Ten Caesars

by Barry Strauss

  Antony, meanwhile, restored Roman control to the East, which Brutus and Cassius had left in turmoil. But Antony is known for something different during his time in the East: his relationship with Cleopatra, an affair not only of the heart but also of the sword and the purse.

  Cleopatra was the most powerful, richest, and most glamorous woman of the era. Queen of Egypt, she was a female ruler in a male world. Like all of her ancestors in the three-century-old Ptolemaic dynasty, she was Greek (or, more precisely, Macedonian), even though she ruled Egypt. She was clever, cunning, educated, and seductive. Cleopatra had great physical presence. She was short and vigorous. She could ride a horse and hunt. She paid enormous attention to her public image. Greco-Roman portrait sculptures made her elegant, while coin portraits showed her as kingly and even slightly masculine.

  Cleopatra exuded charisma, and Egypt’s capital, Alexandria, was an architectural marvel and a cultural magnet. Whichever man had Cleopatra had access to Egypt’s fabled wealth and to the mystique she created in the bedroom. Octavian had Caesar’s name, but Antony had Caesar’s mistress. In 41 BC Antony and Cleopatra began an affair that produced a set of twins. Nevertheless, with Fulvia having died of a sudden illness, Antony took a new wife: Octavian’s sister, Octavia. She was newly widowed herself and understood the way the game was played; the purpose of such a marriage was politics, not love. Yet Octavia seems to have enjoyed Antony’s charm. They had two daughters together whom she raised in their house in Athens along with three children from his and her previous marriages. No one seems to have wondered about Antony’s ties to Cleopatra.

  OCTAVIAN MAKES LOVE AND WAR

  In his midtwenties, Octavian faced his greatest crises to date. He fought his most dangerous military campaign by far, and he met the love of his life—a woman who changed him for the better.

  Octavian had not yet consolidated power in the West. He had to defeat Sextus Pompey, the last surviving son of Caesar’s rival Pompey the Great. Sextus Pompey controlled the seas around Italy with a fleet based in Sicily. Sextus was a cunning and alluring figure who championed the republic and offered asylum to the victims of proscription. Although he blocked grain ships and left Italy hungry, he was popular in a Rome grown weary of purges and property confiscation. Octavian and Antony were forced to make peace with Pompey and recognize his realm. Octavian also acknowledged Sextus’s power by marrying Sextus’s aunt (by marriage), Scribonia. She was strong and severe—and about ten years older than Octavian.

  Then, in 39 BC, Octavian met Livia. The moment could not have been more fraught. At twenty-four, he had just shaved his mourning beard for Caesar after having worn it for five years. Livia Drusilla, to use her full name, was nineteen, noble, bright, and beautiful. Octavian was handsome and rich. True, three years earlier, Octavian had sent Livia running from Italy, just one step ahead of his troops, after she’d supported his enemies Fulvia and Lucius in the war at Perusia. But eventually it was safe for her to come home. Like Octavian, Livia was married. In fact, she was pregnant—and so was Scribonia. Falling in love broke every rule, and that made it irresistible.

  For Livia at age nineteen, winning Octavian’s heart was as much a coup as winning Caesar’s approval had been for Octavian at seventeen. As later events would show, she was Octavian’s soulmate, matching him in intelligence and ambition. But Octavian was a politician, and so there was more to the story than the marriage of true minds. Livia offered him a great increase in respectability because she came from the bluest of noble blood. Her forebears occupied a higher rank in the Roman elite than did Scribonia’s. Livia’s ancestors held Rome’s highest offices and were variously prominent as statesmen, generals, orators, and reformers. Scribonia’s were less important. Meanwhile, Scribonia annoyed Octavian by complaining about his adultery. She was also outliving her political usefulness, since relations with Sextus Pompey showed signs of souring.

  On January 14, 38 BC, Scribonia gave birth to a daughter, Julia. Octavian divorced Scribonia the same day. Around that time, Livia’s husband also divorced her. On January 17 Octavian and Livia were married.

