The October Horse (85 page)

“The assassins must be prosecuted,” Octavian was saying. “The scandal lies in the fact that they weren't prosecuted the day after they did the deed. Had they, the present situation could never have arisen. It's Cicero and the Senate responsible for legalizing Brutus's position, which rather flows on to Cassius's, but it's Antonius and his Senate that didn't prosecute.”

“Which is my point,” Marcellus Minor said. “If they weren't prosecuted immediately afterward—indeed, were given a general amnesty—will people understand?”

“I don't care if people don't, Marcellus. Senate and People have to learn that a group of noblemen can't excuse the murder of a fellow nobleman in a legal office on patriotic grounds. Murder is murder. If the assassins had reason to believe that my father intended to make himself King of Rome, then they should have prosecuted him in a court of law,” said Octavian.

“How could they possibly have done that?” Marcellus asked. “Caesar was Dictator Perpetuus, above the law, inviolable.”

“All they had to do was strip him of his dictatorship—it was voted to him, after all. But they didn't even try to strip him of it. The assassins voted in favor of Dictator Perpetuus.”

“They were afraid of him,” said Pedius. He had been too.

“Nonsense! Afraid of what? When did my father ever take a Roman life except in battle? His policy was clemency—a mistake, but a reality nonetheless. Pedius, he had pardoned most of his assassins, some of them twice over!”

“Still and all, they were afraid of him,” said Marcellus.

The young, smooth, beautiful face hardened, took on the mien of a cold, mature purveyor of terror. “They have more reason to be afraid of me! I won't rest until the last assassin is dead, his reputation in ruins, his property confiscated, his women and children paupers.”

A queer silence fell upon the men. Philippus broke it.

“There are fewer and fewer to prosecute,” he said. “Gaius Trebonius, Aquila, Decimus Brutus, Basilus—”

“But why,” Marcellus interrupted, “is Sextus Pompeius to be prosecuted? He wasn't an assassin, and he's now officially Rome's proconsul of the seas.”

“His proconsular status is about to end, as you well know. I have a dozen witnesses to testify that his ships raided the African grain fleet two nundinae ago. That makes him a traitor. Besides, he's Pompeius Magnus's son,” Octavian said flatly. “I will be rid of all Caesar's enemies.”

His auditors knew that the Caesar he meant was himself.

•      •      •

The trials of the Liberators came on within the first month of the consulship of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and Quintus Pedius; even though there were twenty-three separate hearings (the dead were tried too), the whole process was over within one nundinum. The jurors unanimously condemned each Liberator, who was declared nefas. All his property was confiscated by the state. Those Liberators like the tribune of the plebs Gaius Servilius Casca who were still in Rome fled, but pursuit was slow. Suddenly Servilia and Tertulla were homeless, though not for long. Their private fortunes had always been invested with Atticus, who bought Servilia a new house on the Palatine and took a great deal of undeserved credit for supporting the two women.

When the subsidiary prosecution convicted Sextus Pompey of treason, one of the thirty-three jurors returned a tile marked A for ABSOLVO; the rest obediently said C for CONDEMNO.

“Why did you do that?” Agrippa asked the man, a knight.

“Because Sextus Pompeius is not a traitor” was the answer.

Octavian filed away the name, rather pleased at the size of the man's fortune. He would keep.

The bequests were distributed to the people, and Caesar's parks and gardens thrown open; Romans from all walks of life loved to stroll and picnic in verdant but tamed places. Octavian was pleased to hire Cleopatra's palace out to ambitious members of the First Class desirous of giving large feasts for their clients. Their names went into his “Items of Interest” file too.

He secured the election of two intimates as tribunes of the plebs: Marcus Agrippa and Lucius Cornificius, for with Casca's flight, the College held two vacancies. Publius Titius, already a tribune of the plebs and anxious to stand high with Octavian, saved Octavian's life when the foreign praetor, Quintus Gallus, tried to murder him. Gallus was stripped of his office, the galvanized Senate condemned him to death without a trial, and the ordinary people were allowed to loot his house. Tiny shock waves were radiating through the First Class, who now began to ask themselves if Octavianus was any better than Antonius?

