonius refuses to meet the Senate’s conditions,” said Lucius Piso, looking pinched and worn, “and has issued some of his own. He says he will give up Italian Gaul to Decimus Brutus—if he can retain Further Gaul until after Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius have been consuls four years hence.”
Cicero sat stunned. Marcus Antonius was stealing his thunder! He was proclaiming to the Senate that he was switching sides, that he acknowledged the entitlements of the Liberators, that they must have everything Caesar had given them before they killed him! But that was his, Cicero’s, ploy! To oppose Antonius was to oppose the Liberators.
Cicero’s interpretation was not the only one. The Senate chose to see Antony’s ploy as a repeat of Caesar’s before he took the fatal step and crossed the Rubicon. Therefore it opposed Antony and ignored his references to Brutus and Cassius. For the choice was the same as with Caesar: to accede to Antony’s demands was to admit that the Senate couldn’t control its magistrates. So the House declared a state of tumultus, which meant civil war, and authorized the consuls Pansa and Hirtius to meet Antony on a field of battle by passing the Ultimate Decree. It refused, however, to declare Antony hostis. He was inimicus. A victory for Lucius Caesar, albeit a Pyrrhic one. All Antony’s laws as consul were invalidated, which meant that his praetor brother, Gaius, was no longer governor of Macedonia, that his seizure of the silver in Ops was illegal, that his land allocations for the veterans fell by the wayside—the repercussions went on and on.
Just before the Ides of February a letter came from Marcus Brutus to inform the Senate that Quintus Hortensius had confirmed him as governor of Macedonia, and that Gaius Antonius was now shut up in Apollonia as Brutus’s prisoner. All the legions in Macedonia, said Brutus, had hailed him as governor and their commander.
Dreadful news! Horrific! Or—was it? By this, the Senate was in total disarray, didn’t know what to do. Cicero advocated that the House officially confirm Marcus Brutus the governor of Macedonia, and asked the Antonians why they were so against the two Brutuses, Decimus and Marcus?
“Because they’re murderers!” Fufius Calenus shouted.
“They’re patriots,” said Cicero. “Patriots.”
On the Ides of February the Senate made Brutus the governor of Macedonia, gave him a proconsular imperium, then added Crete, Greece and Illyricum to his provinces. Cicero was ecstatic. Now he had only two things left to do. The first, to see Antony a beaten man on a battlefield in Italian Gaul. The second, to see Syria taken off Dolabella and given to Cassius to govern.
* * *
The first anniversary of Caesar’s assassination brought a new horror, for it was on the Ides of March that Rome learned of the atrocities committed by Publius Cornelius Dolabella. En route to Syria, Dolabella had plundered the cities of Asia Province. When he reached Smyrna, where the governor Trebonius was residing, he entered the city by stealth at night, took Trebonius prisoner, and demanded to know where the province’s moneys were stored. Trebonius refused to tell him, even after Dolabella resorted to torture. Not the worst pain Dolabella could inflict had the power to loosen Trebonius’s tongue; Dolabella lost his temper, killed Trebonius, cut off his head and nailed it to the plinth of Caesar’s statue in the agora. Thus Trebonius became the first assassin to die.
The news devastated the Antonians. How could they defend him when his colleague had behaved like a barbarian? When Pansa called the House into immediate session, Fufius Calenus and his cronies had no choice other than to vote with the rest that Dolabella be stripped of his imperium and declared hostis. All his property was confiscated, but it amounted to nothing; Dolabella had never managed to clear himself of debt.
Then a fresh wrangle broke out, thanks to the fact that Syria was now a vacant governorship. Lucius Caesar proposed that Vatia Isauricus be given a special commission to take an army east and deal with Dolabella. This peeved the senior consul Pansa greatly.
“Aulus Hirtius and I have already been given the East for our provinces next year,” he told the House. “Hirtius is to govern Asia Province and Cilicia, I am to govern Syria. This year our armies are committed to fighting Marcus Antonius in Italian Gaul, we can’t fight Dolabella in Syria as well. Therefore I recommend that this year be devoted to the war in Italian Gaul, and next year to war in Syria against Dolabella.”
The Antonians saw this proposal as their best bet. Antony still had to be beaten, and they were convinced he couldn’t be beaten. Pansa’s proposition would keep the legions already in Italy there for the rest of the year, by which time Antony would have thrashed Hirtius, Pansa and Octavian, and the legions would all belong to him. Then he could go to Syria.
Cicero had a different answer. Give Syria to Gaius Cassius to govern! Now, right this moment! As no one knew whereabouts Cassius was, this proposal came as a shock. Did Cicero know something the rest of the Senate didn’t know?
“Don’t give this job to a slug like Vatia Isauricus, and don’t pop it in the cellar to store for Pansa next year either!” said Cicero, forgetting protocol and manners. “Syria has to be attended to now, not later, and by a young, vigorous man in his prime. A young, vigorous man who already knows Syria well, and has even dealt with the Parthians. Gaius Cassius Longinus! The best and only man for this governorship! What’s more, give him the power to make military requisitions in Bithynia, Pontus, Asia Province and Cilicia. Give him unlimited imperium for five years. Our consuls Pansa and Hirtius have their work cut out for them in Italian Gaul!”
Of course from there it was on to Antony. “Do not forget that this Marcus Antonius is a traitor!” Cicero cried. “When he handed Caesar a diadem on the day of the Lupercalia, he showed the whole world that he was Caesar’s real murderer!”
A look at the faces of his audience showed him that he hadn’t hammered Cassius home enough. “I judge Dolabella as Antonius’s equal in barbarity! Give Syria to Gaius Cassius immediately!”
But that Pansa was not about to allow. He forced a motion through the House which gave him and Hirtius command of the war against Dolabella as soon as the war in Italian Gaul was over. He was now absolutely committed to the war in Italian Gaul and had to get it over and done with quickly so he at least could leave for Syria during this year, not next. So Pansa handed the care of Rome over to the praetors and took more legions to Italian Gaul.
The day after Pansa left, the governor of Further Gaul, Lucius Munatius Plancus, and of Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, sent letters to the Senate that said they would deeply appreciate it if the Senate would come to an accommodation with Marcus Antonius, a Roman as loyal as they were. The message was implicit: the Senate ought not to forget that there were two big armies sitting on the far side of the Alps, and that these two armies were under the command of governors who favored Marcus Antonius.
Blackmail! said Cicero to himself, and took it upon himself to sit down and write to Plancus and Lepidus, though he had no authority to do so. With eleven speeches delivered against Mark Antony, he had entered a state of exaltation that forbade his climbing down in any way, so what he said to Plancus and Lepidus was injudiciously arrogant—stay out of things you’re too far away to know about, mind your own provincial business, and don’t stick your noses into Rome’s affairs! Not a high aristocrat, Plancus took Cicero’s rebuke with his sangfroid intact, whereas Lepidus reacted as if punctured by an ox goad—how dare that New Man nobody Cicero upbraid an Aemilius Lepidus!