Octavian frowned. “Alexandria? What were you doing there?”
“Trying to prise my entitled percentage of the Armenian spoils out of Antonius and that monstrous sow, Cleopatra.” He shrugged. “I didn’t succeed. Nor will anyone else.”
“The last I heard,” said Octavian, settling into his chair, “Antonius was engaged in touring southern Syria—what, that is, he didn’t sign over to Cleopatra.”
“A blind,” Gallus said, scowling. “I’ll bet no one in Rome knows yet that Antonius took every last sestertius of the Armenian spoils to Alexandria. Where he held a triumphal parade for the delectation of the citizens of Alexandria—and their queen, high on a golden dais at the junction of Royal and Canopic Avenues.” He drew a breath, drank deeply. “After he triumphed, he dedicated everything to Serapis—his own share, his legates’ shares, the legions’ shares, and the Treasury’s. Whereupon Cleopatra refused to pay any army shares, though Antonius managed to convince her that the troops had to be paid, and quickly. Men like me were so lowly that we weren’t even invited to the public spectacles.”
“Ye gods!” Octavian said feebly, shocked to his marrow. “He had the temerity to give away what isn’t his to give away?”
“Oh, yes. Eventually I’m sure the entire army will be paid, but the Treasury won’t be. I bore Alexandria after the triumph, but when Antonius held what Dellius calls the Donations, I felt such a hankering for Rome I had to come, still uncompensated.”
“Donations?”
“Oh, a wonderful ceremony in the new gymnasium! Acting on his authority as Rome’s representative, Antonius publicly proclaimed Ptolemy Caesar the King of Kings and ruler of the world! Cleopatra was named Queen of Kings, and her three children by Antonius got most of Africa, the Parthian Kingdom, Anatolia, Thrace, Greece, Macedonia, and all the islands at the eastern end of Our Sea. Amazing, isn’t it?”
Octavian sat with jaw dropped, eyes wide. “Incredible!”
“Perhaps, but real for all that. It’s fact, Caesar, fact!”
“Did Antonius offer his legates any explanation?”
“A curious one, yes. What Dellius knows is beyond me—he enjoys a special position. The rest of us—all junior legates—were told that he had vowed the spoils to Cleopatra, that his honor was involved.”
“And the honor of Rome?”
“Was nowhere to be found.”
During the course of the next hour Octavian got the full tale out of Gallus, in the meticulous detail of one who saw his world as a poet does. The level of the wine flagon went down, but Octavian grudged neither that nor the hefty sum he would pay Gallus for getting this information to him ahead of everyone else in Rome. A fabulous trove! The winter this year had been early and very long; little wonder that so much time had elapsed. The triumph and the Donations had happened in December, and it was now April. However, Gallus warned, he had reason to believe that Dellius had written to Poplicola with all this news at least two months ago, on a ship that had survived.
Finally one last oddity was all that remained to be imparted. Octavian bent forward, elbows on his desk, chin propped on his hands. “Ptolemy Caesar was proclaimed higher than his mother?”
“Caesarion, they call him. Yes, he was.”
“Why?”
“Oh, the woman dotes on him! Comparatively speaking, her sons by Antonius don’t matter. Everything is for Caesarion.”
“Is he my divine father’s son, Gallus?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Gallus firmly. “The image of Divus Julius in every way. I’m not old enough to have known Divus Julius as a youthful man, but Caesarion looks as I imagine Divus Julius must have looked at the same age.”
“Which is?”
“Thirteen. He’ll be fourteen in June.”
Octavian relaxed. “Still a child, then.”
“Oh, no, anything but! He’s well into puberty, Caesar—has a deep voice, the air of a grown man. I understand that his intellect is as profound as it is precocious. He and his mama have some spectacular differences of opinion, according to Dellius.”
“Ah!” Octavian rose to his feet and stretched out his arm to Gallus, shook Gallus’s hand strongly and warmly. “I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for your zeal, so I will let something more tangible speak for me. Go to Oppius’s bank next nundinum and you will find a nice present. What’s more, as I am now the custodian of my stepson’s property, I can offer you Nero’s house for the next ten years at a peppercorn rent.”