True to his word, the new senior consul took enough money from the Treasury to pay his original three legions ten thousand sesterces each. Their representatives had readily agreed to his proposal that the other half should wait and accrue interest as a guarantee of future income. Though, with centurion extras, this amounted to less than four thousand talents, he took six thousand—as much as he dared with grain prices spiraling—and split the remainder up among his three later legions. He also recruited sixty humble rankers in each legion to work as his private agents, one man per century; their job was to spread word of Caesar's generosity and constancy, and also report any troublemakers. They were told to speak about the army as a long-term career sure to leave a soldier a relatively wealthy man at the end of fifteen or twenty years' service. Largesse was good, but secure, well-paid, all-expenses-founded, steady employment was better, was Octavian's message. Be loyal to Rome and Caesar and Rome and Caesar will always look after you, even if there are no wars to be fought. Garrison duty permitted family life on post. The army was an attractive career! Thus, even at this very early stage, Octavian began to prepare the legionaries for the idea of a permanent, standing army.

•      •      •

On the twenty-third day of September, which was his twentieth birthday, Octavian took eleven legions and marched north to contend with Mark Antony and the western governors.

With him he took the tribune of the plebs Lucius Cornificius, an extraordinary action—to care for the interests of his troops, all plebeians, he explained. Behind him in Rome he left Pedius to govern, with his two other tribunes of the plebs, Agrippa and Titius, to push Pedius's laws through the Plebeian Assembly. His more invisible helper, Gaius Maecenas, remained in Rome on less obvious business, chiefly concerned with recruiting innovative men of the lower classes.

Agrippa hadn't liked abandoning Octavian. “You'll get into trouble if I'm not with you,” he said.

“I'll manage, Agrippa. I need you in Rome to gain experience in unwarlike matters, and learn about lawmaking. Believe me, I stand in no danger on this campaign.”

“But you're taking a tribune of the plebs,” Agrippa objected.

“One less known to be my loyalest follower,” said Octavian.

The march was fairly leisurely and ended at Bononia, where Octavian made camp and sent to Mutina for the six legions of raw recruits Decimus Brutus had deemed so hopeless that he left them behind when he chased Antony westward. Salvidienus was charged with drilling and training all recruits remorselessly while the army waited for Mark Antony to find it.

Octavian had no intention of fighting Antony when he came, and had formulated a plan he thought had a fair chance of success, depending upon how persuasively he could talk. What he knew was that it was up to him to unite all the factions of Caesar's old civil war alliance; if he didn't, Rome would go to Brutus and Cassius, now controlling every province east of the Adriatic. A state of affairs that had to be terminated, but impossible to terminate unless all Caesar's adherents were united.

•      •      •

Early in October, Mark Antony took seventeen of his legions out of camp in Forum Julii, leaving six behind with Lucius Varius Cotyla to garrison the West. After their halcyon summer the men were fit, well rested, and spoiling for some action. All three governors marched with him: Plancus, Lepidus and Pollio. But of master plans there were none. Antony was well aware of Brutus and Cassius in the East and understood that they would have to be put down, but his thinking lumped Octavian in with the two Liberators as yet another unacceptable, obnoxious player in the power game. He was not enamored of losing valuable troops in battle against Octavian, but saw no alternative. Once Octavian was knocked out of the game, he would pick up Octavian's troops, but their loyalty would always be suspect, he knew. If the Martia and the Fourth could leave Marcus Antonius for a baby who reminded them of Caesar, what would they think of that selfsame Marcus Antonius when their baby Caesar lay dead at Marcus Antonius's hands?

So he took the Via Domitia and crossed into Italian Gaul at Ocelum in a sour mood, not improved by his bedtime reading, the series of speeches Cicero had delivered against him. Though he despised Octavian, he hated Cicero. Were it not for Cicero, his position would be secure, his public enemy status would not exist, and Octavian wouldn't be a problem. It had been Cicero who encouraged Caesar's heir, Cicero who turned the Senate against him until even Fufius Calenus didn't dare speak up for him. Confiscation of his property hadn't been an issue, for though his debts were paid off, he had no money worth speaking of. Much as they might hunger to, the senators didn't dare touch Fulvia or his palace on the Carinae—she was the granddaughter of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, and under the protection of Atticus.

