“Normal business?” Antonius shook his head in disbelief.
“Yes. The normal business of the Senate of Roma, freed from the rule of a tyrant. The Republic has been restored. The people will rejoice. Five hundred years ago, my ancestor Brutus freed Roma from a wicked king. Today we followed his example—”
“Give your speech to somebody else!” shouted Lucius. He shoved Brutus aside and ran toward the exit, weeping.
Antonius caught up with him. “Come with me, Lucius. No matter what Brutus says, we’re not safe. My house has strong doors, high walls…”
They were on the steps, descending to the public square. There was not a person in sight.
“But…his body,” said Lucius. “What if they throw him in the Tiber, as they did the Gracchi?”
“That will not happen,” said Antonius grimly. “I won’t let such a thing happen. Caesar will have a proper funeral. On my honor as a Roman, I promise you that!”
When he was annoyed, Gaius Octavius’s voice could become quite shrill. He needed oratorical training to overcome the defect, thought Lucius. In the days since Caesar’s assassination and Gaius Octavius’s return to Roma, Lucius had grown very tired of hearing that shrill note in his cousin’s voice.
“From this day forward, Antonius, you will address me as Caesar,” said Octavius, sounding even more shrill and annoyed than usual. “I don’t ask it of you. I demand it!”
“Demand it? You make a demand of me?” Antonius leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He wrinkled his nose. “In the first place, young man, this is my house; here, I give the orders. I used to take orders from Caesar, because he was my commander, but Caesar is dead. He was the last man I’ll ever take orders from. I certainly won’t take orders from his niece’s brat—and I won’t call you by his name! As long as we’re discussing titles, perhaps you should address me as Consul, as I’m the only one of the three of us here in this room who actually holds a magistracy.”
“Only because Caesar saw fit to appoint you—as he saw fit to name me his son and heir!” snapped Octavius.
Antonius bristled. “This is my house, Octavius. You are my guest—”
Lucius rose to his feet. “Marcus! Cousin Gaius! Does this meeting have to be so contentious? The whole city is a viper’s nest. If I want to be subjected to vicious arguments and hateful words, I have only to step outside the door. Can the three of us not speak to one another with some degree of decorum?”
“A good idea, cousin,” said Octavius. “Decorum begins with addressing a man by his rightful name. Caesar’s will made me his son by adoption, and I have taken his name. I am now Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.”
“I understand,” said Lucius. “But if Antonius happens to address you by your old name, why not allow it? Octavius an honorable name, a patrician name, and he honors you and your ancestors when he speaks it. Antonius is our friend, cousin. We need him. He is the shield between us and the men who murdered our uncle. Are we not allies? Do we not share a common purpose? Are the three of us not close enough to call each other by first name, or family name, or whatever name we wish? Can you not simply drop the point for now, cousin Gaius? The question at hand isn’t what we call each other, or yet another discussion of Caesar’s will, but how to keep our heads!”
For the moment, Octavius was silenced, and so was Antonius. It still surprised Lucius that he could command their attention and argue with such self-confidence. Almost overnight, after the initial shock of Caesar’s assassination had passed, Lucius had felt himself transformed. He was no longer a callow youth who hesitated to assert himself in conversation with his elders. He was one of Caesar’s heirs, engaged in a desperate struggle for the future.
When it came down to it, Octavius was only a couple of years older and only slightly more experienced than himself. True, Octavius had seen a bit of battle, but not enough to prove himself a gifted strategist, much less a hero. His overbearing pride sprang from vanity, not accomplishments. In some ways, at least in Lucius’s opinion, his cousin was quite deficient. To begin with, Octavius’s oratorical skills were not at all impressive, no matter what Caesar had thought.
Antonius was a far more polished and persuasive speaker, as he had shown when he delivered Caesar’s funeral oration before a huge crowd. The speech had been intensely dramatic yet remarkably subtle. Antonius never said a word against the killers, but by praising Caesar he moved his listeners to tears of grief and cries of outrage. Without directly saying so, he made the case that Roma had been defiled by the murder of a great leader, not liberated by the assassination of a tyrant. Antonius had also revealed one of the terms of Caesar’s will: From his vast personal fortune, Caesar had decreed a generous disbursement of seventy-five Attic drachmas to every citizen living in Roma. This had done much to sway the crowd against Caesar’s assassins.
