Cicero had no doubt that Antony was to blame. In a blistering speech to the Senate the next year, Cicero said of Antony, “The pretty funeral oration was yours, the emotional appeal was yours, the exhortation was yours—you, you, I say, you lit those torches!” By then, the compromise of March 17 had fallen apart and the lines were drawn. Cicero’s words need to be taken with a grain of salt. And yet, Antony was the answer to that old Roman question, cui bono?—Who benefits?
For Antony, the funeral was a precious chance to claim the leadership of Caesar’s party. To do so, he needed to lay it on thick and to curry favor with Caesar’s veterans. He said that he stood by the amnesty but his performance suggested otherwise.
The assassins judged that the Roman people wanted peace and compromise. They were right. What the assassins misjudged was Antony’s ruthlessness and Caesar’s veterans. When the veterans flooded Rome they gave Antony an opportunity—or perhaps they forced his hand.
MARCH 20 AND AFTER: MOURNING AS DIPLOMACY
Eventually the funeral pyre burned out and Caesar’s remains were brought to the family tomb in the Field of Mars. Mourning, however, continued. Foreigners as well as Romans lamented Caesar. Suetonius opens a window into Rome’s ethnic politics with this statement: “At the height of public mourning a multitude of foreign peoples lamented around the pyre, each in its own way, and especially the Jews, who even on successive nights crowded the funeral site.” The outsize Jewish presence among the mourners deserves comment.
A Roman general, victorious in various provinces, would have many foreign clients. Caesar had the greatest number of them all. Besides, he had made a name for himself as one who championed various foreign elites, especially in Italian Gaul but also in the so-called Province (the Provence region of France) and Hispania (Spain) as well as in various other communities around the empire. One of Caesar’s most successful and long-lasting alliances was with various Jewish communities.
His relationship with the Jews was very different from that of Pompey—who conquered Judea, looted the Temple, deported Jewish slaves to Rome, and paved the way for the country to be diminished and divided. Caesar, by contrast, declared Judea an ally and friend of the Roman people, restored its territorial integrity, reduced taxes, and allowed the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He granted privileges to Roman and other diaspora Jewish communities.
Caesar’s friendliness toward the Jews marks a refreshing change from the verbal hostility of many elite Romans such as Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, and Juvenal, not to mention Pompey’s brutality. Yet the relationship between Caesar and the Jews was surely a marriage of convenience. In Egypt in 48 B.C., Jewish troops came to Caesar’s rescue against his Egyptian enemies. Caesar remembered this and perhaps saw Judea as a base against Parthia. In the Land of Israel, chances are that many saw Caesar as an occupier—better than Pompey but still unwelcome. And Caesar favored Antipater, father of King Herod, who was hated both by the rabbis and by many in the Jewish masses.
The Jews who mourned Caesar night after night might have genuinely admired him. Even if they disliked Caesar, perhaps they wanted to be on good terms with Caesar’s friends if they saw them as the likely winners in the power struggle.
AFTER MARCH 20: “ET TU, DECIME?”
Caesar’s funeral was as good a show as Sulla’s and nearly as violent in its aftermath as Clodius’s. The amnesty was still in effect, but the funeral and riot compromised it. Afterward, the consuls ruled that no one but soldiers could bear arms, which defanged Decimus’s gladiators. No wonder the conspirators felt that they had to lie low or even to run for their lives.
Decimus was the most hated man in Rome. Other friends of Caesar betrayed the dictator on the Ides, but only Decimus had dined with Caesar the night before and only Decimus had lured the dictator from his house to his death. Only Decimus protected the assassins with gladiators. To top it off, Caesar mentioned Decimus in his will. For the Roman public, it was all too much. Antony might have evoked nods of approval when, a few months later, he called Decimus a poisoner. No one is recorded saying “Et tu, Decime?” but that sums up how people felt.
A remarkable letter survives from Decimus to Brutus and Cassius. The date is uncertain but if may have been written soon after Caesar’s funeral. In it, Decimus bemoans his position. He says that Caesar’s close colleague Hirtius visited him at home the evening before and made clear that Antony’s state of mind was very bad and very treacherous.
