Emperor: The Blood of Gods (Special Edition) (Emperor Series, Book 5)

by Conn Iggulden

  Though I have made him a little older to fit the chronology of previous books, Octavian was around nineteen when Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. He was in Greece/Albania when the news came and he returned to Brundisium by ship. On his return to Rome and learning of his adoption by Caesar, he changed his name to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, though he dropped the final part shortly afterwards and never used it.

  Caesar’s will had been written at an earlier stage of his life, though it is not known exactly when. It is true that he gave 300 sesterces to each citizen – a total somewhere in the region of 150 million silver coins in all, as well as a huge garden estate on the banks of the Tiber. Even then, Octavian received around three-quarters of the total after bequests and legacies. Although it was lodged at the temple of Vesta, as I have it, it was in fact read publicly by Caesar’s last father-in-law: Lucius Calpurnius.

  The most important part of the will was that it named Octavian as Caesar’s son, so catapulting him instantly to a status and influence mere wealth could never have brought. With the adoption came the ‘clientela’ – tens of thousands of citizens, soldiers and noble families sworn to Caesar. There is no modern equivalent of this bond, which is closer to a feudal retainer or family tie than a business relationship. It can be fairly said that without that bequest, it is unlikely Octavian would have survived his baptism of fire in Roman politics.

  Mark Antony had a number of children before Cleopatra, most of whom are lost to history. With Fulvia, he had two sons: Marcus Antonius Antyllus and Jullus Antonius. I changed the name of the second son to Paulus as Jullus was just too similar to Julius. Anytllus was a nickname. In later years, he was sent to Octavian with a vast sum offering peace, but Octavian kept the gold and sent him back to his father.

  In a similar way to Jullus Antonius, I changed the name of Decimus Brutus to Decimus Junius, as I didn’t want another Brutus to cause confusion. That assassin of Caesar was in fact a distant relative of Marcus Brutus. It is true that he was given an area of northern Italy as a reward for his part in the assassination. It is also true that Mark Antony decided to take it from him with the Brundisium legions, and that Octavian was given the task of stopping him. What an irony it must have been for Octavian to be ordered north by his enemies to stop the one man who had supported Caesar!

  Note on cowardice. It has become the fashion in recent years to consider Octavian as some sort of weakling. He was neither weak nor a coward. There are well-attested historical accounts of him walking into a hostile camp unarmed to address a mutinous legion – with the body of the last man to try it still on the ground before him. It is true that he was prone to a peculiar collapse at moments of stress. Some modern writers have suggested asthma or dropsy, though the Roman historian Suetonius described him as deeply asleep and senseless, which does not fit those ailments at all. Given that epilepsy ran in his family, the likelihood is that he suffered ‘grand mal’ fits, which left him helpless whenever they struck. His enemies certainly crowed about his absences, but he showed courage in every other aspect of his life. After a wasted day where he was absent and sick, he went on to lead from the front at the battle of Philippi. On other occasions, he stood his ground in riots, with missiles flying all around him. He once went first across over an unsteady gangway and was badly injured when it collapsed. In short, claims of his cowardice sit on weak foundations.

  The death of consuls Hirtius and Pansa in the same campaign against Mark Antony was incredibly fortunate for Octavian. I have simplified the events, which actually took place in two major battles a week apart. Pansa fell in the first and Hirtius in the second, leaving Octavian in sole command. There is no evidence that Octavian colluded with Mark Antony, though I suggest that does not mean there was no collusion. It is one of those historical moments when the extraordinary outcome should be considered a little too fortunate, without someone having jogged fate’s elbow. Octavian was not present at the first battle and fought personally at the second, securing a Roman eagle on his own as he withdrew.

  Having accepted Senate authority and the position of propraetor – equivalent to a governorship of a province – Octavian found himself in sole command of eight legions. There are one or two interesting rumours that spread after the battle. Pansa survived his wounds for a time before dying, which led to gossip that his own doctor had poisoned him on Octavian’s orders. It was even said that Octavian had struck Hirtius down himself, though this is almost certainly untrue.

  While in exile in Athens, Brutus was a regular patron of debates and philosophical discussions, like many other Romans in Greece before him. The small training scene is fictional, though he was fit at the time of Philippi and must have trained regularly. The detail of the second man moving faster is a little-known truth from studies of gunfighters in the American west that I could not resist including. The man who draws first sparks an unconscious response from a trained opponent, who tends to draw more smoothly and with greater speed. It is counter-intuitive, but as Japanese kendo fighters will affirm, the instinctive reaction after thousands of hours of training is often faster than a blow resulting from a controlled decision.

  On coins: Both Brutus and Cassius had coins minted after the assassination of Caesar. The most famous is the one with the head of Brutus on one side and the words ‘Eid Mar’ on the reverse, with two daggers around the skullcap of a newly freed man. Others linked Brutus with the words ‘liberty’ and ‘victory’ – an early example of propaganda in an age before mass communication.

