The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
“So relax and be comfortable, we have plenty to eat until next year’s harvest, if necessary,” he concluded. “However, long before then, Marcus Antonius and Caesar Octavianus will be dead from lack of food.”
“That,” said Cimber between his teeth, “went down very badly, Brutus! They want a fight! They don’t want to sit comfortably and eat while the enemy starves—they want a fight! They’re soldiers, not Forum frequenters!”
Brutus’s answer was to open his war chest and give each and every soldier a cash donative of five thousand sesterces as thanks for their bravery and loyalty. But the army took it as a bribe, and lost whatever respect they might have felt for Marcus Brutus. He tried to sweeten the gift by promising them a lucrative, short campaign in Greece and Macedonia after the Triumvirs had scattered to eat straw, insects, seeds—think of sacking Spartan Lacedaemon, Macedonian Thessalonica! The two richest cities left untouched.
“The army doesn’t want to sack cities, it wants to fight!” said Quintus Ligarius, furious. “It wants to fight here!”
But no matter who said what to him, Brutus refused to fight.
By the beginning of November, the Triumviral army was in severe trouble. Antony sent foraging parties as far afield as Thessaly and the valley of the river Axius far above Thessalonica, but they came back with nothing. Only a sally into the lands of the Bessi along the river Strymon produced grain and pulses, for Rhascus, smarting because he hadn’t remembered the goat track in the Sapaean Pass, offered to show them where to go. The presence of Rhascus hadn’t improved relations between Antony and Octavian: the Thracian prince refused to deal with Antony, insisted on talking to Caesar. Who handled him with a deference Antony could not have summoned up. Octavian’s legions returned with enough edibles to last another month, but no longer.
“It’s time,” said Antony shortly thereafter, “that you and I conferred, Octavianus.”
“Sit down, then,” said Octavian. “Confer about what?”
“Strategy. You’re not a commander’s bootlace, boy, but you’re definitely a crafty politician, and maybe a crafty politician is who we need. Have you any ideas?”
“A few,” said Octavian, maintaining an expressionless face. “To begin with, I think we should promise our troops a twenty-thousand bonus.”
“You’re joking!” Antony gasped, sitting upright in a hurry. “Even with our losses, that would amount to eighty thousand silver talents, and there isn’t that much money this side of Egypt.”
“That’s absolutely true. Nevertheless, I think we should go ahead and make that promise. Sufficient unto the day, my dear Antonius. Our men aren’t fools, they know that we don’t have the money. However, if we can take Brutus with his camp in one piece and the road to Neapolis closed, we’ll find many thousands of silver talents. Our troops are clever enough to realize that too. An extra incentive to force a battle.”
“I see your point. All right, I agree. Anything else?”
“My agents inform me that there’s a great deal of doubt in Brutus’s mind.”
“Your agents?”
“One does what one’s physical and mental equipment make it possible to do, Antonius. As you constantly reiterate, neither my physical nor my mental equipment makes me a general’s bootlace. However, there’s a strong streak of Ulysses in me, so, like that interestingly devious man, I have spies in our own Ilium. One or two quite high up the command chain. They feed me information.”
Jaw dropped, Antony stared. “Jupiter, you’re deep!”
“Yes, I am,” Octavian agreed blandly. “My agents say that it preys on Brutus’s mind that so many of his troops once belonged to Caesar. He’s not sure of their loyalty. Cassius’s troops also worry him—he thinks they have no faith in him.”
“And how much of Brutus’s state of mind is due to the whispers of your agents?” Antony asked shrewdly.
Caesar’s smile dawned. “A little, for sure. He’s vulnerable, our Brutus. A philosopher and a plutocrat all in one. Neither half believes in war—the philosopher because it’s repulsive and destructive, the plutocrat because it ruins business.”
“What’s that to the point you’re obviously trying to make?”
“That Brutus is vulnerable. He can be pressured into giving battle, I think.” Octavian leaned back with a sigh. “As to how we provoke his men into insisting upon battle, I leave to you.”