According to Decimus, Hirtius reported that Antony said that he couldn’t give Decimus his province of Italian Gaul. Further, Antony said it was unsafe for any of the assassins to stay in Rome, not with the soldiers and the people aroused as they were.
All lies, said Decimus. He claimed that Hirtius made clear what Antony really thought—that with only “a moderate boost in the dignitas of the assassins,” the assassins would be safe from popular agitators. What did Decimus have in mind by a “moderate boost in dignitas”?
Decimus said that he had lost hope. He asked for a senatorial commission to travel abroad on public business, and Hirtius agreed, but Decimus doubted that Hirtius could actually obtain it. Public opinion had turned on the assassins, and Decimus said he wouldn’t be surprised if he and his friends were declared public enemies. Therefore, his advice was “we must give in to fortune.” Exile was the solution. Sextus Pompey in Hispania or Caecilius Bassus, the rebel governor of Syria, represented their best hope.
The last paragraph of his letter was, it seems, a postscript. In it Decimus announced a new plan. He had taken heart, perhaps based on new information. He now told Hirtius that he wanted to stay in Rome after all and he demanded a public bodyguard. This, it appears, would suffice as the “moderate boost in dignitas” that Decimus referred to earlier.
It might seem strange that Decimus, of all people, the man who betrayed Caesar, would call a person treacherous, as he called Antony. But Decimus was not someone to see himself as others saw him. In several letters written over the next year he complained about those who vilified him and attacked his dignity. They were malicious, he said. He had no doubt but that he represented his country, while his enemies were “a most wicked conspiracy.” Betray Caesar? As far as Decimus was concerned he had done nothing wrong, and that was that.
In the end, Decimus stayed in Rome without a bodyguard until early April, when he finally went to Italian Gaul. There he had two armies under his command as well as his infamous gladiators.
As for Brutus and Cassius, their status in Rome after the Ides was not as bad as Decimus’s, but it wasn’t good. They had drawn their daggers on the Ides of March. Within a week, an influx of Caesar’s veterans into Rome gave Antony swords and shields. Finally, in mid-April, Brutus and Cassius left the city. By then a new factor had emerged on the political scene.
The men who killed Caesar were caught in a contradiction. What they needed to secure their status was a military coup. Instead, they committed murder and made speeches. Revolution, as Mao said, is not a dinner party.
Emerson said that when you strike at a king, you must kill him. The conspirators thought they had done just that by killing Caesar, but they were wrong. The king wasn’t Caesar but Caesarism—the idea that a general and his armies could conquer the Republic. The only way to kill that idea was to defend the Republic by defeating its enemies once and for all. But doing that would take more than speeches. It would take an army and the determination to use it in a war.
The conspirators had lost Caesar’s veterans in Rome. Now they needed to start raising an army, both in Italy and in the east, by attracting as many battle-hardened soldiers as possible. If they already understood that on the Ides of March, they may not have admitted it. To do so meant accepting the paradox that only the legions could save the Republic from being run by the legions.
Part Three
The
ROAD
BACK
11
THE STRUGGLE FOR ITALY
BY THE TIME THE MESSENGER got to
Apollonia (today, Pojani in Albania), he was stressed and gloomy. A freedman, he had left Rome about ten days earlier on the afternoon of the Ides of March. He hurried across the Adriatic Sea even though it was a dangerous time of year for sailing. In his hands he held the fate of a man or maybe a country. Julius Caesar’s niece, Atia, sent him to her son, Octavian, with a letter containing the news of Caesar’s murder. With the future uncertain, Atia recommended that Octavian come home. So did the messenger. He emphasized both the danger to Caesar’s family and the large number of assassins (or so he thought).
