Augustus

by Allan Massie

  * * *

  The next day I was elected consul. I chose as my colleague an obscure cousin, Quintus Pedius, recommended by my mother as a man who would hinder me in nothing. (Unfortunately she exaggerated his amiability; he was a damned nuisance.) I paused in the act of taking the auspices for the first time, and directed my gaze to the heavens. Naturally the crowd did the same, and there was a moment of awed silence before they broke out in loud huzzas at the sight of a dozen vultures winging in the direction of the Janiculum. Of course I had known what to expect; Marcellus had reminded us that a similar flight had greeted Romulus when he first performed that ceremony, and Maecenas had undertaken to obtain the birds through his theatrical connections ('I don't suppose buzzards would do? So much cheaper'). But I was impressed by his staff-work which had seen to it that a sufficient number of the crowd were aware of the precedent. Such manipulation of the emotions of the public may seem cynical to you, and I can indeed hardly deny the imputation. Nevertheless there are times when such manipulation is necessary. It was poetically right that vultures should make an appearance to link me to Romulus, first Father of Our Country, but the workings of nature are inclined to be capricious. Besides, vultures are much rarer in Italy now than they were in his day - 'I daresay they were common as crows then', as Maecenas said; it is permissible to give fate a nudge from time to time. I must tell you however that the occasional fabrication of omens in no way invalidates those that appear spontaneously. I was not of course impressed by the birds, but the crowd were. That was the great thing: they accepted the flight as confirmation of my authority. There was only one uncomfortable moment. A pair of the birds suddenly lost height; for a ghastly moment it looked as if they were about to plummet into the Tiber. I held my breath, wondering if we had been too clever by half. However - and here is substantial evidence of how hard it is to disentangle the human from the divine - they recovered more abruptly than they had fallen, and were soon lost in the pine trees of Janiculum. The crowd had been silenced by the fall and Maecenas seized the chance to improve the situation: 'See how the Gods favour the consul,' he cried, 'if he stumbles Jupiter himself lifts him to safe triumph.' The crowd broke out in renewed cheers. Later he said to me: 'Bloody birds, I could have died, my dear. I'll have that bird-seller flayed. He swore to me he had given them all a good trial flight in the Campagna.' 'Oh,' I said, 'let him alone. Your intervention improved things, don't you think?'

  The next day I had the court clear my adoption as Julius' heir. Henceforth I was Caesar: Gaius Julius Octavianus Caesar. This done, I paid my troops, which had taken the first steps to restore order and the rule of law in the Republic, their promised bounties, from the public treasury. I ordered the law which had granted an amnesty to Caesar's killers to be rescinded on the high moral grounds that the murder of the head of the Republic, perpetual dictator and pontifex maximus, could never be legally condoned. I set up a special court to outlaw the murderers who had styled themselves Liberators.

  Two days later Cicero left Rome. He wrote to me asking permission. His health was poor, he explained; he required sea air. He thanked me - for what I was never certain. He asked forgiveness for the Past and indulgence for the Future. I replied that I had nothing to forgive, and that I would ever value his counsel as I had always valued it, that he stood where he had always stood in my esteem and gratitude, and that I hoped the sea air would correct his disorders. I never saw him again. He was the saddest of men, one who had seen greatness beckon and failed to grasp the God's proffered hand. He failed because he disdained the true source and nature of power, and thought cleverness a substitute for vision; in the end he had no faith in his own destiny.

  THREE

  Agrippa never knew a day's illness (till he died). In contrast, as he told it, I spent my youth sneezing and expectorating, coughing, wheezing like a pair of holed bellows, shivering with ague sweating with fever, stricken by migraine, oppressed by bile, frequently unable to sit a horse or carry on a conversation that wasn't interrupted by nose-blowing, nose-bleeds or nausea. He exaggerated; he wasn't far wrong. I spent my first three weeks as consul and Caesar with a tortured throat, a runny nose, spots before the eyes and a high temperature. I was working eighteen hours a day. It is hard to concentrate when your shoulders are heavy with lassitude and your whole body trembles. But it was work I could not leave to my secretaries.

