“Then,” you said, “we are not fighting for victory; we are fighting for our lives.”
And it seemed to me that a great burden was lifted from my shoulders, and I felt myself to be almost young again; for I remembered having said the same thing to myself more than thirty years before when six of Sulla’s troops surprised me alone in the mountains, and I fought my way through them to their commander, whom I bribed to take me alive back to Rome. It was then that I knew that I might be what I have become.
Remembering that old time and seeing you before me, I saw myself when I was young; and I took some of your youth into myself and gave you some of my age, and so we had together that odd exhilaration of power against whatever might happen; and we piled the bodies of our fallen comrades and advanced behind them so that our shields would not be weighted with the enemy’s hurled javelins, and we advanced upon the walls and took the fortress of Cordova, there on the Mundian plain.
And I remembered too, this morning, our pursuit of Gnaeus Pompeius across Spain, our bellies full and our muscles tired and the campfires at night and the talk that soldiers make when victory is certain. How all the pain and anguish and joy merge together, and even the ugly dead seem beautiful, and even the fear of death and defeat are like the steps of a game! Here in Rome, I long for summer to come, when we will march against the Parthians and the Germans to secure the last of our important borders. . . . You will understand better my nostalgia for past campaigns and my anticipation of campaigns to come if I let you know a little about the morning that occasioned those memories.
At seven o’clock this morning, the Fool (that is, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus—whom, you will be amused to know, I have had to make your nominal coequal in power under my command) was waiting at my door with a complaint about Marcus Antonius. It seems that one of Antonius’s treasurers was collecting taxes from those who, according to an ancient law cited at tedious length by Lepidus, ought to have their taxes collected by Lepidus’s own treasurer. Then for another hour, apparently thinking that allusive loquacity is subtlety, he suggested that Antonius was ambitious—an observation that surprised me as much as if I had been informed that the Vestal Virgins were chaste. I thanked him, and we exchanged platitudes upon the nature of loyalty, and he left me (I am sure) to report to Antonius that he perceived in me some excessive suspicion of even my closest friends. At eight o’clock, three senators came in, one after another, each accusing the other of accepting an identical bribe; I understood at once that all were guilty, that they had been unable to perform the service for which they were bribed, and that the briber was ready to make a public issue of the matter, which would necessitate a trial before the assembly—a trial that they wished to avoid, since it might conceivably lead to exile if they were unable to bribe enough of the jury to insure their safety. I judged that they would be successful in their effort to buy off justice, and so I trebled the reported amount of the bribe and fined each of them that amount, and resolved that I would deal similarly with the briber. They were well-pleased, and I have no fear of them; I know that they are corrupt, and they think that I am. . . . And so the morning went.
How long have we been living the Roman lie? Ever since I can remember, certainly; perhaps for many years before. And from what source does that lie suck its energy, so that it grows stronger than the truth? We have seen murder, theft, and pillage in the name of the Republic—and call it the necessary price we pay for freedom. Cicero deplores the depraved Roman morality that worships wealth—and, himself a millionaire many times over, travels with a hundred slaves from one of his villas to another. A consul speaks of peace and tranquillity—and raises armies that will murder the colleague whose power threatens his self-interest. The Senate speaks of freedom—and thrusts upon me powers that I do not want but must accept and use if Rome is to endure. Is there no answer to the lie?
I have conquered the world, and none of it is secure; I have shown liberty to the people, and they flee it as if it were a disease; I despise those whom I can trust, and love those best who would most quickly betray me. And I do not know where we are going, though I lead a nation to its destiny.
Such, my dear nephew, whom I would call my son, are the doubts that beset the man whom they would make a king. I envy you your winter in Apollonia; I am pleased with the reports of your studies; and I am happy that you get along so well with the officers of my legions there. But I do miss our talks in the evenings. I comfort myself with the thought that we shall resume them this summer on our Eastern campaign. We shall march across the country, feed upon the land, and kill whom we must kill. It is the only life for a man. And things shall be as they will be.
IV. Quintus Salvidienus Rufus: Notes for a Journal, at Apollonia (March, 44 B.C.)
Afternoon. The sun is bright, hot; ten or twelve officers and ourselves on a hill, looking down at the maneuvers of the cavalry on the field. Dust rises in billows as the horses gallop and turn; shouts, laughter, curses come up to us from the distance, through the thud of hoofbeats. All of us, except Maecenas, have come up from the field and are resting. I have removed my armor and am lying with my head on it; Maecenas, his tunic unspotted and his hair unruffled, sits with his back against the trunk of a small tree; Agrippa stands beside me, sweat drenching his body, his legs like stone pillars; Octavius beside him, his slender body trembling from its recent exertion—one never realizes how slight he is until he stands near someone like Agrippa—his face pale, hair lank and darkened by sweat, plastered to his forehead; Octavius smiling, pointing to something below us; Agrippa nodding. We all have a sense of well-being; it has not rained for a week, the weather has warmed, we are pleased with our skills and with the skills of the soldiers.
I write these words quickly, not knowing what I shall have occasion to use in my leisure. I must get everything down.