It was a shock and a comedown to Octavian. Four months earlier, he arrived in the strategic city of Apollonia. It was a thriving port and the naval link between northern Greece and the harbor of Brundisium (modern Brindisi) in southern Italy, where a highway led to Rome. Apollonia was also the gateway to the Via Egnatia, the great road that ran all the way east to Byzantium (modern Istanbul). No wonder Apollonia was the staging point for much of the army that Caesar gathered for his Parthian campaign. There were six legions, a large number of cavalry and light-armed troops, as well as abundant weapons and military machines. Octavian was there to learn the art of war and to prepare to march east with his uncle the dictator, who had appointed Octavian Master of the Horse. Now, everything had changed.
At eighteen, Octavian was preparing for a career at the top. During his stay in Apollonia he hobnobbed with the army’s officers and drilled with the cavalry. He had an informal council of friends with him, of whom the most important was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. About the same age as Octavian and raised with him in Rome, Agrippa was drawn to a soldier’s life. His advice now was for Octavian to approach the army and convince it to march on Rome and avenge Caesar. Meanwhile, some officers went to Octavian and offered to fight for him in order to avenge Caesar, but Octavian declined. He was too young and inexperienced, the attitude of the Roman people was too uncertain, and the number of enemies too great. About the soldiers, though, he had no doubts. While Caesar had lived they enjoyed his good fortune. Caesar gave them offices and wealth and gifts beyond their wildest dreams. They would avenge him.
There would be time later to circle back to the soldiers. For now, Octavian needed to see for himself the lay of the land in Rome. He also needed to consult the wise men of Caesar’s inner circle and financiers who could bankroll his ambitions. So he took a relatively small entourage and braved the still-wintry Adriatic. Instead of landing at Brundisium they chose a point even farther south where the strait is narrower. After disembarking, Octavian went on foot not to the port city of Brundisium but to Lupiae (modern Lecce), a small, inland town. The cautious young man worried that his enemies held Brundisium and he wasn’t taking any chances.
Messages arrived from Rome with up-to-date news about Caesar’s funeral, the turn against the assassins, and Antony’s success in gathering support from Caesar’s veterans. Most important was the news of Caesar’s last will, naming Octavian his son and heir, and giving him three-fourths of Caesar’s huge estate. Octavian cried but he barely dried his tears before moving on. His mother wrote and warned about his enemies. His stepfather wrote and urged him to give up his inheritance and retire to the safety of private life. Octavian wasn’t having any of that. He knew that Caesar owed everything to taking strategic risks and he planned to do likewise.
He now knew that Brundisium was safe, so he headed there. The troops there welcomed him and hailed him as Caesar. The road to Rome lay open. Rome itself was another matter because it was full of people who would not accept without a fight the man who would be Caesar.
For both the men who killed Caesar and those who wanted to avenge him, it was a time of struggle. For their women, it was a time of rallying support on the home front. For Cicero, the last lion of the Republic, it was a time of heroic resistance from the well of the Senate. And for Octavian and Antony, the two men who wanted to inherit Caesar’s mantle, it was a time of rivalry.
Decimus and Cassius quickly came to the conclusion that the only thing that mattered was the soldiers and the resources to pay them. It took Brutus longer to reach the same end but he got there, too. So much for turning the state back over to the Senate and the people—that was premature while Antony and Octavian had armies at their disposal. To restore the Republic the assassins and their supporters would have to fight. If they won, then, after reestablishing peace, if they moved slowly and wisely and made necessary reforms, they could have the Republic back. For now it was a distant goal.
For three years after the assassination, the Roman commonwealth unraveled and came together again, but in a new and garish pattern. Armies marched, soldiers mutinied, tax collectors squeezed, secret messages flew, aristocratic ladies plotted, assassins’ daggers flashed, orators thundered, the Senate debated and decreed, the people rallied, battle roared, and even the specter of Pompey rose again in the West—all in all, a story that could have filled a third book of Commentaries had Caesar been alive to write it.
The world without Caesar was still a world about Caesar. His wealth, his soldiers, his supporters in the urban plebs, his advisors, his contacts abroad, and even his mistress—all were in contention. Octavian claimed Caesar’s heritage, but the young man’s hold on that would be only as secure as his stomach for a fight and his ability to navigate in a storm.
