I cannot bring myself to believe what I have seen, or to give credence to what I have heard. In this chaos, there is no official news; nothing is posted on the walls of the Senate House; one cannot even be sure that there is a Senate any more. Octavius Caesar has joined with Antonius and Lepidus in what amounts to a military dictatorship; and the enemies of Julius Caesar are proscribed. More than a hundred senators—senators—have been executed, their property and wealth confiscated; and many times that number of wealthy Roman citizens, often of noble name, are either murdered or fled from the city, their property and wealth in the hands of the triumvirs. Merciless. Among those proscribed: Paullus, the blood brother of Lepidus. Lucius Caesar, the uncle of Antonius. And even the famous Cicero is on the published list. These three, and others, I imagine, have fled the city, and may escape with their lives.
The bloodiest of the work seems to be in the hands of Antonius’s soldiers. With my own eyes I have seen the headless bodies of Roman senators littering the very Forum which a week ago was their chief glory; and I have heard, from the safety of my hill, the screams of the rich who have waited too long to flee Rome and their riches. All except the poor, those with moderate wealth, and the friends of Caesar, walk in apprehension of what the morrow might bring, whether their names have been posted or not.
It is said that Octavius Caesar sits in his home and will not show his face nor view the dead bodies of his former colleagues. It is also said that it is Octavius himself who insists that the proscriptions be carried out ruthlessly, at once, and to the letter. One does not know what one may with safety believe.
Is this the Rome that I thought I was beginning to know, after these crowded months? Have I understood these people at all? Athenodorus will not discuss the matter with me; Tyrannion shakes his head sadly.
Perhaps I am less the man and more the youth than I had believed.
Cicero did not escape.
Yesterday, on a cool, bright December afternoon, wandering among the bookstalls in the shop area behind the Forum (it is safe to be on the streets now), I heard a great commotion; and against my better judgment, out of that curiosity that will someday lead me either to fame or death, I made my way inside the Forum gates. A great crush of people was milling around the rostrum near the Senate House.
“It’s Cicero,” someone said, and the name went like a whispering sigh among the people. “Cicero. . . .”
Not knowing what to expect, but dreading what I would see, I pushed my way through the crowd.
There on the Senate rostrum, placed neatly between two severed hands, was the withered and shrunken head of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Someone said that it had been placed there by order of Antonius himself.
It was the same rostrum from which, only three weeks before, Octavius Caesar had spoken so gently of his mother, who had died. Now another death sat upon it; and I could not help, at that moment, being somehow pleased that the mother had died before she had been made witness to what her son had wrought.
II. Letter: Marcus Junius Brutus to Octavius Caesar, from Smyrna (42 B.C.)
I cannot believe that you truly apprehend the gravity of your position. I know that you bear me no love, and I would be foolish if I pretended that I bore you much more; I do not write you out of regard for your person, but out of regard for our nation. I cannot write to Antonius, for he is a madman; I cannot write to Lepidus, for he is a fool. I hope that I may be heard by you, who are neither.
I know that it is through your influence that Cassius and I have been declared outlaws and condemned to exile; but let neither of us believe that such a condemnation has more permanent force of law than can be sustained by a flustered and demoralized Senate. Let neither of us pretend that such an edict has any kind of permanence or validity. Let us speak practically.
All of Syria, all of Macedonia, all of Epirus, all of Greece, all of Asia are ours. All of the East is against you, and the power and wealth of the East is not inconsiderable. We control absolutely the eastern Mediterranean; therefore you can expect no aid from your late uncle’s Egyptian mistress, who might otherwise furnish wealth and manpower to your cause. And though I bear him no love, I know that the pirate, Sextus Pompeius, is nipping at your heels from the west. Thus I do not fear for myself or my forces the war that now seems imminent.
But I do fear for Rome, and for the future of the state. The proscriptions that you and your friends have instituted in Rome bear witness to that fear, to which my personal grief must be subordinate.
