Marcus Agrippa: Right-hand Man of Caesar Augustus (22 page)

The timing and presentation of the request were poor – and it played right into Caesar’s hands.
³³
He used the material to present Antonius as a drunken, debauched playboy who was failing to live up to the high standards expected of a Roman proconsul. From his lodgings in Alexandria Antonius hit back at the accusations with charges of his own.
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Caesar had not given him his share of Sicily after it had been taken from Sex. Pompeius. Caesar had not returned the ships he had been loaned. Caesar had kept Lepidus’ army for himself, along with the territory and cash it generated. And his allotments of land to the veterans had excluded his troops. Imperator Caesar shot back a barbed retort that:

It was hard to see how the two men could now be reconciled.

In the spring of 33 BCE, while Caesar was campaigning in Illyricum and Agrippa was supervising miracles of hydraulic engineering in Rome, Antonius returned to Roman-controlled Armenia. He had learned that King Artavasdes of Media Atropatene had quarrelled with his Parthian neighbour.
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The rift provided Antonius with the unexpected, but timely, opportunity for an alliance. Antonius marched to the Araxes (Aras) River. A treaty was signed to the satisfaction of both sides, in which each would come to the support of the other in time of need. To bind the two men together, the king’s daughter, Iotape, was betrothed to Antonius’ son, Alexander Helios.
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To Polemon I of Pontus, a client king – whose father Zenon had encouraged the local people to resist Q. Labienus and King Pacorus I of Parthia when their armies invaded Syria and Anatolia – he gave orders to police the Roman frontier with Parthia.
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Antonius’ attention was turning westwards. A war between the two strong men of the Roman world, and one which would decide its fate, was now inevitable. With the eastern border at peace – even if fragile – in November Antonius ordered his deputy P. Canidius Crassus to withdraw the sixteen legions from Armenia and march to the coast in preparation for the coming conflict with Caesar.
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Antonius sailed with Kleopatra – now his greatest sponsor, providing him men, horses and ships – to Ephesus for ‘it was there that his naval force was coming together from all quarters, 800 ships of war with merchant vessels, of which Kleopatra furnished 200, besides 20,000 talents, and supplies for the whole army
during the war’.
⁴⁰
In the arms race for the coming civil war, Antonius was far ahead of Caesar. Without having made adequate preparations and lacking many essential supplies, Imperator Caesar feared being forced to fight that summer.
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To raise cash needed to pay for the men and matériel he needed he compelled the citizens to pay a quarter of their income and the freedmen one eighth of their property. Both classes protested vehemently against Caesar. Riots broke out across Italy. He now risked losing the political capital he and Agrippa had so carefully built up over the previous two years. Then, quite unexpectedly, Antonius failed to make the first move. With the benefit of hindsight, ‘among the greatest mistakes of Antonius, men reckon his postponement of the war,’ writes Plutarch, ‘for it gave Caesar time to make preparations and put an end to the disturbances among the people’.
⁴²
There were defections among Antonius’ friends too. Claiming that he had been coldly treated by Antonius on account of unmistakable evidence of his venal rapacity, proconsul L. Munatius Plancus switched sides and brought with him slanderous gossip that Caesar was quick to broadcast; he was soon joined by his uncle M. Titius.
⁴³
They informed him of the contents of Antonius’ will and testament. Though supposedly held in the care of the Vestal Virgins, who were sworn to keep it secret until Antonius’ death, by some means fair or foul Caesar managed to get a copy – or convinced those that needed to be that he had one. He studied it, identified its most damning clauses, and brought them before the Senate.
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To the sober Conscript Fathers Antonius was revealed to be subservient to the queen. They were told how he had rubbed her feet at a banquet in full view of the guests. He had abandoned a court case mid-trial to wander off and join her entourage. He had lavished expensive gifts on her, including the Library at Pergamum and its collection of 200,000 books. Most shocking was the stipulation that after a public funeral in the
Forum
at Rome, his body should be returned to Kleopatra for burial in Egypt.
⁴⁵
Other truths, half-truths, rumours and falsehoods from second and third-hand sources were woven into the oration to show how Antonius had allowed himself to shamefully pander to his Egyptian mistress – he had become ‘a captive to his love for Kleopatra’, in Florus’ words – and to neglect his duties as an official of the Roman state.
⁴⁶
Scandalous was that Antonius already had a Roman wife – and not any woman, but the sister of his fellow
triumvir
.