Antony got up, looked down at the golden head with a frown. “One more question.”
“Yes?” asked Octavian, looking up with lambent eyes.
“Do you have agents in our army?”
Another of Caesar’s smiles. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Antony snarled, peeling back the tent flap, “that you’re warped, Octavianus! You’re too crooked to lie straight in bed, and that’s something no one could ever say about Caesar. He was straight as an arrow, always. I despise you.”
As November wore on, Brutus’s dilemma grew. No matter which way he turned, every face was set against him, for every man wanted one thing, and one thing only—a battle. To compound his woes, Antony marched his army out every day and lined it up, whereupon those in its front ranks began to howl like hungry curs, yammer like rutting curs, whine like kicked curs. Then they shrieked insults at the Liberator soldiers—they were cowards, spineless weaklings, afraid of a fight. The din penetrated every inch of Brutus’s camp, and all who heard what the Triumviral troops were screaming gritted their teeth, hated it—and hated Brutus for not consenting to battle.
Ten days into November, and Brutus began to waver; not only his fellow assassins, his other legates and his tribunes were at him constantly, but the centurions and rankers had joined the perpetual chorus. Not knowing what else to do, Brutus shut his door and sat inside his house, his head in his hands. The Asian cavalry was leaving in droves, not even bothering to conceal the fact; since before First Philippi, grazing had been a problem and water was available only in the hills, to which every horse had to be led once a day for a drink. Like Antony, Cassius had known that the combat would not involve much cavalry, so he had begun to send them home. Now, after First Philippi, the trickle had become a spate. If battle did come, Brutus wouldn’t be able to field more than five thousand horse, and didn’t understand that even this number was too large. He thought it far too small.
When he did venture out of his house, only because he thought he must occasionally, those whispers and shouts all seemed aimed at pointing out that so many of his troops used to belong to dead Caesar, and that every day they could see the yellow thatch of Caesar’s heir as he walked up and down the front line smiling and joking with his troops. So back Brutus would go to hide, sit with his head in his hands.
Finally, the day after the Ides, Lucius Tillius Cimber barged unannounced into the room, marched across to the startled Brutus and yanked him to his feet.
“Whether you want to or not, Brutus, you’re going to fight!” Cimber yelled, beside himself with rage.
“No, it would be the end of everything! Let them starve,” Brutus whimpered.
“Issue battle orders for tomorrow, Brutus, or I’ll relieve you of the command and issue them myself. And don’t think that I’ve just taken it upon myself to say this—I have the backing of all the Liberators, the other legates, the tribunes, the centurions, and the soldiers,” said Cimber. “Make up your mind, Brutus—do you want to retain the command, or are you going to give it to me?”
“So be it,” said Brutus dully. “Give the battle orders. But remember when it’s over and we’re beaten that I didn’t want this.”
At dawn the Liberator army came out of Brutus’s camp and lined up on their side of the river. An anxious and fretful Brutus had badgered his tribunes and centurions to make sure that the men were never too far from free ingress to the camp, that all had a safe avenue of retreat—both tribunes and centurions looked amazed, proceeded to ignore him. What was he doing, trying to tell the men that the battle was lost before it began?
A sentiment they had plenty of time to voice among themselves when no bugle call sounded battle. From dawn they stood in rank and file, leaning on their shields and pila, glad that it was a cloudy, late autumn day. Noncombatants brought food around at noon and both sides ate at their posts, went back to leaning on their shields and pila. What a farce! Plautus couldn’t have written a more ludicrous one.
“Give battle, Brutus, or take off the general’s cape,” said Cimber at two in the afternoon.
“Another hour, Cimber, just one more hour. Then it will have come on too late to be decisive, because the light will soon be gone. Two-hour battles can’t kill too many, or be decisive,” said Brutus, convinced he had dreamed up another of those inspirations that had even awed Cassius.
