The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
Aghast, Cassius raced to cut Antony off by trying to extend his fortifications all the way to the sea; he used his entire army, and drove them ruthlessly. Nothing else entered his mind, even the possibility that this was the start of something far bigger than one army trying to outflank the other. Had he only stopped to think, he might have realized what was really in the wind, but he didn’t. So he threw battle preparedness away among his own troops, and completely forgot all about Brutus and his troops, to whom he sent no word, let alone orders. Not having heard a word from Cassius, Brutus assumed as the racket built that he was to sit pat and do nothing.
At noon Antony attacked on two fronts, using most of the combined army; only Octavian’s two most inexperienced legions were held in reserve inside his small camp. Antony lined his men up facing east at Cassius’s camp, then swung half of his line south to charge Cassius’s men as they worked desperately in the swamps, while the other half charged at the main gate across the road, but on Cassius’s side of it. Those at the main gate front had ladders and grapples, and fell to with great enthusiasm, delighted that the battle had finally come on.
The truth was that even as Antony attacked, Cassius was still convinced that Antony didn’t want a battle. Though he and Antony were much the same age, they had not mixed in the same circles as children, or youths, or men. Antony the bully-boy demagogue riddled with vices, Cassius the martial scion of an equally old noble plebeian family doing everything the correct way: when they met at Philippi, neither man knew how the other’s mind worked. So Cassius failed to take Antony’s recklessness into account, he assumed that his opponent would act as he would himself. Now, with battle thrust upon him, it was too late to organize his resistance or send word to Brutus.
Antony’s troops ran at Cassius’s marsh wall under a hail of missiles and routed Cassius’s front line, men drawn up outside the wall on dry ground. As soon as the front line fell, the Triumviral soldiers stormed Cassius’s outer defenses and cut off those still toiling in the marshes. Good legionaries that they were, they had their arms and armor with them; they scrambled for battle and rushed up to join the fight, but Antony dealt with them by wheeling a few cohorts and driving them, leaderless, back into the swamps. There his shock troops manning the redoubts took over and rounded most of them up like sheep. Some managed to evade capture, sneaked around behind Cassius’s hill, and sought shelter in Brutus’s camp.
With the marsh attack an assured success, Antony turned his attention to the assault on Cassius’s camp alongside the main gate, where his men had part of the wall down, were up and over to tackle Cassius’s inner line of fortifications.
Thousands of soldiers stood along the Via Egnatia wall of Brutus’s camp in full war gear, ears straining for the sound of a bugle or the bellowing of a legate. In vain. No one gave them the order to go to Cassius’s rescue. So at two in the afternoon, the watchers tooks matters into their own hands. Without orders, they unsheathed their swords, dropped from Brutus’s ramparts and charged Antony’s men as they tore down Cassius’s inner defenses. They did well until Antony brought up some of his reserves and threw them into a line between his own men and Brutus’s men, at a disadvantage because they were attacking uphill.
These men of Brutus’s were the hoary old veteran Caesareans; the moment they saw their cause was hopeless, they gave up that fight and embarked upon another. There stood Octavian’s small camp, so they turned and charged it, literally romped into it. It held those two reserve legions, the bulk of the baggage train and a few cavalrymen. No match for the attackers. Brutus’s hoary old Caesarean veteranstook the camp, killed those defenders who stood up to them, and proceeded into the main camp, where there were no defenders at all. Having thoroughly looted the Triumviral camps, at six o’clock they turned and went home in the darkness to Brutus’s hill.
At the start of the conflict a huge pall of dust had arisen, so dry was the ground outside the marshlands; never was a battle so befogged as First Philippi. For which fact Octavian could give thanks, for it spared him the ignominy of being captured; feeling the asthma worsening, with Helenus’s assistance he had gotten himself through the small gate and made his way to the marshes, where he could face the sea and breathe.
