Leaving Maecenas to govern Rome under the indifferent eye of the consuls, Octavian sailed from Ancona to Tergeste, and thence rode overland to join Agrippa’s legions as their nominal commander-in-chief. Illyricum came as a shock; used though he was to thick forests, these were, he sensed, more akin to the leafy wastelands of the German forests than anything Italia or other civilized places could produce. Wet, gloomy, dense beyond imagination, the gigantic trees stretched on forever, the rugged ground beneath their canopy so stripped of light that only ferns and fungi grew there. The people, Iapudes now, hunted deer, bear, wolf, aurochs, and wildcat, some for food, some to safeguard their pathetic villages. Only in a few clearings did they break the soil to grow millet and spelt, the source of pallid bread. The women kept a few chickens, but the diet was monotonous and not particularly nourishing. Trade, which flowed through the sole emporium, Nauportus, consisted in bearskins, fur, and gold panned from rivers like the Corcoras and the Colapis.
He found Agrippa at Avendo, which had surrendered at sight of the legions and so much formidable siege equipment.
Avendo was to be their last peaceful submission; as the legions began to cross the Capella ranges, the forests proved to contain an undergrowth of shrubs and bushes too dense to penetrate without physically hacking a path.
“No wonder,” said Octavian to Agrippa, “that countries much farther away from Italia than Illyricum have been pacified while Illyricum remains unconquered. I think even my divine father would have blanched at this terrible place.” He shuddered. “We are also marching—if I may use that word ironically—at some risk of attack. The undergrowth makes it impossible to recognize the site of an ambush ahead of us.”
“True,” said Agrippa, waiting to see what Caesar suggested.
“Would it help if we sent some cohorts up on to the ridges on either side of our progress? They might have a chance of spotting raiders crossing a clearing.”
“Good tactics, Caesar,” Agrippa said, pleased.
Octavian grinned. “Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?”
“I never underestimate you, Caesar. Too full of surprises.”
The advance cohorts on the ridges foiled several ambushes; Terpo fell, Metulum lay ahead. This was the biggest settlement in the area, with a well-fortified wooden stronghold atop a two-hundred-foot crag. Its gates were shut, its inhabitants defiant.
“Think you can take it?” Agrippa asked Octavian.
“I don’t know, whereas I do know you can.”
“No, because I won’t be here. Taurus is in a dilemma—is he to keep going east, or turn north toward Pannonia?”
“As Rome needs both east and north pacified, Agrippa, you’d better go and make up his mind for him. But I will miss you!”
Octavian surveyed Metulum carefully, and decided that his best line of attack was to build a mound from the valley floor all the way up to the log walls two hundred feet above. The legionaries dug away cheerfully, piled up the rock-larded earth to the specified height. But the Metulans, who had captured siege engines and apparatus from Aulus Gabinius years before, promptly used their excellent Roman spades and shovels to undermine the mound; riddled with tunnels, it fell apart. Octavian re-erected it, but not flat against Metulum’s cliffs. Now it reared free, shored up on every side by stout planks. A second mound was raised alongside it. Able to turn their hands to anything, legionary artificers began constructing a wooden framework between the fortress cliffs and the two Roman mounds; when the scaffolding reached the height of the walls, it would carry two planked bridges from each mound to those walls. Each of the four gangways was wide enough to allow eight soldiers abreast, which would lend the assault great and immediate manpower.
Agrippa came back just in time to witness the attack upon Metulum’s walls, and toured the siegeworks thoughtfully.
“Avaricum on a tiny scale, and flimsier by far,” he said.
Octavian looked devastated. “I did it wrong? It isn’t what is needed? Oh, Marcus, let us not waste lives! If it isn’t right, tear it down, please! You’ll think of a better way.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Agrippa soothed. “Avaricum was a city with murus Gallicus walls, and Divus Julius’s log platform took a month to build, even for him. This will suffice for Metulum.”
