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THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF
MARC ANTONY
BY
ARTHUR WEIGALL
Late InspectQr-Qeneral of &ntigidties, Sgyptian Government
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ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON
Jc$f jb&ckd
1931
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTONY
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Copyright, 1931
by
Arthur Weigall
First Edition
AH rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, miut
not be reproduced in any form without permission.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Tiberius and Cams Gracchus, and the Beginning of Political Violence
in Rome. 134-121 B.C. . 3
CHAPTER II
Caius Marius, and the Growth of the Political Troubles amidst
which Antony was Born. 121-83 B * c 2O
CHAPTER III
The Infancy of Antony during the Rule of Sulla* 83-78 B.C. . . 36
CHAPTER IV
Antony's Growth to Manhood amidst the Political Struggles which
Culminated in the Catilinarian Conspiracy. 78-62 B.C. * * 55
CHAPTER V
Antony's Entrance into Politics on the Side of the Democrats
62-58 B.C. . * ... 86
CHAPTER VI
Antony's Military Service in Syria and Egypt, and his Appointment
to the Staff of Caesar in GauL 58-54 B.C 106
CHAPTER VII
Antony's Service with Caesar in Gaul, and his Tribuneship in Rome
which was Interrupted by the Outbreak of Civil War. 54-49 B.C. 126
CHAPTER VIII
The Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, in which Antony Acted
as Caesar's Chief ^ Lieu tenant. 49-48 B.C. 148
v
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX
PACK
Antony as Vice-Dictator in Rome, and his Temporary Estrangement
from Caesar. 48-45 B.C * . . 175
CHAPTER X
Antony's Consulship, and the Death of Cassar. 45-44 B.c. . * 1 97
CHAPTER XI
Antony's Struggle to Prevent Civil War, and his Difficulties with
Caesar's Heir, Octavian. 44 B.C 224
CHAPTER XII
Antony's Departure from Rome, where Cicero was Delivering the
Philippic Orations against Him; and his Failure to Wrest Cisal-
pine Gaul from Albinus, 44-43 B.C. 247
CHAPTER XIII
Antony's Alliance with Lepidus and then with Octavian; aad the
Turning of the Tables upon Cicero, 43 B,C 276
CHAPTER XIV
The War against Brutus and Cassius, and the Destruction of the
Republican Party* 42 B.C. ........ 298
CHAPTER XV
The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra at Tarsus, and his Winter
with Her in Alexandria. 41-40 B.C 317
CHAPTER XVI
Antony's Return to Rome; His Marriage to Octavia; and His Maneu-
vers for Political Unity. 40-39 B.C. . . , .
CHAPTER XVII
The Enforced Renewal of the Triumvirate, and Antony's Departure
for the East, and Reunion with Cleopatra. 3^-36 B,c. . 358
CHAPTER XVIII
The Great Parthian Adventure, and Antony's Movement towards
Sovereign Power. 36-33 B.C
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIX
PAGE
The Final Quarrel between Antony and Octavian, and Rome's
Declaration of War against Cleopatra. 33-32 B.C. . . . 404
CHAPTER XX
The Battle of Actium and the Return of Antony and Cleopatra to
Egypt. 31-30 B,C 428
CHAPTER XXI
Octavian's Invasion of Egypt and the Death of Antony. 30 B.C. . 454
Index . 469
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
MARC ANTONY Frontispiece
MARIUS 30
POMPEY . . * 136
Junus QESAR 210
CICERO . 286
Cl,EOPATRA 326
OCTAVXA . 370
OCTAVIAN 422
THE LIFE AND TIMES
OF MARC ANTONY
CHAPTER I
Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, and the Beginning of Political Violence
in Rome.
134-121 B.C.
THE outstanding achievement of modern civilization in any
country is the creation of that attitude of mind towards human
life which rejects the weapon of war as an instrument of domestic
politics. The most truly civilized states today are those in which
the home government can be carried on, or changes of government
effected, without bloodshed; and, emphatically, the mark now
of a backward people is the impatient political use of armed force
and the firing-squad*
Ancient Rome at about the date of the birth of Antony, viewed
from this angle, was astonishingly uncivilized; and its political
life can find no comparison in modern times save with that of some
tragi-comic East European or South American state where bluster-
ing revolutions are of frequent occurrence, and fights, murders, exe-
cutions, and hair-raising adventures are the commonplaces of ad-
ministration* Yet, even so, the comparison is not exact; for Rome
conducted its political battles with an indifference to human suf-
fering which is now more or less extinct, and the horror, moreover,
is accentuated by the fact that the butchers and the butchered
were usually educated men, accustomed to the amenities of a cul-
tured life far more fastidious than that which is associated with
political savagery today. The barbarous cruelty of these highly
civilized Roman party-leaders provides a paradox which has no
parallel in the modern world,
Antony was born at a time when no Roman except the very ob-
scure could feel sure that he would survive the next change of gov-
4 MARC ANTONY
eminent: there was always the danger of finding himself upon the
defeated side, and in that case the chance of his being put to
death was by no means negligible. Active politics, and even the
mere holding of an official post, brought that chance to a man's
elbow; and the familiar presence of the menace was followed at
length/ by an indifference to it which was less than heroic only
because it was no more than normal. Every man who meddled in
public affairs staked his head in so doing; and at a crisis he was
quick to take his opponent's* life in order to safeguard his own.
Matters had not always been so. The Romans in the past had
managed their internal affairs with surprising restraint; but dur-
ing the fifty years previous to Antony's birth in 83 B.C. political
violence had become less and less able to be checked. x Thus, to
understand the conditions amidst which Antony was brought up,
and which reached their crisis in the world-war at the end of his
life, it is necessary to go back to the days of the Gracchi ; for it
was then that the two great political parties, hopelessly confused
in the final struggle, first arrayed themselves against one another
to decide by force how Rome and her growing empire should be
governed.
In theory the government was in the hands of the Sena/us Pop*
ulusque Romanus, the "Senate and People of Rome/* According to
the constitution a mixed assembly of Patricians, or men descended
from the original chieftains of primitive Rome, and Plebeians, or
men whose lineage, though often long and illustrious, was not in
early history noble, annually elected two chief magistrates, the
Consuls, who held joint office for the one year; and these Con-
suls nominated the men to fill the vacancies in the Senate* There
were at this time three hundred members in the Roman Senate, all
appointed for life, and most of them were Patricians, though a
few were of Plebeian birth, which does not mean to say, of course,
that their sympathies were democratic. Besides the Senate there
was the Comitia, the People's Assembly, held in the open air; and
technically this Assembly had equal power with the Senate, the
two institutions corresponding in certain ways to the Upper and
JUwer Houses in modern governments. Gradually, however, the
Sei$te had come to represent the aristocracy and upper classes;
*See particularly Salluat: Bellum Jngurthinnm* acli, xliL
MARC ANTONY 5
and the People, overawed, had allowed the role of the Comitia to
become a very secondary matter. It was the Gracchi who, in the
latter part of the Second Century B.C., aroused the masses to a
new consciousness of their strength.
At that time 2 the most pressing trouble was the condition of
the agricultural population belonging to the country around Rome
which had once been the backbone of the State. Foreign conquests,
and particularly the annexation of Greece, had brought cheap corn
into the metropolis from abroad in such quantities that there was
no longer any profit in growing it at home; and in consequence
most of the peasants had migrated to the city, selling their farms
to the great landowners, who turned their fields into pasture and
raised cattle instead of crops. A single slave could look after a
herd of cattle; and the land which had once given employment to
the members of several families now provided work for but a man
or two. Cato the Elder, being once questioned as to what was the
most profitable use to which an estate could be put, replied
"Successful cattle-raising/* "And, next to that, what?" he was
asked. "Moderately successful cattle-raising," he replied* "And
after that?" said the questioner. "Unsuccessful cattle-raising,"
he answered. *
Ruined farmers and unemployed farm-labourers streamed into
Rome, where they earned a precarious livelihood or lived on doles
officially or privately supplied, while the countryside was almost
depopulated. Here in the city, too, there was industrial depres-
sion, for foreign goods of all kinds were being dumped in Rome;
and in many industries only the wealthy, who could employ slave-
labour, were able to compete at home with the manufacturers
abroad. The peasant and the urban working-man were both im-
poverished; and amongst the lower classes the feeling prevailed
that, somehow or other, they were the victims of the rich, and that
the Senate was merely the instrument of a heartless capitalist ty-
ranny. It is true that the Plebs, the People, had the right of ap-
pointing certain representatives of Plebeian race, known as Trib
$+ to protect their interests, and that these men, who were
"The chief authorities for the events recorded in these early chapters are Appian,
Cicero, Dtodorua, Plorus, Plutarch, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Velleiua Paterculus.
1 Cicero: D* Offitih, ii, 25.
6 MARC ANTONY
elected every year, and whose persons were sacrosanct during their
term of office, could put their veto upon oppressive measures;
but of late they had degenerated Into agents of the Senate, and
the disgruntled working classes had little hope of redress.
Then, in the year 134 B.C., Tiberius Gracchus, a man of some
thirty years of age, of Plebeian family but of Illustrious blood,
came forward with a scheme for the relief of the agricultural de-
pression. In view of the fact that the land in question had an-
cieiitly been the Roman Republic's property, and that its later
ownership by private individuals had never been really absolute,
he proposed that no single landowner should be allowed to retain
more than po acres, and that all the rest of the great Roman es-
tates should be surrendered, and should be divided up into small
holdings. By ousting the rich landlords, and sending the free
peasantry back to the fields under government protection! he hoped
to enable the latter to sell their produce profitably in the city
at a price less than that asked by the foreign traders.
