Antony and Cleopatra

Quintus Dellius entered the room, arm in arm with yet another sycophant, Sentius Saturninus.

‘Look who’s just arrived from Agrigentum with Libo!’ Dellius cried delightedly. ‘Antonius, have you any of that Chian red?’

‘Pah!’ spat Antony. ‘Where’s Plancus?’

‘Here, Antonius!’ said Plancus, going to embrace Libo and Sentius Saturninus. ‘Isn’t this nice?’

Very nice, thought Antony sourly. Four servings of syrup.

Moving his army to the Adriatic coast of Macedonia hadn’t begun as anything more than an exercise designed to frighten Octavian; having abandoned all thought of contending with the Parthians until his income improved, Antony had at first wanted to leave his legions in Ephesus, but his visit to Ephesus had changed his mind. Caninius was too weak to control so many senior legates unless cousin Antony was nearby. Besides, the idea of frightening Octavian was too delicious to resist. But somehow everyone assumed that the war they expected to erupt between the two Triumvirs was finally going to push ahead, and Antony found himself in a dilemma. Ought he crush Octavian now? As campaigns went, it would be a cheap one, and he had plenty of transports to ferry his legions across a little sea to home territory, where he could pick up Octavian’s legions to supplement his own, and free up Pollio and Ventidius – fourteen extra legions from them alone! Ten more once Octavian was defeated. And whatever was in the Treasury to put in his war chest.

Still, he wasn’t sure … When Libo’s advice about Julia Antonia proved correct and he never saw her, Antony relaxed a little. His Athenian couch was comfortable and the army content in Apollonia – time would tell him what to do. It didn’t occur to him that in postponing this decision, he was telling his world that he lacked resolution about his future course of action.

PART II

Octavian in the West

41–39 B.C.

SIX

She looked so old and tired, his beloved Lady Roma. From where he stood at the top of the Velia, Octavian could see down into the Forum Romanum and beyond it to the Capitoline Mount; if he turned to face the other way, he could look across the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae all the way along the Sacra Via to the Servian Walls.

Octavian loved Rome with a fierce passion alien to his nature, which tended to be cool and detached. But Goddess Roma, he believed, had no rival on the face of the globe. How he hated to hear this one say that Athens outshone her as the sun does the moon, hear that one say that Pergamum on its heights was far lovelier, hear another say that Alexandria made her look like a Gallic oppidum! Was it her fault that her temples were decayed, her public buildings grimy, her squares and gardens neglected? No, the fault lay with the men who governed in her name, for they cared more about their reputations than they did about hers, who made them. She deserved better, and if he had anything to do with it, she would receive better. Of course there were exceptions: Caesar’s glorious Basilica Julia, the masterpiece that was his Forum, the Basilica Aemilia, Sulla’s Tabularium. But, even on the Capitol, temples as grand as Juno Moneta were in sad need of fresh paint. From the eggs and dolphins of the Circus Maximus to the shrines and fountains of the crossroads, poor Goddess Roma was shabby, a gentlewoman in decline.

If we only had one-tenth of the money Romans have squandered on warring against each other, Roma would be unparalleled for beauty, Octavian thought. Where does it go, all that money? A question that had occurred to him often, and to which he had only an approximate answer, an educated guess: into the purses of the soldiers to be spent on useless things or hoarded according to their natures; into the purses of manufacturers and merchants who took their profits from warmongering; into the purses of foreigners; and into the purses of the very men who waged the wars. But if that last is true, he wondered, why did I not make any profit?

Look at Marcus Antonius, his thoughts went on. He has stolen hundreds of millions, more of them to keep up his hedonistic lifestyle than to pay his legions. And how many millions has he given away to his so-called friends in order to look like a big man? Oh, I have stolen too – I got away with Caesar’s war chest. If I had not, I would be dead today. But, unlike Antonius, I never give a brass farthing away. What I disburse from my hidden treasure-trove I expect to see put to good use, as in paying my army of agents. I cannot survive without my agents. The tragedy is that none of it dare I spend on Roma herself. Most of it goes to pay the legions’ massive bonuses. A bottomless pit that perhaps has only one real asset: it distributes personal wealth more equally than in the old days when the plutocrats could be numbered on the fingers of both hands, and the soldiers didn’t have enough income to belong even to the Fifth Class. That’s not true anymore.

