Augustus, page 18
Caesar divorced Scribonia as soon as she had given birth to Julia. At the most basic level a Roman husband had only to utter the phrase ‘take your things for yourself’ (tuas res tibi habeto) to separate from his wife. In this case Caesar added as reason that he could ‘no longer stand her bitter personality’ and it is impossible to know whether this was true or simply a piece of gratuitous spite. Claudius Nero obligingly divorced Livia and around the beginning of October 39 BC Caesar and Livia were betrothed. A ruling was sought about this from the college of pontiffs to which he belonged, and seems to have involved the official confirmation that Livia was pregnant and Claudius Nero the father, firmly establishing paternity. This did not prevent rumours from circulating that the child was Caesar’s, and there was a joke about how a lucky a couple was to have a child in just three months; but since he must have been conceived while Claudius Nero and Livia were in Greece this is impossible. For the moment Livia moved to live in Caesar’s house as his betrothed, and it was there on 14 January 38 BC that she was delivered of a baby boy, Drusus Claudius Nero. The boy was sent to his father to be raised.27
On 17 January Caesar and Livia married, a mere three days after she had given birth. The bride’s father was dead, and she seems to have had few close male relatives, and so her former husband accompanied her at the ceremony. It was a grand occasion, and the banquet that followed had an Olympian theme with the six men and six women attending all dressed as Greek gods and goddesses. Caesar took on the role of Apollo. Food and drink were on an extravagant scale, as the young couple revelled in their wealth and power. It was the fashion at the time for aristocratic ladies to be attended by deliciae, scantily dressed slave boys – perhaps on this occasion appearing as cupids – who whispered biting comments about those around them. The humour was acidic, camp, often crude, and was enjoyed by the sophisticated. In this case, one boy is supposed to have pointed at Claudius Nero reclining on the other side of the table and said to Livia, ‘Why are you over here, lady, when your husband is over there?’
In later years critics spoke of Caesar abducting another man’s wife – just the sort of thing tyrants were supposed to do. They exaggerated in the way of political abuse, for Claudius Nero was compliant, although admittedly he probably had little choice in the matter. It is difficult to believe that Livia was not an enthusiastic participant who agreed to, and perhaps even suggested, the rapid marriage. At the time, food was again running short in Rome, and the rumoured splendour of what was dubbed the ‘feast of the twelve gods’ was widely resented. People said that Caesar was Apollo indeed, but Apollo the Tormentor, one of the less pleasant aspects of the god. A rhyme circulated which spoke of ‘Caesar playing the false role of Apollo and feasting amid novel debaucheries of the gods; then shall all the deities turn their faces from the earth and Jupiter himself fled from his golden throne.’28
IMPERATOR
Food was short in Rome because of renewed friction with Sextus Pompeius. Piratical raids had occurred, and Caesar claimed that captured raiders revealed under torture that they were sent by Sextus. Whether or not this was true – and it is possible that Pompeius was unable to control all of the men drawn to his cause – Caesar believed that he was fully prepared to fight and win a naval war. One of Pompeius’ trusted admirals, a freedman named Menas, had defected to Caesar, bringing with him some ships and giving him control of Corsica and Sardinia. In the civil wars of these years there was great emphasis on mass, on simply fielding more legions than the opposition. There was also a well-entrenched Roman belief that throwing numbers and resources at a problem ought to bring success. Few Roman commanders, including Julius Caesar, fully adapted their thinking to see naval warfare as fundamentally different to warfare on land, and his heir was no different. There is every sign of complacency and a lack of respect for the unpredictability and power of the sea in the plans for the invasion of Sicily in 38 BC.29
The western coast of Italy lacks natural harbours all the way from the Straits of Messana (modern Messina) up to the Bay of Naples. This, combined with the ability of Sextus’ men to raid any port within range of their bases on the islands, meant that the forces had to be prepared a considerable distance away from their objectives. The plan was for the two Caesarean fleets to unite at sea and co-ordinate their attack on Sicily, but this never happened and instead they fought separately. The ships were new, their crews inexperienced, and their commanders just as raw, with the exception of Menas. Sextus’ experienced squadrons came off the better in the clash with one of the Caesarean fleets, and heavily defeated the other. The weather then finished the job. Exceptionally bad storms, even for the unpredictable seas off the west coast of Italy, blew up. Menas’ ships knew how to cope, but most of the other captains had no idea what to do and their ships were dashed to pieces on the shore. By the next day Caesar was left with less than half of his fleet and the campaign was over. There were riots in Rome, and Maecenas was sent to calm the situation, but there was little that could be done about the food shortages.30