So let us forget proscriptions and assassinations; if you can forgive me the death of Caesar, perhaps I can forgive you the death of Cicero. We cannot be friends to each other; neither of us needs that. But perhaps we can be friends to Rome.
I implore you, do not march with Marcus Antonius. Another battle between Romans would, I fear, destroy what little virtue remains in our state. And Antonius will not march without you.
If you do not march, I assure you that you will have my respect and my thanks; and your future will be assured. If we cannot work together out of friendship to each other, yet we may work together for the good of Rome.
But let me hasten to add this. If you reject this offer of amity, I shall resist with all my strength; and you will be destroyed. I say this with sadness; but I say it.
III. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B.C.)
And after the triumvirate was formed and the Roman enemies of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus were put down, there yet remained in the West the forces of the pirate Sextus Pompeius, and in the East the exiled murderers of the divine Julius, that Brutus and Cassius who threatened the safety and order of Rome. True to his oath, Caesar Augustus resolved to punish the murderers of his father and restore order to the state, and deferred the matter of Sextus Pompeius to another time, taking only those actions against Pompeius that were necessary for the safety of the moment.
My energies at this time were devoted to enrolling and equipping in Italy those legions that were to lay siege to Brutus and Cassius in the East, and to organizing the lines of supply that would allow us to do battle on that distant soil. Antonius was to send eight legions to Amphipolis, on the Aegean coast of Macedonia, to harass the troops of Brutus and Cassius, so that they might not find an advantage of terrain in which to fight. But Antonius delayed the departure of his legions, so that they were forced to find an inferior position on the low ground west of Philippi, where the army of Brutus rested in security. It became necessary for Antonius to send other legions in support of those in Macedonia, but the fleets of Brutus and Cassius hovered around the harbor at Brindisi; so Augustus commanded me to insure safe passage for Antonius. And with the ships and legions that I had raised in Italy, we drove through the navy of Marcus Junius Brutus and landed twelve legions of troops upon the Macedonian shore at Dyrrachium.
But at Dyrrachium, Augustus fell gravely ill, and we would have waited in fear of his life; but he bade us continue, knowing that all would be lost if we delayed our attack upon the armies of the outlaws. And eight of our legions marched across the country to join the beleaguered advance troops of Marcus Antonius at Amphipolis.
Our way was hindered by the cavalry of Brutus and Cassius, and we suffered severe losses on our journey, arriving at Amphipolis with our troops weary and demoralized. When it became clear that the armies of Brutus and Cassius were securely entrenched upon the high ground at Philippi, protected on the north by mountains and on the south by a marsh that stretched from the camp to the sea, I resolved to send an urgent message to Caesar Augustus; for our task seemed hopeless to our soldiers, and I knew that their failing spirits must be revived.
And so, though gravely ill, Augustus forced his way across the country to reinforce us, and went among his men on a litter, being too weak to walk; and though his face was that of a corpse, his eyes were fierce and hard, and his voice was strong, so that the men took heart and resolve from his presence.
We determined to strike boldly and at once, for each day of waitin
g cost us supplies, while Brutus and Cassius had all the lanes of the sea for their support. So while three of the legions of Augustus, under my command, pretended to be intent upon constructing a causeway across the great marsh that protected the enemy’s southern flank, thus diverting a large number of Republican troops to attack us, the legions of Marcus Antonius struck boldly and broke through the weakened line of Cassius, and pillaged the camp before Cassius could recover from his surprise. And Cassius, on a slight hill with a few of his officers, looked (it is said) to the north, and there saw the troops of Brutus in what he took to be full flight; knowing that his own army was defeated, and thinking that all was lost, he despaired; and fell upon his sword, ending his life there in the dust and blood at Philippi, taking revenge upon himself, it seemed, for the murder of the divine Julius, two years and seven months before.