  We advanced by slow stages north. Most of the march I had to be carried in a litter, and that experience taught me something about my relationship with the legions that I have never forgotten. Had I been Julius, or even Antony, they would have chanted ribald songs about my condition and mode of transport. As it was, they marched past the litter in respectful silence. I knew they trusted me, admired me even, were amused by what they regarded as my cunning - 'He's a smart bugger, our general,' they would say - but they did not love me. There was hardly a man except those I kept round my person at Headquarters who would die for me. The magnetism of my personality does not operate at any distance, as Julius' did. I mention this because success in great endeavours depends so much on a just appreciation of one's assets and defects. Neither of you, my dear boys, suffers in this way. But you have other peculiar problems and weaknesses; are you aware of them? 'Know thyself is the wisest of philosophical advice.

  Yet - there is always a 'yet', a 'nevertheless' - such self-knowledge can be inhibitory. The man who has never examined his own mind and spirit acts with a spontaneity denied me.

  (On the other hand Maecenas used to say that I was able to deceive others because I had first deceived myself. I don't think he was right. I record his view merely as evidence of that diversity of interpretation that makes judgement of our fellows so difficult.)

  We halted in a plain on the south bank of the Po. The men, grumbling, pitched camp in the discomfort of a thin rain driving down from the mountains. With night the wind dropped and the river mist seeped through the camp. I sat wrapped in furs and sipped hot wine, aromatic with nutmeg, and still shivered. A slave read Homer to me till I sent him away. All round me the cold bustle of the camp made my tent's silence more acute.

  I called Maco to me. 'Are there lights across the river?'

  'Too foggy to see, sir.'

  'What's the men's mood?'

  'Not good, sir. Puzzled like and apprehensive. They're afraid, that's what, sir, afraid of a battle, afraid of it all starting over again.'

  'There will be no battle by my will.'

  'Ah, sir, will . . . many a battle starts by accident . . . you should go to bed, sir, you really should ..." 'I can't sleep . . .'

  Waiting is always the worst. It was cockcrow when a cry came that a punt was edging across the river, and by then there were few voices in the camp, only the occasional challenge of a sentry or the cry of a man whose sleep was disturbed by fear. There came the swish of boots in the wet grass, the tent flap was thrown back and Agrippa and Marcellus came in.

  'Lord,' said Agrippa, 'I'm tired, and I'll have a head tomorrow. It's all right though. The meeting's on. We held out for the island as the venue. The only point we gave way: he insists on Lepidus being there, wouldn't take no.'

  'I see. He can control Lepidus, and the pair of them will always outvote me. Nevertheless, we accept. When is it fixed for?'

  The day after tomorrow. Well, that's tomorrow by this time. At breakfast. That was a facer for Antony, breakfast, but he rallied.'

  'As for Lepidus,' Marcellus said, 'your interpretation's obviously right. But there's one other factor, Antony doesn't fancy being alone with you. You ought to think of that, brother-in-law.'

  'Thanks,' I said, 'I already had. You have done well, both of you. Now we can sleep.'

  * * *

  I almost called the meeting off. I had after all been denied sleep and my fever was worse. The doctor gave me a draught of some herbal concoction, which brought on immediate nausea, but then to my surprise calmed my pulse and dulled my headache. I still felt weak as a sick kitten, as my old nurse used to desc
ribe it. 'A half-drowned weak rat' she would also call me.

  At first light Maco presented himself at my tent to find me still in my dressing-gown. He urged me to eat some bread, but one of the slaves brought me a sort of gruel, thin corn porridge mixed with honey, and I found that sufficiently reviving to dress.

  The punt was poled out by a couple of Gallic mountaineers who didn't seem to mind being half-naked in the raw morning. In midstream it was still thick mist and the bow had almost touched the bank of the island before I was aware of land. Maco and the half-dozen guards we had agreed should make up the escort disembarked first. I followed with Agrippa, Maecenas, Marcellus and Rufus; we had left Philippus behind. My stepfather had served his purpose. There was no place for him in a conference of the leaders of Caesar's party.