The vista of the Forum blurred as his eyes filled with tears. Caesar, oh, Caesar! What might I have learned if you had lived? It was Antonius enabled them to kill you – he was a part of the plot, I know it in my bones. Believing that he was Caesar’s heir and urgently needing Caesar’s vast fortune, he succumbed to the blandishments of Trebonius and Decimus Brutus. The other Brutus and Cassius were nothings, mere figureheads. Like many before him, Antonius hungers to be the First Man in Rome. Were I not here, he would be. But I am here, and he’s afraid that I will usurp that title as well as Caesar’s name, Caesar’s money. He’s right to be afraid. Caesar the God – Divus Julius – is on my side. If Rome is to prosper, I must win this struggle! Yet I have vowed never to go to war against Antonius, and I will keep that vow.

The zephyr breeze of early summer stirred his mass of bright gold hair; people noticed it first, then noticed the identity of its owner. They stared, usually with a scowl. As the Triumvir present in Rome, it was he who got most of the blame for the hard times – expensive bread, monotonous supplementary foods, high rents, empty purses. But to every scowl he returned Caesar’s smile, a thing so powerful that the scowls became answering smiles.

Though even in Rome Antonius liked to strut around in armor, Octavian always wore his purple-bordered toga; in it he looked small, slight, graceful. The days when he had worn boots with platform soles were gone. Rome now knew him as Caesar’s heir beyond doubt, and many called him what he called himself – Divi Filius, the son of a god. It remained his greatest advantage, even in the face of his unpopularity. Men might scowl and mutter, but mamas and grannies cooed and gushed; Octavian was too clever a politician to discount the impact of mamas and grannies.

From the Velia he walked through the lichen-whiskered ancient pillars of the Porta Mugonia and ascended the Palatine Mount at its less fashionable end. His house had once belonged to the famous advocate Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, Cicero’s rival in the courts. Antonius had blamed the son for the death of his brother Gaius, and had him proscribed. Which didn’t worry young Hortensius, dead in Macedonia, his corpse thrown on Gaius Antonius’s monument. Like most of Rome, Octavian was well aware that Gaius Antonius had been so incompetent that his demise had been a positive blessing.

The domus Hortensia was a very big and luxurious house, though not the size of Pompey the Great’s palace on the Carinae. That, Antonius had snaffled; when Caesar learned of it, he made his cousin pay for it. Upon Caesar’s death, the payments stopped. But Octavian hadn’t wanted a house ostentatious enough to be called a palace, just wanted something large enough to function as offices as well as residence. The domus Hortensia had been knocked down to him at the proscription auctions for two million sesterces, a fraction of its real value. That kind of thing happened often at the proscription auctions, when so much first-class property was sold at one and the same moment.

At the fashionable end of the Palatine, all the crowded houses vied for views of the Forum Romanum, but Hortensius hadn’t cared about outlook. He cared about space. A noted fish fancier, he had huge ponds devoted to gold and silver carp, and grounds and gardens more usual in villas outside the Servian Walls, like the palace Caesar had built for Cleopatra under the Janiculan Hill. Its grounds and gardens were legendary.

The domus Hortensia stood atop a fifty-foot cliff overlooking the Circus Maximus, where on days of parades or chariot races over a hundred and fifty thousand Roman citizens jammed its bleachers to marvel and cheer. Sparing the circus no glance, Octavian entered his house through the garden and ponds behind it, proceeding into a vast reception room that Hortensius had never used, so infirm was he when he added it on.

Octavian liked the house’s design, for the kitchens and the servants’ quarters were off to one side in a separate structure that contained latrines and baths for servile use. The baths and latrines for the owner, his family and guests were inside the main pile and made of priceless marbles. Like most such on the Palatine, they were situated above an underground stream that fed into the immense sewers of the Cloaca Maxima. To Octavian, they were a main reason for his purchasing this domus; he was the most private of persons, especially when it came to voiding his bowels and bladder. No one must see, no one must hear! As was true when he bathed, at least once each day. Thus military campaigns were a torment only made bearable by Agrippa, who contrived to give him privacy whenever possible. Quite why he felt so strongly about this, Octavian didn’t know, as he was well made; save that, without properly arranged clothes, men were vulnerable.

His valet met him, signalling anxiety; Octavian hated the slightest mark on tunic or toga, which made life hard for the man, perpetually busy with chalk and clear vinegar.

‘Yes, you can have the toga,’ he said absently, shed it, and walked out into an internal peristyle garden that had the finest fountain in Rome, of rearing horses with fish’s tails, Amphitryon riding a shell chariot. The painting was exquisite, so lifelike that the water god’s weedy hair glimmered and glowered greenish, his skin a network of tiny, silvery scales. The sculpture sat in the middle of a round pool whose pale green marble had cost Hortensius ten talents to buy from the new quarries at Carrara.

