The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  It may be that, after your consulship has ended, you might choose Syria as your province. To have such a charming neighbor would please me very much. Egypt is close, and well worth a visit. No doubt Caesar told you of his travels on Nilus, of the sights and wonders to be seen only in Egypt. Do, dear Caesar, think about visiting Egypt in the near future! All that it has is yours for the asking. Delights beyond your wildest imagination. I repeat, all that Egypt has is yours for the asking.

  The letter was sent off the same day on a fast trireme, no expense spared, direct for Rome. With the letter went a tiny box in which reposed one enormous, perfect, pink ocean pearl.

  Dear Isis, prayed Pharaoh, brow upon the floor, bent as low as the meanest of her subjects, dear Isis, send this new Caesar to me! Give Egypt life and hope again! Let Pharaoh bear sons and daughters of Caesar’s blood! Safeguard my throne! Safeguard my dynasty! Send this new Caesar to me, and pour into me all the arts and wiles of the countless Goddesses who have served you, and Amun-Ra, and all the Gods of Egypt, as Pharaoh.

  She could expect a reply within two months, but first came a letter from Cha’em to tell her that the plague had reached Memphis and was killing thousands. For some inexplicable reason, the priests in the temple precinct of Ptah were being spared; only those priest-physicians whom Sekhmet governed were sickening, and that because they had gone into the city to minister. The strong contagious element had prompted them not to return to Ptah’s temple, but to stay where they were. A great sorrow to Cha’em. But be warned, he said. The disease would now spread into the Delta and into Alexandria. The Royal Enclosure must be sealed off from the city.

  “Perhaps,” said Hapd’efan’e thoughtfully when Cleopatra showed him Cha’em’s letter, “it has to do with stone. The temple precinct is stone, its grounds are flagged. Whatever it is that carries the plague might not like such a barren environment. If so, then this stonepalace will be a protection. And, if so, then the garden soil will be dangerous. I must consult the gardeners and have them plant the flower beds with wormwood.”

  Octavian’s reply reached Alexandria before the plague did, at the end of November.

  Thank you for your good wishes, Queen of Egypt. It may please you to know that the number of living assassins is dwindling. I will not rest until the last one is dead.

  In the New Year I expect my task will be to deal with Brutus and Cassius.

  My stepfather, Philippus, is dying by inches. We do not expect him to live out the month. His toes have rotted and the poison is in his bloodstream. Lucius Piso is also dying, of an inflammation of the lungs.

  I write this from Bononia in Italian Gaul, where the autumnal air is freezing and full of sleet. I am here to meet Marcus Antonius. As I do not like traveling, I will never visit Egypt as a tourist. Your offer is most kind, but I must refuse it.

  The pearl is beautiful. I have set it in gold and will put it around the neck of Venus Genetrix in her temple in Caesar’s forum.

  Meet Marcus Antonius? Meet? What precisely does he mean by that? And what an answer. Consider yourself slapped on the face, Cleopatra. Octavianus is an icy man, not interested in Egyptian affairs, even of the heart.

  So it can’t be Caesar’s heir. He has rejected me. I adore Lucius Caesar, but he would never make love where Caesar made love. Who else is there with Julian blood? Quintus Pedius. His two sons. Lucius Pinarius. The three Antonian brothers, Marcus, Gaius and Lucius. A total of seven men. It will have to be whichever of them comes first to my end of Their Sea, for I cannot travel to Rome. Seven men. Surely they can’t all be as cold a fish as Octavianus. I will pray to Isis to send me a Julian, and sisters and brothers for Caesarion.

  The plague reached Alexandria in December, and cut the city’s population by seventy percent—Macedonians, Greeks, Jews, Metics, hybrid Egyptians perished in roughly equal numbers. Those who survived would eat well; Cleopatra had drawn the hatred of a million people upon her head for nothing.

  “God,” said Simeon the Jew, “does not discriminate.”

  XIII

  Funding an Army

  From JANUARY until SEXTILIS (AUGUST) of 42 B.C.

  1

  “You can’t possibly think of invading Italy without a great deal more money,” said Hemicillus to Brutus and Cassius.

  “More money?” gasped Brutus. “But there’s no more to be had!”

  “Why?” asked Cassius, frowning. “Between what I squeezed out of Syria and what Cimber and I collected on the way here, I must have two thousand gold talents.” He turned on Brutus with a snarl. “Have you managed to collect none, Brutus?”