  Antony had not yet arrived - 'such a surprise' sighed Maecenas - but Lepidus was already waiting in the tent that would serve as reception centre and ante-chamber to the smaller one where we three principals would bargain. I had never met Lepidus before, as it happens, but I recognized him easily. He was quite remarkably handsome, with smooth utterly regular features and dark hair hardly touched with grey, that curled on his temples as if arranged for a sculptor to copy. He greeted us with ceremonious affability.

  'So this,' he said to Marcellus whom he knew well, 'is the wondrous boy who has surprised us all.'

  His voice was light, trilling and ingratiating; I disliked it intensely, and not merely for its note of patronage. I recalled that Cicero had described him to me as the most sordid and base of fellows: 'He takes hold of your elbow and mutters dishonourable filth in your ear.' I could well believe it and was glad to observe that the blandness he strove to display incompletely marked a lack of true ease. He couldn't stop talking and his hands fluttered from man to man, a press here, a squeeze there, a light deprecating touch on the next shoulder.

  'We can't expect our great Antony on time, that's for sure,' he said. 'I wonder whom he tumbled last night... not Fulvia, that's for sure . . . though he's scared stiff of her, I have that on the very best authority . . . and how did you leave Rome, my dear Caesar ... do you know it's over two years since I saw the city ... I pine for it, that's for sure . . . but I'll tell you something, old boy,' he leaned over me, disgorging an unattractive scent of musk, 'not half as much as Markie Brutus must. You see, old boy, I know I'll feast on the Palatine again. He must be beginning to fear he never will, and serve him right, the poor sod.'

  Yes, you see, my sons, he was a horrible man, and I am ashamed to have been associated with him for so many years.

  I was on edge myself, wondering, as I had during the night, how Antony would greet me. Would he be embarrassed (as I was) by certain memories of Spain and by the insults we had traded for the last year? He had of course shown no sign of embarrassment in Rome? still it was different now. Would he resume the elder-brother tone he had first adopted when I joined Caesar's staff? Would he aim at being cold and statesmanlike?

  He arrived in a swirl of purple and no apologies for his lateness. He embraced Lepidus and turned to me: 'You look ill,' he said, 'and not the pretty boy I knew in Spain. Well, we've put the last year's nonsense behind us and we'll soon put the roses back in your cheeks. You've done remarkably ... I hadn't thought you had it in you.'

  He was intending to throw me off balance. I smiled and acceded to his proposal that we should cut the preliminaries short and get down to business. There was, as I said, a small tent set aside for the three of us. We would converse first in private and then summon slaves to whom we would dictate a statement. Though an agenda had been prepared by our aides, both Antony and I had been firm that the negotiations should be restricted to the three principals, and be kept as informal as possible. My ready agreement to this had surprised him.

  So many versions of our island discussions have been given that the whole negotiation has been enveloped in a cloud of exaggeration, misrepresentation, party animus, private revenge and the sheer human tendency to prefer the more lurid of any two stories offered. I have never till now put on record what was said, and I never discussed the course of the conference with anyone but Livia, years later. Of course my friends and I analysed the decisions, particularly after the first day's talk, lest I should be committing myself to anything which might turn to my disadvantage. But that is all. Lepidus of course chattered. Antony later gave his version, or rather (for I wish to be fair) the intolerable Fulvia published an account which she claimed to be Antony's. In these versions I stand out as the one who was coldest and most implacable, most bent on revenge. This is patently absurd. I had no private revenge to seek. The law which I had had passed in Rome satisfied my legitimate desire that my father's murderers be punished. Otherwise no private impetus drove me. My political career had been too short to let me accumulate a host of scores to settle. Let me make that quite clear. In our decisions on that river island I was impersonal, driven only by that pure motive which I have called 'reason of state'.

