The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
“Three legions in Further Spain and two in Nearer Spain,” Antony said to his war council on the Kalends of June. “Two in Narbonese Gaul, three in Further Gaul, three in Italian Gaul, and two in Illyricum. That puts a good curtain between our provinces and the Germani and the Dacians—will deter Sextus Pompeius from raiding the Spains—and, should the opportunity arise, Lepidus, will give you troops for Africa.” He grunted. “Food, of course, is the main strain on our purse strings, between the legions and the three million people of Italy, but you should be able to manage in our absence, Lepidus. Once we get hold of Brutus and Cassius, we’ll be in better financial condition.”
Octavian sat and listened as Antony went on to fill out his plans in greater detail, well content with the first six months of this three-man dictatorship. The proscriptions had put almost twenty thousand silver talents in the Treasury, and Rome was very quiet, too busy licking her wounds to offer trouble, even among the least co-operative elements in the Senate. Thanks to the sale of those distinctive maroon leather shoes to men desirous of senatorial rank, that body had grown back to Caesar’s thousand members. If some of them hailed from the provinces, why not?
“What of the situation in Sicily?” Lepidus asked.
Antony grinned sourly and squiggled his brows expressively at Octavian. “Sicily is your province, Octavianus. What do you suggest in our absence?”
“Common sense, Marcus Antonius,” Octavian answered levelly. He never bothered to ask Antony to call him Caesar; he knew what the response would be. Antony would keep.
“Common sense?” asked Fufius Calenus, blinking.
“Certainly. For the moment we should permit Sextus Pompeius to regard Sicily as his private fief, and buy grain from him as if he were a legitimate grain vendor. Sooner or later the huge profits he’s making will return to Rome’s coffers, namely when we have the leisure to deal with him the way an elephant deals with a mouse—splat! In the meantime, I suggest that we encourage him to invest some of his ill-gotten gains inside Italy. Even inside Rome. If that leads him to assume that one day he’ll be able to return and enjoy his father’s old status, well and good.”
Antony’s eyes blazed. “I hate paying him!” he snapped.
“So do I, Antonius, so do I. However, since the state does not own Sicily’s grain, we have to pay someone for it. All the state has ever done is tithe, though we can’t do that now. In this time of poor harvests, he’s asking fifteen sesterces the modius, which I agree is extortionate.” That sweet and charming smile showed; Octavian looked demure. “Brutus and Cassius pay ten sesterces the modius—a discount, but not free grain by any means. Sextus Pompeius, like a few other people I know, will keep.”
“The boy’s right,” said Lepidus.
Another grate on Octavian’s hide. “The boy” indeed! You too will keep, you haughty nonentity. One day you’ll all call me by my rightful name. If, that is, I let you live.
Lucius Decidius Saxa and Gaius Norbanus Flaccus had already taken eight of the twenty-eight legions across the Adriatic to Apollonia, under orders to march east on the Via Egnatia until they found an impregnable bolt-hole in which they could sit and wait for the bulk of the army to catch them up. It was good strategy on Mark Antony’s part. When Brutus and Cassius marched west on the same road, they had to be halted well east of the Adriatic, and a formidably entrenched force eight legions strong would bring them to an abrupt stop, no matter how enormous their own army was.
Word from Asia Province was patchy and unreliable; some sources insisted that the Liberators were many months off their invasion, others that they would commence any day now. Both Brutus and Cassius were at Sardis, their spring campaigns a stunning success—what was there to delay them? Time was money when one waged a war.
“We have twenty more legions to ship to Macedonia,” Antony went on, “and that will have to be in two segments—we lack the transports to do it all at once. I don’t plan on using all the twenty-eight in my attack force. Western Macedonia and Greece proper have to be garrisoned so we get whatever food there is.”
“Precious little,” grumbled Publius Ventidius.
