The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  * * *

  On the day after his triumph Caesar stepped down as consul—but not as Dictator—and had Quintus Fabius Maximus and Gaius Trebonius appointed the suffect consuls for the rump of the year, less than three months. Calling them “suffect” dispensed with the need for an election; a senatorial decree was enough.

  He announced his governors for the following year: Trebonius was to replace Vatia Isauricus in Asia Province; Decimus Brutus was to go to Italian Gaul; another Kill Caesar Club member, Staius Murcus, was to succeed Antistius Vetus in Syria; and yet another, Tillius Cimber, was to govern Bithynia combined with Pontus. The strong array of governors in the western provinces went from Pollio in Further Spain through Lepidus in Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul to Lucius Munatius Plancus in Gaul of the Long-hairs and Gaul of the Rhodanus, and ended with Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul.

  “However,” said Caesar to the House, “I cannot step down as Dictator yet, which means I must replace my present Master of the Horse, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, governing next year. His successor will be Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus.”

  Antony, listening smugly and expecting to hear his own name—he was behaving himself perfectly, after all!—felt the rebuff like a plunge into icy water. Calvinus! A far harder man to bully and baffle than Lepidus, and a man who made no effort to conceal his dislike of Marcus Antonius. Damn Caesar! Was nothing to come easily?

  It appeared not. Caesar then proceeded to announce next year’s consuls. Himself as senior consul until he departed for the East, and Marcus Antonius as junior consul for the entire year. The senior consul after Caesar left would be Publius Cornelius Dolabella.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” roared Antony, on his feet. “Be junior to Dolabella? I’d rather be dead!”

  “Let us see what the elections bring, Antonius,” said Caesar, quite unruffled. “If the voters wish to return you ahead of Dolabella in the polls, well and good. Otherwise, lump it.”

  Dolabella, a handsome man quite as tall and almost as heavily built as Antony, leaned back on his stool, folded his hands behind his head and grinned complacently. He knew as well as Antony did that his own activities in Rome were a great deal harder to prove than those of a man who had killed eight hundred Roman civilians in the Forum Romanum with armed troops.

  “Your deeds will come back to haunt you, Antonius,” he said, and began to whistle.

  “It won’t happen!” said Antony through his teeth.

  Cassius listened keenly, on anybody’s side rather than that brute Antonius—at least Caesar had some sense! Dolabella was venal and could behave like a fool, but he’d grown up somewhat during the past year, and he wasn’t about to be cowed by Antonius, so much was sure. Perhaps Rome would survive. Cassius was, besides, still glowing; he had been notified that he was to be inducted into the College of Augurs, a significant honor.

  Brutus listened with growing hope; as he reported to the absent Cicero later, Caesar’s dispositions made him think that eventually Caesar intended to restore the full Republic.

  “Sometimes, Brutus,” Cicero snapped, “you talk utter rubbish! Just because Caesar has made you urban praetor, you suddenly think the man is a wonder. Well, he’s not. He’s an ulcer!”

  It was after this meeting of the Senate that the honors given to Caesar suddenly began to multiply. Many of them had been mooted, even legalized by senatorial consulta, yet nothing had been done to implement them. Now all that changed; the statue of Caesar currently being made to go into the temple of Quirinus was to bear a plaque that said TO THE UNCONQUERABLE GOD—a reference, said Antony during a meeting of the Senate that Caesar didn’t attend, to Quirinus, not to Caesar. At the same meeting funding was granted for an ivory statue of Caesar riding in a golden car to appear at all state parades; yet another statue of him was to be put alongside the ones of the Kings of Rome and the Founder of the Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus. Caesar’s palace on the Quirinal, with its temple pediment, also received a vote of money.

  With the Parthian invasion looming, Caesar in fact didn’t have the time to attend many meetings of the Senate, and at the beginning of December he was obliged to spend some time in Campania dealing with the allocation of veterans’ land. Antony and Trebonius seized their chance immediately, though they were astute enough to have other, lesser men propose their decrees. In future, the month of Quinctilis would be called the month of Julius. A thirty-sixth tribe of Roman citizens was to be created and called the Tribus Julia. A third college of luperci was to come into being as the Luperci Julii, and Mark Antony, already a lupercus, was to be its prefect. A temple was to be built to Caesar’s Clemency, and Mark Antony was to be flamen of the new cult of Caesar’s Clemency. Caesar was to sit on a curule chair made of gold and wear a golden wreath adorned with gems at the games. His ivory statue was to be carried in the parade of the gods and have an identical pulvinar base. All these decrees were to be inscribed in gold letters on pure silver tablets, to show how Caesar had filled the Treasury to overflowing.

