The Classical World (62 page)

At the time the ‘decisive shift’ which was visible was political, not literary. In November 42 Antony and Octavian went east and defeated the almost equally enormous army of Brutus and Cassius in two battles at Philippi. Both of the Liberators, Caesar’s murderers, died. It was Mark Antony who earned the military credit, whereas even Octavian’s close friends had to admit that he had hidden in the marshes. Octavian was no natural soldier and he later claimed to have been kept from battle, first by an ominous dream, then by sickness. As the dominant figure, Antony retained responsibility both for Gaul and the East at this point. Octavian returned to his much smaller responsibilities, above all to Italy where he had to engage both with Sextus Pompeius’ fleet off Sicily and the extremelyawkward problem of overseeing the expropriation of land from up to twenty Italian towns. It involved ejecting the humble occupants in order to settle ever more of Caesar’s veteran soldiers. Already, promises to the troops had multiplied, including those in cash, a reason why such vast numbers continued to fight. At Philippi, the triumvirs’ army alone equalled any force maintained by Alexander the Great at his zenith:
the impossible sum of 150,000 talents had already been promised in arrears and bonuses.

In the aftermath of Philippi, the protagonists’ personal images developed differently. Octavian was still only in his early twenties; his portraits on his coins expressed youth and dignity, while his patron god was Apollo, the god of moral restraint and dignity, the arts and prophecy. His strongest card was his adoption by Caesar. He played it to the full by a serial change of names. First, he had called himself ‘Caesar’ too: then, ‘Caesar, son of the divine one’ (
divi filius
).
³
He claimed the further protection of Venus, the ancestral goddess of the Julii. His ‘father’ Julius had particularly favoured the Asian city of Aphrodisias, whose leaders had presented themselves as the special city of Venus, Caesar’s divine ancestor. The city had been badly treated under the Liberators in 43/2, but the new ‘Caesar’ then wrote in 39
BC
to affirm that he would keep it ‘free’ as his city in Asia. His letter was rediscovered only recently at Aphrodisias and shows that in such personal matters, the division of the East and West with Antony was not cast-iron.
⁴

Antony, by contrast, took on a much more flamboyant role. After the victory at Philippi, he went down for the winter of 42/1 to Athens where he won Greek hearts by attending to intellectual debates, remaining accessible and liking to be called not just ‘philhellene’ but ‘friend of Athens’.
⁵
Like Julius Caesar, he had hard words for neighbouring Megara, a sure way, since the age of Pericles, to win Athenian affection. In the following spring (41
BC
) he crossed into Asia and found himself, like other powerful Romans before him, being welcomed as a god.

In 41 Antony still had responsibility in Gaul too, and so the Greek East was only one area of significance for him. At Ephesus, however, the Greeks promptly greeted him as a ‘new Dionysus’. He drew a circle of Greek acolytes; perhaps there really were processions around him of men dressed as Pans and satyrs and women as wild Bacchants; in Greek eyes, Antony was as powerful as the many kings for whom these shows had been mobilized before. But there was a reciprocal willingness in Antony himself. He had been accompanied to the East bya famous courtesan, Volumnia. In the previous decade he had seen his superior officer, Gabinius, going along with such ‘luxury’ and the
free ways of the East. As his funeral speech over Caesar showed, he also had a sense of theatre, just what his new Greek friends (including actors and mime artists) appreciated in a Hellenistic king. But Antony also had important work to do, raising yet more money and appointing new client-rulers over the adjoining hinterlands of Asia Minor. The Liberators had complicated both tasks by robbing the Greek cities and by favouring allies who could no longer be trusted. Antony had a good eye for a client king and both now and especially in 37/6 his main appointments, including Herod, proved capable and durable. If he wanted to appeal to his newly confirmed kinglets and to smooth the necessary exaction of money (nine years’ tribute, to be paid in two years), it was helpful to go along with Greek honours and compliments. They helped both parties to soften the hard edges of power.

Antony also had a sharp eye for a client queen. Already in summer 41 he slept with one nominee, Queen Glaphyra, and ever fertile, fathered a child on her. Then in autumn 41 he met another, vastly more important one: Cleopatra of Egypt, who was now aged twenty-eight to Antony’s forty-two and was still a crucial player in the balance of power and finance in the East. There was also something else. She had had the baby son Caesarion in 47
BC
and since leaving Rome in 44 she had continued to claim that his father was Julius Caesar. The truth mattered less than the fact that she claimed it and that nobody could prove her wrong.