Cimber stared, confounded. “What about Pharsalus? You were there, Brutus! Less than one hour was long enough.”
“Yes, but very few died. I’ll sound the bugles in another hour, not a moment before,” said Brutus stubbornly.
So at three the bugles sounded. The Triumviral army gave a cheer and charged; the Liberator army gave a cheer and charged. An infantry battle once again; the cavalry on the fringes of the field did little save cruise around each other.
The two massive collections of foot came together fiercely, with huge strength and vigor. There were no preliminary sallies with pila or arrows, the men lusted too passionately to have at each other, smash bodies and thighs with upthrust short swords. From the start it was hand-to-hand fighting, for both sides had waited too long to clash. The slaughter was immense; neither side gave an inch. When men in the front ranks fell, those behind moved up to take their places perched atop the dead and badly wounded, shields around, hoarse from screaming war cries, sword blades flickering thrust, stab, thrust, stab.
Octavian’s five best legions formed Antony’s right wing, with Agrippa and his Fourth Legion closest to the Via Egnatia. Since it had been Octavian’s troops lost the camps, these five legions had a score to settle with Brutus’s veterans, opposite them on Brutus’s left wing. After almost an hour of a struggle that neither yielded nor gained any ground, Octavian’s five legions began to pile on so much weight that they literally pushed Brutus’s left wing back by sheer brute force.
“Oh!” cried the watching Octavian to Helenus, enraptured. “They look as if they’re turning some massive machine around! Push, Agrippa, push! Turn them!”
Very slowly Brutus’s old Caesareans began to yield ground, the pressure on them increasing until it was so remorseless they were compelled to break ranks. Even so, there was no panic, no flight from the field. Simply that as the rear ranks realized that the front ranks were giving way, they too began to retreat.
An hour after the two armies met, the strain became too much to bear. Suddenly the speed of the retreat on Brutus’s left turned into a stampede, with Octavian’s legions so close behind that they were still in sword contact. Ignoring the rain of stones and darts from the ramparts above them, Agrippa’s Fourth stormed the main gate and its fortifications across the Via Egnatia, and closed Brutus’s camp to his fleeing soldiers. Scattering, they ran for the salt marshes or the gulches behind his hill.
Second Philippi lasted very little longer than Pharsalus, but saw a very high death rate; fully half of the Liberator army perished, or was never heard from again by anyone in the world of Our Sea. Later, it would be said that some survived to go into the service of the King of the Parthians, but not to the fate of the ten thousand from Carrhae who now garrisoned the frontier of Sogdiana against the steppe hordes of the Massagetae. For the son of Labienus, Quintus Labienus, was a trusted minion of King Orodes, and Quintus Labienus invited them to help him coach the Parthian army in Roman fighting techniques.
Brutus and his own party had watched from the summit of his hill, able to see today because the dust stayed confined within the heaving, densely packed bodies. When it was obvious that the battle was lost, the tribunes of his four senior legions came to him and asked him what they should do.
“Save your lives,” said Brutus. “Try to get through to the fleets at Neapolis, or else try to get to Thasos.”
“We should escort you, Marcus Brutus.”
“No, I prefer to go alone. Leave now, please.”
Statyllus, Strato of Epirus and Publius Volumnius were with him; so were his three most cherished freedmen—his secretaries Lucilius and Cleitus and his shield bearer, Dardanus—plus a few others. Perhaps twenty in all, including the slaves.
“It is over,” he said, watching Agrippa’s Fourth assaulting his walls. “We had better hurry. Are we packed, Lucilius?”
“Yes, Marcus Brutus. May I beg a favor?”
“Ask.”
“Give me your armor and scarlet cape. We’re the same size and coloring, I can pass for you. If I ride up to their lines and say I am Marcus Junius Brutus, it will delay pursuit,” said Lucilius.