  Livia was six months’ pregnant at the time of the marriage. Three months later, already living in Octavian’s house, she gave birth to a son, Drusus, who joined an older brother, the three-year-old Tiberius. People gossiped and said, “The lucky have children in three months,” which gained the status of a proverb. It turned out to be especially cruel because Livia would bear only one stillborn child for Octavian. Yet they would remain married for fifty-two years, even though he wanted a dynasty that she could not give him.

  Octavian might have divorced Livia, but doing so was dangerous, for she might remarry and create a rival power center. He could have killed her, but that would have sullied his reputation. Maybe Octavian stayed married to Livia because he loved and admired her. Perhaps she proved from the start to be a source of wise advice as well as support. In later years, she was one of the shrewdest politicians in Rome. “He loved and esteemed her to the end without a rival,” the historian Suetonius wrote.

  The peace agreements with Sextus Pompey did not last. Octavian considered his wily and aggressive opponent too dangerous for peaceful coexistence, so he went back to war. Octavian strained the Italian economy and courted unpopularity in order to build a massive new fleet. He went into battle, and, more than once, he was lucky to escape with his life. But his old comrade Agrippa came to Octavian’s rescue as his admiral. Agrippa was a shrewd strategist, brave in battle, and, above all, a superb organizer. With Agrippa in charge, Octavian’s fleet was finally able to beat Sextus decisively at sea in 36 BC. Sextus escaped but was soon captured and killed.

  SHOWDOWN WITH ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

  Antony, meanwhile, planned an invasion of Parthia, Rome’s rival empire in what is today Iran and Iraq. He wanted men and money from Octavian, but Octavian still had his hands full with Sextus. So, in 37 BC, Antony turned to Cleopatra, who became his supplier and once again his lover—she soon bore him a third child. For one stunning moment, the Roman Empire appeared to be a fool for love, governed at opposite ends of the Mediterranean by two pairs of lovers: Antony and Cleopatra, and Octavian and Livia. And in a perverse twist typical of the hothouse world of the Roman elite, Antony was still married to Octavian’s sister, Octavia.

  In an even more perverse twist, each couple represented a competing claim to Julius Caesar’s legacy. Octavian was Caesar’s legally adopted son by Roman law. He had Caesar’s name, and he lived in Rome. Antony was Julius Caesar’s closest surviving lieutenant. He had Caesar’s former mistress, Cleopatra, and lived in a city that Caesar had conquered, Alexandria. And Cleopatra was the mother not only of Antony’s children but also of a son who was probably Caesar’s love child and now Egypt’s king, Ptolemy XV, nicknamed Caesarion. Rome and Alexandria, Caesar and Caesarion: which one would win?

  War, not love, answered the question. The situation grew ever tenser between 36 and 32 BC. First, Antony’s invasion of Parthian territory ended in military disaster. A second campaign did secure him Armenia, but that was a consolation prize. Meanwhile, Octavian was in firm control of Italy and the Roman West. Antony distributed some of Rome’s territories in the East to Cleopatra and their children. He also recognized Caesarion as Julius Caesar’s son, which was a slap in the face to Octavian. In 32 BC Antony made a decisive break with Octavian by divorcing his sister. It is unclear if he formally married Cleopatra.

  But Octavian held the upper hand when it came to propaganda, especially after he seized Antony’s will from the Vestal Virgins in Rome. The will stated Antony’s desire to be buried in Alexandria alongside Cleopatra. Octavian accused his rival of treason, arguing that Antony intended to move the seat of Rome’s empire there.

  Was that really possible? The East had more money, people, and cities than the West, and beyond it beckoned the lands that Alexander the Great had once ruled, stretching all the way to India. Before Julius Caesar’s death, there were rumors that he had planned to move
the capital from Rome to Troy (in today’s Turkey).

  Many eminent senators, however, were unconvinced. For all his flaws, Antony was one of them—a member of the Roman nobility—while Octavian was not. Many senators fled to Antony, but the rest declared war. But it was war on Cleopatra, not Antony. Octavian shrewdly recast the fight as a foreign war and not a civil conflict. “Poor Antony,” he said in effect. “An alien queen had unmanned him.”

