"Is the head snugged down for its passage home?" Octavian asked Agrippa when he entered his tent. "Perfectly, Caesar." "Tell Cornelius Callus to take it to Amphipolis and hire a seaworthy ship. I don't want it traveling with the legions." "Yes, Caesar," said Agrippa, turning to leave. "Agrippa?" "Yes, Caesar?" "You did superbly at the head of the Fourth." He smiled, his breathing light and easy, his pose relaxed. "Brave Diomedes to my Ulysses. So may it always be." "So will it always be, Caesar." And today I too won a victory. I faced Antonius down, I beat him. Within a year he'll have no choice but to call me Caesar to the whole Roman world. I will take the West and give Antonius the East wherein to ruin himself. Lepidus can have Africa and the Domus Publica, he's no threat to either of us. Yes, I have a stout little band of adherents Agrippa, Statilius Taurus, Maecenas, Salvidienus, Lucius Cornificius, Titius, Cornelius Gallus, the Coccei, Sosius . . . The nucleus of an expanding new nobility. That was my father's great mistake. He wanted to preserve the old nobility, wanted his faction adorned by all the great old names. He couldn't establish his autocracy within an ostensibly democratic framework. But I won't make that mistake. My health and my tastes don't run to splendor, I can never rival his magnificence as he stalked through the Forum in the garb of the Pontifex Maximus with his valorous crown upon his head and that inimitable aura of invincibility around him. Women looked on him, and swooned. Men looked on him, and their inadequacies gnawed at them, their impotence drove them to hate him. Whereas I will be their paterfamilias their kind, steady, warm and smiling daddy. I will let them think they rule themselves, and monitor their every word and action. Turn the brick of Rome into marble. Fill Rome's temples with great works of art, re-pave her streets, deck her squares, plant trees and build public baths, give the Head Count full bellies and all the entertainment they could wish for. Wage war only when necessary, but garrison the peripheries of our world. Take the gold of Egypt to revitalize Rome's economy. I am so young, I have the time to do it all. But first, find a way to eliminate Marcus Antonius without murdering him, or going to war against him. It can be done: the answer lies in the mists of time, just waiting to manifest itself. When no ship's captain in Amphipolis could be prevailed upon to take a fat fee and put out into winter seas bound for Rome, Cornelius Callus brought the big, swilling jar back to the camp at Philippi to find the army still mopping up. "Then," said Octavian, sighing, "take it all the way across to Dyrrachium and find a ship there. Go now, Gallus. I don't want it traveling with the army. Soldiers are superstitious." Cornelius Gallus and his squadron of German cavalry arrived in Dyrrachium at the end of that momentous year; there he found his ship, its master willing to make the voyage across the Adriatic to Ancona. Brundisium was no longer under blockade, but there were many fleets roaming, their Liberator admirals rudderless as they debated what to do. Mostly, join Sextus Pompey. It was no part of Callus's orders to accompany the jar; he handed it over to the captain and rode back to Octavian. But someone in his party whispered what the cargo was before he left, for it had generated much interest. A whole ship, hired at great expense, just to ferry a big ceramic jar to Italy? It hadn't made any sense until the whisper surfaced. The head of Marcus Junius Brutus, murderer of Divus Julius! Oh, the Lares Permarini protect us from this evil cargo! In the middle of the sea the merchantman encountered a storm worse than any the crew had ever experienced. The head! It was the head! When the stout hull sprang a bad leak, the crew was sure that the head was determined to kill them too. So the oarsmen and sailors wrested the jar from the captain's custody and threw it overboard. The moment it vanished, the storm blew into nothing. And the jar containing the head of Marcus Junius Brutus sank like the heavy stone it was, down, down, down, to lie forever on the muddy bottom of the Adriatic Sea somewhere between Dyrrachium and Ancona.
FINIS
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6. The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra Page 88