by Allan Massie
'This sounds like politics?' Rufus said. 'Antony was waiting for her as she voyaged up the Cydnus. She travelled in a barge the like of which you've never seen. It was quite indescribable, all purple and gold and with scented sails. She reclined on a throne with a single circle of gold on her head and a single golden chain round her neck and no other jewellery but her eyes. Her cheeks were touched the palest of pink rose and her mouth -have you heard of her mouth? – it's beyond compare, it is the dream-kiss of all eternity. And her eyes were violet and slightly damp. Flute music sounded lulling and languid airs and four Cupids, beautiful half-caste boys, half-Greek half-Syrian, wafted fans over her. Antony saw this vision swan towards him and Fulvia was forgotten. He loves Cleopatra and lived with her all winter, and you say politics. How young you are, Octavian, to know nothing of love!'
That was last winter, before I met Livia. My mind darts over those months like a swallow, forward and back.
Antony objected to my confiscation of Gaul. He wrote to me in angry terms. I suppose the letter exists somewhere, but I cannot be troubled to unearth it. The sequel however was dangerous.
He acted with his usual impetuosity and lack of scruple. Instead of waiting for my reply, he patched up an agreement with Sextus Pompey and Ahenobarbus (one of Caesar's killers who had a pirate fleet), and the three of them sailed to Italy. Naturally I commanded my garrison at Brindisi to forbid them the harbour. His response was to blockade the port and land his legions at Sipontum a few miles up the coast. I hastened south, heavy-hearted at the thought that Antony's folly should once again expose Italy to war.
Maco said to me, 'The men don't like it. Their hearts won't be in any battle.' 'Nor will mine. I don't like it either.'
That night I wandered through the camp. There was a straw summer moon and the mountains of Apulia loomed over us like jagged and angry bears. I had pulled a rough woollen cloak round me and half over my head and when I crouched down beside a group of legionaries (keeping in the shadows, just out of the firelight), none recognized me. Their mood was sullen and nervous.
One said, 'You, Gaius, like all the rest of old Caesar's soldiers, can't think of anything but the next bloody battle. You're hooked on it, you're drugged by war…'
'That's what you think,' was the reply, 'you don't know a thing. Old sweats like me like war least of all. It's one thing bashing up Gauls, there's some sense and satisfaction in that, but I've been a soldier now twenty years, I've been decorated ten times, I've fought in more than fifty battles and skirmishes and I've wounds to show for it, and I never knew any good come from fighting other Romans.'
'Why do we do it then? Why do we let the bosses muck us about? Why don't we bloody tell them to get on with it hand-to-hand, if they're so effing keen?' That raised a laugh. 'Can you see our wee general get in the arena with Antony?'
'It would be…' the speaker left the outcome open and shut in one sentence. 'He's too fly for that, is our wee Caesar.'
I said, 'Well, what do you think he wants? Nothing but power and blood, would you say?'
'Friend,' said the veteran called Gaius, 'I don't know who you effing are but you know eff all about the world.'
'Come off it,' I said, 'these politicians are all the same. They don't care what happens to their men as long as it helps them to power. And, if you ask me, young Octavian's the worst.'
'Friend,' Gaius said, 'would you like a taste of my sword for an early breakfast?' 'Just saying what I think,' I said: 'You tell me why I'm wrong.'
'In the first place,' Gaius said, 'have you any idea how much land he has already handed out to the boys?'
'Oh, that,' I said, 'that don't signify anything to me. That's just a politician building up a group of clients, if you ask me.'
'Nobody's asking you. You're too effing ignorant to ask. I'm telling you,' Gaius said.
'If you're so clever,' I said, 'tell me why you think we're here. Tell me why we're lined up to fight Antony, when just a few months ago we were all bosom chums engaged in common butchery. Tell me that, you grey-bearded know-all.' 'Listen, shithead,' he said, 'we don't want to fight Antony.' 'Too bloody right we don't,' said another. 'Hear, hear, I've got two brothers with Antony.'
'I only like to fight when I'm sure of winning,' said a fourth, 'and I'd never back our boy against Antony.' 'Oh, generalship,' I said, 'generals don't matter that much. All this talk of generalship is horse-piss. It's how us men feel that counts. What they call morale.'