The two triumvirs accused each other openly and publicly. Antonius repeated his charged that Caesar had removed Lepidus unlawfully, and the territory and troops taken from the former
triumvir
, as well as the troops he had confiscated from Sex. Pompeius, which should have been shared between them, and he demanded his half.
⁴⁷
Caesar retorted that Antonius was holding Egypt and the other nations without due process of assigning them by lot, that he had killed Sextus – whom he himself had willingly spared – and the way he had treated the king of Armenia had brought the dignity of the Roman People into disrepute.
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Then he demanded half the spoils of war. Above all he reproached him for the children he had sired with Kleopatra, the gifts he had lavished upon them, and particular, because he was calling the boy Caesarion and bringing him into the family of Caesar.
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Yet, Antonius still had supporters in Rome, and crucially many were in the Senate. On New Year’s Day 32 BCE the new consuls, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and C. Sosius, stood steadfast with their maligned friend; but while Ahenobarbus refrained from speaking out against Caesar, Sosius made a very personal attack against him.
⁵⁰
Caesar, however, was not there to hear them. Fully expecting the accusations, he had wisely stayed away from Rome with Agrippa at his side. When the resulting unfavourable legislation limiting Caesar’s powers finally came up for the vote, he quietly arranged for the sympathetic tribune Nonius Balbus to veto it.
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Returning to the city, Imperator Caesar convened the Senate and surrounded himself menacingly with loyal troops who wore concealed daggers; their hobnailed
caligae
revealed them as military.
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He sat himself provocatively on an official chair with the consuls. Caesar then proceeded to defend his actions at length, but in moderate language, and to bring accusations against Antonius and Sosius, promising at the next meeting of the Senate to produce documents which would irrefutably support his allegations against them.
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Caesar declared that anyone feeling insecure in the city was at complete liberty to leave and join Antonius.
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Many took the cue. This was the moment a large contingent of Antonius’ supporters left – some 200 of the 900 senators fled Rome for the perceived safety of the Egyptian capital to join their leader. Ahenobarbus and Sosius were among them.
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Caesar promptly replaced them with two suffect consuls, L. Cornelius Cinna and M. Valerius Messalla, both sympathetic to his cause.
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While the exiles assembled and declared themselves the legitimate Senate, things did not all go Antonius’ way. On Samos, he and his Egyptian consort received an assembly of client kings, among them Herodes. Another unexpected guest was Artavasdes of Media Atropatene. It transpired that having withdrawn the legions from neighbouring Armenia, there were no Roman troops available to save him from an attack by Phraates (Frahâta) IV.
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Ousted from his own kingdom, he sought sanctuary with Antonius on the Greek island.

During the summer of that year Antonius finally – and unceremoniously – divorced Octavia.
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His callousness contrasted with her consideration. Even as his agents presented the letter demanding that she leave his house in Rome, ‘she was in tears of distress that she herself also would be regarded as one of the causes of the war’.
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Again, he had misjudged the mood of the Roman people. They ‘felt pity for Antonius, not for her, and especially those who had seen Kleopatra and knew that neither in youthfulness nor beauty was she superior to Octavia.’
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A dutiful Roman lady, she left the
domus Antonia
taking all his children with her except M. Antonius Antyllus, his eldest son by Fulvia, who was already with his father. When Antonius and Kleopatra arrived in Athens he insisted that his new wife should receive the same honours Octavia had been accorded. Whenever she spoke, he listened, agreeing with her on many important matters, even against his own instinct and better judgment.
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If he had thought there would be strength in numbers, with the Egyptian regent present among them, relations between his Roman supporters soon became strained. When Antonius proposed to attack Italy, she persuaded him not to, but in doing so he upset several of the senators in exile and many of his officers too.

