The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
Atticus and the bankers had been privately informed that they were not to be proscribed, which did much to keep money from going into hiding, always a danger in trying times. The Treasury cells, empty of all but the precious gold and ten thousand talents of silver, began slowly to fill with the cash reserves and liquid investments of Lucius Caesar, several Appuleii, Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, the two assassin brothers Caecilius, the venerable consular Marcus Terentius Varro, the very wealthy Gaius Lucilius Hirrus, and hundreds more.
Not everyone died. Quintus Fufius Calenus took in old Varro and defied the proscription authorities (the proscriptions were, as in Sulla’s time, bureaucratically run) to kill him until he could get to Antony and secure his life. Lucilius Hirrus fled the country with his slaves and clients by fighting his way to the sea, and the town of Cales bolted its gates and refused to give up Publius Sittius’s brother. Cato’s beloved Marcus Favonius was proscribed, but managed to escape from Italy, as did others. Provided that the money was left behind, the Triumvirs didn’t care deeply about the fate of the persons to whom it had belonged.
Except, that is, for Cicero, whom Antony was determined to bring to a nasty end. Charged with this mission, the tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius Laenas (a very famous name) left Rome with a party of soldiers and a centurion, Herennius, to check Cicero’s villas. The loyal Caesareans Quintus Cicero and his son had gone on the second proscription list, informed on by a slave who swore that their sentiments had changed, that they now were bent on fleeing the country to join the Liberators. So Laenas had three targets, though the great Marcus Cicero was by far the most important, must be attended to first.
The outcome of Octavian’s second march on Rome had stunned Cicero, who had gone to the new senior consul and begged that he be excused from attending future meetings of the Senate.
“I am tired and ill, Octavianus,” he had explained, “and I would very much like to be able to go to my estates whenever I wish. Is that possible?”
“Of course!” Octavian had said warmly. “If I can excuse my step-father from meetings, I can certainly excuse you and Lucius Piso. Philippus and Piso are still suffering the aftermath of that terrible winter journey, you know.”
“I opposed the sending of that embassage.”
“Indeed you did. A pity the Senate ignored you.”
Looking at this beautiful young man, whose exterior had not changed one iota since landing in Brundisium all those months ago, Cicero suddenly realized that Octavian had dedicated himself to the pursuit of power at all costs. How had he ever deluded himself that he could influence this pitiless pillar of ice? Caesar had owned feelings, including a shocking temper, but Octavian mimed feelings. His likeness to Caesar was an acted-out sham.
From that moment Cicero had abandoned all hope, even of persuading Brutus to come home. In his last letters Brutus had turned so critical and acerbic that Cicero felt no urge to write to him, apprise him what he thought of the consulship of Caesar Octavianus and Quintus Pedius.
From his interview with the new senior consul, Cicero had gone at once to see Atticus. “I won’t visit you again,” he had said, “nor am I going to write to you. Truly, Titus, it is better this way, for both our sakes. Look after Pilia, little Attica and yourself. Do nothing to antagonize Octavianus! When he made himself consul, the Republic died for good. Neither Brutus nor Cassius—nor even Marcus Antonius—will prevail. Our old, clement master has had the last laugh. He knew exactly what he was doing when he made Octavianus his heir. Octavianus will complete his work, believe me.”
Atticus had gazed at him through a mist of tears. How old he was looking! Fallen away to skin and bone, those wonderful dark eyes as hunted as a deer’s surrounded by baying wolves. Of the vast presence that had so dominated and awed Rome’s law courts for forty years, nothing was left. When his dearest, most exasperating and impulsive friend had embarked upon that series of invectives aimed at Marcus Antonius, Atticus had hoped to see Cicero healed, back to normal after so many bitter disappointments, griefs, and that constant loneliness devoid of daughter and wife, of brotherly affection. But the advent of Octavianus had killed his revival; it is now Octavianus, thought Atticus, whom Cicero fears the most.
“I shall miss our correspondence,” Atticus had said, not knowing what else to say. “Not one of your letters to me isn’t treasured and preserved.”
“Good. Publish them when you dare, please.”
