Augustus, page 15
The proscriptions claimed many victims, even if by far the majority escaped and survived, in time returning to Italy and Rome itself. These purges provided a fund of stories of dramatic survivals, of heroic protection and treacherous betrayal by family, friends and slaves, and in the years to come numerous books were filled with these tales. There is one claim that a boy was killed on his way to school, and of another hastily added to the list as he was going through the ceremony to make him a man, but on the whole children were safe unless they owned substantial property in their own right. The threats of execution for those harbouring the proscribed were not consistently enforced. One woman begged to be killed along with her husband when his hiding place was found. The soldiers refused, as did the magistrate – perhaps one of the triumvirs or a senior subordinate – when she publicly declared that she was guilty of protecting him. In the end the widow was said to have starved herself to death.11
There is no specific story of a wife being killed for harbouring a husband, unlike fathers or sons. One infamous tale claimed that a woman arranged for her husband to be proscribed, betrayed him by locking him in their house until the soldiers came, and promptly married her lover within hours of the husband’s execution. We also have an inscription set up as a memorial by a once-proscribed husband to his beloved wife. The man tells how she hid him, helped him to escape, and then eventually was able to persuade Caesar to grant a pardon. This proved difficult to enforce, and Lepidus ordered his attendants to beat the woman when she tried to make him take action and recall her husband.12
There is another story of Caesar granting a reprieve. In this case a woman managed to hide her husband in a large chest and have this brought into the triumvir’s presence while he was presiding over public games. The deception was revealed, and the crowd so impressed by her boldness and loyalty to her husband that Caesar sensed their mood and granted him a pardon. Public opinion could not be wholly ignored even by warlords. The proscriptions permitted slaves to win their freedom by betraying their masters, but in a few publicised cases, where they exulted too much or continued to attack their former owner’s family, the triumvirs had them executed or re-enslaved to reassure people that the social order was not seriously in jeopardy.13
Neither Caesar, Antony or Lepidus can escape guilt for their ruthlessness in ordering the proscriptions. From a purely utilitarian point of view, these murders were highly successful in spreading fear. However, the financial yield proved disappointing, for little enthusiasm was shown at the auctions of confiscated property. Too many potential buyers were nervous about showing that they were wealthy enough to purchase new assets, and others remembered the frequent attacks on those who had profited from the Sullan proscriptions. Desperate for more cash, the triumvirs introduced a range of levies, taxing the wealthy on the basis of their property – a thoroughly un-Roman measure. The announcement that the estates of the 1,400 wealthiest citizen women were to be assessed so that they too could pay tax was without any precedent. During the desperate war against Hannibal in the third century BC, aristocratic women had voluntarily given jewellery and other valuables to the Republic, but they had never been taxed. Led by Hortensia, the daughter of the man Cicero had supplanted as Rome’s leading orator, a large group of women went first to the female relatives of the triumvirs, and then into the Forum to confront Caesar, Antony and Lepidus in person. Once again the wider crowd sympathised with this display of feminine courage, and the triumvirate judged that a concession was wise. Only 400 women were taxed, and more levies announced on men. Half of the agricultural yield was to be taken from farms, while communities in Italy were forced to provide free winter billets for soldiers, an imposition usual only in the provinces.14
PHILIPPI