What Cassius did not know was that the army of Brutus was not in flight. Divining our plan, and knowing that the army of Augustus was dispersed in its diversionary tactic, he made haste to invest our camp, and overran it, capturing many soldiers and killing many more. Augustus himself, half-conscious in his illness and unable to move, was carried from his tent by his doctor and hidden in the marsh until the battle was over and night fell, and he could be carried stealthily to where the remnants of the army had retreated and had joined with the troops of Marcus Antonius. The doctor swore that he had had a dream telling him to remove the ill Augustus, so that his life might be spared. . . .
IV. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to His Father, from west of Philippi (42 B.C.)
My dear father, if you receive this letter, you will know that your Horace, a day ago a proud soldier in the army of Marcus Junius Brutus, at this moment, on this cold autumn night, sits in his tent, writing these words by the flickering light of a lantern, in disgrace with himself, if not with his friends. Yet he feels curiously free from the obsession that has gripped him these last several months; and if he is not happy, he is at least beginning to know who he is. . . . Today I was in my first battle; and I must tell you at once that at the first moment of serious danger to myself I dropped my shield and sword, and I ran.
Why I ever embarked upon this venture, I do not know; and surely you are too intelligent to know either. When, out of that kindness of yours to which I have grown so used that I sometimes do not think of it, you sent me to study in Athens year before last, I had no thought of engaging myself in anything so foolish as politics. Did I align myself with Brutus and accept a tribuneship in his army in a contemptible effort to rise above my station into the aristocracy? Was Horace ashamed of being the son of a mere freedman? I cannot believe that that is true; even in my youth and arrogance, I have known that you are the best of men, and I could not wish for a more noble and generous and loving father.
It was, I believe, because in my studies I had forgotten the world, and had begun almost to believe that philosophy was true. Liberty. I joined the cause of Brutus for a word; and I do not know what the word means. A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.
I must tell you now that I did not drop my shield and run from the battle out of mere cowardice—though that was no doubt part of it. But when I suddenly saw one of Octavius Caesar’s soldiers (or maybe Antonius’s, I do not know) advancing toward me with naked steel flashing in his hands and in his eyes, it was as if time suddenly stood still; and I remembered you, and all the hopes you had of my future. I remembered that you had been born a slave, and had managed to buy your freedom; that your labor and your life were early turned to your son, so that he might live in an ease and comfort and security that you never had. And I saw that son uselessly slaughtered on an earth he had no love for, for a cause he did not understand—and I had a sense of what your years might have been with the knowledge of your son’s discarded life—and I ran. I ran over bodies of fallen soldiers, and saw their empty eyes staring at the sky which they would never see again; and it did not matter to me whether they were friend or foe. I ran.
If the fates are kind to me, I shall return to you in Italy. I shall fight no more. Tomorrow, I shall post this letter to you and make my preparations. If we are not attacked, I shall be in no danger; if we are, I shall run again. In any event, I shall not linger at this massacre that leads to an end I cannot see.
I do not know who will be victorious—the Party of Caesar or the Party of the Republic. I do not know the future of our country, or my own future. Perhaps I shall have to disappoint you, and become a tax collector like yourself. It is a position, however lowly in your eyes, to which you lend dignity and honor by your presence. I am your son, Horace, and proud to be so.
V. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B.C.)
And Brutus withdrew once more to the high ground and entrenchments at Philippi, whence, it became clear, he did not propose to retreat. We knew, perhaps better than Brutus, that each day of waiting cost us dearly, for our supplies were running low; nothing could be transported over the sea controlled by Brutus’s navy; behind us were the flat and barren plains of Macedonia, and before us the hostile and barren hills of Greece. Thus we made to be copied sheets of reproaches to the officers of Brutus’s army, taunting them with their timidity and cowardice; and at night we shouted challenges across the campfires, so that the soldiers could not even sleep in honor, but dozed fitfully in their shame.
For three weeks Brutus waited, until at last his men, chafing beneath the burden of their inaction, would wait no longer; and Brutus, fearful that his army would be depleted by desertions, ordered his men to descend from the entrenchments that might have saved them, and to attack our camp.