For Octavian, much depended upon this Illyrian campaign, even above and beyond its political importance. Eight years had passed since Philippi, yet despite the campaign against Sextus Pompey, people still sneered that he was a coward, too afraid to face enemy troops. The asthma had finally disappeared, and he thought its recurrence unlikely in surroundings like these, wet and wooded. He believed that marriage to Livia Drusilla had cured him, for he remembered that his divine father’s Egyptian physician, Hapd’efan’e, had said a happy domestic life was the best recipe for a cure.
Here in Illyricum he had to forge a new reputation—as a brave soldier. Not as a general, but as one who fought in the front lines with sword and shield, the same way his divine father had on many occasions. Somewhere he had to find an opportunity to be a front-line soldier, but so far he hadn’t succeeded. The deed had to be spontaneous and dramatic, visible to those who fought around him—something truly remarkable, worthy of being recounted from legion to legion. If that happened, he would be free of the canard of Philippi. Display battle scars for all to see.
His chance came when the attack on Metulum got under way at dawn on the day following Agrippa’s return. Desperate to be rid of the Roman presence, the Metulans, undetected, had mined a way out of their citadel and emerged at the base of the scaffolding in the middle of the night. They sawed through the main support beams, but not completely; it was the weight of the legionaries, massing on the gangways, that caused the collapse.
Three of the four bridges broke and fell, soldiers plummeting to the valley floor in dozens. By happy chance, Octavian was close to the remaining bridge. When his troops faltered and began to retreat, he seized a shield, drew his sword, and ran to their front rank, halfway across.
“Come on, boys!” he shouted. “Caesar’s here, you can do it!”
The sight of him worked wonders; cheering, shrieking their war cry to Mars Invictus, the troops rallied and, with Octavian at their head, pounded along the gangway. They almost made it. Right under the wall the bridge gave way with a crackling roar; Octavian and the soldiers directly behind him fell into the valley.
I cannot die! a part of Octavian’s mind kept repeating, but it was a cool mind still. As he tumbled off the structure he grabbed for the end of a shattered strut, held it for long enough to spot another below him, and so went down the two hundred feet in stages. His arm felt wrenched out of its socket, his hands and forearms were porcupined with splinters, and somewhere his right knee took a frightful blow, but when he wound up on the mossy ground buried under timber, he was still very much alive.
Frantic men tore the heap apart, screaming to their horrified companions that Caesar was injured but not dead. As they dragged him out, handling the right leg as gently as they could, Agrippa arrived, white-faced.
Octavian gazed up at the ring of faces around him, consumed with pain, determined not to be a sissy and show it.
“What’s this?” he demanded. “What are you doing here, Agrippa? Build more bridges and take this wretched little fortress!”
No stranger to Octavian’s nightmares about cowardice, Agrippa grinned. “Typical!” he roared in a stentorian voice. “Caesar’s badly wounded, but our orders are to take Metulum! Come on, boys, let’s start again!”
The battle was over as far as Octavian was concerned; he was put on a stretcher and carried to the surgeon’s tent to find it jammed with casualties, so many that they spilled out of it to lie everywhere around it. Some were appallingly still, others groaned, howled, cried out. When his stretcher bearers would have pushed all the wounded aside to get Caesar immediate attention, Octavian stopped them.
“No!” he gasped. “Put me down in turn! I will wait until the medics c
onsider my wound the next to be treated.”
And from that they could not budge him.
Someone bound the knee tightly to stanch the bleeding, then he lay and took his turn, the soldiers trying to touch him for good luck, those with the strength crawling to take his hand.
Which didn’t mean that when his turn came, he was palmed off with an assistant surgeon. The chief surgeon, Publius Cornelius, attended to his knee in person, while an underling began to pluck the splinters from his hands and forearms.
When the packing bandage was removed, Cornelius grunted. “A bad wound, Caesar,” he said, probing delicately. “You’ve broken the kneecap, which has splintered in places and come through the skin. Luckily none of the main blood tubes has been torn, but there is a lot of slow bleeding. I’m going to have to pick out the fragments—a painful business.”
“Pick away, Cornelius,” Octavian said with a grin, aware that every other occupant of the huge tent was watching, listening. “If I yell, sit on me.”
