The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
Boom! This time all the swords on the rostra thumped the shield bosses; the female segment of the audience stood rapt, the male segment scandalized.
“Therefore, as a Roman citizen and a woman, I feel entitled to register the outrage of every Roman citizen woman who earns an income of any kind and has the power to control her income! I stand here on behalf of my own First Class, whose income is derived from dowry or meager inheritance, and on behalf of all those women of lower Class or no Class whose income is derived from eggs!—vegetables!—plumbing!—painting!—construction!—whoredom!—et cetera, et cetera! For all of us are to lose a year’s income to fund the insanities of Roman men! Insanities I say, and insanities I mean!”
Boom! Boom! Boom! This time the swords on shields were joined by the cymbals of whores, the feet of women in the crowd, and went on longer. The Forum frequenters looked angrier and angrier, were growling and shaking their fists.
Up went Hortensia’s sword, waved around her head. “Do the citizen women of Rome vote?” she yelled. “Do we elect magistrates? Do we vote for or against laws? Did we have a chance to vote against this disgraceful lex Clodia that says we must pay a year’s income to the Treasury? No, we did not have a chance to vote against this insanity! An insanity sponsored by a trio of smug, privileged, moronic men named Marcus Antonius, Caesar Octavianus and Marcus Lepidus! If Rome wants to tax us, then Rome must give us the franchise as well as citizenship! If Rome wants to tax us, then Rome will have to let us vote for magistrates, vote for or against laws!”
Up went the sword again, this time joined by all the other swords, and accompanied by shrill cheers from the listening women, howls of rage from the listening Forum frequenters.
“And just how are the idiots who run Rome going to collect this iniquitous tax?” Hortensia demanded. “The men of the five Classes are enrolled by the censors, their incomes written down! But we Roman citizen women aren’t entered on any rolls, are we? So how are the idiots who run Rome going to decide what our incomes are? Is some brute of a Treasury agent going to stride up to some poor little old woman in the marketplace selling her embroideries or her lamp wicks or her eggs, and ask her what she earns in a year? Or, even worse, arbitrarily decide what she earns on the evidence of his own bigoted misogynism? Are we to be badgered and bullied, browbeaten and bludgeoned? Are we? Are we?”
“No!” screamed several thousand female throats. “No, no!” The male throats were suddenly silent; it had suddenly dawned on the Forum frequenters that they were shockingly outnumbered.
“I should think not! All of us standing on the rostra are widows—Caesar’s widow, Cato’s widow, Cicero’s widow among us! Did Caesar tax women? Did Cato tax women? Did Cicero tax women? No, they did not! Cicero and Cato and Caesar understood that women have no public voice! The only power at law we have is the right to own our little bit of money free and clear, and now this lex Clodia is going to strip us even of that! Well, we refuse to pay this tax! Not one sestertius! Unless we are accorded different rights—the right to vote, the right to sit in the Senate, the right to stand for election as magistrates!”
Her voice was drowned in a huge cheer.
“And what of the Triumvir Marcus Antonius’s wife, Fulvia?” thundered Hortensia, eyes noting the entire College of Lictors appear at the back of the crowd and start to push their way toward the rostra. “Fulvia is the richest woman in Rome, and sui iuris! But is she to pay this tax? No! No, she is not! Why? Because she’s given Rome seven children! By, I add, three of the most reprehensible villains ever to mount a rostra or a woman! While we, who obeyed the mos maiorum and remained widowed, are to pay!”
She strode to the edge of the rostra and thrust her face at the lictors, nearing the front. “Don’t you dare try to arrest us!” she roared. “Go back to your masters and tell them from Quintus Hortensius’s daughter that the sui iuris women of Rome from highest to lowest will not pay this tax! Will not pay it! Go on, shoo! Shoo, shoo!”
The women in the crowd took it up: “Shoo! Shoo!”
“I’ll have the sow proscribed! I’ll proscribe all the sows!” snarled Antony, livid.
