The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
A debate followed that showed Vatia Senior how unpopular his cause was; if he needed further proof, he received it when the House voted to give Brutus and Cassius grain commissions in Asia Minor and Sicily. Then, to rub it in, Antony and his minions poked fun at him, mocked his age and his old-fashioned ideas. So as soon as the meeting was over, he went back to his villa in Campania.
Once home, he asked his servants to fill his bath. Then Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus Senior stretched out in the water with a sigh of bliss, opened the veins of both wrists with a lancet, and drifted into the warm, infinitely welcome arms of death.
“Oh, how can I bear such a homecoming?” Vatia Junior asked Aulus Hirtius. “Caesar murdered, my father suicided—” He broke down again, wept bitterly.
“—and Rome in the clutches of Marcus Antonius,” Hirtius said grimly. “I wish I could see a way out, Vatia, but I can’t. No one can stand against Antonius, he’s capable of anything from blatant illegality to summary execution without trial. And he has the legions on his side.”
“He’s buying the legions,” said Junia, very glad to see her husband home. “I could kill my brother Brutus for setting all of this in motion, but Porcia pulls his strings.”
Vatia wiped his eyes, blew his nose. “Will Antonius and his tame Senate let you be consul next year, Hirtius?” he asked.
“He says so. I’m careful not to thrust my face under his nose too often—it’s wiser to stay invisible. Pansa thinks the same. That’s why we don’t attend many meetings.”
“So there’s no one with the clout to oppose him?”
“Absolutely no one. Antonius is running wild.”
4
And thus it did seem to Rome’s and Italy’s leading men of business and politics during that dreadful spring and summer after the Ides of March.
Brutus and Cassius wandered from place to place around the Campanian coast, Porcia fastened to Brutus as by a rivet. On the one occasion when they found themselves in the same villa as Servilia and Tertulla, the five of them bickered constantly. News had come of the grain commissions, which mortally offended them—how dare Antony palm them off with duties befitting mere quaestors?
Cicero, calling on them, found Servilia convinced that she still possessed enough power in the Senate to have the decision reversed, Cassius in the mood for war, Brutus utterly despondent, Porcia carping and nagging as usual, and Tertulla in the depths of despair because she had lost her baby.
He went away shattered. It’s a shipwreck. They don’t know what to do, they can’t see a way out, they exist from day to day waiting for some axe or other to fall. The whole of Italy is foundering because malign children are running it and we less malign children have no defenses against their kind of chaos. We have become the tools of professional soldiers and the ruthless brute of a man who controls them. Was this what the Liberators envisioned when they conspired to eliminate Caesar? No, of course not. They could see no further than eliminating Caesar—they genuinely thought that once he was gone, everything would go back to normal. Never understanding that they themselves would have to take the tiller of the ship of state. And in not taking it, they have let it run on the rocks. A shipwreck. Rome is done for.
The two sets of games in the new month of Julius, first those of Apollo, then those dedicated to Caesar’s victories, diverted and amused the people, who poured into Rome from as far afield as Bruttium, the toe, and Italian Gaul, the rump atop the leg. It was high summer, very dry and hot—time for a month of holiday. Rome’s population almost doubled.
Brutus, the absentee celebrant of the ludi Apollinares, had staked his all on a performance of the Tereus, a play by the Latin author Accius. Though the common people preferred the chariot races that opened and closed the seven days of the games, and in between thronged to the big theaters staging Atellan mimes and the musically rich farces of Plautus and Terence, Brutus was convinced that the Tereus would serve as a meter to tell him what the common people thought about the assassination of Caesar. The play was replete with tyrannicide and the reasons behind it—a tragedy of epic proportions. Therefore it didn’t appeal in the least to the common people, who didn’t go to see it—a fact that Brutus’s ignorance of the common people rendered him incapable of grasping. The audience was an elite one, stuffed with literati like Varro and Lucius Piso, and the play was received with almost hysterical approval. After this news was relayed to Brutus, he went around for days convinced that he was vindicated, that the common people condoned Caesar’s assassination, that soon a full reinstatement would come for the Liberators. Whereas the truth was that the production of the Tereus was a brilliant one, the acting superb, and the play itself so rarely staged that it came as a welcome change to dramatically jaded elite palates.
Octavian, the celebrant of the ludi Victoriae Caesaris, had implanted no gauges to monitor popular response to his games, but was gifted with one by Fortuna herself. His games ran for eleven days, and were somewhat different in structure from the other games Rome saw fairly regularly throughout the warmer months. The first seven days were devoted to pageants and scenes, with the opening day’s pageant, a re-enactment of Alesia, situated in the Circus Maximus—a cast of thousands, mock battles galore, an exciting and novel display organized and directed by Maecenas, who demonstrated a rare talent for this sort of activity.