  “I object!” Cassius cried when Trebonius, now consul with the fasces, moved for a division of the House on the proposals. “I say again, I object! Caesar is not a god, but you’re behaving as if he were! Did he vanish down to Campania so that he wouldn’t be present to look bashful and be obliged for form’s sake to protest? It certainly looks that way to me! Strike these motions, consul! They are sacrilegious!”

  “If you object, Gaius Cassius, then stand to the left of the curule dais” was Trebonius’s response.

  Fuming, Cassius went to the left, traditionally the direction that was more likely to lose in a division: ill-omened. That day it was. Only a handful of men, including Cassius, Brutus, Lucius Caesar, Lucius Piso, Calvinus and Philippus, stood to the left. But almost the entire House, Antony in its lead, went right.

  “I don’t think the price of my praetorship is worth it, if I am to bear these godlike honors,” said Cassius to Brutus, Porcia and Tertulla over dinner.

  “Nor do I!” Porcia declared in ringing tones.

  “Give Caesar time, Cassius, please!” Brutus begged. “I don’t believe that any of these honors were proposed at his instigation, I really don’t. I think he’s going to be appalled.”

  “They shame him,” said Tertulla, who hovered perpetually between pleasure at knowing she was Caesar’s daughter and pure pain that he never acknowledged her, however informally.

  “Of course they were passed at Caesar’s instigation!” cried Porcia, flicking Brutus an exasperated glance.

  “No, my love, you’re wrong,” Brutus insisted. “They were proposed by men trying to curry favor with him, and passed by a House that probably does think he wants them. But there are two significant things. One, that Marcus Antonius is up to his eyes in whatever is going on, and the other, that the proposers waited until Caesar definitely couldn’t be present.”

  But it was to be some time before Caesar became aware of the new honors, for the simplest of reasons: the amount of work he had to do was so great that he pushed the minutes of senatorial meetings held in his absence to one side, unread. As it was, he irritated Cleopatra by reading all through her dazzling receptions, eating hardly anything because he was too busy.

  “You try to do too much!” she snapped. “Hapd’efan’e tells me you’re neglecting to drink your syrup now that it isn’t made of juice. Caesar, even if you do dislike it, you must fruit drink it! Do you want to fall over in a fit in public?”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said absently, eyes on a paper.

  She snatched it away and held a glass of liquid under his nose. “Drink!” she snarled.

  The ruler of the world meekly obeyed, but then insisted on going back to his paperwork, lifting his head only when Marcus Tigellius Hermogenes began a series of arias he had composed to the words of Sappho, accompanying himself on a lyre.

  “Music is the one thing that can divert his attention from work,” Cleopatra whispered to Lucius Caesar.

  Lucius squeezed her hand. “At lea
st something does.”

  The honors went on. Mark Antony’s youngest brother, Lucius, became a tribune of the plebs on the tenth day of December, and distinguished himself by proposing to the Plebeian Assembly that Caesar be given the right to recommend half the candidates for every election except that for the consuls—and the right to appoint all the magistrates, including the consuls, while he was away in the East. It went into law at first contio, which was unconstitutional, but sanctioned by the consul Trebonius.

  “For Caesar, nothing is unconstitutional,” said Trebonius, a statement that only men like Cicero, informed of it later, found a little peculiar coming from so stout a Caesarean.

  Midway through December, Caesar named the consuls for the year after next—Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa—and the year after that—Decimus Junius Brutus and Lucius Munatius Plancus. None a man who would support Antony.

  Then the Senate appointed Caesar Dictator for the fourth time, though his third term had not yet elapsed.