From where he got the fortitude to endure the next hour, he didn’t know; as Cornelius worked on the knee he kept himself occupied in talking to the other wounded, joking with them, making nothing of his own plight. In fact, were it not for the agony, the entire experience was fascinating. How many commanders ever come into the surgeon’s tent to see for themselves what war can do? he wondered. What I have seen today is yet one more reason why, when I am undisputed First Man in Rome, I will pile Pelion on top of Ossa to avoid war for the sake of war, war in order to secure a triumph after a governorship is over. My legions will garrison, not invade. They will only fight when there is no other alternative. These men are brave beyond imagining, and do not deserve to suffer needlessly. My plan to take Metulum was a poor one, I did not count upon the enemy’s having sufficient intelligence to do what they did. And that makes me a fool. But a lucky fool. Because I have been badly wounded as a consequence of my bungle, the soldiers will not hold my bungle against me.
“You’ll have to call it a day and return to Rome,” Agrippa said after Metulum capitulated.
The gangways had been rebuilt upon a stouter framework and guards posted to make sure no Metulan miners repeated their work; the very fact that Caesar had been severely wounded spurred the men to get inside Metulum. Which burned to the ground after some of its inhabitants panicked. No spoils, no captives to be sold into slavery.
“I fear you’re right,” Octavian managed; the pain was worse than immediately after his injury. He plucked at his blankets, eyes sunk in their orbits. “You’ll have to carry on without me, Agrippa.” He laughed wryly. “No impediment to success, I know! In fact, you’ll do better.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Caesar, please.” Agrippa frowned. “Cornelius tells me that the knee looks inflamed, and asked me to persuade you to take some syrup of poppies to ease your pain.”
“When I am out of the district, perhaps, but until then, I cannot. Syrup of poppies isn’t available for a humble legionary, and some of them are in more agony than I am.” Octavian grimaced, shifted on his camp bed. “If I am to scotch Philippi, I must keep up appearances.”
“As long as that means you survive, Caesar.”
“Oh, I will survive!”
It took five nundinae to transport a litter-bound Octavian to Tergeste, and another three to get him to Rome via Ancona. An infection set in that saw him traverse the Apennines in delirium, but the assistant surgeon who had traveled with him lanced the abscess that had formed, and by the time he was carried into his own house, he was feeling better.
Livia Drusilla covered him in tears and kisses, then told him that she would sleep elsewhere until he was fully out of danger.
“No,” he said strongly, “no! All that has sustained me is the thought of lying next to you in our own bed.”
As delighted as she was worried, Livia Drusilla consented to share his bed provided that a curved cane roof was placed over the injured knee.
“Caecilius Antiphanes will know how to cure it,” she said.
“I shit on Caecilius Antiphanes!” Octavian growled, looking fierce. “If I have learned nothing else on this campaign, my dear, I have learned that our army surgeons are infinitely more capable than every Greek physician in Rome. Publius Cornelius donated me the services of Gaius Licinius, and Gaius Licinius will continue to doctor me, is that clear?”
“Yes, Caesar.”
Whether because of Gaius Licinius’s ministrations or because Octavian, at twenty-nine, was far healthier than he had been at twenty, once installed in his own bed with Livia Drusilla beside him, he mended rapidly. When first he ventured out and down to the Forum Romanum, he hobbled between two sticks, but two nundinae later he was getting along deedily on one stick, quickly discarded.
People cheered him; no one, even the staunchest of Antony’s senators, spoke of Philippi again. The knee (a handy place to bear a nasty wound, he discovered) could be bared for inspection, tutted and exclaimed over now that bandages were unnecessary. Even the scars on his hands and forearms were impressive, as some of the splinters had been huge. His heroism was manifest.
Hard on the heels of his recovery came news that there had been trouble at Siscia, which Agrippa had reached and taken. He had left Fufius Geminus in command of a garrison, but the Iapudes attacked in force. Octavian and Agrippa set out to relieve it, only to find that Fufius Geminus had managed to contain the uprising without them.