  “Far from it,” Brutus said stiffly, resenting the tone. “Mine is all in coin, about two-thirds silver, a third gold, and amounts to—?” He looked at Hemicillus enquiringly.

  “Two hundred million sesterces.”

  “All up, then, we have four hundred million sesterces,” said Cassius. “That’s enough to mount an expedition to conquer Hades.”

  “You forget,” Hemicillus said patiently, “that there will be no spoils, always the difficulty in civil war. Caesar took to giving his troops cash donatives in lieu of a share of spoils, but what he gave out was nothing compared to what soldiers demand now. Octavianus promised his legions twenty thousand per man, a hundred thousand for centurions of highest rank down to forty thousand for a junior centurion. Word travels. The men expect big money.”

  Brutus got up and walked to the window, looked out across the port, filled with hundreds of warships and transports.

  His appearance had surprised Cassius, used to the mournful dark mouse; this Brutus was brisker, more—martial. His success against the Bessi had endowed him with much needed confidence, and Porcia’s death had hardened him. The recipient of most of Servilia’s letters, Cassius too had been appalled by her callous acceptance of Porcia’s horrible suicide, but, unlike Brutus, he believed it had been a suicide. The Servilia he loved was not the woman Brutus had known and feared since memory began. Nor had Brutus voiced his conviction of murder to Servilia’s favorite male relative, who would have rejected it adamantly.

  “What has happened to Rome?” Brutus asked the multitude of ships. “Where is patriotism? Loyalty?”

  “Still there,” Cassius said harshly. “Jupiter, you’re a fool, Brutus! What do ranker soldiers know about warring factions among their leaders? Whose definition of patriotism is a ranker soldier going to believe? Yours, or the Triumvirs’? All men know is that when they draw their swords, it will be against fellow Romans.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Brutus, turning with a sigh. He sat down and stared at Hemicillus. “Then what do we do, Gaius?”

  “Find more money,” Hemicillus said simply.

  “Where?”

  “To start with, in Rhodes,” said Cassius. “I’ve been talking to Lentulus Spinther, who tried several times to prise ships and money out of the Rhodians without getting either. So did I. According to Rhodes, their treaties with Rome don’t include providing a specific side in a civil war with any aid whatsoever.”

  “And,” said Hemicillus, “another part of Asia Minor that has never really been tapped—Lycia. Too difficult for the governors of Asia Province to get at to be bothered trying.”

  “Rhodes and Lycia,” said Brutus. “I presume we’re going to have to go to war to persuade them to help our enterprise?”

  “In the case of Rhodes, definitely,” said Cassius. “It may be that a simple request to—say, Xanthus, Patara and Myra—will suffice, if they know the alternative is invasion.”

  “How much should we ask from Lycia?” Brutus asked Hemicillus.

  “Two hundred million sesterces.”

  “Rhodes,” Cassius said grimly, “can give us twice that and still have some left over.”

  “Do you think that one thousand million will see us through to Italy?” Brutus asked.

  “I’ll do my sums later, when I know exactly what our strength will be,” said Hemicillus.

  Wintering in Smyrna was comfortab
le, even in this dry year. Of snow there was none, of wind little, and the broad valley of the Hermus enabled the Liberators to scatter their massive army over sixty miles of separate camps, each of which soon acquired its satellite community providing wine, whores and entertainment for the soldiers. Small farmers brought vegetables, ducks, geese, chickens and eggs to sell to eager buyers, sticky confections of oily pastry and syrup, an edible snail of the region, even plump frogs from the marshes. Though the big merchants in the urban settlements did not profit much from an army that had its own staples with it, these commercially unversed yet enterprising peasants, taxed to poverty, began to see a trace of prosperity return.

  For Brutus and Cassius, living in the governor’s residence alongside Smyrna port, the chief advantage of this winter location was the swiftness of news from Rome. So they had learned, aghast, of the formation of the Triumvirate, and understood that Octavian deemed the Liberators a far greater threat to his Rome than he did Marcus Antonius. The Triumviral intention was clear: Brutus and Cassius would have to be eliminated. War preparations were going on all over Italy and Italian Gaul, and none of the forty-plus legions the Triumvirs could call upon had been discharged from service. Rumor said that Lepidus, now senior consul with Plancus as his junior, was to remain in Rome to govern, while Antony and Octavian were to deal with the Liberators; the most quoted commencement date for their campaign was May.