  The tribune of the plebs Lucius Cassius apparently had little knowledge of the law; he put a plebiscite before the Plebeian Assembly that allowed Caesar to appoint new patricians. Quite illegal, as the Patriciate had absolutely nothing to do with the Plebs. Caesar appointed one new patrician, and one only: his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius, busy getting ready to accompany him abroad as his contubernalis. Patrician he might now be, but his military rank had not been elevated, as Philippus rather snappishly informed him. Octavius accepted the reprimand with equanimity, more concerned with dissuading his mother from loading him down with comforts and luxuries he now knew branded him a lightweight.

  * * *

  On the first day of January the new consuls and praetors entered office, and all went well. The night watches for omens were unremarkable, the sacrificial white bulls went to the knife properly drugged, and the feast held in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus atop the Capitol was a good one. Now junior consul, Mark Antony strutted around importantly and managed to ignore Dolabella, smirking in the background because he would be Antony’s senior after Caesar left for the East.

  One of the duties of the senior consul on New Year’s Day was to set the date of the Latin Festival, the feast of Jupiter Latiaris held upon the Alban Mount. Usually it was held in March, just before the start of the campaigning season, but Caesar, who wanted to preside himself, announced that this year it would take place on the Nones of January.

  The Julii were the hereditary priests of Alba Longa, a town older by far than the founding of Rome; when the senior consul happened to be a Julian, as this year, he could wear the regalia of the King of Alba Longa to celebrate the Latin Festival. Of course there had been no King of Alba Longa since infant Rome had leveled the town to the ground, for it had never been rebuilt. But it had been founded by Iulus, the son of Aeneas, and the Julii, his direct descendants, had been its kings, who also were its high priests.

  When Caesar obtained the clothing of the King of Alba Longa and opened the redolent cedar chest to inspect the robes, he found them in perfect condition. They had last been worn fifteen years ago, when he had been consul for the first time. A very tall man, he had been obliged then to have a new pair of the high, bright scarlet boots made. Now they looked a little warped. Best try them on, he thought, and did so. Walking about in them, he noticed that the pain he had been experiencing in his lower legs for some time magically vanished, and went to see Hapd’efan’e.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” the priest-physician asked, sounding chagrined.

  “Think of what?”

  “Caesar, you have varicose veins, and Roman boots are too short to give the distended blood vessels proper support. These boots lace up tightly to just below the knee. That’s why the pain in your legs has eased. You must wear high boots.”

  “Edepol!” Caesar exclaimed, and laughed. “I’ll send for my boot-maker at once, but, since my family are the priests of Alba Longa, there’s no reason why I can’t wear these until I have a few pairs made in ordinary brown. Well done, Hapd’efan’e!”

  Off went Caesar to seat himself on the rostra, where he was dealing with complaints relating to the fiscus.

  Here junior consul Mark Antony, ex–junior consul Trebonius, ex-praetor Lucius Tillius Cimber, ex-praetor Decimus Brutus, and twenty carefully chosen pedarii senators came in solemn procession to see him. Six of the junior men each carried a glittering silver tablet about the size of a sheet of paper. Irritated at the interruption, Caesar glanced up with mouth open to banish them, but Antony got in first, going down reverently on one knee.

  “Caesar,” he hollered, “as your Senate decreed, we present you with six new honors, each inscribed in gold on silver!”

  Ooohs and aaahs from the gathering crowd.

  Decimus Turullius, new quaestor, came forward and presented his tablet on one knee—the month of Julius.

  Caecilius Metellus presented the new tribe, Julia.

  Caecilius Buciolanus presented the Luperci Julii.

  Marcus Rubrius Ruga presented Caesar’s Clemency.

  Cassius Parmensis presented the gold curule chair and wreath.

  Petronius presented the ivory statue in the parade of gods.

  Through all of it, witnessed by the rapidly growing crowd, Caesar sat as if graven from stone, so confounded that he could neither speak nor move, his lips still parted. Finally, when all six tablets had been presented and the group stood around him expectantly, each face beaming with pride at its owner’s cleverness, Caesar shut his mouth. Try though he did, he could not manage to rise to his feet, felt the weakness and dizziness of his affliction.

  “I cannot accept these,” he said, “they’re honors that ought not to be paid to a man. Take them away, melt them down and put the metal back where it belongs—in the Treasury.”