Thus on New Year’s Day the ceremonies could go ahead as planned; Octavian was to be senior consul, and Agrippa, though a consular, took on the duties of curule aedile.
In some ways this was to be the year of Agrippa’s greatest glory, for he commenced a massive overhaul of Rome’s water supply and sewerage. The Aqua Marcia’s reconstruction was finished and the Aqua Julia brought on line to augment water to the Quirinal and Viminal, until now largely reliant upon springs. Wonderful, yes, but insignificant compared to what Agrippa undertook in Rome’s mighty sewers. Three underground streams had made this system of arched tunnels feasible; there were three outlets, one just below the Trigarium of the Tiber, at which point the river was clean and pure for swimming, one at the Port of Rome, and one, the most mammoth, where the Cloaca Maxima flowed out just to one side of the Wooden Bridge. Here the aperture (it had once been the outflow of the river Spinon) was big enough to permit entry into the Cloaca Maxima in a rowboat. All Rome marveled at the journeys Agrippa took in his rowboat, mapping the system, taking note of whereabouts the walls needed shoring up or repairing. There would be, promised Agrippa, no more backing up of the sewers when Father Tiber flooded. What was more, said that amazing man, he did not intend to relinquish supervision of sewers and water supply after he stepped down from office; as long as he lived, Marcus Agrippa would be hunched like a black dog outside the premises of the water companies and the drainage companies, which for far too long had tyrannized over Rome. Only Octavian managed to be half as popular among the people. Having cowed the water and sewerage companies, Agrippa then banished all magicians, prophets, soothsayers, and medical quacks from Rome. He dusted off the sets of standard weights and measures and compelled all vendors of everything to abide by them, then went to work upon the building contractors. For a while he tried to keep the height of all insulae apartments to a hundred feet, but this, as he soon learned, was a task beyond even Marcus Agrippa. What he could do—and did—was to make sure that the adjutages leading off water pipes were of the proper size; no more lavish water for smart apartments on the Palatine and Carinae!
“What staggers me,” said Livia Drusilla to her husband, “is how Agrippa manages all of this, yet can still campaign in Illyricum! Until this year, I had thought you were Rome’s most indefatigable worker, but much and all as I love you, Caesar, I have to say that Agrippa does more.”
Octavian hugged her, kissed her brow. “I take no offense, meum mel, because I know why that is. Did Agrippa only have a wife as dear as you at home, he wouldn’t need to work so hard. As it is, he fin
ds any excuse to avoid spending time with Attica.”
“You’re right,” she said, looking sad. “What can we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Divorce is the only answer.”
“He has to decide that for himself.”
Then Livia Drusilla’s world was thrown upside-down in a way neither she nor Octavian had expected. Tiberius Claudius Nero, a mere fifty years old, died so suddenly that it was left to his steward to discover the body, still hunched over his desk. The will, which Octavian opened, left everything he had to his elder son, Tiberius, but neglected to say what he wanted done with his boys. Young Tiberius was eight years old; his brother, Drusus, born after his mother married Octavian, was just turned five.
“I think, my dear, that we have to take them,” Octavian said to a shocked Livia Drusilla.
“Caesar, no!” she gasped. “They have been reared to hate you! Nor do they like me, as far as I can gather—I never see them! Oh, no, please don’t do this to me! Don’t do it to yourself!”
Well, he had never had any illusions about Livia Drusilla; despite her protestations to the contrary, she was not maternal. Her children might not have existed, she thought of them so little, and when someone asked her how often she visited, she trotted out Nero’s ban—she wasn’t wanted. There were times when he wondered how hard she tried to fall pregnant by him, but her barren state wasn’t a grief to him. And how lucky he was! The gods had given him Livia Drusilla’s sons. If little Julia did not have sons, he would still have heirs to his name.
“It will be done,” he said in the voice that told his wife he would not budge. “The poor boys have no one save—oh, I daresay cousins in a fairly remote degree. Neither the Claudii Nerones nor the Livii Drusi are lucky families. You are the mother of these children. People will expect us to take them.”