The horsemen below us rest; their horses mill around; Octavius sits beside me, pushes my head playfully off the armor; we laugh at nothing in our feeling for the moment. Agrippa smiles at us and stretches his great arms; the leather of his cuirass creaks in the stillness.
From behind us comes Maecenas’s voice—high, thin, a little affected, almost effeminate. “Boys who play at being soldier,” he says. “How unutterably boring.”
Agrippa—his voice deep, slow, deliberate, with that gravity that conceals so much: “If you had it in your power to remove that ample posterior from whatever convenient resting place it might encounter, you would discover that there are pleasures beyond the luxuries you affect.”
Octavius: “Perhaps we could persuade the Parthians to accept him as their general. That would make our task easier this summer.”
Maecenas sighs heavily, gets up, and walks over to where we are lying. For one so heavy, he is very light on his feet. He says: “While you have been indulging yourselves in your vulgar displays, I have been projecting a poem that examines the active versus the contemplative life. The wisdom of the one I know; I have been observing the foolishness of the other.”
Octavius, gravely: “My uncle once told me to read the poets, to love them, and to use them—but never to trust them.”
“Your uncle,” says Maecenas, “is a wise man.”
More banter. We grow quiet. The field below us is almost empty; the horses have been led away to the stables at the edge of the field. Below the field, from the direction of the city, a horseman, galloping at full speed. We watch him idly. He comes to the field, does not pause there, but crosses it wildly, careening in his saddle. I start to say something, but Octavius has stiffened. There is something in his face. We can see the foam flying from the horse’s mouth. Octavius says: “I know that man. He is from my mother’s household.”
He is almost upon us now; the horse slows; he slides from his saddle, stumbles, staggers toward us with something in his hand. Some of the soldiers around us have noticed; they run toward us with their swords half-drawn, but they see that the man is helpless with exhaustion and moves only by his will. He thrusts something
toward Octavius and croaks, “This—this—” It is a letter. Octavius takes it and holds it and does not move for several moments. The messenger collapses, then sits and puts his head between his knees. All we can hear is the hoarse rasp of his breathing. I look at the horse and think absently that it is so broken in its wind that it will die before morning. Octavius has not moved. Everyone is still. Slowly he unrolls the letter; he reads; there is no expression on his face. Still he does not speak. After a long while he raises his head and turns to us. His face is like white marble. He puts the letter in my hand; I do not look at it. He says in a dull, flat voice: “My uncle is dead.”
We cannot take in his words; we look at him stupidly. His expression does not change, but he speaks again, and the voice that comes out of him is grating and loud and filled with uncomprehending pain, like the bellow of a bullock whose throat has been cut at a sacrifice: “Julius Caesar is dead.”
“No,” says Agrippa. “No.”
Maecenas’s face has tightened; he looks at Octavius like a falcon.
My hand is shaking so that I cannot read what is written. I steady myself. My voice is strange to me. I read aloud: “On this Ides of March Julius Caesar is murdered by his enemies in the Senate House. There are no details. The people run wildly through the streets. No one can know what will happen next. You may be in great danger. I can write no more. Your mother beseeches you to care for your person.” The letter has been written in great haste; there are blots of ink, and the letters are ill-formed.
I look around me, not knowing what I feel. An emptiness? The officers stand around us in a ring; I look into the eyes of one; his face crumples, I hear a sob: and I remember that this is one of Caesar’s prime legions, and that the veterans look upon him as a father.
After a long time Octavius moves; he walks to the messenger who remains seated on the ground, his face slack with exhaustion. Octavius kneels beside him; his voice is gentle. “Do you know anything that is not in this letter?”
The messenger says, “No, sir,” and starts to get up but Octavius puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “Rest”; and he rises and speaks to one of the officers. “See that this man is cared for and given comfortable quarters.” Then he turns to the three of us, who have moved closer together. “We will talk later. Now I must think of what this will mean.” He reaches his hand out toward me, and I understand that he wants the letter. I hand it to him, and he turns away from us. The ring of officers breaks for him, and he walks down the hill. For a long time we watch him, a slight boyish figure walking on the deserted field, moving slowly, this way and that, as if trying to discover a way to go.
Later. Great consternation in camp as word of Caesar’s death spreads. Rumors so wild that one can believe none of them. Arguments arise, subside; a few fist fights, quickly broken up. Some of the old professionals, whose lives have been spent in fighting from legion to legion, sometimes against the men who are now their comrades, look with contempt upon the fuss, and go about their business. Still Octavius has not returned from his lonely watch upon the field. The day darkens.
Night. A guard has been placed around our tents by Lugdunius himself, commander of the legion; for no one knows what enemies we have, or what may ensue. The four of us together in Octavius’s tent; we sit or recline on pallets around the lanterns flickering in the center of the floor. Sometimes Octavius rises and sits on a campstool, away from the light, so that his face is in shadow. Many have come in from Apollonia, asking for more news, giving advice, offering aid; Lugdunius has put the legion at our disposal, should we want it. Now Octavius has asked that we not be disturbed, and speaks of those who have come to him.
