Augustus (17 page)

Forced by hunger to come down into the plains, he was kidnapped by a bandit who made a living by preying on passing travelers, putting them in chains and forcing them to work for him. Atilius, brought up in luxury, could not endure the hard labor. Still wearing his fetters, he made off to a main road, where he incautiously identified himself to some passing centurions. They killed him there and then, doubtless taking his head back to Rome for their reward.

A funerary inscription dating from the late first century
B.C.
tells a very different story. It records the speech a grieving husband made at the funeral of his wife after forty years of marriage. We know neither his name nor hers, but she is usually called Turia, the name of a woman who led a similar life and who was once thought, wrongly, to be the same person.

Turia’s husband, an unrepentant republican, was proscribed and went into hiding. He recalled: “You provided abundantly for my needs during my flight and gave me the means for a dignified life-style, when you took all the gold and jewellery you wore and sent it to me.”

A year later, when the need for the proscription had ended, Octavian pardoned Turia’s husband, but Lepidus, then in charge of the city of Rome, refused to acknowledge his colleague’s decision. He seems to have enjoyed the proscription and did not wish it to be over.

Turia presented herself before Lepidus to ask him to recognize the pardon, and prostrated herself before his feet. He did not raise her up (as, according to convention, he should have done), but had her dragged away and beaten. This characteristically unpleasant behavior apparently angered Octavian and, according to Turia’s husband, contributed to his downfall. “That matter was soon to prove harmful to him,” the widower remarked with dry satisfaction.

The cruelty and confusion that the proscription brought about was widespread. As many as three hundred senators were butchered—among them Cicero—and perhaps two thousand
equites
. The republican opposition in Italy was largely liquidated.

Antony had a streak of savagery in his character and entered fully into the spirit of things (unless the record has been distorted by subsequent propaganda against him). He always inspected the heads of victims, even at table when eating a meal. His wife was equally ferocious.

As for Octavian, while the proscription was in progress some observers found him a good deal too fond of victims’ expensive furniture and their Corinthian bronze figures, objets d’art that were highly prized. According to Suetonius, someone scrawled on the base of a statue of him an insulting poem recalling the old story that his family’s fortune derived from the shameful business of moneylending.

I did not take my father’s line;

His trade was silver coin, but mine

Corinthian bronzes…

The proscription was not as effective as its designers had intended. Much less money was made than had been expected, for too much land and built property came on the market at the same time and prices collapsed. Also, the more respectable felt some qualms about buying the estates of innocent victims.

The triumvirs were at their wits’ end, for they had to find the resources to finance forty-three legions. They produced a new proscription list that merely confiscated property. They even stole the personal savings that people had placed in the sacred care of the Vestal Virgins. Ingenious new taxes were devised to swell their war chest.

All this came as a great shock to the citizens of Rome in Italy, who, thanks to the wealth of empire, had been exempt from personal tax for the last century. With the western provinces exhausted and the east off limits, they found themselves, for the first time, paying for their civil war.

Meanwhile, the republican cause was prospering. A new maritime leader in the west had emerged to complement the land power of Brutus and Cassius in the east. He was Sextus Pompeius, Pompey the Great’s youngest son. Although still a very young man, he had already lived an extraordinary life.

In 48
B.C.
, with the civil war in full swing, Pompey the Great sent Sextus, then a child of thirteen or so, with his third wife, the young and beautiful Cornelia, to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the north of the Aegean Sea, where they would be safe from the fighting. He joined them there after Pharsalus, and they sailed with him on his final journey.

Sextus witnessed his father’s murder off the coast of Egypt. A small fishing boat set out from the beach, with a Roman soldier in it and a few court officials. The passengers looked too unimpressively workaday for the reception of a great Roman commander, even one fallen on hard times. Pompey’s entourage grew increasingly suspicious and advised him to have their ship rowed back out of range of the shore.

It was too late, for soon the boat had come alongside and the Roman soldier, a certain Lucius Septimius, whom Pompey recognized, saluted him with the title of
imperator,
commander in chief. Turning to Cornelia and Sextus before leaving the ship, Pompey kissed them and quoted a couple of lines from Sophocles:

Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant’s court

Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.

Cornelia and Sextus were in a frenzy of anxiety, but they relaxed when the little boat neared the beach where what they took to be a welcome party was waiting. However, as Pompey got to his feet before stepping down onto the sand, Septimius struck him with his sword, followed by others in the boat. Pompey pulled his toga over his head and sank down with a groan.