To the principal funder of the games went the honor of giving the signal that they should begin, and Octavian, standing in the box, seemed to the enormous crowd to be a reincarnation of Caesar; much to Antony’s annoyance, Octavian was cheered for a full quarter of an hour. Though this was immensely satisfying, Octavian well knew that it was not an indication that Rome belonged to him; it was an indication that Rome had belonged to Caesar. That was what upset Antony.
Then, about an hour before sunset on the opening day, just as Vercingetorix sat cross-legged at Caesar’s feet, a huge comet appeared in the northern skies above the Capitol. At first no one noticed it, then a few fingers pointed at the stella critina, and suddenly the whole two hundred thousand jammed into the Circus were on their feet, screaming wildly.
“Caesar! The star is Caesar! Caesar is a god!”
The next day’s pageants and scenes, like the five more after them, were relegated to smaller venues around the city, but every day the comet rose about an hour before sunset, and shone through most of the night with eerie brilliance. Its head was as big as the moon, its tail swept behind it in two shimmering trails right across the northern heavens. And during the wild-beast hunts, the horse races, the chariot races and the other magnificent spectacles held in the Circus Maximus for the last four days of the games, the long-haired star personifying Caesar continued to shine. The very moment the games were over, it disappeared.
Octavian had acted quickly. By the second day of the games, Caesar’s statues throughout the city bore gilded stars on their foreheads.
Thanks to Caesar’s star, Octavian had won more than he lost, for Antony himself had forbidden the display of Caesar’s golden chair and wreath in the parade, and Caesar’s ivory statue was not carried in the procession of the gods. On the second day of the games, Antony had delivered a stirring speech to the audience in Pompey’s theater, vigorously defending the Liberators and playing down Caesar’s importance. But with that uncanny comet shining, all Antony’s countermeasures went for nothing.
To those who offered him comments or asked him questions, Octavian replied that the star must indicate Caesar’s godhead; otherwise, why did it appear on the first day of his victory games and vanish the moment those games were over? Unanswerable in any other way. Inarguable. Even Antony could not contradict such unimpeachable evidence, while Dolabella chewed his nails down to the quick and thanked his primal instincts for not destroying Caesar’s altar and column. Though he didn’t re-erect them.
Inside himself, Octavian looked at Caesar’s star differently. Naturally it endowed Caesar’s heir with some of Caesar’s godly mystery; if Caesar were a god, then he wa
A core of invulnerable security was forming in him, for Octavian knew perfectly well what Caesar’s star really meant. It was a message to him from Caesar that his destiny was to rule the world. His desire to rule the world had always seemed to be there, but so tenuous, so manifestly impossible that he had called it a daydream, a fantasy. But from the moment the long-haired star had appeared, he knew otherwise. The sense of destiny had suddenly become certainty. Caesar meant him to rule the world. Caesar had passed to him the task to heal Rome, enhance her empire, endow her with unimaginable power. Under his care, under his aegis. I am the man. I will rule the world. I have time to be patient, time to learn, time to rectify the mistakes I must surely make, time to grind opposition down, time to deal with everyone from the Liberators to Marcus Antonius. Caesar made me heir not just to money and estates, but to his clients and adherents, his power, his destiny, his godhead. And by Sol Indiges, by Tellus, and by Liber Pater, I will not disappoint him. I will be a worthy son. I will be Caesar.
* * *
At the end of the eighth day of the games, which was the first back in the Circus Maximus, a delegation of centurions cornered Antony as he left the Circus after doing everything he could to make it clear to the crowd that he despised Caesar’s heir.
“It’s got to stop, Marcus Antonius,” said the spokesman, who happened to be Marcus Coponius, chief centurion of those two cohorts present in Brundisium when Octavian had needed help to remove the war chest. The two cohorts were now destined to join the Fourth.
“What’s got to stop?” Antony snarled.
“The way you treat dear young Caesar, sir. It ain’t right.”
“Are you asking for a court-martial, centurion?”
“No, sir, definitely not. All I’m saying is that there’s a great big hairy star in the sky called Caesar, who’s gone to live with the gods. He’s shining on his son, young Caesar—a sort of a thank you for putting on these terrific games, we see it. It ain’t me complaining, Marcus Antonius, sir. It’s all of us. I got fifty men here with me, all centurions or ex-centurions from the old boy’s legions. Some have re-enlisted, like me. Some have land Caesar gave them. I got land Caesar gave me last time I was discharged. And we notice how you treat the dear young chap. Like he was dirt. But he ain’t dirt. He’s young Caesar. And we say it’s got to stop. You’ve got to treat young Caesar right.”
Uncomfortably aware that he was in a toga, not in armor, and therefore less impressive in legionary eyes, Antony stood with a storm of feelings crossing his ugly-handsome face—feelings the delegation pretended not to see. His frustration had gotten the better of him, his impatience had led him into conduct that he hadn’t realized would be so offensive to men he needed desperately. The trouble was that he had viewed himself as Caesar’s natural heir, and had believed that Caesar’s veterans would agree that he was. A mistake. At heart they were children. Brave and strong, great soldiers. But children nonetheless. Who wanted their adored Marcus Antonius to smarm and cuddle up to a pretty pansy in high-soled boots because said pretty pansy was Caesar’s adopted son. They didn’t see what he saw. They saw someone that sentiment had convinced them was how Caesar must have looked at eighteen.
