Augustus - Buchan John

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got an army of a kind, but what was he to do with it? His strength was far inferior to Antony’s, unless he could win over the Macedonian legions to his side. His power lay with the Roman populace and the veterans who worshipped the memory of Julius, and with a considerable part of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy which distrusted Antony. But he was trying to drive two ill-mated horses in the same harness. The first stood for vengeance on the murderers, the second either adored the “liberators” or shrank from civil war. In his opposition to Antony he must not alienate those who, while well disposed to Julius’s heir, were on Antony’s side against the “liberators”: in cultivating the Caesarians he must somehow keep the confidence of the classes who saw in him a conservative force not inimical to a restored republic. What must be his next step? Should he remain in Campania with his levies, or should he march to Rome and put his fortune to the test?

      It was a difficult decision for a young man of nineteen, but Octavius did not hesitate. He bombarded Cicero with letters asking for advice, but his resolution was already fixed. In this decision he showed his capacity for extreme boldness, as in his relations with Cicero he revealed his gift for patient diplomacy. Cicero himself was in a divided mind. He was in favour on the whole of the move to Rome, for Octavius seemed the only defence against Antony, and he had promised to act through the Senate. But the old man was troubled. Octavius was begging him to come to the capital, and save the republic as he had done once before—a shrewd piece of flattery which did not fail of its mark; but he was afraid of Antony, and did not wish to leave the sea-coast and the means of escape abroad, and he could not be quite certain about the young man’s policy. He poured out his troubles to Atticus.1 Octavius was a mere boy. He would oppose Antony, but was it for the sake of the Republic or for himself? The one thing plain was that a new war was imminent, and he longed for Brutus and Cassius, now exiles beyond the sea.

      To Rome Octavius went on November 10 with his three thousand, and at once found himself on precarious ground. At the temple of Castor he held a public meeting, where a tribune savagely attacked Antony; he followed in the same vein, dwelling on Julius’s great deeds and the indignities he had himself suffered at Antony’s hands. The speech was one of his few blunders, for it pleased nobody. His soldiers, many of whom had served with Antony, jibbed at the attack on their old leader, and Octavius was forced to disband those who wished to go home, and to pay further bounties to those who remained. The conservatives, already scared by the youth’s audacity, were offended by his eulogy of Caesar and all that it implied, and by the ominous words about “attaining the honours of my father.” Cicero liked it least of all. In the last letter to Atticus which we possess, he exclaims, “What a speech!”1 But he found himself now forced by private reasons of finance to come to Rome, and, with a courage the more admirable because of his natural timidity, the old man girded his loins for his last battle.2

      Octavius could not remain in Rome, for Antony with his bodyguard and the Lark was at its gates. He was on more treacherous ground than ever, for he was beginning to lose the confidence of the Caesarians, and the conservatives did not take him seriously. He and Agrippa—for he had no other adviser except half-hearted relatives like Philippus and Marcellus—two young men not yet twenty, were defying the most noted soldier of the age, who could dispose of formidable armies and who appealed to the same popular emotion as they did themselves. At the same time they were courting the alliance of an aristocracy whose politics they detested and who were laughing at them as children playing at war. Antony, too, was busy with slanders, sneering at Octavius’s humble birth, and spreading tales of unmentionable vices.1 Octavius was playing the only game permitted him, but when he left Rome for Etruria, where by a lavish further expenditure he collected further recruits, he must have seen little light in his path.

      Suddenly the situation changed. Antony entered the capital about November 20, in full military panoply, having left most of his troops at Tibur, but bringing a bodyguard sufficient to overawe the citizens. He was in a vile temper, and issued an edict abusing Octavius and summoning a meeting of the Senate for the 24th. That day he did not appear; Cicero says he was drunk, but the natural explanation is the news which he had from Tibur. For the Martian legion, remembering its old kindness for Octavius and swayed by his propaganda, had disobeyed orders and turned off the coast road to Ariminum, and was now at Alba Longa. Antony hastened thither, and was met by closed gates and a shower of arrows from the walls. He attended the postponed meeting of the Senate on the 28th, where he hustled through a number of decrees and allotted certain vacant provinces to his own supporters. Then he hurried to Tibur, where he had word that the IV legion had followed the example of the Martian. With his new recruits, the Lark, and the II legion he started for Ariminum, leaving his brother Lucius to bring on the remaining Macedonian legion, the XXXV, which had now arrived in Brundisium.2 He had already ordered Decimus Brutus to hand over Cisalpine Gaul. Decimus replied that he held his province at the commands of the Senate and the People; but, realizing that he could not meet Antony in the open field, and must wait upon help from Rome, he marched south, and about the middle of December shut himself up in Mutina (Modena) and prepared to stand a siege.

      Octavius had become the sole hope of the republicans, a more stalwart hope, for he had got himself a considerable army—two legions of Campanian veterans, one of Etrurian recruits, the IV and the Martian. Moreover, he had been in treaty with Decimus Brutus, following his habit of leaving no possible ally unconciliated.1 He discreetly acquiesced in the election of one of the principal assassins, the “envious Casca,” as tribune. The “liberators” ceased to jeer at his youth, and now saw in him a saviour, the republic’s sole champion. Cicero when he reached Rome found himself the civilian leader in the absence of both consuls, and Cicero had now decided that Julius’s heir must be trusted.

      So, while Octavius slowly marched northward on the track of Antony, many fateful things happened in Rome. Dread of a new civil war lay on all parties, even on Antony, who was busy manœuvring for position, and intriguing with the governors of the western provinces, Lepidus, Plancus and Pollio, and who had no desire for an immediate clash of arms. Only Octavius and Cicero were determined on what they believed to be inevitable. Cicero, indeed, had cast all literary preoccupations behind him, and was now eager to ride the storm. In the words of Ferrero, “the audacious figure of the old orator stood amidst the universal vacillation like a huge erratic boulder in the midst of a plain.”2 He had become in his own eyes the guide towards that state which he had drawn in his de República. His Second Philippic against Antony had been published, and he was busy corresponding with the western proconsuls on whose decision he saw that the issue must ultimately depend. On December 20 he delivered his Third Philippic, a moderate speech in which he proposed votes of confidence in Decimus and Octavius, and carried a resolution providing for a meeting of the Senate on January I, under the new consuls Hirtius and Pansa, to annul Antony’s disposition of the provinces. In the Fourth Philippic, spoken on that day to the people, he flung down to Antony the gage of battle.

      Cicero was now clearly pledged to Octavius’s support, He had addressed him publicly as “Caesar.” January 1 came and the Senate met under the protection of armed guards. There was a long debate in which Antony’s more moderate friends urged that before declaring him a public enemy an embassy should be sent to negotiate. Cicero replied in that masterpiece of invective known as the Fifth Philippic, in which he inveighed against Antony and pinned his faith to Octavius. “What god,” he asked, “has given to the Roman people this god-like youth?” He compared his exploits with those of the young Pompey. He took upon himself to guarantee his good faith:

      I know intimately the young man’s every feeling. Nothing is dearer to him than the free state, nothing has more weight with him than your influence, nothing is more desired by him than the good opinion of virtuous men, nothing more delightful to him than true glory. . . . I venture even to pledge my word that Gaius Caesar will always be as loyal a citizen as he is to-day, and as our most fervent wishes and prayers desire.1

      The Senate stuck to the embassy proposal but agreed to continue military preparations, and appointed one of the new consuls to take supreme command of the army. Honours were decreed for Octavius: he was given the rank of senator; the state would pay the bounties he had promised to the two Macedonian legions which had joined him; he was to be entitled to stand for the consulship ten years before he attained the statutory age; a gilded

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