“And service in Illyricum?” asked the warrior poet eagerly.
“Definitely. Not much in the way of booty, but some very good fighting.”
The door shut behind a Gaius Cornelius Gallus floating several feet above the cobbles as he wended his way to Virgil’s house; Octavian stood in the middle of his study sorting out the mine of information into a sequence that enabled him to gauge it properly. That Antony could have done something as stupid as this flabbergasted him, would always remain the most mystifying aspect of the whole business. For he suspected that he would never know the why of it. A vow? That didn’t make sense! As he had never believed his own propaganda, Octavian found himself almost uncertain what to do. Almost. Perhaps the harpy did drug Antony, though until this moment Octavian had been skeptical about potions able to overcome the most basic tenets of existence. And what was more basic to a Roman than Rome? Antony had dumped Rome’s plunder in Cleopatra’s lap without, it seemed, even considering whether or not she could be persuaded to pay his army the percentages due it from the spoils. Had he gone on his knees to beg before she consented at least to pay the common soldiers? Oh, Antonius, Antonius! How could you? What will my sister say? Such an insult!
However, there was one thing more important than all the rest lumped together: Ptolemy Caesar. Caesarion. Somehow Cleopatra made better sense knowing that she doted on this eldest son. A shock to learn for a fact that the boy was the image of his father, even to the early flowering, the intelligence. Fourteen in two months, only five years away from Caesarean audacity, Caesarean acumen. No one knew better than Octavian what Julian blood could do; he himself had struck out for power at eighteen, after all. And succeeded! This boy had so many advantages—used to wielding power already, strong-willed enough to clash with his mother, no doubt as fluent in Latin as she was, therefore capable of fooling Rome into thinking of him as genuinely Roman.
By the time Octavian opened his study door and went to find Livia Drusilla, his priorities were sorted out. Clever chicken, she went straight to the heart of the matter.
“Whatever you do, Caesar, you cannot let Italia or Rome set eyes on this boy!” she cried, hands clenched. “He spells ruin.”
“I agree, but how do I prevent it?”
“Any way you can. First and foremost, by keeping Antonius in the East until your supremacy in Rome is paramount. For if he comes, he’ll bring Caesarion with him. It’s his logical move. If the mother is so devoted to the boy, she won’t object to being left in Egypt. It’s her son who is King of Kings. Oh, all of the Antonian senators and knights will fall over backward when they see Divus Julius’s blood son! The fact that he’s a hybrid and not even a Roman citizen won’t stop them, you know it and I know it. Therefore you must keep Antonius in the East at all costs!”
“Well, the Alexandrian triumph and the Donations are a starting point. It’s my good luck that I have an unimpeachable witness in Cornelius Gallus.”
She looked anxious. “But will he cleave to you? He deserted you for Antonius two years ago.”
“The result of ambition and penury. He’s come back outraged, and I’ve paid him very well. He can caretake Nero’s house, another perquisite. I think he knows where the best bread is.”
“You’ll convene the Senate, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And have Maecenas and your agents tell the whole of Italia what Antonius has done?”
“That goes without saying. My gossip mill will grind Queen Cleopatra to dust.”
“What about the boy? Is there any way we can discredit him?”
“Oppius takes trips to Alexandria. That Cleopatra refuses to see him isn’t nearly as well known. I’ll have Oppius write a pamphlet about Caesarion, saying that he bears no likeness to my divine father.”
“And that he’s actually the child of an Egyptian slave.”
He laughed. “Perhaps I ought to have you write it.”
“I would, had I ever been to Alexandria.” She clasped her hands around Octavian’s arm, shaking it. “Oh, Caesar, we have never stood in greater danger!”
“Don’t worry your beautiful head, dearest one. I am the son of Divus Julius! There will be no other.”
The news of the triumph and the Donations rocked Rome; few could believe it at first, but gradually others like Cornelius Gallus either returned in person or wrote letters long delayed by the wintry seas. Three hundred of Antony’s senators left his ranks to sit as neutrals while the invective and accusations raged on the floor of the House. Knight-businessmen also deserted by the hundreds. But not enough. Never enough.