Popular support for this revolutionary programme was imme-
diately forthcoming, and Tiberius was enthusiastically elected as
one of the Tribunes of the People for the year 133 B.C. He was a
quiet, usually restrained, and somewhat pedantic young man, very
emotional when excited, always transparently honest, but not rich*
ly endowed with brains, his deficiency in that respect, however, be-
ing concealed by his eloquence and the earnest, appealing tone of
his voice. From his childhood he had been brought up to believe
that he ought to render some great service to his country* for
not only had his father been a Consul who had conducted two very
successful wars, but his mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of
Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal, and was one of those
ambitious widows whose ceaseless dream it is to be the mother of
mighty men. In her efforts to rear a brood of heroes she had
lost nine of her twelve children; and her two surviving sons,
Tiberius and Cains, were constantly being upbraided by her for not
doing anything spectacular. **How long/* she kept exclaiming an-
grily to them, "am I to be called the daughter of Africanus and
not the mother of the Gracchi?* It could hardily have been her
wish, however, that they should make their contribution to history
on. the side of the People as the leaders of the struggle against
MARC ANTONY 7
the aristocracy, for not only was she herself an aristocrat by
birth but she had married her one remaining daughter, Sempronia,
to Scipio Af ricanus the younger, the adopted son of her brother,
and this man was an ardent supporter of the nobility and a bitter
enemy of the aspirations of the Proletariat.
The speech with which Tiberius made his dramatic entrance
into political life has been lost except for a few sentences; but
these reveal its dangerous nature. The wild animals, he said,
had their lairs and their dens, but the common people very often
had no more from their country than its open air and its sun-
light. Yet these were the men who were conscribed for the army,
and had to risk their lives for the safety of the fatherland, though
they themselves had no homes and no possessions to defend.
Military commanders, he declared, were talking nonsense when they
made speeches to the soldiers exhorting them to fight for hearth
and home, for the men had neither hearths nor homes to call their
own. They fought and were killed simply to maintain the capital-
ists in luxury. The People were termed the masters of the State,
he said, but actually there was not a foot of ground of which they
could claim possession: all the land belonged to the idle rich.
The Comitia was almost unanimous in its clamorous vote for
the measures which Tiberius proposed, but one of the other Trib-
unes of the People, a certain Marcus Octavius, 4 was persuaded
by the landowners to impose his veto, an action which, according
to Roman law, could hold up the passage of any bill. Octavius,
like his colleague and former friend, Tiberius, was an honest man,
and during the following days he argued with passionate sincerity
against the proposal ; but when Tiberius coldly accused him of de-
siring to obstruct the bill because he himself was a landowner,
his attitude stiffened into one of sullen and inflexible opposi-
tion.
Tiberius responded by redrafting the proposed law in a sever-
er form, and this again having been vetoed, he begged Octavius to
resign his office, quietly saying that if he did not do so, steps
would be taken to depose him, since a Tribune of the People who
opposed the will of the People, was an anomaly which could not
be tolerated. Octavius, however, interpreted his duties as those of
* Second cousin of the grandfather of the Emperor Augustus,
8 MARC ANTONY
a referee maintaining fair play between the political parties;
and he refused either to remove his veto or to resign.
Very well, said Tiberius, suddenly becoming excited: if Oc-
tavius could use his veto, so could he; and he proceeded to dp
so with preposterous indiscrimination. He vetoed all the deci-
sions of the Senate; he vetoed the judgments in the Law Courts;
he vetoed the payment of salaries to Government officials; he ve-
toed the actions of the magistrates; he vetoed the entire business
of the exchequer. Constitutionally he was entitled to do this,
and the fact that a Tribune's person was sacred enabled him to go
about his work without inconvenience, although he professed to be
in fear of his life. Many of the landlords, on the other hand,
pretending to believe that they were about to be reduced to star-
vation, refused, as a token of grief, to wash themselves or to
shave, and appeared in the streets in the dress of mourners, smiting
their heads and bemoaning their impending fate.
On the day when, in defiance of the veto of Octavius, the fi-
nal voting on the redrafted bill was to take place in the Comitia,
two men of consular rank pushed their way through the throng to
the place where Tiberius was standing, and, grasping his hands, im-
plored him with tears in their eyes to abandon his reckless pro-
ject. The more hot-headed of the landowners, however, did not
stoop to plead with him: they and their servants charged down on
the polling-booth, seized the ballot-boxes, * and made off with them,
leaving a scene of wild rioting behind them.
When order had been restored, Tiberius mounted the rostra, or
platform, on which Octavius was standing, and in the sight of a!!
men, put his arm around him and begged him to resign like a good
fellow; but his colleague was adamant, and the meeting was ad-
journed until the next day, when the same scene was repeated. This
time, however, Tiberius flung his arms around Octavius and kissed
him, whereupon the distracted man burst into tears, and might, in*
deed, have consented to resign had he not suddenly observed a
group of landowners winking and shaking their heads at him as
though urging him not to weaken. He therefore told Tiberius that
he was sorry, but that he must decline to oblige him; and at this
his deposition was put to the vote and carried.
'Or, rather,
MARC ANTONY 9
Instantly the mob rushed the platform, but Octavius clung
with both hands to the balustrade, and it was only after a violent
struggle that he was dislodged and pitched into the arms of the
crowd, where he would have been torn to pieces had he not been
rescued by the above-mentioned band of sympathisers who fought
their way to him and somehow effected his escape, though not be-
fore his personal servant had been so battered that he was perma-
nently blinded. The confiscation of the great estates was then suc-
cessfully put to the vote; and Tiberius placed himself at the
head of the Land Commission which was to make the necessary sur-
vey of the properties to be seized. It was a triumph of the
People; and even the most aristocratic Senators, bound by the
Constitution, were obliged to recognize the measure as legal.
At about this time, the eccentric Attalus the Third, King
of Pergamus in Asia Minor, died suddenly, leaving his vast for-
tune to the Roman People an action inspired, it would seem,
by hatred of his family and indifference to his subjects. Ti-
berius, who was now the unquestioned leader of the popular par-
ty, at once appropriated this windfall, and used the money for
the purchase of agricultural implements, the erection of farm
buildings, the stocking of the farms, and all the business in-
cidental to the reinstatement of the peasants upon the land.
The party of the landowners in the Senate was not strong enough
to stop him; for, though the fact is generally overlooked, there
can be no doubt that the nation as a whole was interested in this
movement to rehabilitate the small farmers and to put an end
to the dangerous discontent of the labouring classes.
During the next few weeks the Land Commission proceeded
vigorously with its work, and Tiberius came to be the mob's
hero, credited with far more revolutionary aims than actually
were in his mind. But as one by one the landowners were evicted,
and their public and pitiable lamentations caused disturbance
upon disturbance in the streets, the opposition began to consoli-
date itself, and Tiberius was accused of attempting to establish
a "tyranny/' that is to say a personal and absolute rule, the
story being spread, even, that he had taken possession of the
regalia of Attalus, so that one day he might deck himself out as
a King.
10 MARC ANTONY
His enemies then announced that they were going to bring
against him the capital charge of sacrilege as soon as his year
of office as Tribune of the People was over, on the grounds
that by his behaviour to Octavius he had violated the sanctity
of the Tribuneship; and, in reply to this, Tiberius declared that
he would obtain another year's immunity by having himself re-
elected for a second term, although this had been generally re-
garded as illegal. He made it known, moreover, that in the
following year, if he were elected, he would bring forward a great
many more popular measures, such as the restriction of military
service, the right of appeal from the law-courts to the Comitia,
and so forth.
As time passed, and the abuse to which he was subjected be-
came more violent, he began to feel considerable alarm. Indeed,
when the election-day drew near he appeared in the streets dressed
in mourning, leading his little son by the hand, and sobbing
quietly to himself as he walked along; and presently, addressing
the crowds, he told them in broken tones that if his sacrosanct-
ity were not renewed by re-election he would assuredly be tried
for his life, or assassinated. At this his supporters, greatly
moved, formed an armed bodyguard around him, thereafter never
leaving him by day, and camping around his house by night. On
the eve of the polls he called a secret meeting of his parti-
sans, at which it was arranged that they should by force prevent
his opponents from coming near the ballot-boxes, and that If he
had reason to think his life in danger, he would make a sign
to them by raising his hand and pointing to his head, at which
they were to attack the opposition and drive them from the
Comitia.
Next morning, to his great dismay, he found that the omens
were shockingly unfavourable. For a long time he had been
troubled by the memory of a certain dark portent which had mani-
fested itself one day in his house : two snakes had been found to
have made their nest and to have brought forth their young in his
old military helmet which had been stored away in an out-house*
The sinister occurrence worried him, because it seemed to in-
dicate that secret dangers were lurking in the very thing which
was intended to protect him from his enemies; and now, just as
MARC ANTONY 11
he was coming out of his room on this great day of his life, he
tripped up, and struck his toe so violently against a stone step
that blood was drawn. Hobbling painfully down to the chicken-
house to see whether his hens would give him the recognized and
almost invariably forthcoming sign of good luck by freely eat-
ing the grain thrown to them, he was disappointed to find them
unwilling to leave their coop. One hen at last ventured out, but its
behaviour was most suspicious, for it fluttered its left, or unlucky,
wing, stretched out its left leg, and then went back into the coop.
Just then, over his left shoulder, he observed two ravens fighting
upon a roof, and a stone dislodged by them fell at his foot.
At this, brave man though he was, he was so dismayed that
he very nearly decided to remain at home; but his friends at
length persuaded him to attend the polls, and, in deep depres-
sion, he limped forth. He was received with a tremendous out-
burst of cheering by his followers, but when he began to address
them his voice was drowned by the uproar around the outskirts of
the crowd, where the partisans of the landlords had gathered in
force and were endeavouring to break in on the assembly. Pres-
ently a certain senator, named Fulvius Flaccus, who was one of
his supporters, burst his way through the throng, and excitedly
told Tiberius that the landowners themselves were coming down
with an army of slaves and paid agents to attack the meeting.
At this Tiberius at once raised his hand and pointed sensation-
ally to his head, thus giving the battle-sign to his followers,
who immediately tucked up their gowns and prepared to use the
sticks and bludgeons which they had brought with them or were
now improvising out of broken benches and the like-
Some of the members of the opposition on the fringe of the
crowd, seeing the strange gesture which Tiberius was making,
rushed off to the Senate with the news that he was evidently
asking the People to crown him King; and thereupon the horri-
fied Senators, united by this danger to the Republic, rose almost
as one man* and, likewise tucking up their gowns, charged down
upon the meeting, followed by their attendants armed with the
legs and rungs of the senatorial chairs.