“You will not!” snapped Lepidus. “You’ll do nothing!”
“And say nothing,” Octavian growled.
The next day a red-faced Lucius Clodius went back to the Plebeian Assembly to repeal his law and bring in a new one that compelled every sui iuris woman in Rome, including Fulvia, to pay the Treasury one-thirtieth of her income. But it was never enforced.
XII
East of the Adriatic
From JANUARY until DECEMBER of 43 B.C.
1
After an arduous winter passage across the Candavian mountains, Brutus and his little force arrived outside Dyrrachium on the third day of January. Ordered down from Salona by Mark Antony, the governor of Illyricum, Publius Vatinius, had occupied Petra camp with one legion. Nothing daunted, Brutus moved his troops into one of the many fortresses dotting the circumvallations built five years ago when Caesar and Pompey the Great had waged siege war there. But Brutus’s action proved hardly necessary. Not four days later Vatinius’s soldiers opened the gates of Petra camp and went over to Brutus. Their commander Vatinius, they said, had already gone back to Illyricum.
Suddenly Brutus owned a force of three legions and two hundred cavalrymen! No one was more surprised than he, no one less sure how to general an army. However, he did understand that fifteen thousand men required the services of a praefectus fabrum to ensure that they were kept fed and equipped, so he wrote to his old friend, the banker Gaius Flavius Hemicillus, who had done this duty for Pompey the Great—would he do the same for Marcus Brutus? That out of the way, the new warlord decided to move south to Apollonia, where sat the official governor of Macedonia, Gaius Antonius.
And money just fell into his lap! First came the quaestor of Asia Province, young Lentulus Spinther, carrying its tributes to the Treasury; no lover of Mark Antony, Spinther promptly turned the cash over to Brutus and returned to his boss, Gaius Trebonius, to tell him that the Liberators were not going to lie down tamely after all. No sooner had Spinther departed than the quaestor of Syria, Gaius Antistius Vetus, arrived en route to Rome with Syria’s tributes. He too turned the cash over to Brutus, then elected to stay—who knew what was going on in Syria? Nicer by far in Macedonia.
In mid January the city of Apollonia surrendered without a fight, its legions announcing that they much preferred Brutus to the loathe-some Gaius Antonius. Though men like young Cicero and Antistius Vetus urged Brutus to execute this least talented and unluckiest of the three Antonian brothers, Brutus refused. Instead, he allowed the captive Gaius Antonius the run of his camp, and treated him with great courtesy.
Brutus’s cup ran over when Crete, originally senatorially assigned to him, and Cyrenaica, originally assigned to Cassius, both notified him that they were content to function in the interests of the Liberators, if in return they might be sent proper governors. Brutus delightedly obliged.
Now he had six legions, six hundred horse, and no less than three provinces—Macedonia, Crete and Cyrenaica. Almost before he could assimilate this bounty, Greece, Epirus and coastal Thrace declared for him. Amazing!
Oozing content, Brutus wrote to the Senate in Rome and let it know these facts, with the result that on the Ides of February the Senate officially confirmed him as governor of all these territories, then added Vatinius’s province of Illyricum to his tally. He was now governor of almost half the Roman East!
At which moment came news from Asia Province. Dolabella, he learned, had tortured and beheaded Gaius Trebonius in Smyrna, an horrific deed. Oh, but what had happened to the gallant Lentulus Spinther? Shortly thereafter he received a letter from Spinther telling him that Dolabella had pounced in Ephesus and tried to find out where Trebonius had hidden the province’s money. But Spinther had played dense and stupid so well that the frustrated Dolabella simply ordered him to get out before moving on into Cappadocia.
Brutus was
Through all of this, Cicero was writing to beg Brutus to return to Italy, a tempting alternative now that he was in official favor. In the end, however, Brutus decided that the best thing he could do was to retain control of the Roman land route east across Macedonia and Thrace—the Via Egnatia. Then if Cassius needed him, he could march to his assistance.