Had Octavian made Antony the butt of his campaign he might have won a bigger victory, but he was too shrewd. It was at Queen Cleopatra that he aimed his barbs, for he had seen his way clear: if war came, as seemed inevitable, it would not be war against Mark Antony. It would be war against a foreign foe—Egypt. Often he had longed for someone like Cleopatra to crush Antony without its seeming that Antony was his true object. Now, in accepting Rome’s spoils and forcing Antony to crown her and her children rulers of the world, Cleopatra stood forth as Rome’s enemy.
“But it’s not enough,” he said despondently to Agrippa.
“I think this is but the first trickle of pebbles in what will eventually be a landslide that brings the whole of the East down,” Agrippa comforted. “Be patient, Caesar! You’ll get there.”
Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Gaius Sosius arrived in Rome in June; both were to be consuls next year, something of a coup for Antony, whose adherents they were. Though everyone knew the elections were rigged, both men made a splash in their specially whitened togas as they walked around soliciting votes.
Ahenobarbus’s first task was to read out a letter from Mark Antony to the Senate, which he did with the House doors wide open; it was vital that as many Forum frequenters as possible should hear what Antony had to say.
Considering its author, the letter was very long, which led Octavian (and others, some not always in sympathy with him) to think that its author had had help composing it. Naturally it had to be heard in full, which meant a lot of dozing. Since he had done his share of dozing in the past, Ahenobarbus was well aware of this tendency, and knew how to deal with it. He had read the letter many times himself, and marked the passages that must be heard by men wide awake. Therefore he droned when the contents were unimportant or (a great fault of this letter) tautologous, whereas each important part he announced with a bellow that made the House jerk and flutter, and continued to the end of that part shouting in a voice famous for its volume. Then he reverted to the drone and everybody could have another nice nap. Both the Antonians and the Octavians were so grateful for this technique that Ahenobarbus won a lot of friends.
Octavian sat on his ivory curule chair at the front of the curule magistrates’ dais and tried very hard to keep awake, though when the entire House was dozing, he felt safe to doze too. The building was rather airless unless a fierce wind was blowing through the clerestory apertures high on its side walls, and no such wind blew today; it was early summer. However, staying awake was easier for him; he had a lot on his mind, and the background of soft snores was no impediment. To him, the beginning of the to-be-famous letter was the most interesting part.
“The East,” Antony (or Cleopatra?) said, “is fundamentally alien to the Roman mos maiorum, therefore cannot be understood by Romans. Our civilization is the most advanced in the world; we freely elect the magistrates who govern us, and to ensure that no magistrate starts to think of himself as indispensable, his term in office is limited to one year. Only in times of great internal danger do we resort to longer, more dictatorial government, as at the moment, when we have three—I beg your pardon, conscript fathers, two—Triumvirs to oversee the activities of the consuls, praetors, aediles, and quaestors, if not the tribunes of the plebs.
“We live by the rule of law, the process of which is formal and impartial—”
Sniggers broke out on every tier; Ahenobarbus waited until the noise abated, then resumed as if uninterrupted.
“—and enlightened in its penalties. We do not imprison for any crime. Minor offenses are dealt with by a fine, major ones, up to and including treason, by confiscation of property and exile to a specified distance from Rome.”
Ahenobarbus meticulously outlined the penal system, the kinds of citizens, the division of Roman government into executive and legislative arms, and the place of women in the Roman scheme of things.
“Conscript fathers, I have just detailed the mos maiorum and, in effect, the way a Roman sees the world,” he went on.
“Picture then, if you can, a Roman governor with a proconsular imperium descending upon some eastern province like Cilicia, Syria, or Pontus. He assumes that his province thinks Roman, and when he dispenses justice or issues edicts, he thinks Roman.