“I’ll take my seven remaining legions directly to Brundisium on the Via Appia,” Antony said, ignoring Ventidius. “Octavianus, you’ll take your thirteen down the Via Popillia on the west side of Italy in conjunction with all the warships we can muster. I don’t want Sextus Pompeius in the vicinity of Brundisium while we’re shuttling troops, so that means it’s your job to keep him in the Tuscan Sea. I don’t think he’s terribly interested in events east of Sicily, but I also don’t want him tempted. He’d find it easier to re-establish himself in a Liberator Rome than a Triumviral one.”
“Who for admiral?” asked Octavian.
“Your command, you pick one.”
“Salvidienus, then.”
“Good choice,” said Antony, approving, and smirked at the old hands like Calenus, Ventidius, Carrinas, Vatinius, Pollio.
He went home to Fulvia well pleased with the way things were going. “I haven’t heard a peep out of Pretty Boy,” he said, his head cushioned on her breasts as they shared a dining couch; no one else to dinner, a pleasant change.
“He’s too quiet,” she said, popping a shrimp in his mouth.
“I used to think so, but I’ve changed my mind, meum mel. He can give me twenty years, and he’s settled for that. Oh, he’s sly and devious, I grant you, but he’s not in Caesar’s league when it comes to staking his all on a single gamble. Octavianus is a Pompeius Magnus—he likes to have the odds on his side.”
“He’s patient,” she said thoughtfully.
“But definitely not in a position to challenge me.”
“I wonder if he ever thought he was?” she asked, and made a slurping noise. “Oh, these oysters are delicious! Try them.”
“When he marched on Rome and made himself senior consul, you mean?” Antony laughed, sucked in an oyster. “You’re right—perfect! Oh yes, he thought he had me beaten, our Pretty Boy.”
“I’m not so sure,” Fulvia said slowly. “Octavianus moves in strange ways.”
“I’m definitely not in a position to challenge Antonius,” Octavian was saying to Agrippa at much the same moment in time.
They too were dining, but sitting on hard chairs at either side of a small table holding a plate of crusty bread, some oil in dipping bowls, and a pile of plain broiled sausages.
“When do you plan to challenge him?” Agrippa asked, chin shining with sausage fat. He had spent most of his day playing medicine ball with Statilius Taurus, and was starving. The plain fare suited his palate, though it never ceased to surprise him that a high aristocrat like Caesar also liked plain fare.
“I won’t say boo until after I return to Rome on an equal footing with him as far as the army and the people are concerned. My main obstacle is Antonius’s greed. He’ll try to steal all the victory laurels when we beat Brutus and Cassius. Oh, we will beat them, I’ve no doubt of that! But when the two sides meet, my troops have to contribute as much to our victory as Antonius’s troops—and I have to lead them,” Octavian said, wheezing.
Agrippa stifled a sigh; this awful weather was taking its toll, what with the grit and chaff on every puff of wind. Caesar wasn’t well, wouldn’t be well until after some good rains had laid the dust and prompted some green growth. Still, he knew better than to remark on the wheezing. All he could do was be there for Caesar.
“I heard today that Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus has come out of his retirement,” Agrippa said, pulling the crunchy brown ends off a sausage and saving them to eat last; he had been brought up in a frugal household, treasured treats.
Octavian sat up straighter. “Has he, now? To ally himself with whom, Agrippa?”
“Antonius.”
“A pity.”
“I think so.”
Octavian shrugged, wrinkled his nose. “Well, they’re old campaigning comrades.”
“Calvinus is to command the embarkation at Brundisium
Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus arrived to blockade Brundisium harbor as Antony left Capua with his seven legions, and had been joined by Staius Murcus before Antony reached his destination. With close to a hundred and fifty galleys cruising offshore and the Triumviral fleet accompanying Octavian and his troops down Italy’s west coast, Antony had no choice other than to sit and wait for a chance to break out. What he needed was a good stiff sou’wester, as this wind would give him a chance to outdistance pursuit provided Murcus and Ahenobarbus were where blockading ships usually were, off to the south. But no sou’wester blew.