By now he had a trusty little band of noble followers who included Ahenobarbus’s son, Cicero’s son, Lucius Bibulus, the son of the great Lucullus by Servilia’s younger sister, and yet another defecting quaestor, Marcus Appuleius. Though most were in their twenties, some barely that old, Brutus made them all legates, distributed them through his legions, and counted himself very fortunate.
The worst of not being in Italy was the uncertainty of the news from Rome. A dozen people were writing to Brutus regularly, but what each had to say conflicted with what everyone else said. Their perspectives were different, sometimes contradictory; often they tendered mere rumors as incontrovertible fact. After the deaths of Pansa and Hirtius on the battlefield in Italian Gaul, he was told that Cicero would be the new senior consul with the nineteen-year-old Octavianus as his junior. This was followed by an assurance that Cicero already was consul! Time proved that none of it was true, but how was he to know fact from fiction at this removed distance? Porcia badgered him with tales of her woes at Servilia’s hands, Servilia sent him an infrequent, curt missive informing him that his wife was a madwoman, Cicero protested that he wasn’t consul nor would be consul, but that too many honors were being heaped upon young Octavianus. So when the Senate itself ordered Brutus back to Rome, Brutus ignored the directive. Who was telling the truth? What was the truth?
Unappreciative of Brutus’s courtesy, Gaius Antonius was giving trouble, had taken to donning his purple-bordered toga and haranguing Brutus’s soldiers about his unjust captivity, his governor’s status. When Brutus forbade Gaius Antonius to wear his purple-bordered toga, he switched to a plain white one and went right on haranguing. Which forced Brutus to confine him to his quarters and set a guard on him. So far he hadn’t impressed the troops, but Brutus was too insecure a commander to let him be.
When big brother Mark Antony sent crack troops to Macedonia to extricate Gaius, they went over to Brutus instead; his tally was now seven legions and a thousand horse!
Bolstered by his military strength, Brutus decided that it was time he headed east to rescue Cassius from Dolabella. Behind him in Apollonia he left the original Macedonian legion as a garrison; Antony’s brother he left in the custody of Gaius Clodius, one of the very many Clodiuses of that wayward patrician clan, Claudia.
Having started his march from Apollonia on the Ides of May, he reached the Hellespont toward the end of June, an indication that he wasn’t a swift mover. The Hellespont crossed, he made for Nicomedia, the capital of Bithynia, where he ensconced himself in the governor’s palace. His fellow Liberator, the governor Lucius Tillius Cimber, had picked up his traps and moved east to Pontus, and Cimber’s Liberator quaestor, Decimus Turullius, had mysteriously disappeared; no one, thought Brutus wryly, wants to become involved in a civil war.
Then came a letter from Servilia.
I have some bad news for you, even if it is good news for me. Porcia is dead. As I told you in earlier correspondence, she had not been well since your departure. I gather that others have told you this also.
First she began to neglect her appearance, then to refuse to eat. When I promised her that I would have her tied down and fed by force if necessary, she relented and ate enough to keep living, though every bone ended in showing. Next came bouts of talking to herself. She wandered around the house jabbering and gibbering—about what, no one could tell. Nonsense, pure nonsense.
Though I was having her closely watched, I confess that she was too cunning for me. I mean, how could one ever guess why she asked for a brazier? It was three days after the Ides of June, and the weather was on the cool side. I simply assumed that starvation caused her to feel cold. Certainly she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering.
Her servant Sylvia found her dead about an hour after the fire tripod was delivered to her sitting room. She had eaten red-hot coals, still had one in her hand. Apparently the kind of food she craved, wouldn’t you say?
I have her ashes, but am not sure what you want to do with them—mix them with Cato’s now they’re finally home from Utica, or save them to mix with your own? Or just build a tomb for her alone? You can pay for it if that is your wish.
Brutus dropped the letter as if it too burned, eyes wide but vision turned inward. Watching inside his mind as Servilia tied his wife to a chair, jacked her mouth wide open, and forced the coals down her throat.