  Note on fleet construction: Agrippa’s secret fleet was based near modern-day Naples at the lake of Avernus. The lake has the benefit of being only a mile from the sea and at roughly the same level. Roman surveyors will have confirmed this for him, but it was still a relatively minor project compared to, say, bringing an aqueduct for a hundred miles, or laying road for thousands. Bearing in mind that 25,000 men working with spades on the Panama canal could shift a million cubic yards a day, the Avernus canal could have been dug in just three or four days with a thousand men. Add in complications such as canal gates to hold back the lake, and a figure of start-to-finish in a month is reasonable.

  Agrippa’s catapult grapnel, named the harpax or ‘robber’, is part of the historical record, though not well known. The description of bronze bearings comes from a similar project at a lake by Genzano, near Rome, where Roman ships were rescued from the bottom in the nineteen thirties. In Genzano, the Romans built a tunnel from the lake to the sea. I didn’t know the ancient Romans had ball bearings before that trip and it is well worth a visit.

  With those sorts of innovations, and despite being badly outnumbered, Agrippa was able to destroy the Roman fleet under Sextus Pompey. It is one of those key moments in history where a single man influenced the entire future of a nation and yet it is almost unknown today.

  It is occasionally necessary, for reasons of plot, to alter the main line of history. I have followed the true history for most of this book, but the events concerning Sextus Pompey took place after Philippi and not before as I have them here. Octavian agreed to meet him at sea for a failed peace accord, where Sextus’ admiral Menas offered to cut the ship adrift and effectively hand Rome to Sextus. Sextus had given his oath of truce. He was furious with Menas, not for offering, but for not just doing it and thereby allowing Sextus to preserve his oath.

  The second wife of Brutus was an interesting character. Her actual name was Porcia Catonis, which I changed to Portia because it didn’t sound like the slender beauty she actually was. According to the histories, she came upon her husband when he was considering the assassination of Julius Caesar. Porcia was very young and famously beautiful. He said he couldn’t trust a woman with such a secret, so to prove her loyalty, she wounded her thigh with a knife, then bore the pain and fever for a full day before showing him what she had done. He trusted her after that, though when he went to Athens, he left her in Rome, rather than bring her with him, as I have it here. Instead of showing a relationship through le
tters, I preferred to put her in the scenes in Greece. Though the exact manner is disputed, she committed suicide after the death of Brutus at Philippi.

  On poets: It is an odd coincidence that the two best-known poets of the Roman world, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) and Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), should have known each other. History sometimes throws up clusters of great names in the same generation, just as Michelangelo and Da Vinci knew and loathed each other in a later century.

  Octavian’s noble friend Maecenas was in the habit of collecting poets among his wide group of friends. He knew Virgil well when they were in their twenties. Horace actually met Brutus first when he was in Athens and was present at the battle of Philippi, though Horace was forced to flee in the general chaos.

  Philippi was indeed created by King Philip of Macedon as a walled city to stand against marauding Thracian tribes. It is in ruins today and was rebuilt at least twice even in the time of Augustus. At the time of the battles there, it was a walled stronghold built on a wide hill and overlooking a marsh that Cassius did think was impassable, especially once his men had built wooden palisades along the base.

  When Octavian collapsed, he remained lucid enough to give orders that he be carried to Philippi on a litter. He was in the twin camp when the unplanned attack started. Brutus’ legions rushed forward without warning after days of being stung by skirmishes and raids against their lines. I have compressed the timeline here, as the battles took place after many days where little happened.

  While Mark Antony led his legions in an attack across marshes, taking Cassius’ camp, Brutus’ legions captured his own camp – but Octavian had vanished. We cannot be certain where he went, but he is said to have hidden in a marsh and there was only one around Philippi. Agrippa and Maecenas were almost certainly with him.

  The first day of battle was utterly chaotic, with vast numbers of men passing each other in poor light and not knowing whether they were surrounded by friends or enemies. It is true that Cassius thought he was taken and asked his servant Pindarus to kill him. By the time Titinius returned with news that the approaching horsemen were on their side, Cassius was dead and Brutus was in sole command of the legions against Mark Antony and Caesar.

  Octavian had recovered enough to take part on 23 October 42 BC, when Brutus led out his forces alone for the second battle of Philippi. The Caesarian forces fought bravely, perhaps with the motivation to repay their rout in the first clash. Octavian and Mark Antony worked well together. They broke Brutus’ legions and Mark Antony led the pursuit as Brutus retreated into the wooded hills above Philippi with four battered legions.

  It was Mark Antony who surrounded that exhausted force. Word came to Brutus that his men were considering surrender and the following morning he said goodbye to his companions and threw himself on a sword.

  Mark Antony treated the body with respect, laying his own cloak over it. When Octavian came to see, he had the head removed and sent to Rome to be thrown at the feet of Caesar’s statue.

  It is true that Octavian executed many of the captured men after Philippi, including almost all of the Liberatores still alive. He had his revenge in the end, surviving illness and disasters, setbacks and betrayals to find himself consul and triumvir, in command of Rome.

  Mark Antony travelled to the east to oversee and restore Roman rule to states driven to near bankruptcy by Cassius as he prepared for war. It was Antony who installed King Herod as ruler of Judaea, a man best known for the slaughter of innocents as he tried to defeat a prophecy foretelling the birth of Christ.