I never knew Caesar at eighteen, but maybe he did look like a pretty pansy. Maybe he was a pretty pansy, if there’s any truth in the story about King Nicomedes. But I refuse to believe that Gaius Octavius is an embyronic Caesar! No one could change that much. Octavius doesn’t have Caesar’s arrogance, style, or genius. No, he gets his way by deceit, honey-sweet words, sympathy and smiles. He says himself that he can’t general troops. He’s a lightweight. But these idiots want me to be nice to him because of a wretched comet.
“What’s your definition of treating Gaius Octavius right?” he asked, managing to look more interested than angry.
“Well, for a start, we think you ought to proclaim in public that you’re friends,” said Coponius.
“Then all who are interested should show up on the Capitol at the foot of the steps to Jupiter Optimus Maximus at the second hour on the day after the games finish,” said Antony with as much good grace as he could muster. “Come, Fulvia,” he said to his wife, standing fearfully behind him.
“You’d better watch your step with that little worm,” she said as she toiled up the Steps of Cacus, the babe in her womb growing large enough to be a handicap. “He’s dangerous.”
Antony put his hand in the flat of her back and began to push her upward, a help. That was one of the nicest things about him; another husband would have ordered a servant to assist her, but he saw no loss of dignity in doing it himself.
“My mistake was in thinking I didn’t need my bodyguard for the games. Lictors are useless.” This was said loudly, but the next statement was muttered. “I thought the legions would be on my side in this. They belong to me.”
“They belonged to Caesar first,” puffed Fulvia.
So on the day after Caesar’s victory games ended, over a thousand veterans clustered on the Capitol anywhere that they could see the steps of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Defiantly in armor, Mark Antony arrived first, early because he wanted to pass among the assembled men, chat to them, joke with them. When Octavian arrived he was togate—and in ordinary shoes. Smiling Caesar’s smile, he walked swiftly through the ranks to stand in front of Antony.
Oh, cunning! thought Antony, sitting ruthlessly on his impulse to smash that pretty face to pulp. Today he wants everybody to see how small he is, how harmless and inoffensive. He wants me to look a bully, a churl.
“Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus,” Antony began, hating with every part of him to speak that odious name, “it’s been drawn to my attention by these good fellows that I—er—haven’t always given you a proper measure of respect. For which I sincerely apologize. It was done unintentionally—I’ve got too much on my mind. Will you forgive me?”
“Gladly, Marcus Antonius!” Octavian cried, smile broader than ever, and thrust out his hand.
Antony shook it as if it were made of glass, red eyes roving over the faces of Coponius and the original fifty to see how this nauseating performance was going down. All right, but not enough, their faces said. So, holding in his gorge, Antony put his hands on Octavian’s shoulders and drew him into an embrace, kissed him smackingly on both cheeks. That did it. Sighs of content arose, then the whole crowd applauded.
“I’m only doing this to please them.” Antony whispered into Octavian’s right ear.
“Ditto,” whispered Octavian.
The pair of them left the Capitol by walking through the men, Antony’s arm about Octavian’s shoulders, so far beneath his own that the worm looked an innocent, gorgeous child.
“Lovely!” said Coponius, weeping unashamedly.
The big grey eyes met his, a ghost of a different smile in their limpid depths.
Sextilis came in with a new, equally unpleasant shock for Antony. Brutus and Cassius issued a praetorian edict to all the towns and communities of Italy which differed greatly in content from the two they had issued in April. Couched in prose that had Cicero drooling, it announced that, while they wished to absent themselves from Rome to govern provinces, they w
Antony’s response was a devastating letter to them.
Who do you think you are, putting up your notices in every town from Bruttium and Calabria to Umbria and Etruria? I have issued a consular edict that will go up in the place where yours will be torn down, from Bruttium and Calabria to Umbria and Etruria. It will tell the people of Italy that the pair of you are acting in your own private interests, that your edict does not have praetorian authority. It will go on to warn its readers that should more unofficial notices go up under your names, such notices will be seriously regarded as potentially treasonous, and that their authors may well find themselves designated public enemies.
That’s what I will say in public. In this letter I will go further. You are behaving treasonously, and you have no right to demand anything from the Senate and People of Rome. Instead of whining and bleating about your grain commissions, you ought to be fawning at the Senate’s feet saying a series of abject thank-yous for being given any kind of official duties. After all, you deliberately murdered the man who was legally the head of the Roman state—did you really expect to be dowered with gold curule chairs and gem-studded gold wreaths for committing treason? Grow up, you stupid, pampered adolescents!