Imperator Caesar was now ready to do battle; Agrippa awaited his orders. Due process required that a formal declaration of war had to be agreed in the Roman Senate and ratified by the Popular Assembly. Caesar was extremely careful to position the coming struggle, not as a fight against the wayward Roman, but as a war against the foreign seductress. In the latter part of 32 BCE ‘a vote was passed to wage war against Kleopatra, and to take away from Antonius the authority which he had surrendered to a woman’.
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This last point about her gender was very important:
she
had publicly humiliated a Roman. To stress the culpability of the Egyptian, he added ‘that Antonius had been drugged and was not even master of himself, and that the Romans were carrying on war with Mardion the eunuch, and Potheinus, and Iras, and the tire-woman of Kleopatra, and Charmion, by whom the principal affairs of the government were managed’.
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The Egyptian queen had demanded the Roman Empire from the besotted, drunken commander as payment for her favours.
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To lend gravity to the declaration, Caesar invoked the ancient rite of declaring war in which a fetial priest struck a spear into a patch of ground regarded as token foreign soil at the Temple of Bellona – doing it there saved on the time and expense of delivering the message to the queen in person.
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‘These proceedings,’ writes Dio, ‘were nominally directed against Kleopatra, but really against Antonius.’
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According to Caesar’s own account, this year, to bind the nation all of the communities of Italy were required to take an oath of loyalty (
Iuratio Italiae
) to him – all except Antonius’ hereditary family clients living in Bononia.
⁶⁷
The Actian War (
Bellum Actiense
) had begun.

While the Roman world fractured in two halves as men were forced to pick sides, Agrippa’s own family suffered a deep rent that year. His father-in-law, T. Pomponius Atticus, had had no serious illness for the last three decades.
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Now 77-years-old, he had developed an intestinal condition his doctors could not identify, even after ‘a putrid ulcer broke out through his loins’.
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He urgently sent for Agrippa to be at his side at his house in Rome, along with L. Cornelius Balbus and Sex. Peducaeus. He explained to them that, seeing no possibility for recovery, he could no longer continue if it meant living with the excruciating pain which daily grew worse.
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He had decided to end his life through starvation. Cornelius Nepos describes Agrippa’s reaction to the news:

After stubbornly refusing food for two days, the fever broke. Apparently showing signs of recovery, Atticus nevertheless continued his fast for three more days. On 31 March 32 BCE he died.
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Though wealthy, his funeral was modest. ‘His body was carried out of his house on a small couch, as he himself had directed,’ writes Cornelius Nepos, ‘without any funereal pomp, all the respectable portion of the
people attending, and a vast crowd of the populace.’
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His ashes were placed in the sepulchre of his uncle Q. Caecilius on the
Via Appia
at the fifth milestone from the city. Agrippa had lost a much loved relation, a well-connected friend and a wise confidant.

Setting personal grief aside, Agrippa now took on the most important military leadership role of his life. In the closing months of 32 BCE Caesar placed Agrippa in charge of all military operations.
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News had arrived that Antonius had stationed his troops in many towns and shore forts along the western coast of Greece as far as
Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis
(modern Corinth), and moved his fleet and land army to Kerkyra (Corfu) – the westernmost Greek island.
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The move could have been defensive, but just as likely it suggests Antonius still had the intention of a surprise invasion of Italy before his opponent could respond, despite Kleopatra having already rejected the idea. Antonius represented a clear and present threat. Agrippa immediately despatched a small flotilla across the Adriatic Sea to reconnoitre Antonius’ forces (
map 7
). It seems Agrippa was spotted first. Off the Caraunian Mountains Antonius’ scouts spied the arrival of Agrippa’s ships. Thinking these were the vanguard of Caesar’s main fleet, Antonius advanced no further, but decided to return to the Peloponnese, setting up his winter quarters at Patrae (modern Patras).
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Orosius states that Agrippa captured Kerkyra and ‘then pursued and routed the fugitives in a naval battle, and finally, after accomplishing many acts of the utmost cruelty, came back to Caesar’.
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