‘Nothing?’ Octavian asked them. ‘You are almost the last of those brave men, those Liberatores who murdered the Father of Rome. You have nothing to say to me?’
Galba looked at Ligarius and shrugged, spitting out a final curse before kneeling straight and waiting for the knife. Octavian gestured in sharp anger and the knife was dragged across two more throats, making the air heavy with the smell of blood and death.
Octavian took a deep breath, weary but satisfied. He knew he would sleep well and be up before the dawn. There was just Brutus left. There was just one more day.
The sky was clear as the sun rose and Brutus was still awake after a night that had seemed to last for ever. He watched the spreading colours of dawn in peace and when he stood at last, he felt somehow refreshed, as if the long hours had been years and he had slept after all. With care, he removed his armoured breastplate, untying the thongs and letting it fall away so the cold could reach his skin. He shivered, taking pleasure in the small sensations of being alive on that morning. Every breath was sweeter than the last.
When he could see the faces of his men, he knew what they would say before they said it. The legates came to him as soon as it was light enough and they would not meet his eyes, though he smiled at them and told them they had done all they could and that they had not failed him.
‘There is nowhere left to go,’ one of them murmured. ‘The men would like to surrender, before they come for us.’
Brutus nodded. He found he was breathing harder as he drew his sword. They stared at him as he checked the blade for imperfections and when he looked up, he laughed to see their sorrow.
‘I have lived a long time,’ he said. ‘And I have friends I want to see again. This is just another step, for me.’
He placed the tip of the blade against his chest, holding the hilt tight in both hands. He took one last breath and then threw himself forward, so that the blade punched between his ribs and into the heart. The men with him flinched as the metal stood out from his back and life went out of him like a sigh.
The soldiers of Mark Antony began to march up the hill towards them and the legates readied themselves to offer formal surrender. Two of their number went out to those climbing and word spread quickly that they would not resist, that Brutus was already dead by his own hand.
While the sun still rose, Mark Antony came striding through the scrub bushes with a century of men. The legates laid down their swords and knelt, but he looked past them to where Brutus lay dead. He approached the body, then undid the clasp that held his cloak, draping the cloth over the still form.
‘Carry him gently, gentlemen,’ he said to the kneeling legates. ‘He was a son of Rome, for all his faults.’
They bore the body down the hill to where Octavian waited. The news that they would not have to fight had spread to his men like fire on a dry hill and the mood was sombre as they watched the red-draped figure brought back to the plain of Philippi.
Octavian walked to the legates as they laid the body down. They had taken the sword out of the still flesh and Octavian looked at a face that was strong, even in death.
‘You were his friend,’ Octavian murmured. ‘He loved you more than all the rest.’
When he looked up, his eyes were red with weeping. Agrippa and Maecenas had come to stand by him.
‘There’s an end to it,’ Agrippa said, almost in wonder.
‘It’s not an ending,’ Octavian said, wiping his eyes. ‘It is a beginning.’ Before his friends could reply, he gestured to one of Mark Antony’s men. ‘Remove the head for me,’ he said, his voice hardening as he spoke. ‘Put it with the heads of Cassius and the other Liberatores who fell here. I will have them sent to Rome to be thrown at the feet of the statue of Julius Caesar. I want the people to know I kept my promises.’
He watched as the legates hacked Brutus’ head from his body and bound it in a cloth bag to be taken home. Octavian had hoped for joy when the last of them fell – and it was there, a brightness in him that swelled as he breathed in the warm air.
Mark Antony felt old and tired as he watched the hacking blades fall. There would be triumphal processions to come and he knew he should feel satisfaction. Yet he had seen the bodies of the last Liberatores, left to rot in a room in Philippi. The odour of death was in his hair and clothes and he could not escape it. The crows were gathering already, he saw, settling on the faces of men who had walked and laughed only days before.
He was unable to explain the sadness that gripped him. He looked into the rising sun and thought of the east and the Egyptian queen who was raising the son of Caesar. Mark Antony wondered if the boy would look like his old friend or show some sign of the greatness he had inherited with his blood. He nodded to himself. Perhaps in the spring he would leave Lepidus to handle his affairs in Rome for a time. When Rome was settled, he would visit Cleopatra and see the Nile and the son who would one day own the world. It was a fine promise to make to himself and he felt his weariness lift at the prospect. Philippi would be a place of the dead for years, but Mark Antony was alive and he knew good red wine and redder meat would help him recover his strength. He was the last general of his generation, he realised. He had surely earned the peace to come.
EPILOGUE
Mark Antony checked himself one last time as he stood waiting on the docks at Tarsus. There was a breeze coming off the water and he was cool, his uniform polished. He could almost laugh at his nervous sense of anticipation as he looked down the river with a hundred officials from the Roman town. None of them had predicted that the Egyptian queen would come herself, but her barge had been sighted off the coast of Damascus days before.