“I will, Marcus, I will.”
After that, Cicero had retired completely from public life, nor wrote a single letter. When he learned of the triumviral pact in Bononia, he quit Rome, leaving the faithful Tiro behind to send him reports of everything that happened.
First he went to Tusculum, but the old farmhouse was too full of memories of Tullia and Terentia and his pleasure-loving, martial son. Thank all the gods that young Marcus was now with Brutus! And pray to all the gods that Brutus would win!
When Tiro sent an urgent note to tell him that proscription had come in and his was the first name on the list, he packed up and took the byways and lanes to his villa at Formiae, still using his litter, a painfully slow mode of transport, but the only one Cicero could bear. His intention was to take a ship from the nearest port, Caieta, to flee to Brutus or perhaps to Sextus Pompey in Sicily—he wasn’t sure, couldn’t make up his mind.
It seemed Fortuna favored him, for there was a ship for hire in Caieta harbor, and its master agreed to take him despite his proscribed status; the proscription notices had gone up in every town throughout Italy.
“You’re a special case, Marcus Cicero,” the master said. “I can’t condone the persecution of one of Rome’s greatest men.”
But it was the beginning of December, and winter weather had arrived with gales, a little sleet; the ship put out to sea and was forced back inshore several times, though its master refused to give up, insisted they could make it at least to Sardinia.
A terrible depression invaded Cicero, a weariness so draining that he understood its message: there was to be no leaving Italy for Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose very heartstrings were tied to it.
“Put in to Caieta and set me ashore,” he said.
A servant was sent running to his villa, about a mile away upon the heights of Formiae, and returned three hours after dawn on the seventh day of December with Cicero’s litter and bearers. Wet and shivering, Cicero climbed into its cushioned, welcoming shelter and lay back to wait for whatever was to come.
I am going to die, but at least I will die in the country I have worked so hard and so often to save. I succeeded with that cur Catilina, but then Caesar ruined my victory with his speech—I did not act unconstitutionally by executing Rome’s enemies without a trial! Even Cato said as much. But Caesar’s speech stuck like a burr, and some men looked at me with contempt ever after. Even so, life since has been a shadow, a phantasm, except for my speeches against Marcus Antonius. I am tired of living. I no longer want to endure life’s cruelties, its travesties.
Gaius Popillius Laenas and his men caught the litter on its slow ascent of the hill, dismounted and encircled it. The centurion Herennius drew his sword, two feet of razor-sharp, double-edged efficiency. Cicero poked his head out of the litter to look.
“No, no!” he called to his servants. “Don’t try to fight! Submit quietly and save your lives, please.”
Herennius approached him and raised the sword to the boiling, sullen sky. Gazing at it, Cicero noted that its shade of grey was duller, darker than the vault, and did not glitter. He put his palms upon the litter’s margin and pushed his shoulders out of it, then extended his neck as much as he could manage.
“Strike well,” he said.
The sword descended and took Cicero’s head from his body in one neat blow; the stump gouted blood, the body tensed and did a short, recumbent dance as the head hit the muddy path and rolled a little distance, then stopped. The servants were keening and weeping, but Popillius Laenas’s party ignored them. Herennius bent to
Concentrating upon this, Laenas didn’t notice two of his men haul the rapidly exsanguinating body out of the litter until he heard the scrape of swords coming out of scabbards.
“Here, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Was he right-or left-handed?” a soldier demanded.
Laenas looked blank. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Then we’ll cut off both his hands. One of them wrote awful things about Marcus Antonius.”
Laenas considered this, then nodded. “Go ahead. Put them in the box, then let’s get moving.”
The men rode back to Rome without stopping, their horses foamed and blown by the time they reached Antony’s palace on the Carinae, where a startled steward let them into the peristyle. Carrying the box, Laenas strode into the atrium to find Antony and Fulvia waiting, wrapped in night robes, blinking the last of sleep from their eyes.
“You wanted this, I believe,” said Popillius Laenas, giving Antony the box.
Antony withdrew the head and held it up, laughing. “Got you at last, you vindictive old cunnus!” he shouted.