But for Cassius the opaque cloud meant total loss of contact with what was going on now that the swamp battle had gone all Antony’s way. Even atop the hill inside his camp, he could see nothing. Brutus’s camp, such a short distance away, was blotted from sight, utterly invisible. What he did know was that the enemy was penetrating his defenses along the Via Egnatia, and that his camp was inevitably doomed. Was Brutus under the same ferocious assault? Was Brutus’s camp doomed too? He had to presume so, but he couldn’t see.
“I’m going to try to find a vantage spot,” he said to Cimber and Quinctilius Varus, with him. “Get yourselves away, I think we’re defeated. I think—but I don’t know! Titinius, will you come with me? We might be able to see from Philippi itself.”
So at half after four in the afternoon, Cassius and Lucius Titinius mounted a pair of horses and rode out the back gate, around the rear of Brutus’s hill, and came to the road that led up to Philippi’s mesa. An hour later, with dusk closing in, they reached the heights above the dust cloud and looked down. To see that the light below had died and the pall lay like a higher level, flat, featureless plain.
“Brutus must be done for as well,” said Cassius to Titinius, his voice dull. “We’ve come so far, and all for nothing.”
“We still don’t really know,” Titinius comforted.
Then a group of horsemen emerged from the brown fog, coming up the hill toward them at a gallop.
“Triumviral cavalry,” said Cassius, peering.
“They could as easily be ours—let me intercept them and find out,” said Titinius.
“No, they look like Germans to me. Don’t go, please!”
“Cassius, we have German troopers too! I’m going.”
Kicking his horse in the ribs, Titinius turned and rode down to meet the newcomers. Cassius, watching, saw them surround his friend, take hold of him—the noise of cries drifted up to him.
“He’s taken,” he said to Pindarus, his freedman who bore his shield, and dismounted, struggling to unbuckle his cuirass. “As a free man, Pindarus, you owe me nothing except my death.” His dagger came free of its sheath, the same knife he had twisted so cruely in Caesar’s face—odd, all he could think of at this moment was how much he had hated Caesar at that moment. He held the dagger out to Pindarus. “Strike well,” he said, baring his left side for the blow.
Pindarus struck well. Cassius pitched forward to lie in the road; his freedman stared down, weeping, then scrambled on to his horse and spurred it away toward the town above.
But the German cavalry troopers belonged to the Liberators, and had come to tell Cassius that Brutus’s men had stormed the Triumviral camp, won a victory. First Philippi was a draw. With Titinius in their midst, they came up the slope to find Cassius alone and dead, his horse nosing at his face. Tumbling from the saddle, Titinius ran to him, held him close and wept.
“Cassius, Cassius, it was good news! Why didn’t you wait?”
There seemed no point in continuing to live if Cassius was dead. Titinius pulled his sword and fell on it.
Brutus had spent the whole of that frightful afternoon on top of his hill, trying vainly to see the field. He had no idea what was happening, had no idea that several of his legions had taken matters into their own hands and won a victory, had no idea what Cassius expected him to do. Nothing, was what he presumed, and
“Nothing, I presume” was what he told his legates, friends, all those who came badgering him to do something, do anything!
It was the disheveled and breathless Cimber who told him of his victory, the spoils his legions had dragged across the Ganga River whooping in jubilation.
“But—but Cassius didn’t—didn’t order that!” said Brutus with a stammer, eyes dismayed.
“They did
“Where’s Cassius? The others?”
“Cassius and Titinius rode for Philippi town to see if they could discern what’s happening in this fog. Quinctilius Varus thought all was lost, and fell on his sword. About the rest, I don’t know. Oh, was there ever such a mess?”
Darkness fell, and slowly, very slowly, the dust cloud began to settle. No one on either side would be able to assess the results of this day until the morrow, so those Liberators who had survived it gathered to eat in Brutus’s wooden house, bathed and changed into warm tunics.
“Who died today?” Brutus asked before the meal was served.
“Young Lucullus,” said Quintus Ligarius, assassin.
“Lentulus Spinther, fighting in the marshes,” said Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, assassin.