'I don't know who the hell you effing are,' Gaius said, 'and indeed I'm beginning to wonder if you're a spy sent in to our camp by Antony, in which case I'll hand you over to the senior centurion and volunteer to nail you to a cross myself…' 'Thought you said old sweats never volunteered…'
'This time it would be a pleasure. Still, what you say is true enough, up to a point. It's what men feel that decides battles, decides whether they stand their ground or run away. But you see, one of the things that decides which they do, is what they feel about their general. Not just about their general but about the legion and the whole army. If they don't trust them, they run away. It's that simple, it's why Julius won all his battles… we would always stand our ground for him…' 'And what about the cause?' I said.
His voice had grown gentler in the last speech, as he began to think. I have often noticed how the crudity of the spontaneous and regular speech of soldiers gives way to something more admirable when they begin to reflect.
'You always say it doesn't matter,' he said. 'That you fight for pay, because you're told to, because the centurion will flay you if you don't, and because you're afraid not to, and it is all true. And yet, underneath it all, there is something more. Men fight better when they are fighting for what they believe in. I'm old enough to remember Vercingetorix at Alesia. That was a battle of battles because the Gauls were fighting for everything that was theirs that we were going to take from them and change.'
His voice dropped. Someone threw a branch on the fire and flame spurted up, illuminating his set, scarred face. A flask was passed round. I was included in the circle as if the altered tenor of the conversation, the sense that we were all being made free of everything Gaius had come to know in his life of soldiering, dissipated the suspicion with which I had been viewed and made me part of the group.
Gaius waved the wine aside. He said, 'Our boy's cause is right. He stands for Italy and homes and farmlands and public order.'
'But this time,' another said, 'what is there to fight Antony about…?'
'Maybe nothing,' Gaius said, 'except that he's here. And it's got to be finished. If Antony insists, we have to stand our ground.'
I threw the hood back off my head and stepped forward so that they might see who I was.
'You are quite right, Gaius,' I said… 'No,' I smiled, seeing his consternation, 'don't apologize for having threatened to nail me to a cross. I have no wish for this battle, but, if it has to be, it has to be. You know what my father said after Pharsalus when he looked on the faces of the dead Pompeians. "They wanted it this way", those were his words. And you are quite right too in saying what I stand for. I stand for the Republic, for farms for my soldiers, for decency and peace. We have come a long way and cannot hide from our destiny…'
'That's all right, General,' said one man, a thin-faced boy with a cauliflower ear, 'but destiny's a big word for us boys. I reckon destiny belongs to the likes of you.' 'What is your name?' I said, and sat down beside him. 'Septimus,' he said, 'being the seventh son, you understand.'
'Well, Septimus,' I said, 'if a seventh son doesn't understand destiny, who can? But you're wrong, you know, we all have a fate to work out. And let me tell you, I know, whether we have to fight Antony now or later or not at all, that my star is fixed. I shall achieve for you and all Italians just what Gaius has said I'm aiming at. Trust me in that. We're here, not just for ourselves, but for our children.' 'Don't have any,' said Septimus. 'You will have.'
'Not him, Caesar,' cried another, 'he's not up to it,' and the win
e-flask flew faster amid ribaldry and good-humour… But I was still awake as dawn crept to us out of Asia, over the still grey Ionian, across the inland sea and the still silent marshes. Then the first birds called, sea birds and curlews and redshanks, and then, very slowly, the camp began to wake, horses shifted their feet, rattled their chains and snorted, voices were heard, cooks called to breakfast, and I woke a slave and sent him to fetch Maecenas.
It took him a long time to come and he was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. He wore a dressing-gown of gorgeous taffeta, yellow and deeper gold, adorned with red dragons. A slave attended him bearing a tray of breakfast meats, smoked peacock breast, scampi in a sauce of lemon and saffron, cold boiled lobster and a jug of iced wine.
'I know, Caesar,' Maecenas drawled, 'that you breakfast in too Spartan a manner for me. Very affected I call it, my dear, to eat soldiers' food.'
He yawned: 'What is it, ducky, that could not wait till a more gentlemanly hour?' 'It is,' I said, 'this absurdity.'