Fulvia. He missed her, and he missed his children by her. Full of news and well written, her letters had kept him informed of every event in Rome, and he had cause to be grateful to Atticus. Her hatred of Cicero was even greater than his own, if that were humanly possible.

•      •      •

When Antony reached Mutina, twenty miles from Octavian's camp on the outskirts of Bononia, he was met by the third tribune of the plebs, Lucius Cornificius. A holder of that office was the best of all envoys; even a Mark Antony had sufficient sense to understand that his cause would not be improved by the manhandling of a tribune of the plebs. They were sacrosanct and inviolate when acting for the Plebs, as Cornificius insisted he was, despite the fact that his boss belonged to the Patriciate.

“The consul Caesar,” said Cornificius, twenty-one years old, “wishes to confer with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus.”

“Confer, or surrender?” Antony sneered.

“Confer, definitely confer. I bear an olive branch, not a reversed standard.”

Plancus and Lepidus were very much against the idea of any meeting with Octavian, whereas Pollio thought it excellent. So, after thinking things over, did Antony.

“Tell Octavianus that I'll consider his proposal,” Antony said.

Lucius Cornificius did a lot of galloping back and forth over the next several days, but eventually it was agreed that Antony, Lepidus and Octavian would meet to confer on an island in the middle of the swift, strong Lavinus River near Bononia. It was Cornificius named the site on his last mission.

“All right, that will do,” said Antony after considering it from all sides, “provided that Octavianus moves his camp to the Bononian side of the river, while I move my camp to the Mutinan bank. If there's any treachery, we can fight it out on the spot.”

“Let Pollio and me come with you and Lepidus,” Plancus said, unhappy because he knew that whatever was discussed would affect his whole future. “It ought to be more public, Antonius.”

Bright eyes twinkling, Gaius Asinius Pollio gazed at Plancus in amusement. Poor Plancus! A beautiful writer, an erudite man, but incapable of seeing what he, Pollio, saw plainly. What do men like Plancus and Pollio matter? What, really, does silly Lepidus matter? It's between Antonius and Octavianus. A man of forty versus a man of twenty. The known versus the unknown. Lepidus is merely their sop to throw to good dog Cerberus, their way to enter Hades undevoured. How terrific it is to be an eyewitness of great events when one is an historian! First the Rubicon, now the Lavinus. Two rivers, and Pollio was there.

•      •      •

The island was small and grassy, shaded by several lofty poplars; there had been some willows too, but a party of sappers hauled them out so that the observers on each bank could have an unimpeded view of proceedings. The meeting place for the three negotiators—marked by three curule chairs beneath a poplar—was far enough away from the bevy of servants and secretaries who occupied the island's far end, there to distribute refreshments or wait to be summoned to take something down in writing.

Antony and Lepidus were rowed across from their bank, both clad in armor, whereas Octavian chose his purple-bordered toga and maroon senatorial shoes with consular crescent buckles rather than his special boots. The audience was vast, for both armies lined the banks of the Lavinus and watched raptly while the three figures sat, stood, paced, gesticulated, looked at each other or stared pensively at the swirling waters.

The greetings were typical: Octavian was suitably deferential, Lepidus amiable, Antony curt.

“Let's get down to business,” Antony said, and sat.

“What do you think our business is, Marcus Antonius?” asked Octavian, waiting until Lepidus sat before taking his own chair.

“To help you crawl out of the hole you've dug for yourself,” said Antony. “You know if it comes to battle you'll lose.”

“We each have seventeen legions, and mine contain quite as many veterans, I believe,” Octavian said coolly, fair brows up. “However, you have the advantage of a more experienced command.”

“In other words, you want to crawl out of that hole.”

“No, I'm not thinking of myself. At my age, Antonius, I can afford to suffer an occasional humiliation without its coloring the rest of my career. No, I'm thinking of them.” Octavian indicated the watching soldiers. “I asked for this conference to see if we can work out a way to avoid shedding one drop of their blood. Your men or mine, Antonius, makes no difference. They're all Roman citizens, and all entitled to live, to sire sons and daughters for Rome and Italy, which my father believed were the same entity. Why should they have to shed their blood simply in order to decide whether you or I is the leader of the pack?”