The Horse Changer (12 page)

And so forth. It might have played out as comic theatre in less tumultuous times. As it happened the game was deadly serious. Cicero intended to pave a road by which Brutus and Cassius, the chief assassins of Caesar, might return triumphantly to Rome. Instead, his assault on Anthony gave young Octavian an opening.

Octavian, imagining Antony was down and out, proceeded into the city with his newly purchased legions, every man paid at five times the going rate. His judgment was sound in one respect; there was no one capable of opposing him, but Octavian made the mistake of establishing his military camp in the Forum. At once he lost much of the goodwill his money had bought him with the plebs, for they had no more love of tyranny than the aristocrats.

Not content to run his ship aground with the plebs, Octavian summoned the senate to convene before him. He let it be known he intended to ask for a vote that would name Antony and Dolabella enemies of Rome. To Octavian’s chagrin, the senators stayed home. Within a day of the rebuff Octavian’s officers mutinied and withdrew their forces from the city. Octavian had no choice but to follow his army out of the city, looking to all and sundry like a young whelp with his tail tucked between his legs.

Antony now rallied for a counter-assault, returning to the city with a great show of confidence. Nor did he proceed as a rank amateur by leading armed soldiers into the city. He covered himself only with a few friends and of course a consul’s escort of lictors. And when he summoned the senate, the old men gathered like cattle to a feeding trough.

As a standing consul Antony was legally entitled to call the senate together, and after the recent occupation of the Forum, the senators were undoubtedly in the mood to declare Octavian an enemy of Rome. On the appointed morning, however, the senate sat without Antony. He had made a late night of it celebrating his revived fortunes. He only fell into bed an hour or so before the senate gathered. When his slaves awakened him in a panic, he threatened them with their lives. Knowing their master to be a man of his word the slaves let Antony return to his slumbers. And so Octavian was never officially declared a public enemy.

Was the fate of Rome really subject to an awful hangover? I am not wise enough to know the answer to that. What I can say with confidence is this: a vote to designate Octavian an enemy of Rome would not have influenced the legions supporting his cause. Perhaps Antony knew this and never planned on attending the meeting. Perhaps, deep in his cups, he finally understood the absurdity of voting. Only a battle was going to settle the issue. Perhaps his debauch was an eloquent answer to Cicero. Yes, he was an outrageous drunk, but he was also a general of considerable talent who was about to become Rome’s new tyrant. Complain as men might, vote as they would, there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

With Antony, all intentions were possible at once or none at all. He followed impulse and despised discourse and counsel. He hated discussing how others might react to any given action. It was not that he was stupid; rather he was impatient with lesser mortals. Whatever he chose to do was generally best. Who cared what his enemies planned?

At any rate, once Antony had recovered from his hangover, he travelled to Macedonia and took command of the legions there, though their number was now greatly reduced because of Octavian’s poaching. Antony then crossed back to Italy with his army and marched north into the province of Cisalpine Gaul. This was the same province from which Caesar had launched his attack on Rome. He was a few months early for his proconsul appointment and in the wrong province as well, but no matter. He ousted the sitting governor, an assassin named Junius Decimus, and proceeded to recruit Gauls by the thousands for the coming fight against the boy who called himself Caesar.

In theory, Dolabella had sixteen legions waiting for him in Macedonia. In fact, Octavian, having absconded with the Macedonian army’s payroll, soon brought more than half of these legions under his own standards. Except for two legions, Antony took the rest. That left Dolabella scrambling for auxiliaries.

I played no real role in any of Dolabella’s exchanges with the men of the senate that summer, but he brought me to several of his meetings. Observing Dolabella’s negotiations turned out to be something of an education in how serpents dance. It was usually never a question of a willingness to provide Dolabella assistance; the issue always came down to price, but of course no one ever spoke of
quid pro quo
. An aristocrat would simply begin talking about a piece of property Dolabella’s family owned or a house in a fine neighbourhood by the sea he had always wanted to purchase.

Fighting men were at a premium and no one cared to give away what could be sold. Some men wanted political office; some few wanted a priesthood. Others sought a position of command for a son or nephew or younger brother. But the strangest
quid pro quo
came at the house of the Claudii.

In his youth, elected a military tribune of the legions, Tiberius Claudius Nero rode under the standards of Pompey Magnus. Following this, Nero served as a legate in Gaul under Caesar. Caesar later appointed him admiral of his fleet in Egypt. A sparkling military career, in other words. Nero’s influence in the senate was a different matter. For the sake of his fortune and noble bloodlines Nero’s peers endured him patiently. They even praised him on occasion, but no one ever turned to him for advice. According to Dolabella, who quoted his good friend Gaius Trebonius on the matter, ‘Claudius Nero was the dullest blade in an armoury of rusty swords.’

One had only to examine his performance as a military commander in detail to understand just how dull Nero really was. In Gaul, his only accomplishment was to be trapped and then rescued by Caesar. As Admiral of the Fleet in Egypt, he lost all of Caesar’s ships without ever leaving Alexandria’s harbour. Along with the fleet some portion of the great Alexandrian library burned as well. No blame ever accrued to the noble Claudius Nero, of course. Such mishaps are the fortunes of war. In the aftermath of the Egyptian debacle, once Nero had paid lavishly for the honour, Caesar let him stand as high priest of some temple or another. Dolabella forgot which it was and I never had the curiosity to look it up in the state archives.