'Absurdity? You're naive,' he said. 'You have this strange fancy that Antony is a serious man in the same way we are. Antony is a bar-room type. He wants power and esteem. They make him feel good. It's no use talking to Antony of ideals, ducky. He don't know what you mean. Still, I agree in one respect. It's too soon to fight him. I'll see what I can do…' I fretted all day while Maecenas debated with Antony's envoy, Asinius Pollio. There is nothing more irksome than the position of a principal while his agents negotiate. It was very hot; I had my slaves three times prepare a bath for me, and on each occasion found some other little matter to distract me. I had made up my mind what must be done, and I felt guilty. I knew Antony too well to feel other than guilty, and I prepared myself to face my mother's reproaches.
Later too, Livia said to me, 'You claim to love your sister. She is perhaps the only woman of whom I could feel jealous. And yet you subjected her to this marriage. Why?' 'Not for myself,' I replied. 'For Rome. For the whole world.'
When Antony met me to sign what came to be called the Treaty of Brindisi, he laughed. He stretched forward his hand to pinch my cheek in the old manner, hesitated a moment, and then nipped quite hard. 'Marry your sister, kid,' he crowed. 'Well, that is coming full circle.'
I drew back. I said, 'There is one other thing. This marriage is expedient, but I love my sister.'
'She's a beauty,' he said, 'and they tell me, Caesar, as virtuous as she is beautiful, unlike some I could mention, eh, and wise enough to be Caesar's sister too. So what's this other thing?' 'Cleopatra,' I said. 'Oh, the Queen? What of her?' 'Rumour has it that you and she are lovers.'
'One up to rumour,' Antony said. 'But she's an awful woman all the same. Sees herself as she-who-must-be-obeyed. I'll be very glad to have a good Roman wife to protect me against the Queen. But you must realize our relationship's primarily political. I need Egypt.' 'Rome needs Egypt,' I said. 'Does Rome need Cleopatra…?' Antony beamed.
'You're a deep one, Caesar,' he said. 'The same thought had occurred to me.' That conversation cleared my conscience, or could have done, if my conscience allowed itself to be deceived by words. But I knew I was doing wrong, and yet it was what had to be done.
I explained this to Octavia herself. I told her that Antony and I must hold together and that this was only possible if she agreed to act as the bond.
Octavia said, 'He must promise he will not see the Queen of Egypt alone.'
Antony gave that promise. There are those who talk of Antony and Cleopatra as great lovers. I have noticed this tendency among some of your mother's aristocratic friends. They should know that he gave that promise. There was no deep love between them, believe me.
Octavia also said, 'Caesar married his daughter to Pompey to cement their alliance, and it lasted while she lived. I know what duty demands of me, brother.'
Octavia has a pale face, a priestess's face, and it was very still and lovely, like a priestess before the altar, as she said this. She said one other thing: 'After all, I have known love with Marcellus. That is more than many women can say. But I have one request, brother. I do not wish my son, the young Marcellus, to grow to manhood in Antony's household. I do not wish to surrender him, but I shall leave him with my mother and ask you to make yourself responsible for his virtue, well-being and education.' I said, 'I shall love him as a son or younger brother.'
So the marriage went ahead, though my mother was indeed furious and never ceased to reproach me for having, as she put it, 'sacrificed' my sister. She was right, but the sacrifice was necessary. The Treaty of Brindisi confirmed me in possession of Gaul; it left me a free hand to deal with Sextus Pompey, whom Antony abandoned with a readiness that should have chilled the blood of any of his friends (and which I did not fail to remark myself). In return Antony now took control of the whole Empire of Rome from the Ionian Sea to the Euphrates; I promised him five legions from Gaul for the Parthian War on which his mind was fixed.
'Well, this all seems satisfactory. Have we forgotten anything?' 'I don't think so.' Maecenas tapped me on the shoulder and leaned forward. 'Lepidus,' he said. 'Oh Lepidus,' I said.
'By Jupiter, yes,'Antony said, 'our noble colleague, our fellow triumvir. How could we come to forget him? What about the noble donkey?' 'Let him keep Africa,' I said.
'Why not?' Antony said, and the conference ended on a fit of giggles.