When summoned to Antony at Tarsus, Cleopatra arrived as befitted an eastern queen, in a golden boat under a golden canopy, with roses, it was said, strewn thickly on the floor.
⁶
She seemed like Aphrodite while her maids resembled Cupids: Shakespeare’s magnificent lines on the occasion are based on Plutarch’s well-founded ancient account. Yet again, a Roman general could not resist her. She and Antony entertained each other in turn on their boats, made love and returned for the winter to Alexandria. It was later said that when Antony bet her that she could not eat a dinner worth millions of sesterces, she took an enormous pearl and dissolved it in a cup of vinegar. She is said to have drunk it and won the bet, leaving a story which, centuries later, inspired Tiepolo’s magnificent frescos in the Palazzo Labia in Venice. Octavian, meanwhile, was bogged down by a siege of Perusia (modern Perugia)
in Italy and was writing coarse verses about the choice between ‘screwing’ jealous Fulvia (Antony’s wife) or making war, not love.
⁷

In Egypt, Antony as the ‘new Dionysus’ acquired an unforeseen aptness. Dionysus was the god whom the kings, the Ptolemies, honoured as their ancestor; he was also the consort of the goddess Isis who was sometimes equated with the Ptolemaic queen. At Alexandria, meanwhile, the art for human beings was to mix high life with low. Antony and Cleopatra excelled at it. They founded their own exotic club and called it the Inimitable Lives: we have even found an inscription for a statue-base in which a Greek, calling himself ‘Parasitos’ (the ‘parasite’), honours Antony as a god (in 34
BC
) and as ‘Inimitable at Sex’.
⁸
Music, acting and the world of mythological models set their revels far apart from a modern wallow in drugs and debauchery. At night, in plain clothes, they would roam the streets of Alexandria among inhabitants who had always relished a witty exchange with their kings. They drank, they played dice, they hunted. Antony was not living out some stereotype of the decadent man of ‘luxury’, although critics pinned this label to him. Princes in the Hellenistic world were loved for luxurious display, as several Ptolemies had exemplified, especially Ptolemy IV and Cleopatra’s own father. Antony had a flamboyant, theatrical streak in him, combined with the down-to-earth coarseness of a hardened soldier. He sported with the cultured attention paid to him, but then repaid it in his own uproarious style. Its models were dramatic and theatrical, with the support of myth and poetry which had surrounded Alexander’s Successor kings. By the spring Cleopatra was heavilypregnant with what turned out to be twins, a boy and a girl.

There were other gains for the partners. Antony needed Egypt’s loyalty, its invaluable riches and its co-operation in the eastward attacks on Parthian territory which he was probably already planning. Cleopatra wanted to be strengthened against her sister and her many enemies in Egypt; obligingly, Antony hunted them all down. But sound reasons were already only part of the story. During winter 41/0, the Parthians struck first, pressing far into Syria. If Antony had been at Antioch, on alert, would they really have come so far west? Meanwhile, back in Italy, Antony’s brother Lucius and his loyal wife Fulvia had exploited the discontent which the proscriptions and veteran
settlements were causing: they had declared war against Octavian in the name of ‘freedom’. They had also found a natural ally, Sextus Pompeius, Pompey’s son. Sextus could use his naval supremacy to squeeze the grain-supply into Italy and provoke second thoughts among the crowds in Rome about their favour for Octavian ‘Caesar’s’ cause. Was Antony really so cut off by the winter seas in Egypt that he could not have urged his friends in the West to seize the moment, assist his family, and multiply Octavian’s serious troubles as he fought a grim war round Perusia? Arguably, chances were being missed while Antony’s mind was on Alexandria and passion.

When Antony did return westwards, from February 40 onwards, the cause of ‘freedom’ and the ‘Republic’ took a novel turn: its supporters attached themselves to Antony’s advance. Cicero would have turned in his grave. The brave Sextus Pompeius was also looking to Antony for support, and a combined strike at Octavian in Italymight well have succeeded. But once again the two leaders’ veteran soldiers refused to fight each other after their last horrible encounter up at Mutina three years before. In autumn 40, at Brundisium, Octavian and Antony met and made a pact instead. Octavian agreed to marry Scribonia, the sister, significantly, of an important senator who was the father-in-law of Sextus Pompeius. The marriage was to an older woman who had already had two husbands but it was surely an attempt to win her brother over from Sextus’ camp and damage the young Pompey who had become a major player on the stage. Since the summer of 40, crucially, Antony had lost control of Gaul; he was now centred on the East, and his part of the pact was simply to marry Octavian’s elegant sister, Octavia (his own wife Fulvia had died). Nothing was agreed about Cleopatra and the twins.