Brutus thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right, but on one condition: that you surrender to Marcus Antonius. On no account let them take you to Octavianus. Antonius is an untutored oaf, but he has a sense of honor. He won’t harm you when he finds out he’s been deceived. Whereas I think that Octavianus would have you killed on the spot.”
They exchanged garb; Lucilius mounted Brutus’s Public Horse and rode off down the hill toward the front gate, while Brutus and his party rode off down the hill toward the back gate. The light was fading, the camp walls were still being torn down by Agrippa’s men. So no one saw them leave, enter the nearest defile and negotiate it and others until they emerged on the Via Egnatia well to the east of the Neapolis road, which Antony had captured a few days after First Philippi.
With darkness closing in, Brutus chose to leave the road inside the Corpilan Pass, ascend the heavily forested slopes below the gorge escarpment.
“Antonius will surely have cavalry out looking for escapees,” Brutus said in explanation. “If we settle on this ledge for the night, we can see our best course in the morning.”
“If we put someone on lookout, we can have a fire,” Volumnius said, shivering. “It’s too cloudy to see without torches, so we need only douse the fire when our lookout sees approaching torches.”
“The sky is clearing,” said Statyllus, sounding desolate.
They gathered around a briskly blazing fire of dead wood to find that they were too thirsty to eat; no one had remembered to carry water.
“The Harpessus has to be nearby,” said Rhascupolis, getting up.
“I’ll take two spare horses and bring water back, if I can empty the grain out of these jars and store it in sacks.”
Brutus hardly heard, so abstracted that the activity went on around him as if seen through a thick mist and heard through ears stuffed with wadding.
This is the end of my road, the end of my time on this awful, tormented globe. I was never cut out to be a warrior, it isn’t in my blood. I do not even know how the military mind works. If I did, I might have understood Cassius better. He was so dedicated and aggressive. That’s why Mama always preferred him to me. For she is the most aggressive person I have ever known. Prouder than the towers of Ilium, stronger than Hercules, harder than adamas. She’s doomed to outlive all of us—Cato, Caesar, Silanus, Porcia, Cassius, and me. She will outlive all save perhaps that serpent Octavianus. It was he who forced Antonius to persecute the Liberators. Had it not been for Octavianus, we would all be living in
Octavianus owns the guile of a man four times his age. Caesar’s heir! The roll of Fortuna’s dice we none of us took into consideration. Caesar, who started it all when he seduced Mama—shamed me—tore my Julia away to marry her to an old man. Caesar the self-server. Shuddering, he thought of a line from the Medea of Euripides, cried it aloud:
“‘Almighty Zeus, remember who is the cause of so much pain!’”
“What was that?” asked Volumnius, trying to store everything up until he could next make an entry in his diary.
Brutus didn’t answer, so Volumnius had to wrestle with the quotation until Strato of Epirus enlightened him. But Volumnius assumed Brutus referred to Antonius, didn’t even think of Caesar.
Rhascupolis came back with the water; everyone save Brutus drank greedily, parched. After that they ate.
Somewhat later a noise in the distance made them stamp out the fire; they sat rigid while Volumnius and Dardanus went off to investigate. A false alarm, said the pair on their return.
Suddenly Statyllus leaped to his feet, clapping his hands around himself to generate a little warmth. “I can’t stand it!” he cried. “I’m going back to Philippi to see what’s happening. If I find the hill inside the camp deserted, I’ll light the big beacon fire. From this height, you should see it well—after all, it was designed to warn the guards in both passes if the Triumvirs outflanked Neapolis. What is it, five miles? You should see it in about an hour if I hurry. Then you’ll know whether Antonius’s men are doing more sleeping than hunting.”
Off he went, while those left behind huddled together to ward off the cold. Only Brutus remained aloof, sunk in thought.
This is the end of my road, and it was all for nothing. I was so sure that if Caesar died, the Republic would return. But it didn’t. All his death accomplished was the unleashing of worse enemies. My heart’s strings are the binding of the Republic, it is fitting that I die.