But Antonius, too, had his faults, as Lucius had become all too aware in recent days. For one thing, he drank too much. In happier times, the man’s appetite for debauchery had impressed and even awed Lucius. Now it struck him as foolhardy; the jeopardy in which they found themselves demanded clear thinking. Antonius also had a streak of pettiness. His refusal to address Octavius as Caesar was perhaps understandable, because it raised a sore point: Octavius was the chief benefactor of Caesar’s will, while Antonius, to everyone’s surprise, had been left out of the will entirely. Nonetheless, Antonius’s repeated and deliberate baiting of Octavius served no one’s purpose.
The will was the crux of the matter. In it, Caesar posthumously adopted Octavius as his son, and bequeathed to him half his estate. The other half he divided equally between his nephew Quintus Pedius, who was still away from the city, and his great-nephew, Lucius Pinarius. So much for the special debt that Caesar had owed to Lucius on account of his grandfather’s sacrifice; Octavius had merited adoption, but not Lucius! Lucius had his own reasons to be resentful of Octavius, but he was determined to move past them.
The will had made no mention of Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son. Immediately after the assassination, the Egyptian queen vacated Caesar’s villa and sailed back to Alexandria.
Politically, it was left to Caesar’s long-time subordinates, Antonius and Lepidus, to uphold his edicts and maintain the order he had imposed on the state, but without the benefit of his dictatorial powers. The cooperation of Caesar’s heirs was vital to their cause. Each of the three cousins had inherited an enormous fortune, and each could exert a tremendous sentimental appeal to those who had supported Caesar and now mourned him. In return, the heirs needed the protection and experienced advice that Lepidus and, especially, Antonius could provide. Driven by necessity, this alliance had been uneasy from the start, rife with mutual suspicions and resentments, especially between Octavius and Antonius.
In the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, Roma had become a cauldron of intrigue. The conspirators against Caesar numbered at least sixty men; some had taken part in the actual killing while others had only lent support. Should those men be declared criminals and brought to trial, or applauded as saviors of the Republic? Three days after the Ides of Martius, the Senate voted an amnesty for the assassins, drafted in careful language that neither acknowledged their guilt nor praised their patriotism.
Despite the Senate’s amnesty, fierce partisans on both sides had resorted to violence. An innocent tribune named Cinna, unlucky enough to be mistaken for one of the conspirators, had literally been torn apart by an angry mob; pieces of his body were scattered across the Forum. After gangs threatened to burn down the houses of Cassius and Brutus, both men left Roma to prematurely claim the provincial governorships that Caesar had scheduled for them.
This raised a further question: Were Caesar’s appointments still valid? Brutus and Cassius argued that Caesar was a tyrant and usurper. If that were so, how could any of his decrees be legally valid, including their own provincial appointments?
The legitimacy of every act by every magistrate was now routinely called into question by parti
sans of one side or the other. Who possessed legal authority, and by what right? Those who had hoped that Caesar’s death would result in a quick and harmonious restoration of senatorial power were bitterly disappointed. Roma was poised on a sword’s edge, ready to fall into chaos. After so many years of death and destruction, the outbreak of another civil war was an almost unbearable prospect, yet increasingly it seemed inevitable.
The future was fraught with uncertainty. The future was what Lucius and his cousin had come to the house of Antonius to discuss. Yet the discussion seemed to circle back endlessly to recriminations about things already past.
It was Octavius who broke the strained silence. “The conspirators should have been dealt with at once, immediately following the murder. You, Antonius, as consul, had the power to arrest them. You could have invoked the Ultimate Decree—”
“There were no senators left in the chamber to vote on such a proposal!”
“Even so, if, instead of fleeing to your house, you had taken immediate action against the men who killed my father—”
“If you think it would have been as easy as that, young man, then you’re even more naive than I thought, and you are certainly not Caesar’s son!”