“They know even less than we, and they speak only to their own fortunes. Yesterday—” he pauses and looks at something in the darkness—“yesterday, it seemed they were my friends. Now I may not trust them.” He pauses again, comes close to us, and puts his hand on my shoulder. “I shall speak of these matters only with you three, who are truly my friends.”
Maecenas speaks; his voice has deepened, and no longer shrills with the effeminacy that he sometimes affects: “Do not trust even us, who love you. From this moment on, put only that faith in us that you have to.”
Octavius turns abruptly away from us, his back to the light, and says in a strangled voice: “I know. I know even that.”
And so we talk of what we must do.
Agrippa says that we must do nothing, since we know nothing upon which we can reasonably act. In the unsteady light of the lanterns, he might be an old man, with his voice and his gravity. “We are safe here, at least for the time being; this legion will be loyal to us—Lugdunius has given his word. For all we know, this may be a general rebellion, and armies may already have been dispatched for our capture, as Sulla sent troops for the descendants of Marius—among whom was Julius Caesar himself. We may not be as lucky now as he was then. We have behind us the mountains of Macedonia, where they will not follow against this legion. In any event, we shall have time to receive more news; and we shall have made no move to compromise our position, one way or the other. We must wait in the safety of the moment.”
Octavius, softly: “My uncle once told me that too much caution may lead to death as certainly as too much rashness.”
I suddenly find myself on my feet; a power has come upon me; I speak in a voice that seems not my own: “I call you Caesar, for I know that he would have had you as his son.”
Octavius looks at me; the thought had not occurred to him, I believe. “It is too early for that,” he says slowly, “but I will remember that it was Salvidienus who first called me by that name.”
I say: “And if he would have you as his son, he would have you act as he would have done. Agrippa has said that we have the loyalty of one legion here; the other five in Macedonia will respond as Lugdunius has, if we do not delay in asking their allegiance. For if we know nothing of what will ensue, they know even less. I say that we march on Rome with the legions we have and assume the power that lies there.”
Octavius: “And then? We do not know what that power is; we do not know who will oppose us. We do not even know who murdered him.”
Myself: “The power shall become what we make it to be. As for who will oppose us, we cannot know. But if Antonius’s legions will join with ours, then—”
Octavius, slowly: “We do not even know who murdered him. We do not know his enemies, thus we cannot know our own.”
Maecenas sighs, rises, shakes his head. “We have spoken of action, of what we shall do; but we have not spoken of the end to which that action is aimed.” He gazes at Octavius. “My friend, what is it that you wish to accomplish, by whatever action we take?”
For a moment Octavius does not speak. Then he looks at each of us in turn, intently. “I swear to you all now, and to the gods, that if it is my destiny to live, I shall have vengeance upon the murderers of my uncle, whoever they may be.”
Maecenas, nodding: “Then our first purpose is to ensure that destiny, so that you may fulfill the vow. We must stay alive. To that end we must move with caution—but we must move.” He is walking about the room, addressing us as if we were schoolchildren. “Our friend Agrippa recommends that we remain here safely until we can know which way to move. But to remain here is to remain in ignorance. News will come from Rome— but it will be rumor confounded with fact, fact confounded with self-interest, until self-interest and faction become the source of all we shall know.” He turns to me. “Our impetuous friend Salvidienus advises that we strike at once, finding advantage in the confusion that the world may now be in. To run in the dark against a timid opponent may win you the race; but it is as likely to plunge you over a cliff you cannot see, or lead you to a mark you do not wish to find. No. . . . All of Rome will know that Octavius has received word of his uncle’s death. He shall return quietly, with his friends and his grief—but without the soldiers that both his friends and enemies might welcome. No army will attack four boys and a few servants, who return
to grieve a relative; and no force will gather around them to warn and stiffen the will of the enemy. And if it is to be murder, four can run more swiftly than a legion.”
We have had our say; Octavius is silent; and it occurs to me how odd it is that we will so suddenly defer to his decision, as we have not done before. Is it a power in him we sense and have not known earlier? Is it the moment? Is it some lack in ourselves? I will consider this later.
At last Octavius speaks: “We shall do as Maecenas says. We’ll leave most of our possessions here, as if we intend to return; and tomorrow we make as much haste as we can to cross to Italy. But not to Brindisi—there’s a legion there, and we cannot know its disposition.”
“Otranto,” Agrippa says. “It’s nearer anyway.”
Octavius nods. “And now you must choose. Whoever returns with me commits his fortune to my own. There is no other way, and there can be no turning back. And I can promise you nothing, except my own chance.”
Maecenas yawns; he is his old self again. “We came across on that stinking fish-boat with you; if we could endure that, we can endure anything.”
Octavius smiles, a little sadly. “That was a long time ago,” he says, “that day.”
We say nothing more, except our good nights.
I am alone in my tent; the lamp sputters on my table where I write these words, and through the tent door I can see in the east, above the mountains, the first pale light of dawn. I have not been able to sleep.
In this early morning stillness, the events of the day seem far away and unreal. I know that the course of my life—of all our lives—has been changed. How do the others feel? Do they know?
Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same.
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