On 1 January 42 BC Lepidus began a second consulship, just four years after holding the office with Julius Caesar. This time his colleague was Lucius Munatius Plancus, one of the army commanders who had joined Antony after Mutina. They began by taking an oath – willingly joined by Antony and Caesar and less freely by the rest of the Senate – that all deeds of the dead dictator were to be forever binding. Julius Caesar was now formally consecrated as a god, and work began on a temple to him near the site of his cremation – its remains still stand in the Forum today. His heir was now not simply Caesar in name, but the son of a god, although he did not immediately adopt this title.15
Family connections were never far from the mind of any Roman aristocrat. Late in 43 BC Atia had died, having lived long enough to see her son reach the consulship. She was honoured with a public funeral. By this time her son was already engaged to the daughter of an elderly aristocrat, but this arrangement was broken off when the triumvirate was formed. Neither Antony nor Lepidus had a daughter of suitable age, but the army was vocally eager for some means of cementing the new alliance and so the young Caesar married Fulvia’s daughter from her first marriage. The girl – her name was Claudia and was not changed to the vulgar form Clodia when her father was adopted into the plebeian order – came from important aristocratic families on both sides and so was a suitable match. However, she was very young, still a few years short of the normal marriageable age, and although the couple were married they did not live as husband and wife; when the couple divorced two years later, Caesar took an oath stating that the girl remained a virgin.16
For the moment the marriage provided a very traditional bond between Antony and Caesar, who only a few months before had traded invective and then fought each other in battle. Now they would go east in joint command to deal with the powerful forces assembled by Brutus and Cassius. Lepidus remained in Italy with only a few legions. Regardless of age and experience, it was clear that Caesar must go with the army sent to punish the men who had murdered his father. This was far more important than the distribution of provinces between the triumvirs. Antony and Caesar would win glory – or perish in the attempt. If they won, then Lepidus would gain only an indirect share of the prestige and power. If they lost and did not return, then a man who had shared in the proscriptions was likely to find that he had plenty of enemies.17
Winning would not be easy. The Liberators had acquired and recruited more than twenty legions. Some of these had originally been raised by Julius Caesar, but none had seen extensive service under him or had reason to feel a close bond to his heir or to Mark Antony. Nor were they profoundly committed to defending the rights of the senatorial elite, and Brutus and Cassius were careful to offer their legionaries financial incentives every bit as generous as those given and promised by the triumvirate. The provinces of the eastern Mediterranean had little choice but to foot the bill for this, and were squeezed with heavy taxes and required to supply food, material and allied soldiers. Some did so willingly, but none could hope to resist the might of the Liberators’ legions. Cassius invaded Rhodes when the island proved reluctant to meet his demands, and sold into slavery the populations of several communities in Judaea who were similarly recalcitrant. Around the same time, Brutus besieged and sacked Xanthus in Lycia, prompting the mass suicide of many of its inhabitants. Such grim warnings ensured that most communities readily gave them what they wanted. Brutus employed some of the silver he acquired to mint coin series with his head on the face – something first done by Julius Caesar, but now copied by the triumvirs – and a more appropriately Republican cap of liberty on the reverse.18
By the end of the summer of 42 BC the Liberators felt strong enough to concentrate their armies and cross the Hellespont from Asia Minor into Macedonia. Antony and Caesar had sent a force of eight legions across the Adriatic while they prepared their main body and gathered the ships needed to transport so many soldiers. Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, this corps managed to retreat westwards along the Via Egnatia to Amphipolis. The Liberators did not pursue them all the way, but took up a strong position in front of the city of Philippi – founded by and named after Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II, in the fourth century BC.