Although Dolabella was too clever to quarrel with Nero the two men had no fondness for each other. Nero in fact had spoken out openly against Dolabella’s sexual immorality, which is to say he disapproved of Dolabella’s mixing with the lower classes. It is, after all, one thing for a Roman senator to tup his boy slaves, if that is his inclination. It is quite another matter to let actors and gladiators climb on.

Through much of the summer Dolabella had avoided Nero chiefly because he expected his visit would be a waste of time, but by autumn, resting at his estate in Campania for a few weeks, Dolabella found himself still in short supply of competent cavalry. If Nero wanted to cooperate, he could provide Dolabella with five hundred Spartan horsemen of the finest reputation. It was not an essential visit, but once he learned that Nero was in Campania as well, Dolabella decided it would not hurt to spend a few days courting the great man for the sake of the finest cavalrymen in Greece. In the worst case, he could expect to eat and drink quite well; Nero was rather famous for the spreads he put on. In the best circumstances, Nero might actually deliver the needed cavalry for the promise of a praetorship.

I expected Dolabella to pull his claws in and present only his best manners. That was the kind of behaviour I had witnessed all summer, but my patron had a real genius for divining moral depravity. With Nero he came charging in with the sort of wickedness he generally reserved for his transvestite and gladiator friends.

Nero was a good two decades older than Dolabella, in his late-forties or perhaps early fifties. That seems a vigorous age to me these days. At the time, he appeared to be a veritable ancient, all the more so once I discovered his new bride was an adolescent cousin from some branch of the far-flung Claudii gens. Nero was a tall man with thick, flabby limbs and a great gut. He had a long wobbly neck topped by a solemn square face that might have been carved of stone for all the animation it demonstrated. He generally wore a grim, pasty expression that never quite seemed sociable. He was slow moving and slow thinking, a man of extreme gravitas without so much as a spark of wit to make it bearable. Dolabella announced he had come to his ‘old friend’ hoping they might ‘crack cups, get drunk, and throw up together.’

Nero reacted to this banter exactly as a man does who’s been slapped and doesn’t know what to do about it. Nor did Dolabella give the poor dolt a chance to respond. He dropped names the moment he arrived, choosing from among the nobility he had courted that summer. He disparaged and sniggered at their pompous airs and middling fortunes, a bleating flock of hypocrites, the whole bunch of them. It was blasphemy and slander to Nero’s ears; it was also delicious gossip. Soon enough Nero was drinking it down in gulps. To give Dolabella his due: not a word of his chatter was untrue.

‘A fine villa,’ Dolabella said of one senator’s country estate, ‘even if it is mortgaged to the hilt with three different lenders. Better hope they don’t find out about each other. Oh, I mean it’s a perfect fraud: up to his ears in it with other people’s money.’

Of another: ‘Besotted with one of his own slaves. A pretty boy, no doubt of that, but I mean, really. When the master plays wife to his own slave it’s not going to end well.’

Of one senator’s wife Dolabella said, ‘I tell you, friend, I’ve seen prettier horses.’ This comment was part of Dolabella’s rant against men who married ugly women. Nero’s bride was not only sweet and unspoiled, she was gorgeous. I say this without exaggeration and with no argument from any man living in those days. All who met Claudia Livia Drusilla found her small stature and round, sweet face the very essence of sensuality. One can find a well-formed body and a pretty face at every bend in the road. It’s the distinguishing feature of youth. They are babbling brooks of delights, soon enough enjoyed and forgotten. But there are some young girls with a sensuality that smoulders for decades in a man’s memory.

Such was Livia’s power. Rather than pretend he did not appreciate her delicious beauty, Dolabella declared he could only respect a man who married a beautiful woman. By that standard he put Claudius Nero above all other men in the senate. Nor did Dolabella offer the usual formulaic praise for a good wife, nonsense muttered about docility and homemaking skills with a passing reference to her stature and self-possession. No, he was mad for the girl’s pert round arse, and he made sure to let Nero watch him drool for it.

‘So many men marry old crones for the sake of their fortunes these days. Even our hero of the Republic, Mark Antony. Fulvia!’ Dolabella shuddered as if chilled by a sudden winter frost. ‘Castrate me if I am ever so hard-up for money. Not my friend Nero. No second leavings for his marriage bed. But tell me, friend, do you intend to trade her off for another cousin once she’s twenty and gone to the dogs or will you keep her on a bit longer out of sentiment?’

Nero had no idea how to answer such talk. I don’t think anyone had ever confided in him about anything, least of all women. Certainly not in those terms. No matter. Dolabella could talk enough for both of them. He loved young girls. Not exclusively of course but well enough that if Livia had a sister looking for a husband he was freshly divorced and in the market.

In private, quite certain Nero’s spies were listening, Dolabella declared he envied Nero as much for the little filly he mounted and rode each night as for the fortune his family possessed. ‘What I wouldn’t give for one night with that delicious cunny, Dellius. One time. By the gods, one time! I’ll wager when a man plunges into her, she sizzles!’

‘Tell me, Nero,’ Dolabella whispered at dinner one evening, ‘did Livia weep on her wedding night? You lucky bastard! I bet she did. Is she still the bashful girl in bed or mad for the old thyrsus now she knows what it’s all about?’