“Enough!” said Lucius. “You both need to stop this squabbling and return to the matter at hand. Namely, the need to deal with Cassius and Brutus. It may or may not be possible to convince the Senate to declare that Caesar’s murder was a criminal act. Most of the senators seem inclined to mimic Cicero. They’ll avoid taking sides as long as possible, until they see how things fall out. For now, the Senate’s amnesty protects the assassins.
“However, it seems to me that the premature seizures by Cassius and Brutus of their provinces were unquestionably illegal. Those actions could be construed as hostile acts against the state, and thus lay them open to military action by you, Antonius, acting as consul.”
“If any military action is taken, Caesar must take part as well,” said Octavius, adopting his great-uncle’s habit of referring to himself in the third person—to Antonius’s disgust, as evidenced by the gritting of his teeth. “It’s Caesar’s fortune that can raise the troops. It’s Caesar’s name to which his veterans will swear loyalty. And if I am to command troops in the field, I must be given full consular authority.”
“Impossible!” said Antonius. “You’re far too young.”
“By what reckoning? My great-uncle appointed men to magistracies who were under the required age. Thus there is legal precedent—”
“An important point, cousin,” said Lucius. “We must be seen to follow the law. Any military action must be perceived as just and necessary. There must be no grounds for anyone to assert that we have initiated”—he hesitated even to say the words—“that we have initiated a civil war for personal gain or private revenge. We must win the support of the Senate, the legions, and the people. But how? It’s the sort of challenge at which Uncle Gaius excelled so brilliantly.”
Lucius took a deep breath. He looked from one man to the other. He had no illusions that he could assume Caesar’s mantle of leadership, but increasingly it seemed to him that neither Antonius nor Octavius was fit to do so either, no matter that one had been Caesar’s right-hand man and the other was his adopted son. They were barely able to keep peace between themselves.
As if to prove him right, both men began to speak at the same time. Neither would yield. Instead they raised their voices. Lucius clapped his hands over his ears.
“Marcus! Cousin Gaius! Be quiet and listen to what I have to say. You’re both ambitious men. You both have a craving to rule the state. Good for you! The gods admire ambition, especially in a Roman. But my ambition—my only ambition—is to avenge Caesar’s death. All the assassins must be declared outlaws. They must be hunted down. They must be killed. Brutus and Cassius are our foremost concern. I’m eager to take up arms against them. Put a sword in my hand, and I’ll readily serve under either of you—you, Gaius, or you, Marcus, I don’t care which! But I don’t believe either of you can see the task to completion without the other. I beg of you, stop this bickering and bend your wills to the common purpose!”
He stared at Antonius, who finally shrugged and nodded.
He stared at Octavius. His cousin raised an eyebrow. “You’re right, of course. Thank you, cousin Lucius. Such a clear-sighted sense of purpose is just what we need to keep us on course. Well, Antonius? Shall we get back to business?”
The discussion that followed was fruitful. Lucius was glad to have spoken out. But as he looked from Octavius to Antonius, he knew his words had not been entirely truthful. He had said he didn’t care which man he served under, but in his heart, there was no question which of them he preferred: the hot-blooded, plain-spoken, pleasure-loving, sometimes crude Antonius. Partly this was because of the affection the man had shown him. Partly it was because his cousin Gaius was so vain and cold-blooded. Antonius he could serve with enthusiasm. Octavius he would serve if he must.
Lucius prayed to the gods he would never be forced to choose between them.
1 B.C.
Lucius Pinarius dreamed an old, recurring dream. It was a nightmare he had first experienced on the Ides of Martius long ago, when he was young.
In the dream he was both participant and observer, aware he was dreaming and yet unable to stop the dream. Caesar had died. A great multitude had gathered to hear the reading of his will. A Vestal virgin produced a scroll. Marcus Antonius unrolled the document and proceeded to read. Though Lucius stood at the front of the crowd, he could not hear the names being read. He heard only the roar of the crowd in his ears, like the crashing of waves. He wanted to tell the others to be quiet, but he could not open his mouth to speak. He could not move at all. Antonius continued to read, but Lucius could not hear, speak, or move.
