by Allan Massie
They did not reply directly. But their measures indicated their changing yet ever-treacherous temper. They voted Decimus Brutus a Triumph. 'Ye Gods,' said Agrippa, 'he's done nothing but sit on his arse and pray we'd arrive in time to save his bacon . . .' They summoned the sea-thief Sextus Pompeius to command the navy of the Republic. They confirmed the Caesaricides, vain Brutus and false Cassius, in command of the provinces which they had illegally seized. With insolence bred of folly and prejudice, they commanded me to hand over to Decimus Brutus Pansa's legions which had flocked enthusiastically to my standard; and they even had the audacity to demand that I surrender the IVth and the Martian to him also. I was not mentioned in the vote of thanks to the army. I was not placed on the commission appointed to revise Antony's decrees. I was refused a triumph and an ovation.
It was clear that Cicero's epigram was being enacted; they had concluded it was now safe to discard me.
* * *
I summoned a council: Maecenas and Agrippa of course; my brother-in-law Marcellus; P. Salvidienus Rufus, quick-tempered, vain, touchy and acute; my stepfather Philippus. As is my wont on such occasions I said little myself. I asked each of them for his assessment of the situation.
Philippus moaned that we were lost and wrung his hands: 'You have overplayed it,' he sobbed, 'Fortuna is offended and the Gods are drawing their skirts away from you.'
'What would you advise, stepfather?' My voice had all the honey of the Alban Hills.
'You must do as they wish. You must show yourself humble and respectful. You must inform them that you have no other purpose, no other desire, but to do the will of the Senate. You must appear there and speak politely and submissively. All may not yet be lost. You have still the rank of propraetor, and you must confess yourself sensible of the extraordinary honours the Senate has been gracious to confer on one so young. In this way you may yet salvage something.'
'In other words,' Maecenas said, 'you must eat dirt, and say you like it, while throwing up the game which is hardly half-played.'
'Marcellus,' I said, 'you know how I respect your experience and capacity.'
'What Philippus advises is absurd. The Senate would receive you with contempt. Worse, the soldiers who have trusted you would never do so again. Certainly, you would be in no danger. You would be in no danger because you would be of no account. You would have surrendered your position as Caesar's heir and you would take your place in the Senate as Philippus' stepson.'
He had risen as he spoke, and, when he talked of the soldiers, he threw open the flap of the tent. We could see tents stretching into the evening distance, smoke rising from the camp-fires to lose itself in the river mist. We could see the obscure night closing around us.
P. Salvidienus Rufus rose also and placed his hand on Marcellus' shoulder.
'What Marcellus says is absolutely correct. I associate myself with him all the way. You won't be surprised to know that we have discussed the state of affairs. And we are agreed. You hold the line here, and meanwhile send an embassy to Antony - I am ready to go myself as your ambassador. Propose an alliance which he will now be willing to accept on your terms, or as near your terms as dammit. Then the pair of you march on Rome. That's what you must do. You've got yourself mounted on the wrong horse. I've always said so. It's time to change horses.'
'Thank you, my friend,' I said. 'As ever your advice is to the point - and all but cogent. However, let us hear our other friends. Maecenas?' I said, though I could see that Agrippa was fretting to give his opinion.
'What can I say? Marcellus and Rufus have analysed the situation with their customary acuity, and they are adept in Roman politics as I shall never be. I cannot, I regret' - he bowed to Philippus - 'find myself in accord with you, sir. Your counsel is, in my humble opinion, the delicious and tender fruit of your paternal care and affection for Octavius, but, it seems to me, that you are attempting to separate the private person who is your cherished stepson from the political force he has become. And such surgery appears, in my humble opinion, to be impossible. It is what he is - Caesar's heir - which makes him of consequence; and it is the political skill he has displayed in this last year, guided of course by the wisdom of his friends and fructified by his own willingness to hearken to their advice, which have made him . . . formidable. Such qualities, such achievement cannot be resigned; if I know that, half-foreign aesthete that I am, mere dabbler in the murky waters of politics, how much more certainly do our friendly foes! So, I must bow rather to the judicious advice tendered by Marcellus and Rufus. Yet may I suggest - tentatively of course - that their masterly analysis leaves two factors out of account. In the first place, Octavius now has power, but no real authority. He requires that if he is to treat with Antony. Second, there are armies in Narbonnese Gaul and Celtic Gaul and Spain commanded - pray correct me if I am mistaken - by Lepidus, Plancus and Pollio respectively. I don't know how many legions they have of course - I'm sure Agrippa can enlighten us - but I do know the real question: whose side are they on? Don't you think we should discover how they stand? My own uninformed guess is that they will drift, willy-nilly, to Antony. . . and, if they do, he will surely outnumber us. Moreover while we should make conditions, they won't. Can you imagine poor Lepidus making conditions stick? Now if I can guess this - so can Antony. Therefore the fruit that represents the alliance with Antony, which must - I agree of course - eventually come, is not ripe for plucking. We must have more to offer than we do now.'