Rome after Caesar resembled Macedon after Alexander. In each case, the great man’s marshals fought over the empire that he had won. Both were warrior cultures that could not suddenly embrace the arts of peace. In each case, the army missed its fallen chief—while always keeping an eye out for a good deal with a new chief. “Vengeance” and “loyalty” became the watchwords of the day, often with grotesque results. Romans were hunted down and murdered merely for sympathizing with Caesar’s assassins, but that was less gruesome than what had happened in Macedon—the murder of Alexander’s mother, widow, and sons.
Even dead, Caesar set the tone in Rome for the years following the Ides of March. “Where were you on the Ides of March?” became the unspoken question of the day. For Antony and especially for Octavian, loyalty to Caesar—pietas, in Latin—was a key card to play. The assassins, meanwhile, brandished their daggers like primitive victory trophies. Love Caesar or hate him, conquest and power still made Roman hearts beat faster. Even Brutus rendered homage to Caesar by putting an image of himself on his coins while still alive, a practice that Caesar had begun, thereby overturning centuries of Roman tradition that frowned on something so immodest.
THE GATHERING STORM
Antony kept his options open in March and April 44 B.C. He arranged land allotments in Italy for Caesar’s veterans while suppressing a radical movement in Rome. He showed respect to the Senate and Caesar’s assassins, especially Brutus. Antony and Brutus always shared a certain mutual regard. As two members of the old Roman nobility, they were confident they could settle the world’s fate with a handshake. Not Cicero. He had little sympathy for Antony and suspected him as an enemy of the Best Men. A new man who had risen from the Central Italian aristocracy, Cicero felt no class solidarity with Antony. He despised Antony for marrying Fulvia, the widow of Cicero’s archenemy, Clodius. He was convinced that Antony was forging alleged decrees of Caesar—which had the force of law—and making off with Caesar’s fortune. Cicero always believed the assassins made a mistake by letting Antony live on the Ides of March.
Left on his own Antony might have become a prince of the Republic like Pompey or like Caesar without the monarchical airs. A son of the Roman nobility, Antony had residual respect for the system, and he had skills as an orator and as a general to rise to the top of it. But no one was willing to leave him on his own. Brutus and Cassius challenged Antony first from various places in Italy and then from the East. Sextus Pompey represented a growing threat in Hispania and Massilia. Decimus honed his army in the foothills of northern Italy’s Alps. The other provincial governors ran hot and cold on Antony. Beginning in summer of 44 B.C., Cicero rallied opposition to Antony in the Senate.
Last but not least there was Caesar’s heir, young Octavian. He challenged Antony for the leadership of Caesar’s faction. Octavian raised a private army among Caesar’s veterans, siphoned off some of the legions returned from Macedonia, and rallied support among the urban plebs of Rome.
Faced with these challenges, Antony decided to use his position as consul to amass a power base. His opponents did not leave that decision unchallenged. Ultimately, Antony became a revolutionary who wrecked what was left of Rome’s traditional government, although he was forced into it.
During a brief trip to Rome in April, Octavian officially accepted his adoption by Caesar. Afterward, Octavian began to call himself Caesar. Most of the ancient sources refer to him by that name. To avoid confusion, even if not historically accurate, we will continue to call him Octavian, although to his contemporaries, he was Caesar.
One title that Octavian did not inherit was Chief Priest. Before Caesar’s death, the Senate had decreed that Caesar’s son or adopted son would replace him as Chief Priest. But Antony ignored that decree and now arranged for Lepidus to become Chief Priest. Antony did not want the office to go to Octavian and, besides, he saw the value of building bridges with Lepidus, who was about to take office as governor of the important provinces of Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Hispania. For good measure, Antony had his daughter engaged to Lepidus’s son, probably the same son who had been a hostage on the Capitoline on March 17.
Around the same time that Octavian came to Rome, Cleopatra left. She did not depart quickly after the Ides of March. Cleopatra wasn’t just a bereft mistress but a queen, and she needed to ensure the continued friendship for Egypt of Rome’s new rulers—whoever they would be. She might even have been hoping to get official recognition for Caesarion, Caesar’s alleged son. If so, she failed.
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