  By common consent Antony acted as chairman. (I am not afraid to confess that; it would have been presumptuous in me to have assumed the role.) He had a natural authority; for all his many faults of character I can no more deny that, than I can remember him without affection, despite his treachery, selfishness and untrustworthiness. And, when he bent his mind to business, he revealed a brilliant lucidity and mastery of the structure of politics and strategy of war. I would never wish to take that away from his memory.

  He began by summing up the situation - a sparkling tour d'horizon. He showed a generous appreciation of my own achievements. 'You made things tough for me, kid,' he said, 'and there were several moments when I thought your own rope-dance would end in disaster for you. But you brought it off - there's nothing after all that succeeds like success. So here you is - no longer Kid but Caesar, even if to me' - he got up and walked round the table and squeezed my shoulder - 'you'll always be, in some part, just Kid. Still, it's quite something -no longer Kid but Caesar. Do you remember when they called out to Him, that he was planning to make himself King, and he snapped back, "My name ain't King, it's Caesar"?'

  I thought to myself: before I have finished Caesar will be more than a name. An odd discordant thought: perhaps it will be more than King?

  'Anyway,' he said, 'to sum up: the West is ours. I don't say there's no disaffection left, especially in Italy, but it's at a level that we can control. The high-minded skunks are on the run. They're our next problem . . .'

  'Pompey?' I suggested.

  'Pompey can wait. It's what Pompeys are good at doing, the indecisive so-and-sos. Our job is to clean up Marcus Brutus.'

  'My information is,' Lepidus stuck in, 'that Brutus and Cassius have raised more than forty legions and plan to land at Brindisi in the spring.'

  'They won't,' Antony said.

  'If they ally themselves to Pompey, they would have a fleet.'

  'They won't move that fast. They're a committee.'

  'They moved quite quickly on the Ides of March,' I said.

  'Murder's a short sprint,' Antony said. 'You need staying power for war.'

  He leaned back; his face had become deeply lined in the last year, and that made it look stronger. He had lost the playboy look. The big mouth turned down at the corners now, and his eyes were a little bloodshot. He had been through it; I felt a shaft of affection. His deep voice warmed the room.

  'You've just come from the city, kid,' he said, giving a mighty and possibly calculated stretch and yawn. 'What's the state of the Treasury?'

  'I paid my troops out of it,' I said, and looked him in the eye. 'As consul,' I said; his eye did not drop, but wavered towards Lepidus.

  'Perfectly correct,' that worthy yelped. He had been left out and was fidgeting to intervene. 'Perfectly correct... I wonder if you would sanction a payment to . . .'

  Antony interrupted: 'Nobody, kid, questions your correctness. I wasn't either trying to needle you. Look, by my calculations - supplied in part, I don't mind telling you, by
my agents in your camps - don't look like a grey gander, Lepidus, if you don't have any agents in my camp, you bloody well should have - Caesar here has squads of 'em, don't you, kid? - so, as I was saying before being interrupted by our chum here having the dry heaves - talking of which, it's a hell of a long time between drinks, as one proconsul said to the other - Lepidus, before I resume, would you mind tinkling that dong so that we can get ourselves a snifter? Ah boy, a flask of white for the generals.'

  He paused. Lepidus puffed and blew and wheezed and drummed his fingers, till the boy returned with the wine.

  'Just pour it out, will you, and then be off with you, and don't try listening. It's deep politics we're talking, way beyond you, child. Right, where was we? Yup. I reckon we have forty-three legions between us. I suppose yours like mine are a bit under-strength, so let's say a total force of about 200,000 men. Well, those boys may love us, but they'll want pay too. So again I ask, how's the Treasury, kid?'

  'It won't support that force for more than a few months. What's more,' I said, 'we'll get no tax revenues from Asia while our enemies hold Greece and the seas . . .'

  'That Egyptian bint of Himself s ain't going to disgorge either. I'd a note from her the other day, saying, much as she would like to fulfil her obligations, blah-bloody-blah, she couldn't entrust tax money to the sea while Pompey held it. A bloody good excuse of course. Did you ever meet her, kid?'