Sextus could barely believe his good fortune, for the bad weather had come at just the right moment. Later he took to wearing a sea-blue cloak and calling himself the son of Neptune. Caesar is supposed to have boasted that he would have the victory in spite of Neptune, and ordered that statues of the sea god were not to be carried in the procession at the next games in Rome. Most Romans blamed the triumvir rather than the god for the shortages of food and an unnecessary and disastrous war. Knowing that Caesar was addicted to dice games and gambling, some wag came up with the following verse around this time: ‘When he has twice been beaten in sea battles and lost his fleet, then he plays with dice – hoping he can win one victory!’31
Caesar had asked Antony to come to Brundisium for a meeting at the start of the summer, but then failed to turn up as arranged. Antony grew tired of waiting and sailed back to the east. After the disasters of the summer Caesar sent Maecenas to him, and eventually a fresh conference was arranged and was held at Tarentum in 37 BC. Antony came with an escort of 300 warships, and as part of the new deal loaned 120 of these to his brother-in-law. The latter promised to send him soldiers for his Parthian War. Octavia was believed to have helped the negotiations, persuading her husband to add an additional ten small ships, while her brother gave Antony 1,000 elite praetorian guardsmen. More formally the triumvirate was renewed, since the five years of office originally given to them by law in 43 BC had now elapsed. The details of this constitutional façade elude modern scholars, and may well have been a little vague at the time, for there was no real precedent for such extended power. Antyllus, Antony’s ten-year-old son by Fulvia, was betrothed to Caesar’s infant daughter Julia to provide the now almost routine marriage bond to round off the deal.32
A new war was planned against Sextus, and all of 37 BC and the first half of the next year was spent in preparations. In charge was Agrippa, the old friend and contemporary who had been with Caesar at Apollonia in 44 BC, and seems to have served him ever since in increasingly senior roles. He had missed the first conflict with Sextus because he had been in Gaul, where he suppressed a rebellion in Aquitania and emulated Julius Caesar by bridging the Rhine and leading an expedition against the German tribes. Skill and competence, whether as a general, engineer or administrator, would be the hallmark of Agrippa throughout his life, combined with absolute loyalty to Caesar and a studied modesty. Justifiably awarded a triumph, he chose not to celebrate it rather than highlight the failures of his chief. Instead he oversaw the creation of a new, more powerful fleet. Behind Cumae on the Bay of Naples he excavated a canal connecting Lake Avernus via a smaller lake to the sea, providing an extensive port and a safe expanse of water for training the crews.
Teams of rowers began practising on land, sitting in specially constructed tiers of seats to simulate the inside of a warship. Many of these men were former slaves, given their freedom in return for serving – one of the rare occasions when slaves were enlisted. The Hollywood image of galley slaves chained to their oars is a myth, and warships were always crewed by free and salaried sailors and rowers. The warships themselves were built to be large and strong, their decks covered to protect the rowers, and many were equipped with a new type of collapsible tower so that missiles could be flung or shot down onto the enemy vessels. There was also a secret weapon called the harpax, a hook with rope attached fired by catapult and intended to stick hard into an enemy vessel, grappling it so that it could be held fast and boarded.33
Sextus was also busy, and the opposing sides now each mustered more than 300 ships, each warlord hoping to overwhelm the enemy. Some of the problems were the same as in 38 BC, for Caesar’s fleets had had to be prepared in separate places and his three-pronged attack on Sicily was difficult to co-ordinate when the campaign began at the start of July. Once again Neptune seemed ill-disposed, and Agrippa lost ships to bad weather. At the first attempt only Lepidus, crossing from North Africa, was able to land legions on the island, and even then a convoy of reinforcements was intercepted and destroyed by the enemy.