With a start and a shiver, he woke from the dream. He was trembling and covered with sweat. The dream was like an old enemy, still hounding him after all these years, taunting him with memories of his youth and of the bright promises that had been shattered by Caesar’s death. But the dream had been visiting him for so many years it had almost become an old friend. Where else but in the dream could he see again the face of Antonius, alive and in his prime?
Lucius wiped the sleep from his eyes. Slowly, he came to his senses. The dream faded.
Against all odds, Lucius Pinarius had become an old man. He was sixty.
So many men of his generation had died in the civil wars that followed Caesar’s death. If they survived the wars, accident or illness had eventually taken them off to Hades. But Lucius was still alive.
He rose from his bed, relieved himself in the chamber pot, and slipped into a tunic. Later he would put on his senatorial toga, for this was an important day, but for now a tunic would do.
The cook prepared for him a simple breakfast of farina cooked with a little milk and water and sweetened with a dab of honey. Lucius still had strong teeth, but his digestion was not what it used to be. Nowadays, the blander the food, the better. Chewing a mouthful of mush, he thought back to the days of endless feasting in Alexandria. Wines from Greece, dates from Parthia, crocodile eggs from the Nile; serving girls from Nubia, dancers from Ethiopia, courtesans from Antioch! Whatever else people said about Antonius and Cleopatra, no one could deny that those two had known how to mount a banquet—especially in their final months and days, as the end drew near for them.
It was the dream’s fault, that he should be thinking of Antonius. Remembering made Lucius sad. The mush turned bitter in his mouth.
But today was not about the past. Today was about the future. His grandson was coming.
Even as he thought about the boy, the door slave announced that young Lucius Pinarius had just arrived and was waiting in the vestibule.
“Already?” said Lucius. “He’s early. Ah, well, he can spend a few minutes contemplating the effigies of his ancestors while I force a bit more of this mush down my gullet. Meanwhile, order the bearers to bring a litter around
to the front door.”
“Which litter, master?”
“Oh, the fancy one, I should think, with the yellow curtains and embroidered pillows and all those brass baubles hanging off it. Today is a special day!”
“Once upon a time—before this blasted stiffness in my knees—I’d have walked to the Baths of Agrippa, no matter that they’re all the way out on the Field of Mars. But here we are, two Roman males, taking a litter through the streets. I blush to think of what our ancestors would have thought of such an indulgence!” Lucius smiled at his grandson, who sat beside him and seemed to be enjoying the ride. The boy leaned forward and turned his head this way and that, peering at the passing sights with the insatiable curiosity of a ten-year-old. Ideally, Lucius would have waited until his grandson’s toga day for this occasion, but that was years away. Lucius might not live to see it. Better to tend to his duty now, while he still had his wits and a pulse.
“Why do they call this the Field of Mars, Grandfather?”
“Let me think. Very, very long ago, I believe it must have been called the Field of Mavors, because that was the ancient name for Mars. I suppose someone built an altar to the god, so naturally they named the whole area for Mars—”
“Yes, but why is it called a field? There’s no field here. All I can see are streets and buildings.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, it’s all built up now. But it wasn’t always so. I can remember a time when the Field of Mars, or at least a large portion of it, was still open to the sky, a place for soldiers to drill and for large groups to assemble. Now the city’s spread outward to fill up every patch of land between the ancient walls and the Tiber. I see we’re passing by Pompeius’s theater now. I was about your age when that opened.”
Lucius’s eyes followed the steps leading to the main portico. He never passed the theater without remembering what he had witnessed there, but he was not in a mood to speak of it and was grateful that the boy did not question him about it. “Up ahead is the Pantheon, of course, which was built by the emperor’s right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa. And near the Pantheon are the baths, which Agrippa built at the same time. When the baths opened, twenty years ago, it was quite an event, because there had never been anything like them in Roma before. Once the baths were open, all sorts of shops and arcades were built in the vicinity.”
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