Aware that Caesar’s heir should emulate his divine father in speed of movement, Octavian hustled his thirteen legions and reached the lower section of the Via Popillia in Bruttium by the middle of June, with Salvidienus’s fleet shadowing him a mile out to sea. Some of Sextus Pompey’s handy triremes appeared, but Salvidienus did surprisingly well in the series of skirmishes that followed between Vibo and Rhegium. For those on land, the march was wearisome; it was three times as long as the Via Appia route to Brundisium, hugging the littoral of the Italian foot all the way to Tarentum.
Then, with Sicily clearly visible across the Straits of Messana, came a curt note from Antony: Ahenobarbus and Murcus had him penned up, he couldn’t get one single legionary or mule across the Adriatic. Therefore Octavian would have to forget trying to contain Sextus Pompey, send the fleet to Brundisium in a tearing hurry.
The only problem in obeying that order was Sextus Pompey, whose major fleet chose to block the southern outlet of the straits not long after Octavian had flagged Salvidienus to break out the oars and sails and make haste for Brundisium. Caught in the midst of one chaos by another bearing down on him, the unlucky Salvidienus was too slow bringing his ships into battle formation, and found the fastest of Sextus Pompey’s galleys in among his own before he could do more than order up the next rank of vessels. So the early phases of the conflict went all Sextus Pompey’s way, but not as decisively as he had hoped; the young Picentine military man was no sloth on the sea either.
“I could do better,” muttered Agrippa under his breath.
“Eh?” asked Octavian, beside himself with anxiety.
“Maybe it’s sitting on shore watching, Caesar, but I can see how Salvidienus should be doing things, and isn’t. For one thing, he has that squadron of Liburnians in the rear, when they ought to be in the front rank—they’re faster and nippier than anything Sextus Pompeius has,” said Agrippa.
“Then next time, the fleet is yours. Oh, what wretched bad luck! Quintus Salvidienus, extricate yourself! We need your fleet in Brundisium, not on the sea bottom!” Octavian cried, arms rigidly by his sides, fists clenched.
He’s willing Salvidienus out of it! thought Agrippa.
Suddenly a wind came up out of the northwest that pushed Salvidienus’s heavier ships through Sextus Pompey’s hordes and allowed his lighter ships to follow in their wake; the Triumviral fleet bore away to the south with two holed triremes making for port in Rhegium, and only minor damage to a few other galleys.
“Statilius,” Octavian barked at Gaius Statilius Taurus, “take a pinnace and catch Salvidienus. Tell him he has to get to Brundisium as quickly as possible, then return to me. The army will follow as best it can. Helenus—where’s Helenus?” This last query was to his favorite freedman, Gaius Julius Helenus.
“Here, Caesar.”
“Take this letter down:
“This is all rather silly, Sextus Pompeius. I am Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius, in command of that army your sea captains must surely have reported to you as heading down the Via Popillia in company of a fleet. I gladly concede you the honors of the maritime engagement, but was wondering if there is any possibility that we could meet for a parley? Just the two of us? Preferably neither at sea nor in a place I would have to reach by sea. I am sending you four hostages with this note, in the hope that you will agree to meet me in one nundinum at Caulonia.”
Gaius Cornelius Gallus, the Brothers Cocceius and Gaius Sosius were chosen to go as hostages; Cornelius Gallus, not a patrician Cornelian but of a family from Ligurian Gaul, was so well known to be one of Octavian’s intimates that even an exile like Sextus Pompey would appreciate his value to Octavian. The note, Gallus and the others boarded a second pinnace; the little craft raced off across the deceptively placid waters wherein lurked the awful monsters Scylla and Charybdis.
The army now had to reach Caulonia, on the sole of the Italian foot, in just eight days—only eighty miles, but who knew what the road would be like? This was not a legionary route, and the chain of the Apennines plunged into the Sicilian Sea through high, rugged countryside. The ox wagons and artillery had gone with the rest to be shipped from Ancona, so only men and mules made the march.