  More horrifying even than all this was the news that Caesar had officially been declared a god, and that the cult of Divus Julius, as he was to be known, would be propagated all over Italy and Italian Gaul, with temples, priests, festivals. Octavian now openly called himself “Divi Filius,” and Mark Antony had not voiced an objection. One of the Triumvirs was the son of a god, their cause must be the right one! So much had Antony’s attitude changed since his own disastrous consulship that he now joined with Octavian in forcing the Senate to swear an oath to uphold all of Divus Julius’s laws and dictates. And an imposing temple to Divus Julius was being built in the Forum Romanum on the site where his body had been burned. The People of Rome had won their battle to be allowed to worship Caesar.

  “Even if we beat Antonius and win Rome, we’re going to have to suffer Divus Julius forever,” Brutus said miserably.

  “The place has gone downhill,” Cassius answered, scowling. “Can you imagine some lout raping a Vestal Virgin?”

  That news had come too, that Rome’s most revered women, used to walking freely about the city unaccompanied, now had to take a lictor as a bodyguard; Cornelia Merula, strolling alone to visit Fabia on the Quirinal, had been attacked and molested, though rape was Cassius’s word, not mentioned in Servilia’s letter. In all the history of Rome, the Vestals, clad in their unmistakable white robes and veils, had been free to come and go without fear.

  “It represents a milestone,” Brutus said sadly. “The old values and taboos are no longer respected. I’m not even sure I want to enter Rome ever again.”

  “If Antonius and Octavianus have anything to do with it, you won’t, Brutus. All I know is that they’ll have to fight hard to prevent my entering Rome,” said Cassius.

  With nineteen legions, five thousand cavalry and seven hundred ships at his disposal, Cassius sat down to work out how to extract six hundred million sesterces out of Rhodes and the cities of Lycia. Brutus was present, but had learned over the preceding few nundinae to be suitably deferential when Cassius had command on his mind; to Cassius, Brutus had simply had a stroke of luck in Thrace rather than generaled an authentic campaign.

  “I’ll take Rhodes,” he announced, “which means a maritime war, at least to begin with. You’ll invade Lycia, a land business, though you’ll have to bring your troops in by sea. I doubt that there’s much use for horse in either case, so I suggest that we send all but a thousand of our cavalry to Galatia for the spring and summer.” He grinned. “Let Deiotarus bear their cost.”

  “He’s been very generous and helpful” from Brutus, timidly.

  “Then he can be even more generous and helpful” from Cassius.

  “Why can’t I march overland from Caria?” Brutus asked.

  “I suppose you could, but why would you want to?”

  “Because Roman foot hate sea voyages.”

  “All right, please yourself, but you can’t muddle along at a snail’s pace, and you’ll have some nasty mountains to cross.”

  “I understand that,” Brutus said patiently.

  “Ten legions and five hundred horse for scouting.”

  “No baggage train if there are nasty mountains. The army will have to use pack mules, which means it can’t afford to be on the march for longer than six nundinae. I’ll have to hope that Xanthus has sufficient food to feed me when I get there. I do think Xanthus ought to be my first target, don’t you?”

  Cassius blinked, rather startled. Who would have thought to hear so much military common sense from Brutus? “Yes, Xanthus first,” he agreed. “However, there’s nothing to stop you sending more food by sea and picking it up when you reach Xanthus.”

  “Good idea,” said Brutus, smiling. “And you?”

  “As I said, sea battles, though I’ll need four legions—who will board transports and endure the deep whether they like it or not,” said Cassius.

  2

  Brutus set out with his ten legions and five hundred cavalry in March, following a good Roman road south through the valley of the Maeander River to Ceramus, where he negotiated the coast for as long as he could. The route offered him plenty of forage, for the granaries still contained wheat from last year’s lean harvest, and he didn’t care if his confiscations left the local people hungry, though he was sensible enough to heed their pleas that he must leave them enough seed to plant this year’s crops. Unfortunately the spring rains hadn’t come, a bad omen; the fields would have to be watered by hand from the rivers. How, asked the farmers piteously, were they to do that if they were too weak from hunger?