  So war it was, with Greece the focus of action. Although Antony had huge resources and great military experience, Octavian was hardened by the struggle against Sextus and buoyed by Livia’s support. Octavian’s navy, commanded by the faithful and talented Agrippa, slowly cut off the enemy’s supplies. Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet was under great pressure when it finally faced Octavian’s navy off the Actium Peninsula in western Greece. The day of decision was September 2, 31 BC. Actium was a historical turning point. On a likely reconstruction of the battle, Antony and Cleopatra gambled on a master stroke but failed. They then fled the scene, leaving most of their fleet to fend for itself.

  Octavian (or, actually, Agrippa), had an enormous victory, which he followed up the next year by invading Egypt, where armed resistance crumbled. Antony and Cleopatra each committed suicide in Alexandria in 30 BC.

  The torch was out. The world was duller but calmer. Octavian’s patron, Apollo, the god of reason, had defeated Antony’s patron, Hercules, the symbol of might. Octavian now stood alone, the master of the Roman Empire. And it would be Roman indeed. Actium kept the center of gravity of the empire in Rome, where it would remain for another three centuries.

  Cleopatra was a strategic genius, but she had moved the world through love. She had seduced in succession two of the most powerful men in Rome and had borne their children. She almost brought down the Roman Empire. But she had met her match in Octavian.

  Octavian entered Alexandria. He was the new ruler, but he behaved more like a political boss than a conqueror, preferring to make deals with the locals than to crush them.

  The victor rode into town in a carriage not with a fierce legionary but with his tutor, a native of Alexandria. Octavian entered the most beautiful public building in the city, the Gymnasium, the very symbol of Greek culture. There he got up on a dais and addressed the people—not in Latin but in Greek. He said that he would spare them for three reasons: the memory of Alexander the Great, the size and beauty of the city, and as a favor to his teacher. The combination of royalty, culture, and cronyism was classic Octavian. Leniency toward a city of perhaps a half million people was incidental! Indeed, Octavian spared the city but not its king. He had Caesarion executed. As Octavian’s tutor explained, “Too many Caesars is not a good thing.”

  Octavian got off a good line himself. After seeing the mummified body of Alexander the Great, he turned down the eager locals who wanted to show him the mummies of the Ptolemies. “I wished to see a king, not corpses,” Octavian said. This was vintage Octavian, too: cutting irony and a sense of his own majesty.

  Egypt was now a Roman province, and Octavian was its pharaoh. The prestige of the city of both Alexander and Caesar, as well as of Cleopatra, now belonged to him. By force of arms and by the power of persuasion, Octavian showed himself to be Caesar’s son.

  Yet another execution awaited. On Octavian’s order, one Cassius of Parma, a poet and the last survivor among Julius Caesar’s assassins, was executed in Athens. Caesar’s adopted son finally had the last full measure of revenge. But the entire Roman world had paid for it.

  MY NAME IS AUGUSTUS

  Having defeated Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian faced another great challenge: stabilizing Rome’s political system after a century of war and revolution. And he had to do so in a way that would leave him in charge without exposing himself to the daggers that had brought down Caesar. He began with a name, or, rather, a title.

  Augustus was unique and invented for the occasion, although it did recall certain Roman traditions. On January 16, 27 BC, the Roman Senate voted that from now on Octavian would be called Augustus or, more formally, Caesar Augustus.

  Three days earlier, on January 13, Augustus had announced that he was stepping down from power, but everyone knew that it was a mere show. He was only thirty-five and had many more years of rule in him. But the careful stage-managing hints at how Augustus, as we will now call him, broke the cycle of war and violence.

  Soon Augustus would be everywhere. You couldn’t cross the street, go to a dinner party, enter a temple, or handle a coin without hearing his name or seeing his face, or that of his beautiful wife or his adorable children. He had been a man; now Augustus was a brand.

  Augustus used his image to promote stability. Coins issued in 27 and 26 BC, for instance, bear a familiar image of his face but with the new names Augustus as well as Caesar. They highlight images of peace and plenty such as laurel wreaths, stalks of grain, and cornucopias. They evoke the gods Apollo and Jupiter. They praise Augustus for saving citizens’ lives.