The people on the trireme gave out a great wailing sound when they saw what was happening, a cry so loud that it was heard on the shore. But Cornelia and Sextus knew there was nothing that could be done. Their ship weighed anchor and, with a strong following wind in its sail, ran out to sea.

The shock of what he had seen marked Sextus forever. The greatest personality not simply in the boy’s own life, but in the Roman world (as he will have been told), was dead, not falling honorably on the battlefield but butchered in a squalid ambush. Although the records of Sextus’ doings are scant, enough evidence survives to suggest that he modeled himself on his father. He gave himself an unusual
agnomen,
Pius, to convey the meaning that he was “loyal to his father’s memory.”

Cornelia went back to Rome, but Sextus made his way to Africa, where he joined his elder brother, Gnaeus. After the defeat at Thapsus and Cato’s suicide, he and his brother fled to Spain, where the Pompeius clan were popular. Gnaeus had little difficulty in raising an army of thirteen legions, in the main recruited from Spanish tribesmen and slaves. As we have seen, that force was largely destroyed at Munda, and Gnaeus was hunted down and killed. Sextus, however, made a getaway and disappeared into Spain’s tribal hinterland. Caesar published a pardon for Sextus and did not pursue him, believing he was too young to be a serious threat.

This was a mistake, for the young man soon gathered new forces. Although only a teenager, he ran a highly effective guerrilla war against the provincial governors whom Caesar appointed. Appian makes it clear that he understood the principles of irregular fighting, a long tradition among Spanish tribesmen: “With his greater mobility [Sextus] made unexpected appearances, disappeared again, harassed his enemies, and ended up taking a number of towns, small and large.”

The Ides of March changed everything. From being an enemy of the state, Sextus, now about eighteen years old, was suddenly in a position to support the republican cause. The Senate appointed him prefect of the fleet and the seacoasts in 43
B.C.
, whereupon he gathered together all the ships he could find and set sail for Massilia (today’s Marseille).

Sextus’ fortunes soon went into reverse. After the establishment of the Triumvirate, the consul Pedius canceled his appointment as admiral. However, Sextus hung on to his ships and, in a bold stroke, decided not to return to Spain, instead settling in Sicily, where he persuaded the governor to hand over the island. The triumvirs, seeing their danger, added his name to the proscription list (despite the fact that he had nothing whatever to do with Caesar’s assassination).

Sextus was now in an extraordinarily strong position; from his maritime vantage point in Sicily he controlled the grain supply to Rome from Egypt, Africa, and Sicily itself. Many proscribed men flocked to him, as did refugees and escaped slaves from all over Italy. Sextus encouraged this development, as Appian reports: “His small boats and merchant vessels met any who came by sea; his warships patrolled the shores, made signals to help the lost, and picked up anyone they encountered. He came in person to meet the new arrivals.”

A new strategy began to take shape in republican minds: Brutus and Cassius were in charge of the east, and Sextus of the west. Italy and Gaul were isolated. It would only be a matter of time before the dead dictator’s poisonous faction was isolated and crushed.

Octavian had the same idea, but from the opposite standpoint. He sent a squadron to put paid to Sextus, but it was defeated, and Cassius then sent ships and reinforcements to Sextus. For the time being, Octavian did not press the issue.

The mood in Rome was bleak and panicky. On January 1, 42, a religious ceremony of great political importance was conducted. The triumvirs took an oath that Julius Caesar had become a god, all of whose acts were sacred and binding, and made the Senate swear to the same effect. They laid the foundations of a small temple dedicated to Caesar in the Forum, on the spot where his corpse had been cremated by the grieving mob. His birthday was made a public holiday; celebrations were compulsory and senators or senators’ sons who did not take part were liable to a severe fine of one million sesterces.

Julius Caesar’s deification calls for some explanation. In the classical world, the boundary between gods and men was not clear-cut. Heroes in Greek legends, such as Heracles, were thought to be half human and half divine. From the third century
B.C.
, kings in the Middle East regularly arranged for themselves to be “deified” in their lifetimes. Nobody really believed that they were of a different nature from the rest of humanity, but divine status added majesty to their office and created a respectful distance between them and their grateful subjects.

Roman governors were also sometimes awarded divine honors, although these were held to be valid only in the east. The novelty of Caesar’s deification is that it took place in Rome and under the auspices of the state.

As for Octavian, his standing was considerably enhanced, for he could style himself
divi filius,
the son of a god. His supporters lost no opportunity to publicize his adoptive father’s elevation to the stars.