A most desperate fight ensued, in which no less than three
hundred persons lost their lives, clubbed to death by these wooden
12 MARC ANTONY
weapons, or felled by brickbats, not a single sword or dagger
being used. Tiberius himself took to his heels when his followers
broke and fled. Somebody seized him by the gown, but he slipped
out of it, and ran on in his shirt. A few moments later, however,
he fell flat on his face, and, as he was picking himself up, his brains
were knocked out by one of his fellow Tribunes, who, seeing how
the fight was going, had allied himself with the victors and had
armed himself with a broken wooden stooL
Caius Gracchus, the younger brother of Tiberius, came upon
the scene after the battle was over, and, in the name of his
mother, Cornelia, daughter of the national hero, Af ricanus, begged
the senatorial authorities to allow him to bury the body; but
this was refused by the angry aristocrats, and the corpses of
Tiberius and his unfortunate followers were dragged through the
streets and flung pell-mell into the river. Several of his chief sup*
porters, who had escaped, were hounded down and murdered at
the instigation of a magistrate named Opimius, one man being
thrown headlong into a large, disused wine-*cask which was crawl-
ing with poisonous snakes.
The senators justified themselves by declaring that their action
had not been directed against the People, but that they had tried
to save the Republic from a madman who would have made
himself King. In their anxiety they expressed no hostility to his
projects in regard to the land, and, much to the disappointment
of the landowners, allowed the Commission to continue its work of
expropriation. The battle, however, went down to history as the
first occasion on which extensive bloodshed resulting from political
differences had occurred in Rome since the abolition of the mon-
archy four centuries earlier; and it ushered in the new age of in-
ternal strife which was raging at the time when Antony was born,
For a few years the work of restoring the peasants to the
land progressed, one of the Commissioners being Caius Gracchus,
whose industry was notorious; but in 126 B.c* he was persuaded
to accept a high official position in Sardinia, where he remained
until 124 B.C. His character was very different from that of
his murdered brother, Tiberius, whose junior he had been by nine
years. He was a headstrong, aggressive, loud-voiced young man,
clever, ambitious, and eager to avenge his brother's death. When
MARC ANTONY 13
he was speaking in public he used to become so excited that he
would pace up and down the platform, wave his arms about, pull
his gown off, and thump the balustrade or smack his leg. In the
vehemence of his oratory, his voice was wont to rise to an un-
pleasant falsetto; and, being aware of this fault, he used to employ
a man to stand near him, whose business it was to sound a sus-
tained and dispassionate note upon a pitch-pipe to recall his tones
to their normal range.
On his return to Rome he was elected Tribune of the People
for the year 123 B.C., and he began at once to introduce a series
of popular measures which soon made him the idol of the crowd and
the terror of the aristocracy. Since his brother's death the
Comitia had managed to pass a law making it legal for a Tribune
to hold office for as many successive years as his supporters chose
to grant him by annual re-election; and Caius now made it known
"that it was his aim so to serve his party that they would keep
him in office perpetually. With the optimism of youth he felt,
indeed, that there was no reason why he should not be the life-
long leader of the People, enabled by the sacrosanctity of the
Tribunate and by its right of veto, to control the actions of the
Senate and to establish the Comitia, under his guidance, as the
.supreme power in the State. In speaking from the rostra the
Tribunes had formerly turned towards that part of the assembly-
ground which by ancient custom was allotted to the Senators
and patricians; but Caius, ignoring this section of his audience,
addressed himself always to the People, an innovation which,
as Plutarch points out, was tantamount to a definite recognition
-that the government was shifted from the aristocracy to the de-
-mocracy.
The first new law which Caius formulated was put forward
from motives no higher than those of sweet revenge. He pro-
posed that any magistrate who had banished or put to death a
Roman citi2en without trial should be called to account before
the Comitia; and its immediate effect was the flight of Opimws
and those directly concerned in the murder of Tiberius and the
subsequent punishment of his supporters. He then proposed a
law that any person who had been removed from office might not
put himself forward for re-election, his object in this case be-
14 MARC ANTONY
ing to check the attempt of the deposed Octavius to regain a
Tribuneship so that he might veto the acts of Cams as he had
vetoed those of Tiberius. This bill, however, was dropped by
its author on the advice of his mother, Cornelia, who saw, per-
haps, that Caius himself might one day be deposed.
He then successfully passed a law placing a tax on all imported
objects of luxury, for he believed that without some sort of pro*
tection many of the home industries would go into bankruptcy.
He lightened the conditions of military service, and attempted
to put an end to the death-penalty in the army: at least, he
proposed that a condemned soldier should have the right of ap-
peal to the civil authorities. To relieve unemployment he in-
augurated a vast scheme of road-making; and for the same
purpose he established Roman colonies on the site of the de-
stroyed Carthage and elsewhere, and encouraged emigration there-
to. He also speeded up the eviction of the great landowners,
and the creation of small-holdings; but he appears to have
discouraged the growing of corn for the Roman market, the far-
mers being recommended, it would seem, to seek new markets
in the other cities of Italy where prices were better because cheap
foreign grain did not penetrate to them. At the same time he
delighted the populace in Rome by lowering by one half the price
of the government corn received as tribute from the subject nations,
and issuing it in quantities sufficient for one month to every citizen
who came himself to pay for it and take it away this stipulation
being intended, I suppose, to prevent its reaching the markets
outside Rome supplied by the rehabilitated farmers.
By these and similar laws, and in various other ways* he
endeavoured to serve the People and to increase his popularity,
the result being that he was elected for a second year of of-
fice. He then gave up his house on the Palatine Hill, and
went to live in the slums. Once, when a gladiatorial show was
to be given in the market-place, and seats for the well-to-do had
been erected around the arena, he ordered them to be pulled down
so that the common people might have free access to the ring-side;
and on this order being disobeyed, he and his men broke up and
removed the structures during the night before the contest, with
the result that the ticket-holders arriving next day found that
MARC ANTONY 15
they had paid their money for nothing, and that an impenetrable
crowd of poor townspeople and peasants occupied all the avail-
able space. The mob applauded his action; but his fellow-Trib-
unes were furious at it, and thereafter worked against him to such
purpose that his popularity began to be seriously affected.
One of his new bills also told against him. At this time
Rome, in spite of its foreign conquests, was still a city-state;
and while a great part of Italy was incorporated in the Latin
League, of which Rome was the head, there were other parts of
the peninsula which were inhabited by peoples who were not yet
regarded as compatriots. Caius proposed that the franchise should
be conferred on all the Latins, which meant that the jealously
guarded privileges of Roman citizenship, including the right to
vote in the Comitia, would be enjoyed by the inhabitants of all
the little towns and villages throughout Latin Italy. By allowing
such a bill to pass, his opponents said, the Romans would soon
find themselves out-voted in the Comitia by their country-cousins,
crowded out of the theatres, baths, and public places of resort,
forced to share the money from time to time distributed amongst
the poor, and so forth.
But what most Injured his reputation was the failure of
his African emigration-scheme. He had gone over to Carthage
personally to inaugurate the new colony there; but the omens
were disastrously unfavourable. A sudden storm of wind flung the
Roman standard to the ground with its pole broken, and blew the
sacrifices clean off the altars; while the boundary-marks of the
new city were scratched up in the night by jackals, owing, I sup-
pose, to the customary burial of sacrificial-meat beneath them*
It was pointed out, too, that the site had been formally cursed
at the time of the destruction of Carthage by the Romans in
146 B.C., and that therefore nothing could prosper in the new
colony, the result being that few people could be persuaded to go
there.
Towards the close of his second year of office Caius suffered
a further diminution of his popularity owing to the fact that one
of his fellow-Tribunes, Marcus Livius Drusus, put forward vari-
ous democratic measures calculated to please the People even more
than those proposed by Caius. At the same time, however, this
!6 MARC ANTONY
Drusus definitely opposed the two unpopular schemes of his rival
the extension of the franchise, and the encouragement of emi-
gration; and he greatly strengthened his position by carrying the
Seriate with him in all that he did, thereby relieving the anxieties
of the masses, who had always felt, in following Caius, that they
were perilously close to open warfare with their political oppo-
nents. Drusus showed them that the Comitia and the Senate were
not necessarily opposed, and that the People could obtain all that
Caius was trying to get for them, and more, without any risk to
their lives. It is usually supposed that Drusus was merely the tool of
the Senate, cunningly stealing Caius's thunder for the Conserva-
tives' sinister ends; but it may well be that he was a genuine tac-
tician, bent on preventing civil war.
The upshot was that Caius, to his amazement, failed to be
elected for a third term, and no sooner was he out of office
in 121 B.C. than Drusus in the Comitia and Opimius, who was
now Consul, in the Senate began to rescind the laws he had passed.
But when Caius heard that the disestablishment of the colony
at Carthage was going to be put to the vote his exasperation was
so great that he made up his mind to oppose the passage of the
bill by force. Although no longer a Tribune he still had a great
following, and when the time came for the vote to be taken
he arrived at the meeting at the head of an aimed body of sup-
porters. Everybody expected a clash and was prepared for it ; but
when a servant of the Consul insolently ordered some of the sup-
porters of Caius out of his way, and was instantly stabbed to death
by one of the latter, both sides were too startled to do anything.