“And Quinctilius Varus,” Cimber, assassin, added.
Brutus wept, especially for the unflappable and innovative Spinther, son of a more torpid, less worthy man.
Came the sound of a commotion; young Cato burst into the room, eyes wild. “Marcus Brutus!” he cried. “Here! Out here!”
His tone brought the dozen men present to their feet, then to the door. On the ground just outside, the bodies of Gaius Cassius Longinus and Lucius Titinius lay on a rough litter. A thin scream erupted from Brutus, who fell to his knees and began to rock, his hands covering his face.
“How?” asked Cimber, taking command.
“Some German cavalry brought them in,” young Marcus Cato said, standing stiffly, pose martial; his father would not have known him. “It seems Cassius thought they were Antonius’s troopers come to take him prisoner—he and Titinius were on the road at Philippi. Titinius went to intercept them and found out that they were ours, but Cassius killed himself while Titinius was away. He was dead when they reached him. Titinius fell on his sword.”
“And where,” roared Mark Antony, standing amid the ruins of his camp, “were you while all this was going on?”
Leaning on Helenus—he dared not look at the silent Agrippa, whose hand was on his sword—Octavian stared into the small, angry eyes without flinching. “In the marshes trying to breathe.”
“While those cunni stole our war chest!”
“I’m quite sure,” Octavian wheezed, lowering his long fair lashes, “that you’ll get it back, Marcus Antonius.”
“You’re right, I will, you useless, pathetic ninny! You mama’s boy, you waste of a good command! Here was I thinking I’d won, and all the time some renegades from Brutus’s camp were plundering my camp! My camp! And several thousand men dead into the bargain! What’s the point in killing eight thousand of Cassius’s men when I lose men inside my own camp? You couldn’t organize a bun fight!”
“I never claimed I could organize a bun fight,” Octavian said calmly. “You made the dispositions for today, I didn’t. You hardly bothered to tell me you were attacking, and you certainly didn’t invite me to your council.”
“Why don’t you give up and go home, Octavianus?”
“Because I am co-commander of this war, Antonius, no matter how you feel about that fact. I’ve contributed the same number of men—they were my infantry died today, not yours!—and more of the money than you have, for all your bellowing and your blustering. In future, I suggest that you include me in your war councils and make better provision for safeguarding our camp.”
Fists clenched, Antony hawked and spat on the ground at Octavian’s feet, then stormed away.
“Let me kill him, please,” Agrippa pleaded. “I could take him, Caesar, I know I could! He’s getting old, and he drinks too much. Let me kill him! It can be fair, I’ll fight a duel!”
“No, not today,” said Octavian, turning to walk back to his battered tent. Noncombatants were digging pits by torchlight, as there were many horses to bury. A dead horse meant a cavalryman who couldn’t fight, as Brutus’s soldiers well knew. “You were in the thick of things, Agrippa—Taurus told me. What you need is sleep, not a duel with a vulgar gladiator like Antonius. Taurus told me that you won nine gold phalerae for being the first over Cassius’s wall. It should have been a corona vallaris, but Taurus says Antonius quibbled because there were two walls, and you weren’t first over both of them. Oh, that makes me so proud! When we fight Brutus, you’ll be commanding the Fourth Legion.”
Though he swelled with happiness for the praise, Agrippa was more worried about Caesar than concerned with himself. After that undeserved dressing-down from a boar like Antonius, he thought, Caesar should be black in the face and dying. Instead, the roaring out seemed to act like a magical medicine, improved his condition. How controlled he is. Never turned a hair. He has his own sort of bravery. Nor will Antonius get anywhere if he tries to undermine Caesar’s reputation among the legions by mocking him for cowardice today. They know Caesar is ill, and they will think that his illness today helped them win a great victory. For it is a great victory. The troops we lost were our worst. The troops the Liberators lost were Cassius’s best. No, the legions won’t believe Caesar a coward. It’s inside Rome among Antonius’s cronies and the senatorial couch generals that men will believe Antonius’s lying stories. There, he’ll forget to mention illness.