Antony’s and Caesar’s main armies did not set sail until September – very late in the year to begin campaigning, but matching Julius Caesar’s determined prosecution of the earlier civil war. Like him they were short of transport ships and faced powerful enemy squadrons of warships determined to hinder their crossing. Antony had to fight off raids on the port of Brundisium itself as he prepared the expedition. Before he had even reached the Adriatic, Caesar engaged in some indecisive naval skirmishing with the growing power of Sextus Pompeius. When they finally set sail, it was with only part of their forces, and the transport ships would have to return to bring reinforcements. They managed to carry across a second convoy before the Liberators’ warships closed off the sea route for some time.19
The triumvirs landed at Apollonia – more than two years since Caius Octavius had left for the uncertainties of Roman politics – but the familiar surroundings were little comfort because he had fallen seriously ill during the voyage. We do not know what the sickness was, but he was incapable of going any further for the moment. Antony pressed on with his legions, marching to reinforce the vanguard at Amphipolis. He then went further, boldly pushing on to camp facing Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. This was a risk, since they outnumbered him by at least a third, but the Liberators were too cautious to exploit their advantage. There was a little skirmishing between the rival armies’ outposts for the next ten days, until Caesar and his legions finally arrived to join his colleague. Close to his twenty-first birthday, the young commander had to be carried in a litter since he was incapable of riding a horse.20
The triumvirs had nineteen legions with them – as many as Pompey and Julius Caesar combined at the decisive Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC – and faced seventeen legions under Brutus and Cassius. The Liberators had the advantage in cavalry, allegedly fielding 20,000 against the triumvirs’ 13,000. If the legions were close to full theoretical strength then this would mean that more than 200,000 soldiers fought in the battles to come, but we need to be cautious. Probably all of the legions were substantially under-strength and the totals for cavalry also inflated. Horses were difficult to transport by ship, and it would have been immensely difficult to feed so many mounts, along with similar numbers of pack and draught animals, and all these soldiers and camp-followers for any length of time. Brutus and Cassius had amassed considerable stocks of food and fodder, and had ready access to supplies brought by sea – advantages denied to their opponents – but it is doubtful in the extreme that they could have supplied such a large force for the duration of the campaign.21
Even if the armies were in fact two-thirds or half the size claimed then they would still have been large. There were some veterans on both sides, but the overwhelming majority of soldiers and many officers had little prior experience of battle. This was also true of the commanders. Cassius had served as Crassus’ quaestor in 53 BC and led a fragment of his defeated army to safety, but that was now twenty years ago. He and Brutus both served in the Macedonian campaign in 48 BC, but otherwise gained no more military experience until their small-scale punitive operations to raise funds for this war. It was scarcely thorough preparation for controlling one of the largest Roman armies ever put into the field. Antony had more experience of command, although as we have seen considerably less than is usually assumed; he was by no stretch of the imagination a Julius Caesar or a Pompey – and even they had never led so many legions into battle. This was a war fought by large and clumsy armies, where none of the senior officers had any experience of warfare on so grand a scale. On each side the armies remained to a great degree separate, loyal only to the leader who paid them. They formed up beside each other, but were not integrated into a single command.
Brutus and Cassius each held a distinct camp on the higher ground outside Philippi. Brutus was on the right, his flank resting on a line of hills. Cassius was on the left, beside a wide stretch of marshland. Lines of fortification joined the two camps together. They had good access to water, a ready supply line to the coast, and their plan was to wait for the enemy to attack at a disadvantage or to run out of food. It might have worked, but did give the initiative to the triumvirs and that was not really the Roman way. Caesar’s legions camped opposite Brutus, with Antony’s men in front of Cassius’ position. For a while they were content to skirmish. Most days the rival armies marched out to deploy in battle order in front of their camps, but neither side advanced to force an action. Such challenges to battle were a common feature of warfare in this era.22
In an effort to break the stand-off, Antony decided that the marshland on the left of the enemy position was vulnerable, and set his men to making a fortified line through the marshes. His men built outwards from their own camp, and the idea was to create a position running past Cassius’ flank and eventually threatening the enemy’s supply lines. At first the work was concealed by the high reeds, and care was taken to continue the main deployment outside the camps each day and occupy the enemy’s attention. Eventually Cassius realised what was happening, and set a detachment to build his own ditch and rampart at right angles to Antony’s. He planned to cut across Antony’s line, overpower any men at that spot and cut off all those in advance of it so that they could be mopped up later. On 3 October Antony’s patrols discovered what the enemy were doing. As usual the rival armies were formed in battle-lines, and it is possible that the Liberators had decided to advance a little further forward or perhaps even to attack in order to distract their opponents from the building work.