They all stared excitedly at the dead man ; but a sudden torrent of
rain sent everybody flying for shelter- Both sides were spoiling for
a fight, but few were willing to be drenched to the skin*
Next day the Senate invested Opimius with special powers
"to protect the state" against Caius and his supporters, and all
senators loyal to the Republic were asked to come with armed at*
tendants to a great meeting on the following morning. The People,
on hearing this, for the most part abandoned the pacific counsels
of Drusus and threw in their lot with their former leader, Caius,
likewise arming themselves for the morrow's fray: they had no
sympathy with the colonization-scheme, but they were not going
MARC ANTONY 17
to allow the rights of the Proletariat to be trampled upon by the
upper classes. No, indeed ! the Gracchi brothers had taught them
to realize their power, and "the sovereign will of the People" was
a phrase which had recently come to have real meaning. They had
much for which to be grateful to Caius ; and when somebody said
that he had been seen that day standing in front of his father's
statue in the Forum, gazing up at it while the tears ran down his
cheeks, a great many declared that they would not allow the poor
fellow's cherished projects thus to be quashed. In the evening many
of them went to his residence and stood guard over it during the
night; but Caius could not sleep, and, indeed, spent many hours
in bitter tears.
Early next morning he set out from his house in deep melan-
choly, but just as he stepped into the street his wife, Licinia,
ran after him, seized his hand, and cried out hysterically that he
was going to his death and that she would not even have the satis-
faction of burying his body, since it would doubtless be flung into
the river as that of Tiberius had been. Caius tore himself away
from her depressing embraces with difficulty, whereupon she fell
full length upon the ground, and lay there in a dead faint until
the servants carried her away.
He had arranged a rendezvous with his followers on the Aven-
tine Hill* whence he intended to lead his men across the valley
to the Capitoline, where the opposing party was gathered; but
when he arrived at his headquarters he found his friends cowed by
the reports of the strength of their opponents, and anxious to
negotiate a settlement of the trouble. Fulvius Flaccus, one of his
chief lieutenants, in fact, had been drunk all night, and now,
in his befuddled condition, could suggest nothing but that his
son, a boy still in his 'teens, should be sent over to the enemy to
open negotiations with them, for it was not likely that the good-
looking and obviously innocent youth would come to any harm
at their hands* Accordingly, he was despatched under the equiva-
lent of the white flag to Opimius, who, however, sent him back with
orders not to return unless he were to bring an offer of uncondition-
al surrender; but, in spite of this, Fulvius sent him over a second
time to plead the People's cause, whereupon Opimius very cruelly
ordered htm to be executed. As the wretched boy, trembling and
!8 MARC ANTONY
weeping, was being taken into the prison, a certain astrologer who
had accompanied him on his mission, and now expected death
for himself also, suddenly turned to him, and saying 4t Why don't
you do what I am going to do?" dashed his head against the stone
doorpost and fell, unconscious, with a fractured skull from which
he shortly died. 6
Opimius then brought a body of archers across the valley,
and ordered them to shoot down the so-called rebels. The first
volley wrought havoc amongst the democrats, most of whom
fled, and Caius, cursing their cowardice and seeing that all was
lost, rushed into the temple of Diana, where, in a passion of de-
spair, he prayed the goddess that the Roman People, who had
thus deserted him, should for ever remain the slaves of the aris-
tocracy. He then drew his dagger to kill himself, but he was re-
strained by two friends, Pomponius and Laetorius, who persuaded
him to try to escape by way of the old Sublician Bridge which
crossed the Tiber at the western side of the Aventine.
He was running down towards the river when he stumbled
and twisted his ankle; and before he was able to continue his way
some soldiers under the orders of the Consul appeared in hot pur-
suit. Thereupon Pomponius very gallantly stayed behind to bar the
way, and though it was not long before he was overwhelmed and
killed, his action enabled Caius to reach the bridge- Here Laetonus
performed a similar deed of devotion, holding the pursuers at bay
until he, too, was cut down. By this time, however, Caius had
reached the opposite bank of the river; and as he dashed along,
accompanied by a single slave, the people in the streets excitedly
cheered him on and called after him to run his hardest, as though
the affair were a sporting event. Not one offered to help him,
however, nor responded to his incessant and agonized shouts for a
horse.
At last he reached the slopes of the Janiculunrt, and, too ex-
hausted to go further, ran into a garden which enclosed a cer-
tain sacred shrine; but somebody told the pursuing soldiers where
he was, and they were quickly upon the scene. They found him
lying on the ground, clasped in the arms of his slave. An officer
ran the man through the back with his sword, and* pulling the
a Velleius, ii, vii.
MARC ANTONY 19
body away, discovered that Cains had a moment before been
stabbed to the heart by this faithful servant who had buried the
weapon in his own breast at the instant when he was struck from
behind. Caius's head was then cut off and taken to Opimius, and
the decapitated body was afterwards thrown into the river. Mean-
while, his followers, flying from the Aventine, were pursued in
all directions; and it is said that no less than three thousand per :
sons lost their lives on that day, Fulvius and another son of his
being amongst the slain.
Caius, of course, came to be venerated at length as a popu-
lar hero and martyr, as also did his brother, Tiberius. To the
impotent disgust of the aristocratic party, their statues were set
up, and the places where they were killed were consecrated, of-
ferings to their spirits being regularly made there. They were
the founders, indeed, of the democratic party whose fight with the
conservatives or republicans Is the "thunder off" which accom-
panies the whole drama of Antony's life. Their mother, Cornelia,
who long outlived them, became the recipient of the deepest
veneration ; and her house at Misenum, near Naples, was visited by
the greatest men in the land, to whom she used to talk freely
about her sons, showing no emotion whatsoever, but telling tales
of their exploits and their misfortunes as though they had been
legendary heroes of old. In f act, so devoid of natural feelings did
she appear to be, that people were obliged to find excuses for her,
saying that age, or the greatness of her sorrows, had deprived her
of her sensibilities. She used to relate long stories, too, about her
revered father, Africanus; but when she was told that the Roman
People had erected a bronze statue of her, and had inscribed it with
the words "The Mother of the Gracchi," the light of proud satis-
faction in her eyes disclosed the fact that the undying ambition
of her heart had been fulfilled.
CHAPTER II
Caius Marius, and the Growth of the Political Troubles amidst which
Antony was Born,
121-83 B.C.
ALTHOUGH the Gracchi were not of aristocratic lineage on their
father's side, their paternal descent was, at any rate, distinguished,
and their mother was of the bluest blood. The two brothers were
both men of culture and refinement, who supported the Comitia
rather than the Senate because they believed the latter to be a
corrupt and self-seeking body far less fit than the People's As-
sembly to promote the true interests of the nation- But in 1 19 .c,,
two years after the death of Caius Gracchus, another famous Trib-
une of the People, this time a genuine working man, made his bow
to the restless Roman audience. His name was Caius Marius*
He was born in 157 B.C. in a village near the little town of
Arpinum (Arpino) in the rugged Volsciau Mountains, his parents
being- people of small means and no importance; 1 but after a
hard-working youth he had the good fortune to come under the
notice of Csecilius Metellus, a man of ancient and illustrious
plebeian family, but of aristocratic sympathies and high stand*
ing in the Senatorial party, who, in 133 B.C., persuaded him to
join the army, and sent him with a letter of introduction to Scipio
Africanus the Younger* the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, then
commanding the Roman forces fighting in Spain* Scipio took a
fancy to, and rapidly promoted, the young man, whose bravery,
abstemiousness, and devotion to duty caused him to be generally
respected in spite of his rough manners and his habit of speak-
ing his mind; and once, so the story goes, when a staffofficer flat*
* Velleius (if, It) calls him natus tguestri loco, but the tiiutl correction
to agresti, to meet the strong tradition that he w*t t peasant, Is rery probable.
20
MARC ANTONY 21
teringly asked where Rome would ever find another Scipio, that
general put his hand on Marius's shoulder, and said "Possibly
here."
When the war was over and Marius had come back home with
a considerable reputation for efficiency, and an unbounded belief
in himself, both Scipio and Metellus helped him to fulfil his am-
bition to enter political life as a Tribune of the People, although
the fact that he was a poor speech-maker, halting and tactless,
was likely to tell against him. In 129 B.C. Scipio was murdered,
perhaps, as many people thought, by his wife Sempronia, the
sister of the Gracchi, because of his violently aristocratic prejudices
which led him too often to make rude remarks about the late
Tiberius Gracchus ; but Metellus continued to keep a guiding hand
upon Marius, and it seems evident that he hoped to train him to be
a useful member of the conservative or republican party the party,
that is to say, which upheld the rigid constitution of the old Re-
public against the restless pressure of the new democracy.
To his disgust, however, Marius conceived an overwhelming
dislike for the nobility, whom he regarded as nincompoops and
voluptuaries; and as soon as he became Tribune, he proposed in
the Comitia a law in regard to the suffrage which had as its ob-
ject the curtailing of the powers of the aristocrats' vehicle, the
Senate, The Consul Cotta 2 led the senators in their opposition
to this bill, and arrogantly sent for Marius to explain his con-
duct before the House; but to everybody's astonishment the Trib-
une marched into the Senate, followed by some officers of the
Comitia, and told Cotta that unless he allowed the bill to pass,
he> Marius, would have him thrown into prison for obstructing
the People's wishes. The Senators gasped; and when Marius then
turned to his former patron Metellus and angrily asked him what
he was going to do about it, Metellus, greatly shocked at such in-
solence in his proteg6, declared that he, too, would oppose the bill,
whereupon Marius called up his officers and said "Arrest that
man!** At this the nervous senators, supposing that another revolu-
tion was upon them, hastily expressed their willingness to recon-
sider the matter; and Marius marched out of the House again in
triumph.
* A near relation of the mother of the as yet unborn Julius Cs*r.
22
MARC ANTONY
A few days later, however, his delighted supporters proposed
another law in the Comitia, this time in regard to the distribution
of corn; and when the senators opposed it, Marius risked his popu-
larity with the masses by upholding the objection, for the simple
reason that he did not regard the measure as serving the public
good. Both parties realized then that that current phenomenon,
an honest patriot, had once more appeared in the democratic ranks.