Through a pair of bronze doors bearing scenes of Lapiths and centaurs in bas relief, Octavian entered a hall that had his study to one side and the dining room to the other. Thence he passed into a huge atrium whose impluvium pool beneath the complu-vium in the roof shimmered mirrorlike from an overhead sun. And finally through another pair of bronze doors he came onto the loggia, a vast open-air balcony. Hortensius had liked the idea of an arbor as shelter from strong sun, and erected a series of struts over part of the area, then planted grapevines to train over them. With the years they had festooned the frame into a dappled haven, pendant at this season with dangling bunches of pale green beads.

Four men sat in big chairs around a low table, with a fifth chair vacant to complete the circle. Two jugs and a number of beakers sat on the table, of plain Arvernian pottery – no golden goblets or Alexandrian glass flagons for Octavian! The water jug was bigger than the wine one, which held a very light, sparkling white vintage from Alba Fucentia. No connoisseur of oenological bent would have sniffed contemptuously at this wine, for Octavian liked to serve the best of everything. What he disliked were extravagance and imported anythings. The produce of Italia, he was fond of telling those prepared to listen, was superlative, so why play the snob by flaunting wines from Chios, rugs from Miletus, wools dyed in Hierapolis, tapestries from Corduba?

Cat-footed, Octavian gave no warning of his advent, and stood in the doorway for a moment to observe them; his ‘council of elders’, as Maecenas called them, punning on the fact that Quintus Salvidienus, at thirty-one, was the oldest of the group. To these four men – and to them alone – did Octavian voice his thoughts; though not all his thoughts. That privilege was reserved for Agrippa, his coeval and spiritual brother.

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, aged twenty-two, was everything a Roman nobleman ought to be in looks. He was as tall as Caesar had been, heavily muscled in a lean way, and possessed of an unusual yet handsome face whose brows beetled below a shelf of forehead and whose strong chin was tucked firmly beneath a stern mouth. Discovering that his deep-set eyes were hazel was difficult thanks to the bristling brows obscuring them. Yet Agrippa’s birth was so low that a Tiberius Claudius Nero sneered – who had ever heard of a family named Vipsanius? Samnite, if not Apulian or Calabrian. Italian scum at any rate. Only Octavian fully appreciated the depth and breadth of his intellect, which ran to the generaling of armies, the building of bridges and aqueducts, the invention of gadgets and tools to make labor easier. This year he was Rome’s urban praetor, responsible for all civil law suits and the apportioning of criminal cases to the various courts. A heavy job, but not heavy enough to satisfy Agrippa, who had also taken on some of the duties of the aediles. These worthies were supposed to care for Rome’s buildings and services; apostrophizing them as a scabby lot of idlers, he had assumed authority over the water supply and sewerage, much to the dismay of the companies that the city contracted to run them. He talked seriously of doing things to prevent the sewers backing up whenever the Tiber flooded, but feared it would not happen this year, as it necessitated a thorough mapping of many miles of sewers and drains. However, he had managed to get some action on the Aqua Marcia, the best of Rome’s existing aqueducts, and was constructing a new one, the Aqua Julia. Rome’s water supply was the best in the world, but the city’s population was increasing and time was running out.

He was Octavian’s man to the death, not blindly loyal but insight-fully so; he knew Octavian’s weaknesses as well as his strengths, and suffered for him as Octavian never suffered for himself. There could be no question of ambition. Unlike almost all New Men, Agrippa truly understood to the core of his being that it was Octavian, with the birth, who must retain ascendancy. His was the role of fides Achates, and he would always be there for Octavian … who would elevate him far beyond his true social status: what better fate than to be the Second Man in Rome? For Agrippa, that was more than any New Man deserved.

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, aged thirty, was an Etruscan of the oldest blood; his family were the lords of Arretium, a busy river port on the bend of the Arnus where the Annian, Cassian and Clodian roads met as they traveled from Rome to Italian Gaul. For reasons best known to himself, he had dropped his family name, Cilnius, and called himself plain Gaius Maecenas. His love of the finer things in life showed in his softly plump physique, though he could, when push came to shove, undertake grueling journeys on Octavian’s behalf. The face was a trifle froglike, for his pale blue eyes had a tendency to pop out – exophthalmia, the Greeks called it.

A famous wit and raconteur, he had a mind as broad and deep as Agrippa’s, but in a different way; Maecenas loved literature, art, philosophy, rhetoric, and collected not antique pots but new poets. As Agrippa jokingly observed, he couldn’t general a bun fight in a brothel, but he did know how to stop one. A smoother, more persuasive talker than Maecenas no one had yet found, nor a man more suited for scheming and plotting in the shadows behind the curule chair. Like Agrippa, he had reconciled himself to Octavian’s ascendancy, though his motives were not as pure as Agrippa’s. Maecenas was a grey eminence, a diplomat, a dealer in men’s fates. He could spot a useful flaw in a trice and insert his sweet words painlessly into the weakness to produce a wound worse than any dagger could make. Dangerous, was Maecenas.