Brutus’s camp was full to overflowing; perhaps twenty-five thousand of Cassius’s soldiers had made it to haven inside. Some of them were wounded, most were merely exhausted from laboring in the marshes and then trying to fight. Brutus had extra rations broken out of Stores, made the noncombatant bakers work as hard as the soldiers had in the swamps, laid on fresh bread and lentil soup laced with plenty of bacon. It was so cold, and firewood was hard to come by because trees felled from the hills behind were too green to burn yet. Hot soup and bread-and-oil would put some warmth into them.
When he thought of how the troops were going to react to the death of Cassius, Brutus panicked. He bundled all the noble bodies into a cart and secretly sent them to Neapolis in the charge of young Cato, whom he instructed to cremate them there and send the ashes home before returning. How terrible, how unreal to see Cassius’s face leached of life! It had been more alive than any other face he had ever set eyes on. They had been friends since school days, they became brothers-in-law, their lives inextricably intertwined even before killing Caesar had fused them together for better or worse. Now he was alone. Cassius’s ashes would go home to Tertulla, who had so wanted children, but never managed to carry them. It seemed a fate common to Julian women; in that, she had taken after Caesar. Too late for children now. Too late for her, too late for Marcus Brutus as well. Porcia is dead, Mama alive. Porcia is dead, Mama alive. Porcia is dead, Mama alive.
Then after Cassius’s body had gone, a peculiar strength flowed into Brutus; the enterprise had entirely passed to him, he was the one Liberator left who mattered to the history books. So he wrapped a cloak around his thin, stooped frame and set out to do what he could to comfort Cassius’s men. They felt their defeat bitterly, he discovered as he went from one group to another to talk to them, calm them down, soothe them. No, no, it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t lack valor or determination, Antonius the unprincipled sneaked up on you, didn’t behave like a man of honor. Of course they wanted to know how Cassius was, why it wasn’t he visiting them. Convinced that news of his death would utterly demoralize them, Brutus lied: Cassius was wounded, it would be some days before he was back on his feet. Which seemed to work.
As dawn neared, he summoned all his own legates, tribunes and senior centurions to a conference in the assembly place.
“Marcus Cicero,” he said to Cicero’s son, “it is your job to confer with my centurions and attach Cassius’s soldiers to my legions, even if they go to over-strength. But find out if any of his legions survived intact enough to retain their identities.”
Young Cicero nodded eagerly; the most painful aspect of being the great Cicero’s son was that he ought by rights to have been Quintus Cicero’s son, and young Quin
But having comforted Cassius’s men, the peculiar strength drained out of Brutus to be replaced by the old despondency.
“It will be some days before we can offer battle,” said Cimber.
“Offer battle?” Brutus asked blankly. “Oh no, Lucius Cimber, we won’t be offering battle.”
“But we must!” cried Lucius Bibulus the noble blockhead.
The tribunes and centurions were exchanging glances, looking sour; everyone, it was clear, wanted a battle.
“We sit here where we are,” said Brutus, drawing himself up with as much dignity as he could muster. “We do not—I repeat, we do not!—offer battle.”
Dawn saw Antony lined up for battle, however. Disgusted, Cimber summoned the Liberator army to do the same. There was actually an attempt at an engagement, broken off when Antony withdrew; his men were tired, his camps in dire need of much attention. All he had intended to do was to show Brutus that he meant business, he was not going to go away.
The day after that, Brutus called a general assembly of all his infantry and addressed them in a short speech that left them feeling winded, wronged. For, said Brutus, he had no intention of giving battle at any time in the future. It wasn’t necessary, and his first priority was to protect their precious lives. Marcus Antonius had bitten off more than he could chew because all he had to chew was air; there were no crops or animals in Greece, Macedonia and western Thrace, so he was going to starve. The Liberator fleets controlled the seas, Antonius and Octavianus could bring supplies from nowhere!