Oh, yes, Mama, it was you. You conceived the idea out of your threat to force-feed my poor tormented girl. Its horrific cruelty would have appealed to you—you are the cruelest person I know. Do you think me a fool, Mama? No one, no matter how mad, can commit suicide that way. Bodily reflexes alone would prevent it. You tied her down and fed them to her. The agony! Oh, Porcia, my pillar of flame! My dearly beloved, core of my being. Cato’s daughter, so full of courage, so alive, so passionate.
He didn’t weep. He didn’t even destroy the letter. Instead he walked out on to the balcony overlooking that mirrored sound of water and stared sightlessly at the forested hill on its far side. I curse you, Mama. May you be visited daily by the Furies. May you never again know a moment’s peace. A comfort for me to know that Aquila your lover died at Mutina, but you never cared for him. Leaving aside Caesar, the ruling passion of your entire life has been your hatred of Cato, your own brother. But your killing Porcia is a signal to me. That you do not expect ever to see me again. That you deem my cause hopeless and my chances of success nonexistent. For if I ever did see you again, I would tie you down and feed you hot coals.
* * *
When King Deiotarus sent Brutus a legion of infantry and said that he would do whatever lay in his power to aid the Liberators, Brutus wrote (vainly, as it turned out) to all the cities of Asia Province and demanded that they give him troops, ships—and money. From Bithynia he asked two hundred warships and fifty transports, but there was no one to implement his request, nor would the local socii co-operate; Cimber’s quaestor, Turullius, he now discovered, had taken everything the province could offer and gone to serve Cassius.
News from Rome continued to be alarming: Mark Antony was a second-class public enemy, so was Lepidus. Then Gaius Clodius, the legate Brutus had left in charge of Apollonia, wrote to tell Brutus that he had heard for absolute certain that Mark Antony was in the act of mounting a full-scale invasion of western Macedonia to rescue his brother. Clodius’s response had been to lock himself and the Legio Macedonica inside Apollonia—and to kill Gaius Antonius. His logic was impeccably Clodian: once Antony learned that his brother was dead, he’d cancel his invasion.
Oh, Gaius Clodius, why did you do that? Marcus Antonius is inimicus, he’s in no position to mount any rescue invasions!
Terrified nonetheless of what Antony might do when he found out that his brother was dead, Brutus put some of his legions into camp along the river Granicus in Bithynia, and ordered the rest to march back into the west as far as Thessalonica while he himself raced ahead to see exactly what was happening on the Adriatic coast of Macedonia.
Nothing. When he reached Apollonia late in Julius, he found the Legio Macedonica enthusiastically investigating reported landings of Antonian troops here, there, and everywhere.
“But every last report is spurious,” said Gaius Clodius.
“Clodius, you should not have executed Gaius Antonius!”
“Of course I should,” said Gaius Clodius, unrepentant. “In my view, the world is well rid of the cunnus. Besides, as I said to you in my letter, I was sur
Brutus threw his hands in the air—who could reason with a Clodius? They were all mad. So he backtracked east again to Thessalonica, where he found his legions and Gaius Flavius Hemicillus already at work.
Cassius was finally in contact, informing the astonished Brutus that Syria was uncontestably his. Dolabella was dead, and he was planning to invade Egypt and punish its queen for not helping him. That would take two months, said Cassius, after which he would start mounting an expedition to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians. Those seven Roman Eagles taken from Crassus at Carrhae had to be wrested from their pedestals in Ecbatana.
“Cassius’s work is cut out for him for some time to come,” said Hemicillus, one of those people noble Rome could produce by the dozens: meticulous, efficient, logical, canny. “While he is so engaged, it would benefit your troops greatly if you were to blood them in a small campaign.”
“A small campaign?” Brutus asked warily.
“Yes, against the Thracian Bessi.”
It turned out that Hemicillus had befriended a Thracian prince named Rhascupolis, whose tribe was subject to King Sadala of the Bessi, the major people of inland Thrace.