Augustus. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ Macedonia the command of Cisalpine Gaul,² together with the Macedonian legions, and, with this trump card in his hand, he could afford to be generous. He agreed to a formal reconciliation.³

      The friction with Antony had one good result; it strengthened the position of Octavius with the republicans. He had the wisdom to keep in close touch with Cicero, and the opinion of Cicero weighed heavily with the conservatives. The old statesman was now in a sad frame of mind, torn between duty and self-interest. He was making plans to return to Greece, and then hesitating to leave his native land. His mood was much that of the famous sentence written after his daughter’s death: “The long ages when I shall be no more are more important in my eyes than the brief span of present life, which indeed seems all too long.”⁴ His chief dread was Antony, and his chief hope, in spite of the doubts of Brutus, was now Octavius. He wrote of him to Atticus in June, calling him for the first time Octavianus, and thereby acknowledging Julius’s adoption:

      I see clearly that he has brains and spirit, and is as well disposed to our heroes as we could desire. But we must carefully consider the degree of reliance that can be placed on him, taking into account his age, his name, his position as Caesar’s heir, and his upbringing. He must be trained, and above all he must be alienated from Antony. . . . He has an excellent disposition, if it only lasts.¹

      After some months of doubt and waiting, Octavius, aided by the sagacity of Agrippa and Maecenas,² had devised a policy, a strategic plan which would permit of much opportunism in tactics. His main purpose was to avenge Julius and to carry on his work, which meant that sooner or later he would find himself in implacable opposition to the republican conservatives. Antony shared in the first part of his purpose; but it was now certain that Antony would not, if he could help it, admit him as an ally, but would labour to make himself de facto Julius’s heir and successor. To bring Antony to reason two things were needed. He must acquire an armed following of his own, by lavish expenditure and adroit propaganda, for after all his name, his adoption, and his heirship made a strong emotional appeal to the Caesarian veterans. In the second place he must keep on good terms with all who feared and distrusted Antony. To these he must appear as a young man seeking only his legal rights, an admirer of Julius but also imbued with a sober republican sentiment. He must continue to speak the “liberators” fair whatever he felt about them in his heart. His role must be that of a mild Caesarian, but a stout anti-Antonian. Gaius Marcellus, the husband of his sister Octavia, was a valuable trait d’union, and so was Cicero.

      Antony was nervous about this silent, self-contained young man. It was true that Octavius had supported his claim to Cisalpine Gaul as against Decimus Brutus, but, since the latter was one of the principal assassins, he was bound to do so or lose caste with every Caesarian. But he feared his growing popularity with the extreme among the veterans. He was beginning also to lose his temper. Cicero came to Rome at the end of August, and delivered in the Senate the speech known as the First Philippic, which was a dignified criticism of his recent doings and did much to rally the conservatives. Antony showed his nervousness by a preposterous charge against Octavius of attempted murder, for which he could produce no evidence. The young man ridiculed the accusation, and presently all Rome joined in the laughter.¹

      Yet Antony’s position might well have seemed impregnable. He had ousted Decimus Brutus from Cisalpine Gaul and next year would also have Celtic Gaul. His friend Dolabella would have Syria, and, if Decimus received Macedonia, it would be without the legions. Brutus and Cassius were disconsidered wanderers. Most of the provincial governors, who had armies at their command, were Caesarians, and likely to be his friends—Plancus in Celtic Gaul, Asinius Pollio in Further Spain, and Lepidus who would presently have Hither Spain and the Narbonese. Things were moving towards a crisis, and the vital matter was the control of armies. His first business was to get one of his own. He had already his Campanian levies of veterans and condottieri, and four of the Macedonian legions assigned to him were on the sea. On October 9 he set out for Brundisium to meet them. His wife Fulvia went with him; she had once been the wife of the gangster Clodius, and was one of those terrible women produced now and then by the Roman stock, unsexed, implacable, filled with an insane lust of power. She and his brother Lucius, a feebler version of himself, were now his chief advisers.

      It behoved Octavius to act at once. His reconciliation with Antony had been shattered by the bogus assassination charge, and the two now stood in the public eye as declared enemies. He sent agents to negotiate with the Macedonian legions and distribute leaflets setting forth his case, and he himself made a tour of the colonies of old soldiers in Campania, summoning them in Julius’s name to re-enlist, and offering each man a bounty of twenty pounds sterling. He must have either retrieved some of the ready money which Antony had embezzled, or disposed of some of the real estate for cash, for it does not appear that he entrenched upon his own or his mother’s private fortune; from now onwards he never seems to have suffered from financial embarrassment. He raised three thousand troops, afterwards organized in two legions. It was a bold step, for he had no legal military command, and no mandate from Senate or people, and appropriately it is the first deed recorded in the Res Gestae, that summary of the main events in his life: “At the age of nineteen years, on my own authority and at my own cost, I raised the army by means of which I liberated the republic from the oppression of a tyrannical faction.” The army, the same army with which he was to triumph at Actium.¹ He had taken the first step in his campaign of vengeance.

      Antony was less fortunate. At Suessa he purged his levies by executing a number of soldiers whose loyalty he distrusted. At Brundisium he found that only three legions had arrived, the II, the IV and the Martian, and that Octavius’s propaganda had done its work among them. They were in a difficult temper, angry with Antony for his apparent supineness as Julius’s avenger, and contrasting his meagre bounty with the largesse of Octavius. Antony proceeded to put to death several officers and some three hundred men, and for a moment seemed to have quelled the mutiny. He selected a bodyguard with which he pushed on to Rome, picking up on the way the Lark,² that famous unit of the Gallic wars, and bidding his other legions follow by the coast road to Ariminum, which was the way to Cisalpine Gaul.

      Octavius had now to face a delicate problem. He had 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 СКАЧАТЬ