Agrippa won a battle off Cape Mylae – his large, heavily constructed ships proving difficult for the more manoeuvrable but smaller enemy warships to damage. Soon afterwards, Caesar was in turn beaten by Sextus off Tauromenium (modern Taormina), losing most of his ships and having to flee ashore. For a while he was attended by only a single bodyguard and was close to exhaustion by the time they met friendly forces. Yet over the days to come more and more soldiers were landed on Sicily until there were some twenty-one legions and supporting troops on the island. The Pompeians severely harassed a few of these detachments, but lacked the numbers and determination to destroy any of them. The odds were turning ever more decisively against them, as Sextus’ bases were besieged and taken one by one. He was left with little choice but to fight a major fleet action.
On 3 September the battle was fought off Naulochus – there is even a chance that the time and location were mutually agreed before the battle. Agrippa commanded from his flagship, while Caesar watched from the shore. It was said that he had fallen into an exhausted sleep and could only be woken with difficulty so that he could give the signal to engage. Antony later taunted him with falling into a terrified stupor and being unable even to look at the enemy, let alone fight them. His presence proved unnecessary. Agrippa’s growing skill as an admiral and his bigger ships crewed by newly confident and experienced men smashed the enemy fleet, destroying most of it as the Pompeians tried to flee. Caesar rewarded him with a special blue flag or vexillum and a newly created gold crown shaped like the prows of warships, the corona navalis.34
Caesar had won again, although the war with Sextus Pompeius had proved one of the sternest trials of his life. It was fortunate that Pompeius always lacked the land forces to carry the war to Italy for he never acquired the good recruiting grounds to raise many legions. Caesar took risks in this conflict, and suffered heavily when things went wrong. It is interesting that several stories are preserved of his personal escapades, and narrow avoidance of death – very similar in flavour to the tales of the escapes of victims of the proscriptions that clearly captured the Romans’ imagination. Most of these probably derive from his memoirs, suggesting a style very different to Julius Caesar’s dispassionate accounts of his campaigns, where little is said of the general’s exploits. The genre was different, but more importantly the dictator was modestly telling stories of his own victories. His heir instead had to shed a personally heroic light on his failures and the battles won by his subordinates. Shrewd enough by 36 BC to admit that he needed to rely on the talents of men like Agrippa to do the actual fighting, he was skilful in securing the main credit for himself and painting his own involvement in the most exciting light possible.
10
RIVALS
‘Wars, both civil and foreign, I undertook throughout the world, on sea and land, and when victorious I spared all citizens who sued for pardon.’ Deeds of the Divine Augustus.1
‘At last he broke off his alliance with Mark Antony, which was always doubtful and uncertain, and with difficulty kept alive by various reconciliations; and better to show that his rival had fallen away from conduct becoming a citizen, he had the will which Antony had left in Rome, naming his children by Cleopatra among his heirs, opened and read before the people.’ Suetonius, early second century AD.2
Caesar was given an opportunity for fresh heroism almost immediately, this time at the expense of an ally. The capture of Sicily had given Lepidus an important role for the first time in years. Understandably resentful at his marginalisation since Philippi, the oldest member of the triumvirate now expected to regain some of his lost power. Bypassing Caesar’s generals on the island, Lepidus arranged for the strongest Pompeian army to surrender to him and serve under his command, increasing his army to more than twenty legions – a prestigious total even if many were greatly understrength. He let the former Pompeians join his own men as they sacked Messana in an effort to win their goodwill. His own soldiers may have been less enthusiastic to share the spoils with recent enemies, but obeyed orders. For the moment Lepidus felt strong, and was determined to add Sicily to his African provinces and retain control of his enlarged army. There were angry exchanges with Caesar and his local commanders as he asserted his right to command on the island, and his troops were drawn away to camp on their own. Legions were the ultimate basis of power in these years, and a man with a strong and loyal army could not be ignored. Yet loyalty was often negotiable, and Caesar’s agents were soon at work among the soldiers, just as they had once courted the Fourth and Martia at Brundisium in 43 BC.