  “Eat eggs and poultry,” said Brutus.

  “Then don’t let your men steal our chickens!”

  Deeming this reasonable, Brutus tightened up on illicit plundering of farmyard animals by his troops, who were beginning to discover that their commander was tougher than he looked.

  The Solyma Mountains of Lycia were formidable, towering eight thousand feet straight up from the water’s edge; it was thanks to them that no governor of Asia Province had ever bothered to regulate Lycia, determine a tribute or send legates to enforce his edicts. Long a haven for pirates, it was a place where the settlements were confined to a series of narrow river valleys, and all communication between settlements went on by sea. The land of Sarpedon and Glaucus of Iliad fame commenced at the town of Telmessus, where the good Roman road stopped. From Telmessus onward, there was not so much as a goat track.

  Brutus simply made his own road as he marched, cycling the duty of going ahead to hack and dig with picks and shovels through his legions, whose men groaned and whined at the labor, but put their backs to it when their centurions administered the knobbed ends of their vine rods.

  The dryness meant beautiful weather, no danger of landslides and no mud to slow the pack mules down, but camps were a thing of the past; each night the men curled up where they were along the ten-foot-wide rubble of the road, indifferent to the spangled nets of stars in the sky, the soaring, lacy cataracts of boiling little rivers, the pine-smothered peaks scarred by mighty hollows where whole flanks had fallen away, the pearly mists that coiled around the blackish-green trees at dawn. On the other hand, they had all noticed the big, shiny chunks of jet-black rock their picks turned over, but only because they had thought this some rare gemstone; the moment they were informed that it was just unworkable glass, they cursed it along with everything else on that grueling road-making exercise through the Solyma.

  Only Brutus and his three philosophers had the temperament—and the leisure—to appreciate the beauties that unfolded by day, continued in mysterious form after dark, when crea
tures screamed from the forest, bats flitted, night birds hung silhouetted against the moon-silvered vault. Apart from appreciating the scenery, they each had their preferred activities: for Statyllus and Strato of Epirus, mathematics; for the Roman Volumnius, a diary; whereas Brutus wrote letters to dead Porcia and dead Cato.

  It was a mere twenty miles from Telmessus to the valley of the Xanthus River, but those twenty miles occupied more than half of the thirty-day, hundred-and-fifty-mile march. Both Lycia’s biggest cities, Xanthus and Patara, stood on this river’s banks—Patara at its mouth, Xanthus fifteen miles upstream.

  Brutus’s army spilled off its homemade road into the valley closer to Patara than Xanthus, Brutus’s first target. Unluckily for him, a stray shepherd had warned the cities, whose people used the hours to good advantage; they razed the countryside, evacuated the suburbs and shut the gates. All the granaries were inside, there were springs of fresh water, and the walls of Xanthus in particular were massive enough bastions to keep the Romans out.

  Brutus’s two chief legates were Aulus Allienus, a skilled soldier from a family of Picentine nobodies, and Marcus Livius Drusus Nero, a Claudian aristocrat adopted into the Livian clan; his sister, Livia, was betrothed to Tiberius Claudius Nero, though not yet old enough to marry this insufferable dolt whom Caesar had loathed and Cicero had wanted as his son-in-law. Using both Allienus and Drusus Nero as his advisers, Brutus put his military machine into siege mode. The scorched earth had annoyed him, as it removed vegetables from his legionary menu; he wouldn’t bother starving the Xanthians out, he’d try to take the city quickly.

  Considered by his peers to be extraordinarily erudite, Brutus actually was well versed in only a very few subjects—philosophy, rhetoric, certain literature. Geography bored him, as did non-Roman history save for titans like Thucydides, so he never read earth-people like Herodotus. Thus he knew nothing about Xanthus, apart from a tradition that said it had been founded by the Homeric King Sarpedon, who was worshiped as the city’s principal god and had the most imposing temple. But Xanthus had another tradition too, unknown to Brutus. Twice before it had been besieged, first by a general of Cyrus the Great of Persia’s named Harpagus the Mede, then by Alexander the Great. When it fell, as fall it did, the entire population of Xanthus had committed suicide. Among the frenzied activities the Xanthians had pursued during that period of grace the shepherd’s warning gave them was the gathering of a huge amount of firewood; as the Roman siege swung into operation, the people inside the city heaped the wood into pyres in every open space.