After the pact the two rivals went up to Rome where their welcome was far from one-sided. Sextus had damaged the city’s imports of grain. Had people begun to wonder if Pompey’s son was perhaps a sounder and straighter bet than Julius Caesar’s heir? Both Octavian and Antony had troubles with their own officers, and in 39
BC
it was as well that they sought to make terms with Sextus in the south. He was now calling himself ‘son of Neptune’, the sea-god, an allusion to his own sea-power and to his father Pompey’s great naval victories over pirates. In late summer 39 the three of them eventuallymet down at Cape Misenum.
Sextus was offered Sicily and other territory and promised a consulship years in advance; the slaves with him were to be freed and his veterans would be eligible for rewards. These offers would make such people much harder for Sextus to retain. When Antony and Octavian joined him for dinner on his ship, it was said that Sextus’ ‘pirate’ captain urged him to cut the cable and leave the two rivals at his mercy so that he, Sextus, could be master of all the world.
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Pompey’s heir was more scrupulous than Caesar’s, and did nothing. At Rome, meanwhile, Antony continued to own the great Pompey’s house.

A pact did not solve what was now an uneasy triangle; late in 39, Octavian felt confident enough to compound it bydivorcing Scribonia. Instead, he fell in love (we are told) with Livia, the wife of a noble senator who had fled to Sextus to escape the recent proscriptions. In January 38 he went on to marry her, and she would remain his wife for more than fifty years of childless marriage. At the time she was pregnant by her previous husband, but for Octavian she had another attraction: she was the granddaughter of the great Livius Drusus who had been so significant for the Italians’ cause back in 91
BC
. Octavian’s image in Italy certainly needed to be enhanced.

As for Antony, it suited him if Sextus and Octavian now fought each other off the coast of Italy. He left Rome in October 39 (he would never see it again) and went east to Athens, from where he could visit the war which had begun against Parthia. Matters were still going his way there. In 39 and 38 his able general Ventidius won two good victories over the Parthians in the Near East. At Athens, meanwhile, the people hailed him as ‘new Dionysus’ and took his new wife Octavia to heart as their ‘divine Benefactress’. Octavian, by contrast, turned on Sextus, hoping to eliminate him, but failed. In 37 the wayforward was obvious: Antony himself should follow up in the East, attack the Parthians as directlyas possible and take advantage of the quarrels which had split their royal family. Octavian, meanwhile, would be bogged down in yet more civil war with Sextus Pompeius off Italy. Success in the East would eclipse the new ‘Caesar’s’ star, because Parthia had been Julius Caesar’s last known objective. By 33, when there would be the next break in the triumvirs’ five-year powers, Antony could return to Rome as the most glorious conqueror, rich with Eastern booty.

Even without his hold on Gaul, Antony was still the stronger of the two rivals. However, his infantrywas not strong enough to be sure of conquering Parthia and so he needed recruits from Italy in order to maximize his chances. In summer 37 he crossed to south Italy with a huge force of 300 ships, an advantage which Octavian would envy in his own struggles against Sextus. After threatening to fight, however, Antony was obliged to negotiate and at Tarentum, the rivals agreed yet another pact: Antony would give Octavian ships to conclude the war against Sextus, while Octavian would give him troops to use against Parthia. It was to be the last pact, but its outcome was not as Antony hoped. Both the main players had war in mind, but whereas Antony gave Octavian ships, he did not receive from Octavian most of the promised troops. At the time, Octavia had helped the pact along by mediating between her husband and her brother. In only three years of marriage Antony had already fathered two healthy daughters on her (a third, perhaps, had been short-lived). But there would now be problems for her, too. She was not to go east with him: there were the girls, perhaps a pregnancy, and all the eastern dangers, but there was promptly something else. In winter 37/6 Antony had returned to Antioch, preparing for the Parthian War, and to him came Cleopatra, his ‘Egyptian dish’. She may not have been given all the new territoryshe wanted, but she certainlyreceived significant swathes of it. She also became pregnant with yet another son.