  The delegation’s members drew themselves up in outrage.

  “You insult us!” Turullius cried.

  Ignoring him, Caesar turned to Antony, who looked quite as put out as the rest. “Marcus Antonius, you should know better. As consul with the fasces, I am convoking the Senate to meet in the Curia Hostilia in one hour.” He beckoned to his syrup slave, took the beaker and drained it. A close thing.

  The new Curia Hostilia owned a far less pretentious interior than Pompey’s Curia on the Campus Martius, but it was, a peeking Cicero had admitted with a twinge of regret that he wouldn’t be sitting there, in exquisite taste. Just simple white marble tiers and curule dais, plastered walls painted white with a few decorative curliques, and a black-and-white tesselated marble floor; the roof, just like the old one, was naked cedar rafters with the bellies of the terra-cotta tiles showing through. Save for age, it was a twin of the old Curia Hostilia, thus no one objected to its having the same name.

  Summoned at such short notice, the House was by no means full, but when Caesar entered behind his twenty-four lictors, he counted a comfortable quorum. As it was a court day, all the praetors were there; most of the tribunes of the plebs; a few quaestors besides that worm Turullius; two hundred backbenchers; Dolabella, Calvinus, Lepidus, Lucius Caesar, Torquatus, Piso. It was obvious that word of his rejection of the silver tablets had gotten around, for the buzz when he entered increased rather than diminished. I am getting old indeed, he thought; I am not even in a temper over this, I am just very tired. They’re wearing me down.

  Caesar distinguished the new pontifex, Brutus, by having him take the prayers, and the new augur, Cassius, by having him take the auspices. Then he moved to the front of the curule dais and stood in his corona civica while the House applauded. He waited until his three crowned ex-centurion senators were applauded in turn, then began to speak.

  “Honored junior consul, consulars, praetors, aediles, tribunes of the plebs and conscript fathers of the Senate, I have summoned you to inform you that these honors you insist upon showering on me must cease forthwith. It is fitting that the Dictator of Rome should receive some honors, but only those honors appropriate for a man. A man!
An ordinary member of the gens humana, neither a king nor a god. Today some of you presented me with honors that infringe our mos maiorum, and in a public manner I found extremely distasteful. Our laws are inscribed on bronze, not on silver, and bronze all laws must be. These were silver inscribed in gold, two precious metals with more useful purpose than as law tablets. I ordered them destroyed and the metal returned to the Treasury.”

  He paused, his eyes meeting Lucius Caesar’s. Lucius tilted his head infinitesimally toward Antony, behind Caesar on the dais. His own head nodded: yes, I understand your message.

  “Conscript fathers, I give you notice that these ridiculous, sycophantic gestures must stop. I have not asked for them, I do not crave them, and I will not accept them. That is my dictate, and will be obeyed. I will have no decrees passed in this House that may be interpreted as an attempt to crown me King of Rome! That is a title we abrogated when the Republic came into being, and it is a title I abhor. I have no need to be the King of Rome! I am Rome’s legally appointed Dictator, which is all I need to be.”

  There was a stir as Quintus Ligarius got to his feet. “If you have no wish to be the King of Rome,” he shouted, pointing at Caesar’s right leg, “why are you wearing the high scarlet boots of a king?”

  Caesar’s mouth went thin, two red spots flaring in his cheeks. Admit to this lot that he had varicose veins? Never! “As priest of Jupiter Latiaris, it is my right to wear the priestly boots, and I’ll have no false assumptions made on that sort of premise, Ligarius! Are you finished? If so, sit down.”

  Ligarius subsided, scowling.

  “That’s all I have to say to you on the subject of honors,” he said. “However, to further make my point, to demonstrate to all of you conclusively that I am no more than a Roman man and have no wish to be more than my rank entitles me to be, I hereby dismiss my twenty-four lictors. Kings must have bodyguards, and a curule magistrate’s lictors represent the republican equivalent of a bodyguard. Therefore I will go about my official business without them while ever I am within one mile of Rome.” He turned to Fabius, sitting with his fellows on the side steps to the right of the curule dais. “Take your men back to the College of Lictors, Fabius. I will notify you when I need you.”