Quintus Salvidienus was a man from Picenum, that nest of demagogues and political nuisances that had bred such luminaries as Pompey the Great and Titus Labienus. But he hadn’t won his laurels in the Forum Romanum; his were earned on the battlefield, where he excelled. Fine-looking in the face and body, he had a thatch of bright red hair that had given him his cognomen, Rufus, and shrewd, far-sighted blue eyes. Inside himself he cherished high ambitions, and had tied his career to the tail of Octavian’s comet as the quickest way to the top. From time to time the Picentine vice stirred in him, which was to contemplate changing sides if it seemed prudent to do so. Salvidienus had no intention of ending on a losing side, and wondered sometimes if Octavian really had what it took to win the coming struggle. Of gratitude he had little, of loyalty none, but he had hidden these so successfully that Octavian, for one, did not dream that they existed in him. His guard was good, but there were occasions when he wondered if Agrippa suspected, so, whenever Agrippa was present, he watched what he said and did closely. As for Maecenas – who knew what that oily aristocrat sensed?

Titus Statilius Taurus, aged twenty-seven, was the least man among them, and therefore knew the least about Octavian’s ideas and plans. Another military man, he looked what he was, being tall, solidly built and rather beaten around the face – a swollen left ear, scarred left brow and cheek, broken nose. Yet he was, withal, a handsome man with wheat-colored hair, grey eyes, and an easy smile that belied his reputation as a martinet when he commanded legions. He had a horror of homosexuality and would not have anyone so inclined under his authority, no matter how well born. As a soldier he was inferior to Agrippa and Salvidienus, but not by much; what he lacked was their genius for improvisation. Of his loyalty there was no doubt, chiefly because Octavian dazzled him; the undeniable talents and brilliance of Agrippa, Salvidienus and Maecenas were as nothing compared to the extraordinary mind of Caesar’s heir.

‘Greetings,’ said Octavian, going to the vacant chair.

Agrippa smiled. ‘Where have you been? Making eyes at Lady Roma? Forum or Mons Aventinus?’

‘Forum.’ Octavian poured water and drank it thirstily, then sighed. ‘I was planning what to do when I have the money to set Lady Roma to rights.’

‘Planning is all it can be,’ said Maecenas wryly.

‘True. Still, Gaius, nothing is wasted. What plans I make now don’t have to be made later. Have we heard what our consul Pollio is up to? Ventidius?’

‘Skulking in eastern Italian Gaul,’ Maecenas said. ‘Rumor has it that shortly they’ll be marching down the Adriatic coast to help Antonius land his legions, which are clustered around Apollonia. Between Pollio’s seven, Ventidius’s seven and the ten Antonius has with him, we’re in for a terrible drubbing.’

‘I will not go to war against Antonius!’ Octavian cried.

‘You won’t need to,’ said Agrippa with a grin. ‘Their men won’t fight ours, on that I’d stake my life.’

‘I agree,’ said Salvidienus. ‘The men have had a gut-full of wars they don’t understand. What’s the difference to them between Caesar’s nephew and Caesar’s cousin? Once they belonged to Caesar himself, that’s all they remember. Thanks to Caesar’s habit of shifting his soldiers around to plump out this legion or thin down that legion, they identify with Caesar, not a unit.’

‘They mutinied,’ Maecenas said, voice hard.

‘Only the Ninth can be said to have mutinied directly against Caesar, thanks to a dozen corrupt centurions in the pay of Pompeius Magnus’s cronies. For the rest, blame Antonius. He put them up to it, no one else! He kept their centurions drunk and bought their spokesmen. He worked on them!’ Agrippa said contemptuously. ‘Antonius is a mischief maker, not a political genius. He lacks any subtlety. Why else is he even thinking of landing his men in Italia? It makes no sense! Have you declared war on him? Has Lepidus? He’s doing it because he’s afraid of you.’

‘Antonius is no bigger a mischief maker than Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, to give him his full name,’ said Maecenas, and laughed. ‘I hear that Sextus sent tata-in-law Libo to Athens to ask Antonius to join him in crushing you.’

‘How do you know that?’ Octavian demanded, sitting upright.

‘Like Ulysses, I have spies everywhere.’

‘So do I, but it’s news to me. What did Antonius answer?’

‘A sort of a no. No official alliance, but he won’t impede Sextus’s activities, provided they’re directed at you.’