Far from being revolted, Fulvia snatched at the head. “Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me!” she shrilled while Antony kept holding it just out of her reach, laughing and teasing.
“My men brought you something else,” said Laenas. “Look in the box, Marcus Antonius.”
So Fulvia succeeded in grabbing the head; Antony was busy removing and inspecting the two hands.
“We didn’t know if he was right-or left-handed, so we brought you both of them to be sure. As my men said, they wrote awful things about you.”
“You’ve earned an extra talent.” Antony grinned. He glanced at Fulvia, who had put the head down on a console table and was busy scrabbling among its untidy contents—scrolls, papers, ink, pens, wax tablets. “What are you doing?” he asked her.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, holding up a steel stylus.
Cicero’s eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. Antony’s wife thrust her long-nailed fingers between the lips and fished about, then squeaked with triumph and yanked. Out came Cicero’s tongue, held by her nails. She took the thick strap of flesh in a harder hold and skewered it with the stylus, which lay athwart the mouth and kept the tongue protruding.
“That’s what I think of his gift of the gab,” she said, eyeing her work with huge satisfaction.
“Fix up a wooden frame and nail it to the rostra,” Antony ordered Laenas. “The head in the middle, a hand to either side.”
So when Rome awoke at dawn, it saw Cicero’s head and hands nailed to the rostra on a wooden frame.
The Forum frequenters were devastated. Since his twelfth birthday Cicero had walked the flags of the Forum Romanum without rhetorical peer. The trials! The speeches! The sheer wonder of his words!
“But,” said one frequenter, mopping his tears, “dear Marcus Cicero is still champion of the Forum.”
The two Quintus Cicerones perished shortly thereafter, though their heads were not displayed. What the divorced Pomponia felt, at least for her son, an appalled Rome soon learned. She kidnaped the slave who had informed on them and killed him by making him carve slices off his own body, broil them, and eat them.
The barbarity of Antony’s revenge on Cicero did not sit well with Octavian, but, since there was nothing he could do about it, he made no reference to it in public or in private; he simply avoided Antony’s company whenever possible. When he had first set eyes on Claudia, he had thought that perhaps he could learn to love her, for she was very pretty, very dark (he liked dark women), and suitably virginal. But after he saw Cicero’s skewered tongue and listened to Fulvia’s describing the pleasure she had taken in doing this particular indignity to Cicero’s flesh, Octavian decided that Claudia was not going to bear any children of his.
“Therefore,” he said to Maecenas, “she will be my wife in name only. Find six big, strapping German women slaves and make sure that Claudia is never left alone. I want her a virgin against the day when I can return her to Antonius and her vulgar harpy of a mother.”
“You’re sure?” asked Maecenas, knitting his brows.
“Believe me, Gaius, I would as soon touch a decayed black dog as any daughter of Fulvia’s!”
Because Philippus chose to die on the same day, the wedding itself was a very quiet affair; Atia and Octavia couldn’t come, and the moment the ceremony was over, Octavian joined his mother and sister, leaving his wife alone with her German guards. The bereavement gave him an excellent excuse for not consummating the marriage.
But as time went on it became obvious to Claudia that consummation was unlikely to occur at all. She found her husband’s attitude—and her guards—inexplicable; on meeting him, she had thought him handsome, alluringly aloof. Now she lived as a virtual prisoner, untouched and apparently undesired.
“What do you expect me to do about it?” Fulvia asked when appealed to for help.
“Mama, take me home!”
“I can’t do that. You’re a peace offering between Antonius and your husband.”
“But he doesn’t want me! He doesn’t even talk to me!”
“That sometimes happens with arranged marriages.” Fulvia got up, chucked her daughter under the chin bracingly. “He’ll come to his senses in time, girl. Wait him out.”
“Ask Marcus Antonius to intercede for me!” Claudia pleaded.
“I’ll do no such thing. He’s far too busy to be bothered with trivialities.” And off went Fulvia, absorbed in her latest family; Clodius had been a long time ago.