I nodded gravely. Maecenas had delivered with persuasive perfection the speech we had rehearsed in the small hours of the previous night.
Agrippa stood up. 'Too many bloody words,' he said. 'Too much damned subtlety from the lot of you. Look at the boys out there. I may not know much about fine bloody politics, but I know them. They'll have your guts for garters if you follow Philippus' course. That's sure to begin with. And it'll bloody well serve you right. As for Antony, let's twist his tail a bit tighter first . . .'
* * *
We marched on Rome. I stayed with the army, though I sent Maecenas and Marcellus posting ahead. Naturally I was tempted to go with them, for there was work to be done, there were arms to be twisted and ears to be soothed with honey; but I had listened to the undercurrent of Agrippa's words. I stayed therefore with the legions as we swung down the great road to Rome, through olive groves and vineyards, past grazing cattle and flocks of sheep, by heavy-flanked oxen bearing sweet-smelling hay on lumbering wains. There was a surge and exhilaration to that march. Italy's maidens emerged from doorways to deck us with roses. The elders of each community presented me with an address. It held us up dreadfully, to Agrippa's irritation, but I told him to open his eyes: Italy, I said, was acclaiming us, pledging her loyalty, acknowledging that we alone could restore peace and fruitfulness to the land. The moral effect of the reports of our reception which the Senate will receive compensates for any delay; besides,' I said, 'it boosts the morale of our troops. Soldiers, good ones anyway, like to be loved; it's only the degenerates who are pleased to inspire fear.'
Then I sent Agrippa on ahead. 'There are three legions,' I said, 'two from Africa blocking the Flaminian Way. We do not want a battle. To fight within earshot of the walls of Rome would change everything. I would arrive as a conqueror to a scene of terror.'
Agrippa galloped into the dawn. Two days later a messenger returned. Agrippa would meet me at the cross-roads ten miles north of Tivoli. I was to bring only a handful as escort. Philippus, twittering into my tent with another letter in his hand, picked up Agrippa's. I suppose he turned pale. At any rate when he spoke he twittered worse. I was being tricked, he said; Agrippa had defected; he had been bribed; how could I have thought it safe to trust a man of neither birth nor breeding; I was going to walk into a trap; much more in the same womanish vein. (No, that is unjust, my sons; one should not talk so of women; Livia has never given me weak advice in our many years of marriage.)
I said to Philippus: 'Stepfather, I understand of course that you are af
raid of my mother, and that you have promised her to see that no harm will come to me, and I realize also that as an old Pompeian you are a snob who doesn't understand democratic politics; but have you no nose that functions? Can't you feel the direction of the wind? I don't ask you to share my opinion of Agrippa, which is (by the way) that he is the most trustworthy man I know, but I do ask you to realize that he is a chap of some intelligence, even if his vowel-sounds are long and provincial. So, even if I agreed with you concerning his character, I would still tell you your fears were groundless. I mean, have you ever heard of a rat leaving a ship in full sail? What's that you have in your hand now?'
'This? Oh this is another worry, which may destroy that complacency you now show. Listen to what my correspondent tells me. Cicero has been in touch with Lepidus. He has offered him the dictatorship. What do you say to that?'
'How generous of him to offer what he has no means of delivering.'