From Tribune Marius rose at length to the high magisterial
office of Praetor; and so influential did he become that Caius
Julius Csesar, who later was the father of the great Dictator,
and who was one of the heads of the proudly aristocratic Julian
family, willingly gave him his sister, Julia, in marriage,
At about this time the Romans found themselves involved in
a war against King Jugurtha of Numidia in North Africa, an at-
tractive young man who, as a prince, had served under Scipio in
Spain, and was well-known to Marius, He had been a great fa-
vourite with the general, both as a dashing officer and as a
sportsman, and had gone back to Numidia with such high recom-
mendations that his royal father had made him his heir over the
heads of his two other sons, with the result that a family quarrel
had ensued, and Jugurtha had been obliged to kill off one of his
rivals and make war against the other,
Jugurtha at length came himself to Rome to try to obtain
the patronage of the Republic; and, being both rich and charm-
ing, he soon managed to win the support of the patrician sena**
tors, and did not hesitate to cement his friendship by the lavish
distribution of bribes* The discovery of these payments, however,
caused a tremendous scandal in the city; and the Comitia, ap*
parently at the instigation of Marius, took sides against him, and
ordered him to leave the country, which he did with a sneering
remark implying that everything was a question of money in
Rome, and that if only he had been richer he could have bought
the whole Republic. So greatly were the People incensed with
him that, in 109 B.C., they decided to drive him from his throne
by force; and Metellus, who was Consul for that year, and was
one of the few nobles who had not accepted Jugurtha's money,
was ordered to lead an expedition against him, with Marius, whom
the Comitia could trust, as his
MARC ANTONY 23
During the many months of indeterminate fighting which en-
sued, Marius won great military renown at the expense of his
somewhat incompetent superior officer, and became extremely
popular with the troops, whose every hardship he shared. Metellus,
on the contrary, was a man who believed only in strict discipline,
and inflicted punishments which were too inhuman even for Roman
taste. For example, his treatment of certain Greek and Italian
deserters who had been surrendered to him by the enemy was
savage almost to the degree of lunacy : he buried them up to their
armpits, used them as targets for his arrows, and then, alive or
dead, made little bonfires over them. 3 At last Marius decided by
hook or by crook to go back to Rome, get himself elected Consul
for the year 107 B.C., and ignoring in the public interest the prob-
able charge of ingratitude, make an attempt to supersede Metellus
in the supreme command. Metellus, very naturally, was not will-
ing at first to give him leave of absence, and, quite apart from
other and obvious considerations, could not stomach the idea of a
common and uneducated man becoming Consul; but at last, twelve
days before the date of the consular elections, he magnanimously
released him, whereupon Marius made a dash for home, and ar-
rived just in time to secure election by bluntly telling the Roman
People that this war was a man's job which could never be brought
to a successful conclusion by an elegant personage such as Metellus,
backed by a lot of emasculated senatorial nonentities.
"My fellow citizens," said Marius to the Comitia, 4 "com-
pare me, a self-made man, with these arrogant nobles. What they
have but heard or read, I have seen or done. What they have
learnt from books* I have acquired in the field. They despise
my humble birth: I despise their imbecility, for I consider
that all men are equal by birth and that only he who works
hard is noble. But if these patrician gentlemen justly despise me,
then let them also despise their own ancestors whose nobility, like
mine, had its origin in merit. And if they envy me the honours
I have received, let them also envy me my hard work, my
abstinences, and the perils by which I obtained these honours.
It is true that I cannot boast of ancestral portraits nor of the
deeds of my forefathers; but if it be necessary I can show you my
* Appum: Roman History, viii, pfc H, 3, 4 Salluat: Rellum Juffurthinum> Ixxxv.
24 MARC ANTONY
military rewards and the scars of my wounds. These are my
family heirlooms, these my nobility honours not inherited, like
theirs, but acquired amidst innumerable toils and dangers/'
"My speech, they say, is inelegant,' 9 he went on; ''but I have
never thought that of much importance, Nor can I speak Greek;
for I have never had a wish to learn a language which adds noth-
ing to the valour of those who know it. They jeer at me as being
unpolished, because I have but little skill in getting up an enter-
tainment, and do not give my cook higher wages than my steward.
I admit it, for I learnt from my father that vain indulgences be-
long to women, and work to men. Let the nobility, if they wish,
pursue the pleasures which are so dear to them ; let them devote
themselves to licentiousness and luxury; let them pass their lives
in revelry and feasting, the slaves of gluttony and debauchery.
But let them leave the toil and dust of the field to us, to whom
such things are better than banquets/*
Here, indeed, was the spirit of the Gracchi again, and the
People cheered the familiar sentiments to the echo; nor was it
long before Marius was given his heart's desire the supreme
command against Jugurtha, He then took a step which was so
revolutionary that even his supporters must have been startled
by it. Regular Roman troops could not be spared from their many
duties to act as reinforcements for the African campaign, and
Marius therefore enlisted the Latins from all over Italy, who had
never before been allowed to serve in the proud and exclusive
legions of Rome, and with them he enrolled as many suitable men
from the rabble of the city as he could find, although, until then,
the lowest classes had, likewise, been contemptuously debarred
from regular military service, This was the beginning of the vast
and heterogeneous Roman, army of the future, in which the legions
were recruited from all over the world; but the innovation must
have been regarded with horror by the conservatives who doubtless
thought that it would lower the whole tone of the forces. Marius,
however, soon licked his recruits into shape, and his experiment
was fully justified by their subsequent behaviour in battle.
By the time that he arrived back in Africa with authority to
take over the supreme command, the enemy's resistance was broken,
and it was not long before Jugurtha was in flight* Metellus, of
MARC ANTONY 25
course, was cut to the quick at being deprived of the final glory,
and, refusing to meet Marius, went home to Rome, where the
Senate saw to it that he received the honours which were his due,
whether the People liked it or not. Marius, meanwhile, was left
to catch the elusive Numidian monarch, a task which was well
nigh impossible. Jugurtha, however, sealed his own fate in the
following year, 106 B.C., by placing himself under the protection
of his father-in-law, King Bocchus of Mauretania, who secretly
opened negotiations with the Romans for his surrender.
At this point a new character makes a dramatic appearance
in the pages of Roman history, in the person of Lucius Cornelius
Sulla, the most extraordinary figure of that age. He was at
this time a yellow-haired young man of thirty who had been
taken up by Marius, and had been given the position of his
quaestor, or lieutenant. The choice was curious, for he was an
aristocrat by birth and a scholar by nature, whereas his chief
was a man of little education; but Marius was no doubt attracted
by Sulla's strong character, and his notorious ability to make him-
self pleasant and polite when it served his dark purpose. He was
remarkably daring, and both his bravery and his cunning were
displayed in the Incident which introduces him to history.
King BoccHus did not wish to incur the odium of handing
Jugurtha over as a prisoner, and Sulla therefore obtained the
permission of Marius to go with a small force to the Mauretanian
capital and personally make the arrest, in doing which, however,
he had to place his life in the hands of a man even more treacher-
ous than he was himself. Bocchus proved to be undecided as to
what to do, and it was only after protracted conversations that
Sulla's exceptional diplomatic ability obtained him his host's per-
mission to kidnap Jugurtha and make off with him in such a way
that the honour of Bocchus would not be too deeply stained. Thus
the Numidian King was captured, and sent in chains to Rome.
But just as Marius had taken from Metellus the victor's crown,
so now Sulla arrogated to himself the honour of thus ending the
war; and it was on this account that that deadly enmity between
the two men developed which ultimately caused the wholesale
slaughter whereat Rome was trembling at the time of Antony's
birth*
2 6 MARC ANTONY
The year 105 B.C. was spent by Marius In Africa, winding
up Numidian affairs; but meanwhile the fatherland was threat-
ened by a menace from the north more terrible than any yet
experienced by the Republic. A vast horde of barbarians of mixed
Celtic and Teutonic stock, migrating from Germany, had marched
southwards with their women and children in search of new
lands, and had carried all before them. In October, 105 B.C., an
army sent to check their incursion into Roman territory was cut
to pieces; and thereafter all eyes were turned to Marius and to
the army which he was bringing back from Africa, While he was
still on his way he was elected Consul again for the year 104 B.C.,
and on his arrival in Rome he was accorded a Triumph, the chief
feature in the procession being the captive King Jugurtha who
had been dressed up for the occasion in all his finery, but whose
deportment was spectacular in an unexpected sense, owing to the
fact that his brutal treatment in prison had sent him off his head.
At the end of the day's festivities the wretched man's royal
robes were dragged from his back, and in the struggle to get pos-
session of the single gold ring which, in African style, he wore in
the tip of one ear, his gaolers tore off a piece of the flesh. He
was then lowered, naked and bleeding, into the Tullian dungeon-
pit, beneath the Capitol, and as he fell into the damp slirne at the
bottom he was heard to utter a blood-curdling laugh and to exclaim
"O God, how cold your bath is!" He was left there to shiver and
starve to death, but it was six days before his demented sufferings
were ended by a gaoler who went down into the pit and strangled
him. 6 The case is typical of the savagery of Rome's traditional
treatment of foreign enemies*
To everybody's immense relief the victorious hordes from the
north did not march on Italy, but wandered off towards Spain;
yet so great was Rome's dread of them that Marius was elected
Consul again for the third time in 103 B.C., and for the fourth
time in 102 B.C. In the latter year, however, the invaders began
to move once more towards Italy in two bodies ; and thereat Marius
marched out against them at the head of an army which he had
trained into a perfect machine. The first battle was fought near
Aix: the tall, blonde Teutons, wearing heavy metal helmets, came
"Eutropius, iv, 11.
MARC ANTONY 27
on, linked hand in hand, in dense masses ; but Marius out-maneu-
vered them, and annihilated them and afterwards their women and
children. In the following year, being made Consul for the fifth
time, he attacked the other body of the invaders in northern Italy
with a like result, but when the men had been slaughtered the wo-
men took up the fight amongst the baggage-wagons, and those who
did not fall before the Roman swords brained their children and
hanged themselves with their own plaited yellow hair.