In the late afternoon they came down from the hill like a northern storm; no cries or shouts escaped their lips, and we heard only the clump of hooves and the pad of feet in the dust that came with them like a cloud. I ordered our line to give way before the initial attack; and as the enemy streamed into us, we closed the lines on either side, so that he had to fight on two flanks at once. And we broke the army in two, and each of those parts into two again, so that he could not re-form himself to withstand our attacks. By nightfall, the battle was over; and the stars heard the moans of the wounded, and watched impassively the bodies that did not move.
Brutus escaped with what remained of his legions, and made his way to the wilderness beyond the entrenchments at Philippi, which we had invested. He would have attacked again with what remained of his army, but his officers refused to risk themselves; and in the early dawn, the day after the Ides of November, on a lonely hillock overlooking the carnage of his will and resolve, with a few of his faithful officers, he fell upon his sword; and the army of the Republic was no more.
Thus was the murder of Julius Caesar avenged, and thus did the chaos of treason and faction give way to the years of order and peace, under the Emperor of our state, Gaius Octavius Caesar, now the August.
VI. Letter: Gaius Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B.C.)
After Philippi, slowly, with many stops along the way, more dead than alive, he came back to Rome; he had saved Italy from its enemies abroad, and it remained for him to heal the nation that was shattered within.
My dear Livy, I cannot tell you the shock I had upon seeing him for the first time after those many months, when they carried him in secret to his house on the Palatine. I, of course, had remained in Rome during the fighting, according to Octavius’s orders, so that I could keep an eye on things and do what I could to prevent Lepidus, either out of conspiracy or incompetence, from wholly disrupting the internal government of Italy.
He was not quite twenty-two years old that winter when he returned from the fighting, but I swear to you he looked double —treble—that age. His face was waxen, and, slight though he always was, he had lost so much weight that his skin sagged upon his bones. He had the strength to speak only in a hoarse whisper. I looked at him, and I despaired of his life.
“Do not let them know,” he said, and paused a long time, as if the uttering of that
phrase had exhausted him. “Do not let them know of my illness. Neither the people nor Lepidus.”
“I will not, my friend,” I told him.
The illness had, in fact, begun the year before, during the time of the proscriptions, and had grown steadily worse; and though the physicians who attended him had been paid handsomely and threatened with their livelihood, if not their lives, for any breach of secrecy, rumors of the illness had crept out. The doctors (a dreadful lot, then as now) might as well not have been called in; they were able to do nothing except prescribe noxious herbs and treatments of heat and cold. He was able to eat almost nothing, and upon more than one occasion he had vomited blood. Yet as his body had weakened, it seemed that his will had hardened, so that he drove himself even more fiercely in his illness than he had in his health.
“Antonius,” he said in that terrible voice, “will not return yet to Rome. He has gone into the East to gather booty and to strengthen his position. I agreed to it—I would prefer to have him steal from the Asians and the Egyptians than from the Romans. . . . I believe he expects me to die; and though he hopes for it, I suspect he doesn’t want to be in Italy when it happens.”
He lay back on his bed, breathing shallowly, his eyes closed. At length he regained his strength, and said:
“Give me the news of the city.”
“Rest,” I said. “We shall have time when you are stronger.”
“The news,” he said. “Though my body cannot move, my mind can.”
There were bitter things I had to tell him, but I knew that he would not have forgiven me had I sweetened them. I said:
“Lepidus negotiates secretly with the pirate, Sextus Pompeius; he has some notion, I believe, of allying himself with Pompeius against either you or Antonius, whichever proves weaker. I have the evidence; but if we confront him with it, he will swear that he negotiates only to bring peace to Rome. . . . Out of Philippi, Antonius is the hero and you are the coward. Antonius’s pig of a wife and his vulture of a brother have spread the stories—while you cowered and quaked in fear in the salt marsh, Antonius bravely punished the enemies of Caesar. Fulvia makes speeches to the soldiers, warning that you will not pay them the bounties that Antonius promised; while Lucius goes about the countryside stirring up the landowner and the farmer with rumors that you will confiscate their properties to settle the veterans. Do you want to hear more?”
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