Imperator Caesar followed, riding at the head of his cavalry. He left these outside, and boldly went into the camp accompanied by just a few officers and guards. There was an echo of Julius Caesar’s ice-cool confrontation of the mutinous Tenth, when he broke their spirits by calling them quirites – citizens or civilians – rather than the usual commilitones – comrades or fellow soldiers. His heir lacked something of the dictator’s charisma and had no long association with the men he now faced. The latter were mainly strangers, some until very recently enemies, although no doubt there were a few officers who had served under Julius Caesar and perhaps this helped. Lepidus and those loyal to him tried to stop the bold young commander. Caesar was jostled, and narrowly missed by a javelin aimed at him, but he and his party were not massacred as they must surely have been if Lepidus’ army had been at all determined.
Caesar spoke to the soldiers, urging them to join him. He personally grabbed a legionary eagle – just as he had done at Mutina – and began to march out of camp trusting that the men of that unit would follow. Some did, and some of these were standard-bearers themselves who in turn led more men with them. It was not an instant defection. For the moment the bulk of the troops were unsure what to do. The arrival of more of Caesar’s men outside their camp may have helped many to make up their minds. More important was Lepidus’ failure to ignite their passion on his behalf, and his soldiers left him – at first in dribs and drabs, and finally en masse. The abandoned commander took off his armour and military cloak and went to surrender clad in the civilian toga.
Julius Caesar paraded his clemency, but the triumvirs had openly followed a different path. Now his heir decided it was both practical and worthwhile to emulate his ‘father’. Lepidus was expelled from the triumvirate and stripped of all power, but his life was spared and he was sent to live in comfortable captivity in Italy. Caesar’s legal right to do this was unclear and in the conditions of these years unimportant. Lepidus remained pontifex maximus until his death many years later. He was spared because he presented no danger. There was a hint of cruelty within the judgement – made worse because for Roman aristocrats the admission that someone else possessed the power to decide their fate was a humiliation in itself – and over the years Caesar would occasionally bring Lepidus to Rome to take part in a ceremony or meeting of the Senate. Even so, this was still far more mercy than had been granted to the proscribed. Lepidus lived to a ripe old age.3
Sextus Pompeius was not so fortunate. With his few remaining ships and men he sailed east, preferring to deal with Antony rather than with Caesar. That was not unreasonable, and his initial welcome was encouraging, until he sensed a chance to revive his fortunes and negotiate from more strength and so began raising a new army. One of Antony’s commanders quickly defeated him and soon afterwards had Sextus executed. It was unclear even at the time whether or not his death was on Antony’s orders.4
The triumvir – for thus he continued to style himself even if now there were only two members of the board – had greater problems than the fate of Pompey the Great’s son. In the summer of 36 BC, Mark Antony had finally launched the great attack on Parthia, intended to restore the Roman pride humbled by the defeat of Crassus and the more recent invasion of the eastern provinces. Caesar had failed to send his colleague the soldiers promised the year before, but even so Antony’s forces were extremely large – with some fifteen to eighteen legions, supported by auxiliaries and strong allied contingents provided by client rulers. An exuberant Plutarch later claimed that rulers as far away as India trembled at the news of this mighty horde.5
Yet Antony was no Alexander the Great, and neither were the Parthians as ready to collapse as the Persians had been in the fourth century BC. A deception plan achieved little at great cost of valuable time, and then impatience led him to leave his slow-moving siege and baggage train behind with inadequate guard. The mobile Parthians promptly pounced and wiped them out, so that Antony’s main column was stranded deep in enemy territory without equipment or much food as winter approached. The treachery of his Armenian allies made the situation worse, but the mistakes were Antony’s alone. With no choice save retreat, the Romans withdrew and were mercilessly harried by the Parthians for four long weeks. Antony showed personal courage, and his men often fought bravely, but during one night-time panic in the Roman camp he despaired and contemplated suicide. Only the news that it was a false alarm prevented him from acting. In fact, the enemy soon afterwards gave up the pursuit, and the Roman army eventually made its way to safety. At least a quarter of the legionaries never returned; the losses were even higher among the camp-followers and allies, and inevitably higher still among the cavalry mounts and transport animals. The survivors are unlikely to have been in good health after their ordeal and would take time to recover. Fortunately for Antony, the Parthians were not inclined to launch a counter-invasion. He would be in no state to repeat his own attack for many years, if ever.