When Marius came back to Rome he was hailed almost as a
god, and the adoration of the lower classes for him was all the
more extreme because, in spite of his aristocratic marriage, he
was one of themselves, a true son of the People. The nobility,
however, attempted to counteract this popularity by paying high
honours to Sulla, who had greatly distinguished himself in these
campaigns, and who, being a patrician by birth and inclination,
had thrown in his lot with the Senate in its rivalry with the Comi-
tia. Sulla, fastidious, intellectual, and licentious, detested the
rough and ignorant mob from which Marius derived his chief sup-
port, and gradually, with deep cunning, he undermined his rival's
prestige, the process being aided by the fact that Marius, who was
really a very simple man, allowed himself to become a tool in the
hands of the most selfish elements in his party. Once more Rome
was divided into two hostile camps that of the nobles or conserva-
tives, acting through the Senate, and that of the People or demo-
crats, acting through the Comitia.
Marius managed, not without difficulty, to be elected Consul
for the sixth time for the year 100 B.C.; but his age, and the fact
that in these days he was drinking somewhat heavily, had caused
him to lose his grip, and he was unable to control the actions of
his two chief supporters, Saturninus, a violent and sinister ruffian
who nursed a personal grievance against the Senate, and Glaucia,
a tub-thumping demagogue, famous for his vulgar wit. These two
men induced Marius to push forward a programme of popular re-
forms much like that for which the Gracchi had stood ; and when
Metellus, since the days of the war against Jugurtha the bitter
enemy of Marius, had refused to be a party to the Senate's en-
forced approval of the measures, he was driven into exile. Riots
and murders, the outcome of class-hatred, now began to occur in
28 MARC ANTONY
Rome with startling frequency; senatorial politicians were beaten
or stoned to death in the streets by angry mobs who would no long-
er listen to their former hero's orders; and at last the younger mem-
bers of the patrician party banded themselves together to defend
their class by force against the unruly Proletariat,
Marius, who had now grown corpulent and unwieldy, was be-
wildered by these events; and from under his shaggy eyebrows he
stared about him like an angry bull perplexed by its tormentors,
At length in 99 B.C. Saturninus passed completely out of control,
and, at the head of an excited mob, seized the Capitol, it being
his intention, so it was said, to overthrow the Republic and make
himself sole ruler of the state. Too late Marius realised his inten-
tions, and repudiated him: the leadership was taken out of his
hands, and "a mob of gentlemen," quietly instigated by Sulla,
pelted Saturninus and his men to death with tiles snatched from the
roofs of the out-buildings, after which they caught and killed
Glaucia also.
The reputation of Marius was ruined by the incident, and
therewith he passed into a temporary obscurity which was only
lightened for him by a superstitious conviction that the stars
had promised him a seventh Consulate before he died. Unable
to bear his present humiliation, and exasperated to hear that the
Senate had exercised its recovered authority by ordering Metellus
back from exile, he set out on a tour of Greece and Asia Minor,
ostensibly to fulfil a vow he had made to Cybele, the great
Asiatic mother-goddess, but actually to study the lie of the land
in anticipation of an expected rising there against Rome. Plutarch,
indeed, thinks that he was prepared to foment trouble and bring
the incipient insurrection to a head, in the hope that the danger
would lead to his destined seventh Consulship, and that he would
regain his lost popularity by commanding the Roman army which
would be sent out against the rebels ; but this, perhaps, is to credit
the fallen hero with a cunning of which his artless nature seems to
me to have been incapable,
In Rome during the next few years the aristocratic party
was in control of the situation, and when Marios returned from
his tour he found himself almost ignored, and retired to his villa
on the Bay of Naples, that same house which had formerly be*
MARC ANTONY 29
longed to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, and which his
patrician wife had enlarged and beautified. There he mooned
about in surroundings too sumptuous for his simple mind to ap-
preciate, and became gouty and heavy through too much drinking
and too little exercise. But suddenly in 90 B.C. the outbreak of an
insurrection in Italy itself called him back into public notice.
The various peoples of the Italian peninsula, not being Roman
citizens, and knowing no way of protecting themselves from the
arrogance of those who were, leagued themselves together to de-
stroy Rome and establish a new republic. The menace to the city
was so great that party-differences were set aside, and Marius and
Sulla both found themselves in command of Roman armies dur-
ing the two years of subsequent war, and both shared in the final
victory, though the greater honour went to the dashing Sulla,
Marius being regarded as somewhat too slow. But it was a ter-
rible blow to Marius when Sulla was elected Consul for 88 B.C.
No sooner was the war over than the expected rebellion in
Asia Minor took place, but on a scale and with a ferocity which
was wholly unlocked for. The Roman governor, Aquillius, was
taken prisoner by the rebels, and, in revenge for the greed for
money which he had shown, was horribly put to death by the
pouring of molten gold into his mouth; and on the same day no
less than eighty thousand Roman residents in the country were
massacred.
When the news reached Italy in 88 B.C., Marius hastened to
Rome, feeling that at last his great chance had come. He had
studied the lands through which the Romans would have to march;
his plan of campaign was already settled in his mind; and he
saw himself once more elected Consul and Commander-in-Chief.
He was nearly seventy years of age; but in order to create an
impression of energy he went each day to the Campus Martius,
and there exercised himself with the young men on the public
athletic grounds and riding-track. Puffing and panting, and once
or twice nearly fainting from his exertions, he bravely struggled
to overcome the weight of his years, so that the Comitia should
give him the longed-for command; and at last, to his great joy, he
succeeded in bribing Sulpicius, a Tribune of the People for that
year, to secure his appointment.
30 MARC ANTONY
Sulla at that time was still with the legions which he had
commanded during the Italian war, encamped at Nola in Cam-
pania; and, coming to Rome to try to have the appointment of
' Marius rescinded in his own favour by the Senate, he was set upon
by Sulpicius and driven again from the city* Marius then sent him
a peremptory order to hand over his troops; but this he refused
to do, and boldly marched on Rome at their head. The aristo*
cratic party gave him their support; and after scenes of dread*
ful violence, Sulpicius was killed, and Marius, almost broken-
hearted at the shattering of his dreams, was forced to fly for
his life with a price upon his head*
With the help of friends he was able to charter a ship at
Ostia, the port of Rome, and put to sea; but a storm so nearly
wrecked the vessel and caused the fugitive such miseries of sea-
sickness that the dangers to be feared on land were forgotten,
and the ship was beached near Circeium (Circello), about half
way between Rome and Naples. Going ashore, Marius hid himself
in a wood, where he passed a night of great discomfort, and
next day he and his friends wandered along the beach without
hope or plan. After a while, however, they saw, to their dismay,
a troop of cavalry coming towards them, and thereat they plunged
into the sea and swam towards two ships which happened to be
passing by. Marius was too fat and too exhausted to make much
progress through the water, but he was helped by his companions,
and at last, half-drowned, was taken aboard one of the vessels,
and was conveyed to the mouth of the river Liris (the GarigHano)^
a day's sail to the south, where the crew set him ashore and went
their way.
For some time he sat disconsolately on the sand, but at
length he made his way inland, floundering through marshland
and splashing across ditches full of water, until he came to the
hut of a peasant, who good-naturedly hid him in a pit and covered
its mouth with reeds- A little later, however, some soldiers who
were scouring the country in search of him arrived at the hut,
whereat Marius, thinking the man would reveal his hiding place,
crawled out of the pit, and divesting himself of his clothes, ran
down to a neighbouring pond, where he attempted to conceal him-
self in the cold and muddy water, only his head remaining above
afh by Alinari
MAWUS (?)
Vatican
MARC ANTONY 31
the surface. The soldiers, however, found him, and dragged him
out, shivering, naked, and covered with mud, and took him to the
nearest village, where the inhabitants, not knowing what to do
with him, decided to lock him up for the night. As he was being
taken into the building where he was to be lodged, a donkey ran
towards him, brayed loudly, and, kicking up its heels in apparent
pleasure, ran off to drink at a trough nearby. Marius took this to
be a sign from heaven that he should escape by water ; and, some-
what comforted, he lay down and soon fell into an exhausted
sleep.
He was awakened by the opening of the door, and, starting
up, saw a soldier, sword in hand, coming towards him. The man,
who was a German one of the prisoners captured by Marius a
dozen years before, and subsequently released 6 had been sent
by the village council to put him to death, that course of ac-
tion having been decided upon at their meeting; but when he
saw the eyes of the old general glaring at him out of the semi-
darkness, and heard his slow and awe-inspiring voice cry out,
"Fellow, do you dare to kill Caius Marius," he flung down his
sword and rushed from the house. At this the villagers, stand-
ing outside, once more changed their minds, and decided to help
him to escape. They therefore entered the room in a body, and,
taking the panting old man by the hands, ran him down to the
sea, and bundled him aboard a ship.
Landing by chance on the island of ^Enaria (Ischia) he there
came upon the rest of his company who had escaped in the second
of the two vessels to which they had swum out, as recorded above ;
and all together they sailed for Sicily. Here, however, on land-
ing near Eryx (S. Guiliano), on the north-west coast, they were
attacked by a Roman officer and his men, who killed most of
them ; but Marius made good his escape to the ship, and got away.
Thence they steered their course to the colony founded by Caius
Gracchus on the site of Carthage, where they went ashore in the
hope that the colonists, who owed the existence of their settlement
to the party of the People, might take pity on them ; but they were
met by an officer of the governor, who ordered them, whoever they
might be, to leave his shores immediately. At this Marius, seat-
a, xix.
32 MARC ANTONY
ing himself upon a block of stone which had once been part of a
busy wharf in the city that was no more, said to the officer, "Go
and tell the governor that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in
exile amidst the ruins of Carthage/'
As chance would have it, news had just arrived from Rome
which changed the whole fortune of the fugitives. Sulla had
gone to Asia Minor at the head of the Roman army to suppress the
rebellion there; but on his departure the fight between the aris-
tocracy and the People had once more broken out, and Cinna, one
of the Consuls for that year, who belonged to the popular party,
had been driven from the city by his aristocratic colleague, but had
collected a large fighting force in Italy and was preparing to
march back on Rome, giving out openly that if Marius were still
alive and would come to him, he would gladly receive him.