  Famously, Mark Antony met Cleopatra when she came to him at Tarsus in her royal barge, rowed by silver oars and with purple sails. She was in her early thirties and still renowned for her beauty and intelligence. It is said that she dressed as Aphrodite to meet the Roman. The relationship that followed would be the great love of his life. When years of argument and strain between Antony and Octavian finally led to conflict in 31 BC, Mark Antony lost the sea battle of Actium and another at Alexandria. He and Cleopatra both committed suicide when it was clear they had lost. The son she had with Julius Caesar, Ptolemy Caesarion, was killed in Alexandria on the orders of Octavian. He was just seventeen years old.

  Octavian ruled for decades as Augustus Caesar, a title meaning ‘noble’ or ‘illustrious’. He was first in Rome for a golden age of expansion, until his death in AD 14. Yet in his long life, he never called himself emperor. Historians refer to him as the first emperor, but that title would not be used until his successor, Tiberius. Octavian’s long rule was exactly what was needed for Rome to consolidate after decades of internal wars. It can honestly be said that his legacy was the Roman empire, his period of stable rule saving Rome from destruction and chaos. It is because of Augustus as well as Julius that Rome survived longer than any other empire in history and the name of Caesar came to mean king.

  As a writer of historical fiction, I like to travel to the lands in question wherever possible, but I also need the best histories for the details. As well as older sources such as Plutarch and Cassius Dio, I am indebted to Anthony Everitt, for his wonderful book Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor. I recommend it to anyone interested in the period. Thanks are also due to Shelagh Broughton, who moved heaven and earth to research the list of Caesar’s assassins for me.

  It would be possible to write another two or three books on the reign of Augustus Caesar and the men who followed him as emperors. There are many stories left to tell. Yet I always intended this book to be about the immediate aftermath of the assassination and the fates of those men who stabbed Julius Caesar on the steps of Pompey’s theatre, on the Ides of March 44 BC. Not a single one of them died a natural death.

  Conn Iggulden

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted once again to the talented group who read, re-read, argued furiously about and edited this book with me. In particular: Katie Espiner, Tim Waller, Tracy Devine and Victoria Hobbs – I thank you all.

  Continue the adventure

  Read on for an exclusive short story by

  Conn Iggulden …

  FIG TREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Augustus Caesar sat in the shade, a precious commodity during a summer on Capri. He was leaning back and comfortable, propped up on fine cushions with his legs stretched out in front of him. For a time, he closed his eyes and just let the heat seep into him, easing old aches.

  The grand palace he had built on the hill’s peak had no water of its own, so that it had to be brought up by cart and donkey to fill the cool rock cisterns. The sun beat down on his legs, though his upper body was shielded from it by the patterned shadows of the old fig tree. He looked up at the thought, pleased at how the living thing had thrived in such rocky soil. Like the palace itself, the tree had fought for its place and even borne fruit, surviving only because of will. The green figs were ripening and would soon be sweet, one of the few things Octavian still enjoyed. Rocks and dust and sun had not prevented him building on the highest point of the island, with a view unmatched anywhere in Roman lands. The sea was very blue, sparkling a mile or more below his feet.

  When his wife came out to check on him, the old man was briefly surprised at the changes the years had made in her – and in him. Such moments could strike him without warning, betraying his belief that he was essentially unchanged. He would see Livia’s white hair, or catch a glimpse of himself in a polished bronze mirror and be astonished. He was seventy-seven years old; Livia seventy-one. They had been married for almost half a century, but the mind was a strange thing. As often as the sight of age depressed him, he could be reminded in an instant of Livia when she was young and beautiful. In the shade of the tree, as she raised a hand to her eyes to look up at him, she could have been the same woman he’d married fifty years before.

  ‘What makes you smile so?’ she said, her expression mild.

  ‘I was remembering how you looked when I saw you first,’ he replied. ‘I tell you I never loved till that
moment.’

  Livia snorted softly, though her gaze was affectionate.

  ‘So you have said before. I blush to think of it, still. To approach a married woman in such a way, with such demands and offers! You were shameless then.’

  ‘I still am,’ he said, delighted with the memory. He had been so very young, so very certain of himself. Yet he had been right and Livia was still the great love of his life. ‘Well, a few years have passed since then, Livia. Have I not proven my devotion to you? Or will you tire of me now and take other lovers?’

  She laughed at the idea, reaching back to curl a wisp of perfectly white hair over her ear. She had dyed it dark for years, but let it grow out as she turned seventy. Her old beauty had gone, as such things will, but he saw her youth still in her eyes.

  ‘Perhaps I will, at that,’ she said. ‘There is a young guard here who watches me with great interest.’ She came over to where he sat, easing herself down with a care that belied her words so that she could lean over him and become part of the shadows casting shade on her husband. He looked up at her and reached out to touch her face. Both of them felt his hand shake as he brushed her cheek.

  ‘Will you come down with me, to the ship?’ he asked. He saw her bite her lip in an expression he knew as well as his own. ‘What? What is it?’