* * *
I took Maco and half a dozen men and we rode into the sun. We rode some two hours and saw no soldiers, nothing but quiet villages and farmers working in their fields. Then Maco touched my sleeve: 'There's a glint of metal in that oak grove there. Shall I ride on to check?'
'No,' I said, 'it will be Agrippa.'
'Can't be sure.'
'It will be Agrippa. Have no fear, Maco. I'm not being rash, you know. There's no chance in the business to-day. The dice have fallen. All we have to do is pick up our winnings.'
(How much of this, you ask, was acting? How much conviction? Such a question would have been almost meaningless even then. I had to behave as I did. My men must know that I never questioned my destiny; nor, on this occasion, did I. I don't say that it was always so, for I have known nights of doubt when the blankets seem to shroud me, as I am denied restoring sleep; nights when I felt that the Gods had abandoned me and when I walked in empty wind-swept passages. But on this occasion I had all the certainty of the great artist who finds a long-projected and much brooded-on work slowly assuming the perfect, hardly-understood, shape before his eyes; a moment of magic, as Virgil once described it to me, 'When everything you have ever known or dreamed assumes an unknown and undreamed-of reality and lightness.' So it was with me in those August days.)
Agrippa was drinking wine and eating pecorino cheese and apples in the midst of some dozen men. They had tied their horses under the oak trees, in the shade. 'You see,' I had said to Maco as we drew near, 'no sentries even. That's a measure of our victory, our self-confidence and relaxation.' 'Nevertheless', he said, and proceeded straightaway to do what Agrippa had thought unnecessary. That 'nevertheless' was why Maco was such a fine sergeant-major - he never took things at face value; and why he stayed a sergeant-major - there are times when face value is true value.
'Well?' I said.
'Well. Have you eaten?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'Well, you bloody should. I've told you that often. You'll wear yourself out, shrimp, if you don't eat. You'll get ulcers. Told you that too bloody often, you don't bloody listen, do you? You feed your horse, don't you? Wouldn't let him go without food, eh? Well, then, don't be such a bloody fool. This is good cheese. Here, you!' he called, 'Bring the general bread and cheese and wine. Look sharp about it.'
'All right, all right,' I said, 'you don't need to go on. I've nothing against food, you know.'
'I should hope not. It's only the bloody rich can afford to despise food.'
'Well, I'm rich,' I said. 'Bloody rich, if you like. So what's the news?' Agrippa began to laugh.
'All right,' I said, 'I concede. You've forced me to ask this time.'
I picked up a piece of bread. 'Look,' I said, 'I'm eating. So what's the news?'
'They'll all desert, bar a few of the stuffier officers. But on one condition. You yourself must advance to them, ahead of your army, with no bigger escort than you have here. They want to make it seem spontaneous, not as if they've been coerced.'
He paused, gave me a crooked smile. 'Do you buy that?' he said.
'Why not? It's not that proposal I'm buying, it's your judgement. And I bought that a long time ago, and see no reason to go back on the deal. You obviously think it's fine, or you wouldn't be eating this bread - which is on the stale side by the way, and the wine's sour - sitting here on your backside. You would have been posting back to camp, fairly sharply I should say.'
'Too bloody right I would,' he said. 'It's OK, they're yours. There are no hostile troops between here and Rome.'
* * *
It was very hot the next few days. Agrippa drank great draughts of beer and sweated it out almost as fast as he engulfed them. As for me I contented myself with sucking at lemons and pomegranates and sipping white wine in which a block of snow brought down by mule train from the high Apennines had been allowed to dissolve. We were lucky, they said, to get snow to cool our wine so late in the year.
There was a constant coming and going of secretaries. Letters were flooding in from the municipalities, from the priestly colleges, from individual senators, from the trade guilds and the equestrian corporations. 'If we'd realized you were this loved, my dear, we wouldn't have delayed all these dreary months,' Maecenas said. 'I can't wait to be in the city. To visit the baths and the theatre. I've heard there's a sensational new dancer from Spain, a real yum-yum, only sixteen and not an ounce of puppy fat, hard as a camp-bed (to coin a phrase). Give me another glass of that muck, ducky, I can hardly wait. . .'
'What the hell are we waiting for anyway?' Agrippa said.