The arrival of Marius at Carthage was therefore hailed with
enthusiasm by the many refugees and outlaws from Rome who
had fled to the African coast at the time of Sulla's triumph ; and a
few weeks later he sailed for Italy at the head of a rabble of no
less than a thousand persons, to join Cinna. They found him al-
ready victoriously approaching the city, and soon Marius and the
Consul were encamped with their army on the Janiculum hill,
close to the spot where Caius Gracchus had met his death. The
Senate sent messengers to them to beg them to enter the city in
peace and to spare the citizens; but the stern and wild aspect of
Marius, who, as a token of mourning, had not cut or combed
his hair nor shaved his face since his exile, gave little promise that
he would forego his revenge.
Cinna then marched into the city with his troops, but Ma-
rius remained at the gates, proudly refusing to enter until the
death-sentence upon him had been rescinded by public vote, A
meeting of the Comitia was therefore called to pass this motion;
but it seems that the voting was not unanimous, for, in a blaze
of anger, Marius impatiently entered the city surrounded by his
armed guard, to whom he gave a savage order that they should
kill at sight any man whom he should point out to them as one
of his enemies. As a result of this order the streets along which
he made his way were soon dotted with little groups of horrified
townspeople clustered around the bodies of the unfortunate per*
MARC ANTONY 33
sons who had been cut down by the passing soldiers ; and presently
the frightened senators and men of importance began here and
there to hasten forward to kiss his hand so that they might save
their skins by pretending to be rejoiced at his return. A certain
senator named Ancharius, however, on running up to him with
unctuous smiles and exclamations of pleasure was received with a
stony stare, whereupon the guards immediately killed him; and
after this every personage of the kind who was not greeted in
return by Marius was immediately butchered, with the result that
his real well-wishers were terrified of the consequences either of
coming forward or of holding back.
During the next few days his old enemies were hunted down
in all directions, and slaughtered. One man, a certain Cornu-
tus, was saved by his slaves who secured the body of one of the
slain and passed it off as that of their master- Cnseus Octavius, and
Cornelius Merula, both of whom had been Consuls, were amongst
those who met their deaths, the former being murdered, and the
latter cheating his pursuers by cutting the veins of his wrists and
dying with curses against the democrats upon his lips. But the fury
of Marius was not often balked; and never before had political
strife brought such bloodshed or such terror into the heart of
Rome,
This horrible massacre introduces into our pages for the first
time the great plebeian family of the Antonii, of which Antony,
the subject of this biography, born four years later, was the most
famous member. His grandfather, Marcus Antonius, who was
born in 143 B.C., had been Consul for the year 99 B.C., that
year so disastrous for Marius, when, owing to the uncontrolled
behaviour of Saturninus, the hopes o the People's party were
wrecked. This Marcus Antonms was one of the most distinguished
orators of his time, and was famous both for his successful plead-
ings at the Bar and for the political speeches which had helped
him to attain the highest honours in the State. Although of ple-
beian rank, his ancestry was illustrious, 7 and his many aristocratic
connections had induced him to take the side of the Senate against
that of the Comitia, for which reason he had incurred the enmity
of Marius, He had two sons, Marcus and Caius, The elder son,
T CJcero: Philippic lit, vi.
34 MARC ANTONY
Marcus, afterwards the father of the famous Antony had married
Julia, the daughter of a celebrated patrician, Lucius Julius Gesar,
and the distant cousin of that other Julia who had married Marius.
Lucius Julius Caesar had been one of the important generals in the
war against the Italian confederacy, and, being a friend of Sulla's,
was as obnoxious to Marius as was Marcus Antonius, the orator.
Both men were therefore condemned to death, and Lucius
was quickly found and killed, together with his brother Caius
Julius Caesar, another celebrated orator. Marcus Antonius, how-
ever, was successfully hidden for a few days by a certain poor
man, but the secret of his whereabouts was discovered at length
by a wine-merchant, who went with the news to Marius, Marius
was at supper at the time, and on receiving this information gave
a ferocious shout of pleasure and clapped his fat hands together*
thereafter sending an officer named Annius and some soldiers to
put him to death. The soldiers, however, were so touched by the
voice of the orator as he pleaded for his life that they refused to
despatch him, and stood weeping around him in the little upper
room where they had found him, until their officer was obliged to
do the deed with his own hand. His severed head was exhibited on
Marius's dinner-table, 8 and then with that of Lucius Julius Csesar,
and those of some of the other more important victims, was stuck
up on the Rostra in the Forum the curious custom of placing
the heads of political enemies on the platform from which other
politicians made their speeches having been introduced by Sulla
at the time of the disturbances which resulted in the exile of
Marius.
Towards the end of the year news, which later proved to be
untrue, was brought to Rome that Sulla was inarching home at the
head of his victorious army; and since his coming would mean
that the aristocracy would take its revenge upon the People, the
latter party decided to elect Marius as Consul for the new year,
86 B.C., and to give him power to defend the Proletariat. Mar*
ius, however, knew that the pitiless Sulla and his troops would
make short work of him, and he fell into the deepest despondency,
protesting in tones of anguish that he was too old to bear these
new anxieties, and that he could never again face the horrors
Florus, iii, xxi.
MARC ANTONY 35
of exile. Sleep forsook him, or, if he did sleep, he was terri-
fied by frightful dreams ; yet he was afraid to lie awake at nights,
and therefore drank himself into a dazed condition every evening.
In the second week in January, after the seventh Consulship
promised to him by the astrologers had been his for but ten days, he
caught a chill which rapidly turned to pneumonia. In his delirium
he fancied that his dearest wish had been attained, and that he
was in command of the Roman forces in Asia Minor. Leaping
from his bed, he shouted orders to the soldiers of his fevered im-
agination, and hurled defiance at the phantom army of the enemy,
throwing his heavy body into heroic postures, and glaring about
the room, brandishing a sword which none but himself could
see. On the seventh day of his illness he died. d
But Sulla, detained by the war, did not yet come back, and
for three years Cinna was the ruler of Rome, the People's party
having complete control of the situation. Then in 84 B.C. came
a ferocious letter from Sulla saying that he was returning, vic-
torious, to the capital, and that he would punish all those who had
not been loyal to him. At this Cinna gathered an army and went
out to do battle with him; but his soldiers refused to fight their
own countrymen, and in the mutiny Cinna was murdered.
The reins of government were then taken up by two other
leaders of the People, Carbo and Marius the Younger, the son of
the old general. Sulla landed in Italy in 83 B.C.; and at just about
the time that he did so, 10 when the fate of the Republic was hang-
ing in the balance, and the two parties the republicans or conser-
vatives and the democrats were at daggers drawn, the young
Julia, daughter of the murdered Lucius Julius Csesar, and wife
of Marcus Antonius, the son of the murdered orator, gave birth
to a male child, who received the family name of Marcus Antonius,
and is known to us more familiarly as Marc Antony.
* January t7th; but another account says January 13th.
10 Gardthauien : Augustus und stine Zfit, ii, p. 5.
CHAPTER III
The Infancy of Antony, during the Rule of Sulla.
83-78 B.C.
LTJCIXJS CORNELIUS SULLA was about fifty-five years of age
when he came back to Italy, for he was born in 138 B.C. Al-
though of patrician family and the great-grandson of a man who
had twice been Consul, he had found himself in his youth so
impoverished by the extravagances of a dissolute father that he
was obliged to live in some cheap lodgings in Rome until a good-
natured and extremely successful prostitute, named Nicopolis, who
had ruined her business by falling in love with him* conveniently
died and left him all that remained to her of the money she had
received from his friends. His rise to fame and fortune has been
recorded in the previous chapter; but since he held the centre of
the Roman stage for the next few years it will be as well for us
now to look more closely at him*
He was a man of startling appearance, having a thick crop
of faded hair which had once been yellow, staring eyes of blue,
and a dead white complexion so disfigured by pimples and red
blotches, due to drink, that somebody described his face as being
like "a mulberry sprinkled with flour-** l His character has, for
us who are not at his mercy, the charm of inconsistency, and he
at once attracts and repels us. When sober he was polite and ur-
bane to his friends, and even diplomatically deferential to those
whose good offices he needed ; but while his heart was tender, and
he easily shed tears of compassion, his brain was cold and pitiless,
and he had the mental equipment of a murderer* When drunk,
which was his frequent condition, he was good-natured* generous,
1 Plutarch ; M/a,
3$
MARC ANTONY 37
and anxious to oblige; and since it seems to be true that a man
in his cups reveals his real nature, one may say that there was a
wealth of natural good in him held in check by his monstrous and
passionless intellect.
He was a very fine scholar, deeply read in Roman and Greek
literature; and, combining wide knowledge with a love of beauti-
ful things and the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, he derived keen
enjoyment both from artistic and intellectual pursuits. He sought
the company of painters, sculptors, actors, philosophers, men of
letters, and, indeed, anybody on whose wits, like steel upon steel,
he could sharpen his own; and nothing gave him greater pleasure
than the kind of conversation which obliged him to exercise his
brain. It amused him to outwit people, and Sallust says that "his
depth of thought in disguising his intentions was incredible" ; 2
yet nobody found more relief than he did in talking elegant non-
sense and giving himself up to laughter. His reason did not per-
mit him much belief in the religious systems of his age, yet he was
preposterously superstitious, and was firmly convinced of the omnip-
otence of his lucky star.
He was flagrantly vicious, and some lack in his sponta-
neous emotions obliged him to exert a remarkable ingenuity in
his pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which respect he was as en-
tirely devoid of shame as he was of decency; yet he could be a
normal lover* and, when he was not seeking perverted adventure,
was so incorrigibly domestic that he entered the bonds of matri-
mony no less than five times,
He did not often permit his pleasures, however, to interfere
with his duties ; and if he was too frequently drunk, he was never
idle when he was sober. He was a man of iron will, courageous
but impatient, and neither fear of the consequences nor any instinct
of mercy nothing, in fact, except boredom ever turned him from
his purpose. The nature of that purpose is the redeeming feature in
a character terrifying to contemporary Rome because of its pitiless-
ness; for Sulla undoubtedly acted in what he believed to be the
best interests of the Republic, and showed so little personal am-
bition that he resigned office as soon as he deemed his work done.