“But,” roared Ahenobarbus, “the East is not Roman! It does not think Roman! For instance, nowhere but in Rome are the poor fed at the State’s expense. The poor of the East are regarded as a nuisance, and let starve if they cannot afford to buy bread. Men and women are imprisoned in hideous dungeons, sometimes for offenses a Roman would consider worthy only of a trifling fine. Those in authority do as they please, for laws are scarce, and when present, often turn out to be differently applied, depending on the economic or social status of the accused—”
“It’s the same in Rome!” Messala Corvinus yelled. “Marcus Cacus of the Subura will pay a talent in fines for dressing as a woman and soliciting customers outside Venus Erucina’s, while Lucius Cornelius Patricius gets off—in more ways than one!”
The House rocked with laughter; Ahenobarbus waited, unable to suppress his own amusement.
“Executions are common. Women have neither citizenship nor money. They cannot inherit, and what they earn has to be put in a man’s name. They can be divorced, but not divorce. Official positions may be filled by election, but more commonly are filled by sortition and, most commonly of all, by right of birth. Taxes are levied in an entirely different way than in Rome, each place having its own preferred system of taxation.”
Octavian’s eyelids drooped; clearly Antony (or Cleopatra) was about to embark upon the minutiae. The amplitude of snores increased, Ahenobarbus began to drone.
“Rome cannot directly rule in the East!” Ahenobarbus roared. “Rule must be through client-kings! Which is better, conscript fathers? A Roman governor enforcing Roman law on people who do not understand it, conducting wars that do not benefit the local people, and feathering his own nest—or a client-king who enforces laws his people understand, and who is not allowed to go to war at all? What Rome wants from the East is tribute, pure and simple. Time and time again it has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the tribute flows better from a client-kingdom than from a Roman governor. Client-kings know how to squeeze their people, client-kings don’t provoke rebellions.”
Back to the drone; Octavian yawned, eyes watering, and decided to do some mental gymnastics upon the subject of blackening Queen Cleopatra’s reputation. He was absorbed in this when Ahenobarbus commenced to bellow.
“To attempt to garrison the East with Roman troops is idiotic! They go native, conscript fathers! Look at what happened to the four legions of Gabiniani left to garrison Alexandria on behalf of its king, Ptolemy Auletes! When the late Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus recalled them to duty in Syria, they refused to obey. His two elder sons, protected only by lictors, insisted. With the result that the Gabiniani murdered them, the childr
en of a senior Roman governor! Queen Cleopatra behaved in an exemplary way by executing the ringleaders and sending all four legions back to Syria—”
“Go on!” Maecenas interjected scornfully. “Four legions have a total of two hundred and forty centurions. As Marcus Antonius has already pointed out, centurions are the legion’s officers. Divus Julius, it is said, wept for the death of a centurion, but not for the death of a legate. And what did Cleopatra do? Why, the ten most incompetent heads rolled, but the other two hundred and thirty centurions were never sent back to Syria! She kept them in Egypt to stiffen her own army!”
“That is a lie!” Poplicola shouted. “Take it back, you perfumed ponce!”
“Order,” said Octavian in a weary voice.
The House fell silent.
“Some places are Romanized or Hellenized enough to accept direct Roman rule, to be garrisoned by Roman troops. They are Macedonia including Greece and coastal Thrace, Bithynia, and Asia Province. Nowhere else. Nowhere! Cilicia never worked as a province, nor has Syria since Pompeius Magnus established it. But we haven’t tried to incorporate places like Cappadocia and Galatia into provinces—nor should we! When Pontus was governed as a part of Bithynia, said government was a joke. How many times during his term did a governor of Bithynia ever get to Pontus? Once or twice, if at all!”
Here it comes, thought Octavian, straightening. We are about to hear Antonius’s excuses for his actions.
“I make no apologies for my dispositions in the East,” said Ahenobarbus on Antony’s behalf, “because they are the right dispositions. I have given some of Rome’s former direct possessions over to the rule of new client-kings, and strengthened the authority of client-kings who have always ruled. Before I lay down my present triumvirate, I will complete my work by giving all of Anatolia save Asia Province and Bithynia to client-kings, and all of Syrian Asia as well. They will be governed by capable men of integrity and extreme loyalty to Rome, their suzerain.”