Greece and Macedonia, and the Battles of Philippi
Antony was at the far-right flank of his line and immediately led the closest troops into the marshes against Cassius’ new line of fortification. Elsewhere a confused battle developed. Whether or not the attack was premeditated, Brutus’ and Cassius’ staff had difficulty in co-ordinating so many inexperienced legions. The orders to advance did not reach each unit at the same time, and on the initiative of local commanders some waited and others moved forward without instructions. The result was an enthusiastic but disordered advance. Things were even more confused on the other side. After days of posturing and facing the enemy without fighting, the triumvirs’ legions were not expecting a full-scale battle. Brutus’ line extended further to the right than Caesar’s troops – probably more by chance than design. The Fourth held the post of honour on the extreme left of the line and the experienced Caesarean legion found itself charged in the front and flank and was quickly overwhelmed. Panic spread, and Caesar’s entire left wing collapsed. Brutus’ exultant troops surged forward into pursuit and broke into the enemy camp, where they quickly dispersed to plunder and forgot all about completing their victory.
In the meantime Antony’s men had used ladders to scale and capture Cassius’ new wall, and then kept going, urged on by their general. Antony was one of the first to break into Cassius’ main camp. Most of the latter’s legions were engaged to the front and not involved in the fighting in the marsh, but as rumour spread that their possessions were lost, the cohorts began to waver and retreat. Cassius himself despaired as his army dissolved around him. Short-sighted, he mistook some of Brutus’ cavalry for the enemy and ordered his body servant to help him commit suicide rather than become a prisoner. (This man promptly disappeared, and some wondered if he had killed his master without waiting for the order.) Brutus was unable to get his men back under control and turn against Antony, and instead they began to drift back to their own camp, laden down with loot. Antony in turn had become too involved in the storming of Cassius’ camp to influence the wider battle and was unable to exploit the disorder of Brutus’ men. Caesar was simply nowhere to be seen.23
For the rest of his life controversy would surround the young triumvir’s conduct on 3 October, and there is no doubt that he failed to perform as a Roman aristocrat should at the head of an army. He was still seriously ill, incapable of active command, and yet he does not seem to have appointed a subordinate to fulfil this role – no doubt because a warlord must avenge a dead father himself and not through a deputy. This leadership vacuum was the most important cause of the bad order and rapid collapse of his army under Brutus’ attack. Caesar may have been with them, carried in his litter behind the battle lines. He was certainly not in his main camp when the Liberators’ men broke in, although several of these came to Brutus boasting that they had killed the young triumvir. Caesar’s own story was that his personal physician dreamed that it would be dangerous to stay in his tent, and so at some point his companions heeded the warning and he was carried away by his personal attendants. It was not clear whether this was before or during the fighting. They took him away from the battle, and hid in an area of marshland some distance to the rear. Perhaps they or he despaired of the battle, or he was simply too exhausted to move, but he remained there for three days before returning to the camp.24
Cumbersome and essentially amateur armies given poor leadership, or none at all, turned the First Battle of Philippi into a draw. Casualties were heaviest among Caesar’s legions, which also lost a number of standards. Worse news came when a courier arrived to report that the latest convoy to come from Italy had been intercepted by enemy warships and destroyed. A large part of Legio Martia, along with another legion, perished by fire or drowning when the transport ships were burned. Brutus did not believe the report when it reached him, and seems to have sunk into depression following the death of his ally and brother-in-law. Cassius was dead, but the two armies remained fiercely separate, and so Brutus immediately gave his colleague’s soldiers a generous gift of money to preserve their willingness to die for the Republic and liberty. Antony continued to extend his fortifications around the enemy left. Cassius had kept a garrison on one commanding hill but, whether through a simple mistake or a misplaced desire to assert his authority, Brutus withdrew them. Antony and Caesar spotted the error and immediately sent troops to the spot, who quickly built a strong fort there. Brutus’ supply line was now in jeopardy. As the days and weeks passed his army grew frustrated, eager to end things by confronting the enemy again.