Mark Antony leaned forward yet again, staring down the river at the huge barge coming slowly up to the port. He saw the description had been no exaggeration. The oars shone blindingly in the sun, each blade covered in polished silver. Purple sails fluttered above the craft, catching the breeze and easing the strain on the slaves working below. Mark Antony grinned. Or perhaps it was just for the effect, the glorious splash of colour that already made the Roman port look drab in comparison.
He watched in pleasure at the spectacle as the enormous vessel came up to the piers and the crew snapped orders in a tongue he did not know, easing their charge in as the oars were shipped and ropes flung to waiting dockmen to tie them off fore and aft. Mark Antony could see a figure on the deck, reclining under an awning amidst a sea of coloured cushions. His breath caught as she rose like a dancer to her feet, her gaze passing lightly over the men waiting and then settling on him. It was surely no accident that she was wearing the formal dress of Aphrodite, with her shoulders bare. The pale pink cloth looked well against her tanned skin and Mark Antony recalled the woman’s Greek ancestry, visible in the curling black hair bound in tiny golden seashells. For a moment, he envied Julius.
Mark Antony told himself not to forget that she was the joint ruler of Egypt with her son. It had been Cleopatra who led the negotiations with her estranged court when Caesar had come to her lands. It was because of her that Cyprus was Egyptian once more and no longer an island of Rome. Her barge would have passed it on the journey around the coast and he wondered if she had thought of Julius then, or pointed out her possession to his son.
A wooden ramp was laid to the docks and, to Mark Antony’s surprise, a troupe of beautiful women came up from the hold, singing as they went. A dozen black soldiers took their position as an honour guard on the docks, perhaps aware of how splendid they looked with their dark skin set against armour of polished bronze.
Through them all, the queen of Egypt walked, guiding a young boy with her hand resting on his shoulder. Mark Antony stared, entranced as they came towards him. The women walked with her, so that she moved in song.
He cleared his throat, deliberately bluff and composed. He was a triumvir of Rome! He told himself to get a grip on his awe as she came to stand before him, looking up into his face.
‘I have heard about you, Mark Antony,’ she sa
id, smiling. ‘I have been told you are a good man.’
Mark Antony found himself flushing and he nodded, collecting wits which seemed to have deserted him.
‘You are … welcome in Tarsus, your majesty. It is a pleasure I did not expect.’
She did not seem to blink as she listened, though her smile widened. By the gods, she was still beautiful, Mark Antony thought to himself. His eyes drank her in and he did not want to look away.
‘Let me introduce my son, Ptolemy Caesar.’
The boy stepped forward with her hand still on his shoulder. He was dark-haired and serious, a boy of only six years. He glowered at Mark Antony, looking up at the man with no sign of being impressed.
‘We call him Caesarion – little Caesar,’ Cleopatra said. He could hear the affection in her voice. ‘I believe you knew his father.’
‘Yes, I knew him,’ Mark Antony replied, searching the boy’s features in fascination. ‘He was the greatest man I have ever known.’
Cleopatra cocked her head slightly as she listened to him, all her attention focused on the big Roman welcoming her to his lands. She smiled a little wider at that, seeing honesty in his response.
‘I know Caesarion would like to hear about his father, Mark Antony, if you are willing to talk about him.’
She held out her hand and he took it formally, leading her away from the docks and breaking the trance that had settled on him since she set foot on land.
‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘It is a fine tale.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
No other writer can equal Mark Antony’s funeral oration as written by William Shakespeare, though the playwright didn’t use the detail of a wax effigy, a matter of historical record. It is true that the rioting crowds burned the senate house down for the second time, along with an impromptu cremation of Caesar’s body. Nicolaus of Damascus gave the number of assassins as eighty, whereas the first-century historian Suetonius mentions sixty. Plutarch mentions twenty-three wounds, which suggests a core group, with many more who did not actually strike. Of those core conspirators, the names of nineteen are known: Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Brutus, Publius Casca (who actually struck the first blow), Gaius Casca, Tillius Cimber, Gaius Trebonius (who distracted Mark Antony during the assassination), Lucius Minucius Basilus, Rubrius Ruga, Marcus Favonius, Marcus Spurius, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Servius Sulpicius Galba, Quintus Ligarius, Lucius Pella, Sextius Naso, Pontius Aquila, Turullius, Hortensius, Bucolianus.
For those who are interested in details, Publius Casca had his estate and possessions sold in a proscription auction, which included a table bought by a wealthy Roman and then transported to a provincial town in the south: Pompeii. Preserved in the ash of the Vesuvius eruption, the lionhead legs of that table can be viewed there today, still marked with his name.
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 Brut
us 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 Emperor Series: Books 1-5 Page 213