  Like Augustus, the women of his family were ubiquitous. Their images appeared on statues, sculpted reliefs, gems, and, less commonly, on coins. Buildings were dedicated to them. Prayers and sacrifices honored them. Their birthdays were celebrated.

  Augustus believed that Rome had to settle down, not just politically but also personally. The personal decadence of the elite bothered him. (As a former bad boy himself, he knew whereof he spoke.) He also fretted over Rome’s declining birth rate and the toll that years of civil war had taken on the size of the population.

  So Augustus sponsored a program of moral reform. He passed an ambitious series of laws that promoted childbearing and punished the childless and unmarried by limiting their ability to inherit. Romans paid a penalty, in effect, for celibacy. They also paid a price for adultery, as Augustus turned sex with a married woman (other than a man’s wife), widow, or unmarried woman into a public crime. Previously these matters were handled within the family. Note that it was not a crime for a husband to have an extramarital affair with a slave, a freedwoman (an ex-slave), or a prostitute. Augustus was serious, and he gave the laws teeth, but that also raised opposition because Rome’s upper classes enjoyed their fun. Eventually these restrictions came back to hurt Augustus hard.

  THE AUGUSTAN PEACE

  Roman civil wars had a well-established pattern: first came the bloodshed, then came the settlement. But it was easier to win the war than to forge the peace, since few generals were as good at making peace as at waging war. Augustus was the exception. The cold-blooded killer grew with the job. He ended a century of civil war and laid the foundations of two hundred years of peace and prosperity—the famous Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. Trade flourished in the Augustan peace. The cheapest way to transport goods was at sea. Thanks to Agrippa’s victories, Rome ruled the waves, and piracy virtually disappeared. Rome represented a huge market for grain imports, but many other goods were traded as well. Stability and the security of Roman law encouraged money lending, while a military drawdown took pressure off taxes. In short, conditions were ripe for good times.

  Augustus also achieved the ambitious agenda that he had set himself at age nineteen. He had all of the power and glory of Julius Caesar. But it took fifteen years to get it, and it cost a heavy price in blood and treasure. At least Augustus learned something in the process: how to build a lasting and stable peace, something that Caesar had failed to do. Julius Caesar might have ruled the battlefield, but when it came to politics, the son outdid the father.

  How did he do it? What, besides a new title, explains his success?

  Augustus ruled for a long time. After defeating his rivals at Actium in 31 BC, just short of the age of thirty-two, he led the empire for the next forty-five years, dying in the year 14 at age seventy-six. No one ever ruled the Roman Empire longer than he did. Augustus had the advantage of learning from his predecessors as well as the wisdom of avoiding their mistakes. During his long reign, he experimented with various forms of government and made numerous chan
ges and adjustments. He was nothing if not flexible.

  He was immensely rich, having inherited a fortune from Caesar and acquiring more wealth during his career of conquest. Agriculture and mineral resources made Egypt one of the wealthiest places on earth, and Augustus controlled it as his personal possession.

  He chose his advisors wisely. None did more to execute Augustus’s vision than his old friend Agrippa. Both at home and abroad, Agrippa was a troubleshooter, a manager, a builder, and, when need be, an enforcer. He negotiated with senators and kings and sponsored major infrastructure programs at Rome and in the provinces. Agrippa did not lack personal ambition, but he always put loyalty to Augustus first. The poet Horace called Agrippa “a cunning fox imitating a noble lion,” a reference both to his craftiness and his social climbing. Augustus himself would eulogize Agrippa as a man whose virtues everyone acknowledged.

  Augustus was Machiavellian centuries before Niccolò Machiavelli, who advised usurpers to start their reigns by putting into effect all the cruel measures that they considered most necessary and then to rule in a way that calmed and enriched the people, to win them over. Doing the opposite—starting soft but becoming increasingly cruel—would be fatal.

  Augustus did not start soft. From 43 to 30 BC, he fought, lied, cheated, and trampled on the law. It is estimated that he killed more than a hundred senators. Then, after defeating all his domestic enemies, Augustus dedicated himself to peace at home and limited military expansion against foreign—and never Roman—enemies. Still, however gentle he became, Augustus always remembered that his rule depended on his soldiers.