With no one left to whom she could appeal, Claudia had no choice other than to suffer her existence, which did improve after Octavian bought Quintus Hortensius’s enormous old mansion at the proscription auctions. Its size allowed her a suite of rooms to herself, which removed her entirely from Octavian’s vicinity; youth being resilient, she made friends of her German women, and set out to have as happy a life as a married virgin could.
Octavian was not sleeping alone. He had taken a mistress.
Never plagued by strong sexual impulses, the youngest of the Triumvirs had contented himself with masturbation until after his marriage, when the perceptive and subtle Maecenas took a hand. It was high time, he decided, that Octavian had a woman. So he cruised the premises of Mercurius Stichus, famous for his sex slaves, and found Octavian’s ideal woman. A girl of twenty who had a small boy child, she hailed from Cilicia, had been the toy of a pirate chieftain in Pamphylia, and bore the name of Sappho, just like the poet. Ravishingly pretty, dark of hair and eye, round and cuddly, she had, said Mercurius Stichus, a sweet nature. Maecenas brought her home and popped her into Octavian’s bed on his first night in Hortensius’s old mansion. The ploy worked; there was no disgrace in a slave, no possibility of her gaining ascendancy over a master like Octavian. He liked her docile submission, he appreciated her situation, he let her have time with her child, he esteemed the new maturity taking sexual liberties gave him.
In fact, were it not for Sappho, Octavian’s life during the early days of the Triumvirate would have been extremely unpleasant. Controlling Antony was always difficult, sometimes—as in the affair of Cicero’s death—impossible. The proscription auctions weren’t fetching nearly enough, and it fell to Octavian to cull the informants’ lists to see who had sufficient ready money to warrant posting as a Liberator sympathizer. Additional taxes had to be found, hints dropped to the inviolate plutocrats and bankers that they had better start giving large donations toward buying grain, the price of which kept spiraling. Not very many days into December, all the Classes from First to Fifth discovered that they had to pay the state a year’s income in cash forthwith.
But even that wasn’t enough. At the end of December the tribune of the plebs Lucius Clodius, a creature of Antony’s, brought in a lex Clodia that compelled all w
This annoyed Hortensia very much. The widow of Cato’s half brother Caepio and the mother of Caepio’s only daughter (married to the son of Ahenobarbus), Hortensia had inherited far more of her father’s famous rhetorical skills than had her brother, now proscribed because he had offered Macedonia to Brutus. With Cicero’s widow, Terentia, and a group of women who included Marcia, Pomponia, Fabia the ex–Chief Vestal, and Calpurnia, Hortensia marched into the Forum and mounted the rostra, the others in her wake. And there they stood, wearing chain mail shirts, helmets on their heads, shields at rest on the ground, swords in their hands. Such an extraordinary sight that every Forum frequenter collected; so too, though at first it wasn’t remarked upon, did a great many women from all walks of life, including a good number of professional whores in flame-colored togas, gaudy wigs and paint.
“I am a Roman citizen!” Hortensia roared in a voice that was audible in the Porticus Margaritaria. “I am also a woman! A woman of the First Class! And what exactly does that mean? Why, that I go to my marriage bed a virgin, and then become the chattel of my husband! Who can execute me for unchastity, though I cannot reproach him for having sex with other women—or men! And when I am widowed, I am not supposed to marry again. Instead, I must depend upon the charity of my family to house me, for under the lex Voconia I cannot inherit any fortunes, and if my husband wants to plunder my dowry, it is very hard to prevent him!”
Boom! came the sound of the flat of her sword against the boss of her shield; the audience jumped.
“That is the lot of a woman of the First Class! But how would it differ were I a woman of a lower Class, or if I had no Class at all? I would still be a Roman citizen! I would still be a virgin when I went to my marriage bed, and I would still be the chattel of my husband! I would still have to depend upon the charity of my family when I was widowed. But at least I would have the opportunity to espouse more than a man! I could espouse a profession, a trade, a craft. I could earn a living for myself as a painter or a carpenter, a physician or a herbalist. I could sell the produce of my garden or my hen house. If I wished, I could sell my body by working as a whore. I could save a little of what I earned and put it away for my old age!”