'Things must be done properly,' Marcellus said. 'We are not entering the city as conquerors. We must arrange the right sort of reception. It takes time.'
I experienced a curious peace as I listened to them, a peace such as I had indeed not known before. It was as if we had rolled the whole last year of struggle into one ball, which was now hanging on the lip of the hole as in a game of marbles. For the moment there was no need of decision, no further struggle. I have known the same feeling since; it comes when the flood of events has taken direction of one's life out of one's hands. No doubt despair can affect one similarly. I have never known despair.
Now all I said was: 'Besides I must first go to see that all is well with my mother and sister.'
* * *
Octavia was confused.
'You look the same,' she said, 'when I look at you properly, but I would hardly have recognized you. Why haven't you brought Marcellus?'
'Staff duties,' I said.
'Pig.'
'Besides,' I said, 'if you think I've changed, well, it seems to me that marriage has changed you. I don't really feel you are my sister when I see you playing his wife. That's really why I found him staff duties to-day, I'm jealous. How's Mother?'
'Preparing the banquet.'
'You should have stopped her. I can't eat banquet food. You know that. Anyway I haven't time.'
'Just you try stopping her. How's our stepfather?'
'Prosy, apprehensive and a damned bore. This time tomorrow I'll be consul. You know that, don't you? But he's still afraid we'll get our throats cut. It's incredible. Still, he's been very useful, that's got to be said.'
'Him useful? I make a rude gesture to that.'
'It's true, sis. You see he's invaluable in council. Nobody wants to be associated with him, so I've only to invite him to speak first, which I invariably do of course out of my respect for our relationship and his grey hairs . . .'
'And his fat belly.'
'Yes of course, and his fat belly - how could I forget the famous belly - well, I've only to do that to make quite certain that everyone else proposes more or less what 1 want, since
that's bound to be the exact opposite of what old Flutter-fingers has advocated. Oh yes, I'll be able to tell Mamma her man has been invaluable.'
'She won't care, she'll know you're mocking him and pulling her leg, but she won't care. She's really proud, you know. She keeps saying you've proved you're a true Julian.'
I looked out into the summer sky where a hawk hovered, then dropped sheer on its prey.
'No,' I said, 'she's wrong there. I shall never be a real Julian.'
I couldn't avoid the banquet, though I managed to excuse myself from eating the lake fish on the grounds that it would make me bilious in the hot weather. Before I left my mother said to me: 'Remember, Brutus and Cassius live.'
* * *
Cicero met me at the gates of the city. There had come first a crowd of senators few of whom I knew even by sight. Most of them tried to smile; sullenness and fear showed through however. I used Philippus and Marcellus to mingle among them. 'Be affable,' I said. I plucked Salvidienus by the sleeve. 'There are some of your family here, aren't there?' 'My two brothers'; he flushed as if my question indicated distrust of his absolute loyalty. 'Do pray introduce me,' I said. He complied with an ill grace, and his brothers looked sheepish as men do who have backed the defeated side. I urged them to regard me as their friend, but I could see they were enviously counting the years between us.
A hush fell on the assembly, broken only by a high-pitched giggle - Maecenas of course. I looked round for explanation. An ornate purple-canopied litter was emerging from the shadow of a narrow street into the full sun of the piazza. It was carried by half a dozen slaves, mountaineers from Anatolia by the look of them. It halted before the dais on which I was standing. The curtains were withdrawn to reveal Cicero.
I have been much criticized - both at the time and later - for what happened next. I can only say it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. I leapt from the dais and advanced towards the litter. For a moment I thought the old man was going to lie there, even extend his hand to me as if I had been a client or supplicant. I am sure the thought crossed his mind. He must however have calculated that the satisfaction to be obtained from such a gesture would be no more than momentary, for, with a visible effort and an arthritic groan he stuck out his scrawny neck, heaved his legs round, and disembarked from the litter. I resumed my advance and embraced him (he smelled of old yellow papyrus) with the words: 'Ah, the last of all my friends.' I am not ashamed of the words, which were well and deliberately chosen. If he had been more prominent and constant in friendship, this point would never have been reached. All the same, as I spoke, I felt him stiffen. He kissed my cheek, and held me a moment in a grip like a vulture's talons.