Which turned out to be an easy one. The road was in good condition save for an occasional small landslide, and the army reached Caulonia in three days. Octavian sent it onward under the command of another nicknamed Gallus, Lucius Caninius Gallus. His first choice had been Agrippa, but that worthy refused to leave him attended by, as he put it,
“Servants and fools. Who knows whether this son of Pompeius Magnus is honorable? I’m staying with you. So are Taurus and a cohort of the Legio Martia.”
Sextus Pompey arrived off Caulonia so suspiciously soon after dawn on the eighth day that the reception committee assumed he had moored somewhere in the neighborhood overnight. His lone ship, a sleek bireme, was faster than anything sitting in what passed for a harbor, and he came ashore in a small boat accompanied by a crew of oarsmen who dragged the boat up on the shingle, then went off in search of a good breakfast.
Octavian advanced to meet him with a smile and his right hand extended.
“I see what the gossip means,” said Sextus, shaking it.
“Gossip?” asked Octavian, escorting his guest to the duumvir’s house, Agrippa in their wake.
“It says you’re very young and very pretty.”
“The years will take care of both.”
“True.”
“You’re quite like your father’s statues, but darker.”
“Did you never see him, Caesar?”
Acknowledgment! Octavian, prone to like Sextus anyway, liked him even more. “In the distance, when I was a child, but he didn’t mix with Philippus and the Epicures.”
“No, he didn’t.”
They entered the house, were received by an awed duumvir, and taken to his reception room.
“We’re not very different in age, Caesar,” said Sextus, seating himself. “I’m twenty-five. You are—?”
“Twenty-one in September.”
Helenus waited on their needs, but a vigilant Marcus Agrippa stood just inside the door, sword in scabbard and face set.
“Does Agrippa have to be here?” Sextus asked, breaking fresh bread eagerly.
“No, but he thinks he does,” Octavian said tranquilly. “He’s no gossip. Whatever we say will go no further.”
“Ah, there’s nothing like new bread after four days at sea!” said Sextus, crunching and tearing with gusto. “Don’t like the sea, eh?”
“I hate it,” Octavian said frankly, shuddering.
“Well, some men do hate it, I know. I’m the opposite, never happier than when the water’s busy.”
“A little mulled wine?”
“Yes, but just a little,” Sextus said warily.
“I made sure the poker was white-hot, so it won’t addle your wits, Sextus Pompeius. Myself, I like a warm drink first thing in the morning, and mulled wine is far preferable to my father’s vinegar in hot water.”
And so the conversation went while they ate, pleasant and unprovocative. Then Sextus Pompey clasped his hands between his knees and looked up at Octavian from under his brows.
“Just why did you ask to parley, Caesar?”
“Well, I’m here,
“You make it sound,” said Sextus, grinning, “as if you yourself are not so sure that I’m a Liberator supporter.”
“I keep my options open, Sextus Pompeius, and it’s occurred to me that you probably do the same. Therefore I don’t automatically suppose you a Liberator supporter. My feeling is that you’re a Sextus Pompeius supporter. So I thought that two such open-minded young men as you and I should parley on our own, without any of those elderly, terrifically experienced warriors of the battlefield and the Forum present to remind us of our tender years and our naïveté.” Octavian smiled broadly. “Our provinces are, you might say, much the same. I am supposed to be in charge of the grain supply, whereas, in actual fact, you are.”
“Well put! Go on, I’m agog.”
“The Liberator faction is huge and august,” said Octavian, holding Sextus’s eyes. “So huge and august that even a Sextus Pompeius is liable to be buried beneath a plethora of Junii, Cassii, patrician Claudii and Cornelii, Calpurnii, Aemilii, Domitii—need I go on?”
“No,” said Sextus Pompey between his teeth.
“Admittedly you have a large and competent fleet to offer the Liberators, but little else apart from grain—which, my agents say, is not a commodity in short supply for the Liberators, who stripped inland Thrace and all Anatolia—and have a nice deal in place with King Asander of Cimmeria. Therefore it seems to me that your best course is not to ally yourself with the Liberators. Indeed, to hope that Rome does not end up a Liberator Rome. They don’t need you as badly as I do.”
“You, Caesar. What about Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus?”