***
There are in Germany dark and trackless forests. Huge trees join their branches to deny the sun to the ground below. The undergrowth is thick, tangled and full of briars which lacerate the traveller's legs, and even reach above the protective leggings of ox-hide such as Ulysses wore when he drove his plough in Ithaca. These forests are numinous, spirit-haunted by the demons of delusion. In the absence of paths, the traveller must trace his journey by notching the trees with his knife. The forests afflict the nerves; no Roman who spends any time there comes out unimpaired, but rather prey to nervous disorders, stomach troubles, strange shudderings. He sighs for the lucidity of the Mediterranean world, for the stark truthful landscape of rock and sky and water; he longs for the certainties of these harsh realities.
For five years after Caesar's murder I lived in a world like that German forest. Though in retrospect I can discern a pattern, at the time I moved from restless day through sleepless and wary night. I had a sense of my general direction, but I moved without precise knowledge, apprehensive, circumspect and often fearful.
Livia brought me into the sunshine, as if I emerged from the forest to find a fruitful plain spread below me. I fell in love with her at first sight; yet for three weeks she refused to see me. She regarded me as an enemy; I was the young disturber of the social order, the champion of those without property and family – her lovely head was full of the stuffiest aristocratic notions, and her gull-witted husband resentfully encouraged them. I sent her letters, flowers, gifts of fruit and shellfish – to no avail -though I had at least the sense not to send her my verses. Then I invited the pair of them to a dinner-party, and sent Maecenas to warn the egregious Tiberius Nero that the invitation was in reality a command. She arrived in a white gown with no jewellery, and her face expressed disdain. I set myself to be charming and failed to charm. Of course I had next to no experience with young girls of good birth, and clearly neither of my marriages had prepared me. I tried to talk nonsense, not realizing that Livia had no taste for it; later she told me she had thought me a disappointing buffoon.
Conversation was sticky; no doubt about that. I knew Maecenas was laughing at me, and should have realized that his was just the sort of presence to revolt Livia. What, I wondered, itching with impatience and almost stammering with nervousness, would the girl like to talk about? War and politics were out; we would only disagree. I tried poetry; she said she never read it. I asked her about her family:
'I loved my father,' she said, 'he was an honourable man. He was killed at Philippi. I have been told he was killed after the battle.'
Her chin tilted upwards and she looked me full in
the eyes with no flicker of understanding, but only challenge.
I said to myself: she is going to despise me if I knuckle under and don't meet her defiance. I leaned across the table and poured wine into her cup.
'It was an ugly business, Philippi,' I said, 'and it followed on an uglier – the murder of my father. But I am sorry to hear of your father, believe me. There can never be anything but pain and grief in shedding the blood of a fellow-citizen.' 'That is easy to say, Caesar.' 'And difficult to prove?' 'Impossible, I should say.' Her eyes held mine.
'You are right,' I said. 'It is impossible. I can only ask you to believe me, and to remember this: had Philippi gone differently I would be in my grave myself, and I do not think it would be honoured. War between Romans is foul, wicked and wrong. If I have one aim in life, it is to bring an end to these civil wars, which have disfigured and deformed the Republic since the days of Sulla and Marius. But to bring them to an end it is not sufficient to conquer; the social causes of civil strife must be treated, for the body politic is diseased. The true mission of any Roman of conscience today is that of healer, but to cure disease requires first the surgeon's knife…'
A smile, like the first shaft of dawn sunlight striking a cold wall, touched the corner of her mouth.
'I am glad you are no longer talking to me as if I were just a pretty girl,' she said. 'I am glad you can be serious with me, Caesar.'
She rose from her couch, and, either catching her foot in the hem of her gown or slipping on the marble, tumbled abruptly to the floor. I was at her side in a moment. 'My ankle,' she said. I glanced down the table. Tiberius Nero was blearily deep in the wine-flask, paying no heed to his wife. I picked her up. 'We'll have it seen to,' I said. 'Ouch,' she said, 'you're stronger than you look, though.'
'It's very difficult,' I said, laying her on a couch in the antechamber and feeling the ankle, which was already swelling, 'to forget that you are a lovely girl.' 'Why do you wear that disgusting beard?' she murmured. 'To please you, I'll remove it.'