The war in Greece and Asia Minor from which he was now
* Sallust : Bfllum Ju0urtkittum> xcv.
MARC ANTONY,
38
returning had proved him to be a brilliant general. His small
army which marched out to suppress the Greek rebellion was soon
left to its fate by distracted Rome, and received no support from
the government of Cinna; but by his skilful leadership it succeeded
in reconquering the lost provinces and in humbling the arch-enemy,
King Mithradates 3 of Pontus, who from his headquarters at
Ephesus had organized the insurrection. Sulla took Athens by storm
in March, 86 B.C., but called his soldiers off before its sack was
complete, announcing that he had decided to spare that fallen
generation of Athenians as a mark of his respect for their great
countrymen of long ago Plato, Pericles, Socrates, Thucydides,
and the many others. As his personal share of the loot he appro-
priated the library of the philosopher Apellicon of Teos, who had
recently died, which contained the original manuscripts of Aris-
totle's works, and other literary treasures more pleasing to him
than gold or silver. He then marched against Archelaus, the gen-
eral of Mithradates, and having twice defeated him, crossed the
Hellespont, and early in 84 B.C. concluded peace. Thence he re-
turned to the port of Dyrrhachium (Durazy.o) on the Greek coast
opposite Italy, where he gathered a fleet of twelve hundred vessels
in which to transport his victorious army across to Brundusium
(Brindisi).
Just before he sailed a curious incident occurred which may
be mentioned here because of the light it throws upon the mental
outlook of the age. 4 Not far from Dyrrhachium stood the town of
Apollonia, near which was the Nymphaeum, or Abode of the
Nymphs, a tract of mountainous and wooded country wherein
there were hot springs and other volcanic peculiarities. Here, one
day, some of his soldiers, carelessly trespassing upon this uncanny
preserve of the half -gods, came upon a little bearded man like a
satyr, asleep under a tree; and, having caught him, they brought
him to Sulla. He was earnestly questioned by interpreters as to who
he was, whether mortal or elfin; but he only uttered strange,
frightened cries, "something between the neighing of a horse and
the bleating of a goat," and this so dismayed Sulla that he hastily
*The usual spelling of this name, Mithridatea, is thown to be incorrect by the
coins, as is evident, also, from the name of the god Mi&r* which it incorporate*.
'Plutarch: Sulla.
MARC ANTONY 39
told the soldiers to take him away, and for some time was greatly
troubled as to what the bringing in of so primeval a prisoner
might portend. We are not told, unfortunately, whether the little
creature was set free to return to his woodland glades and mountain
streams; nor would it be true to the spirit of the old world to
seek a natural explanation of the phenomenon.
The arrival of Sulla and his army in Italy, expressly sworn
to the restoration of the aristocracy, caused the greatest conster-
nation in Rome; and Marius the Younger and Carbo led out the
forces which were loyal to the party of the People to do battle
with him. Many of the patricians, however, went over to him,
and amongst these mention must be made particularly of Crassus
and Pompey, who afterwards figured conspicuously in the affairs
9f the Republic.
Marcus Crassus, born about 107 B.C., was the son of an ex-
Consul who, because he belonged to the aristocratic party, had
been forced by Marius to commit suicide, but he himself had fled
with some others to Spain, where for eight months he and his
friends lived in hiding in a spacious cavern beside the sea. The
owner of the land in which the cave was situated was a friend
of his, and used daily to dispatch a servant thither who, without
ever seeing the noble fugitive or knowing his identity, left food
for him and his companions upon the rocks. The historian
Fenestella, who lived a generation later, but whose works are lost,
used to tell, moreover, how he met an old woman who in her youth
had been sent by this considerate host to the cave to distribute her
charms amongst the little band of outlaws, a mission upon which
she looked back with the greatest pleasure as the most agreeable
of her life. * But when both Marius and Cinna were dead, Crassus,
now about twenty-four years of age, was able to come out of hid-
ing; after which he joined forces with another exile of aristocratic
sympathies, Metellus, the son of that Metellus of whom we have
read in the previous chapter, and together they offered their ser-
vices to Sulla.
Cnaeus Pompeius, whom we now call Pompey, was no more
than twenty-three years of age when he, too, threw in his lot
with Sulla; but already he was an outstanding figure in Rome and
Plutarch: Cr&ssus*
40 MARC ANTONY
was greatly beloved by the rank and file of the patrician party,
in spite of the intense unpopularity of his father, a former Con-
sul, who, in the end was struck dead by lightning a fate which
most people believed to be a divine punishment for his cruelty and
avarice. He was an extremely good-looking young man, whose
features were often compared to those of Alexander the Great,
and whose eyes were so "languishing," as Plutarch relates, that
women were always falling in love with him. Indeed, a famous and
beautiful courtesan, named Flora, declared that she could never
resist biting him; and when he refused to have anything more to
do with her out of consideration for a friend of his who had lost
his heart to her, she very nearly died of grief* He was a happy-go-
lucky youth, so charming that he could do whatever he liked with-
out giving offence, and so easy and simple in his manners that his
vast opinion of himself and his youthful assurance were tolerated
with the greatest good-nature by his elders.
Nowhere was he more beloved than in Picenum, the country
on the east side of the Italian peninsula opposite Rome, for that
was his ancestral home; and now at his audacious bidding thou-
sands of his countrymen flocked to his standard, and soon the amaz-
ing young man had organized and drilled them into three first-
rate legions, complete with arms, munitions, and baggage-wagons.
It troubled him not at all that the country between him and Sulla
was held by the forces of the People; and in the first battle he
rode out alone in advance of his men, met the fire-eating leader
and champion of the opposing cavalry in a hand to hand duel, and*
killed him with such unruffled ease that the others thought him to
be superhuman and fled. Shortly after this his little army came face
to face with a large force under the command of the People's
Consul for that year, Scipio Asiaticus; 6 but these troops at once
came over to his side, and Scipio was obliged to fly for his life. He
then outmaneuvered another army sent against him by Carbo, and,
having obliged them to surrender, made them hand over their fine
arms, armour, and horses, and then let them go*
The road to Sulla's headquarters was now open, and when
Pompey had come in sight of the camp he drew up his troops in
parade-orderglittering rank upon rank of them, infantry and
* Great-grandson of Scipio Af rfcanus, the grand! attor of the Gracchi
MARC ANTONY 41
cavalry, and riding forward to meet the astonished Sulla, politely
dismounted and hailed him as Imperator, the title given to a vic-
torious Commander-in-Chief . At this Sulla also dismounted, and
addressed the young man with the same most exalted title, I#2-
perator, an unprecedented honour for a youth of that age. Pom-
pey accepted the generous compliment with a happy smile: his
head was not in the least turned by it, nor did he show any signs
of modest embarrassment when the pimpled but dignified Sulla,
at all future meetings, gravely stood up and saluted him with ex-
aggerated deference.
Meanwhile, in Rome, the father and mother of the baby Marc
Antony must have been living in fear of their lives; for the
successes of Sulla, who had sworn to reinstate the aristocratic or
republican party, had exasperated the leaders of the People, and
they were quite capable of exterminating this little family which,
if Rome fell to Sulla, would doubtless seek its revenge for the mur-
der of the old orator who had been the head of the house. Al-
ready several nobles and men of aristocratic sympathies had been
arrested, and some of them executed on trumped-up charges ; and
the younger Marius was showing himself to be as bloodthirsty as
his father* It was a period of terror for the senatorial party, and,
with beating heart, Antony's mother must have clutched her baby
to her bosom at every unusual sound. On all sides it was felt that
Rome had reached a crisis in its affairs which marked the end of an
epoch, and none could say whether the approach of Sulla would
'precipitate the destruction of the city or bring it a new lease of
life; but when in July, 83 B.C,, the Capitol was accidentally burnt
to the ground, and the best copy of the Sibylline Books destroyed,
no doubt remained in the minds of the citizens that, for better
or for worse, Rome's violent hour of change had arrived.
To the anxious parents of the baby it seemed that the birth
of this son of theirs was not unconnected with the turmoil which
ushered him into the world. Perhaps, they said to themselves in the
nepotism of their parental pride, he was the nation's hoped-for
deliverer; perhaps he had been born to avenge the murders not
only of his two grandfathers, but of all the other victims of the
People's rule ; perhaps it would fall to his lot to sweep away the
ruins of the old Rome and to build a fairer city in its place. An
42 MARC ANTONY
outstanding* career at any rate was surely to be expected of a male
child, born to an important family at such a time as this, when
portents and omens were everywhere being discussed, and fearful
occurrences were almost daily shocking their minds. But for the
present their eyes were turned to the approaching Sulla, the cham-
pion of their cause, whose coming was the one hope they had of
safety for themselves and their child of destiny.
During the following months Sulla defeated the enemy several
times, and gradually broke their resistance, Marius the Younger
finally shutting himself up in the town of Pneneste (Palestrina),
some twenty miles from Rome, where he was closely besieged* In
the early spring of 82 B.C. Sulla was thus able to march on Rome;
but when his approach was reported the leaders of the People be-
gan a last, savage massacre of their political opponents, in which so
many patricians and their sympathisers were killed that the escape
of the baby Antony and his parents seems to have been almost
miraculous. The war, however, was not yet at an end; and Sulla
was soon obliged to take the field again against Carbo and a for-
midable army concentrated in Etruria, north of Rome. But while
he was thus engaged, the Samnites from central Italy, who were
tired of Rome's quarrels and, under the pretence of helping the
People's cause, wished to take this opportunity to destroy the city
entirely and massacre its inhabitants, made a sudden rush on the
capital ; and Sulla returned only just in time to prevent their entry.
The two armies met at sunset just outside the Colline Gate,
on the northern side of the city, and Sulla was very nearly de-
feated, for his men were exhausted by their rapid march. The
young Crassus, it is true, who commanded one wing, was victorious,
but the main body was pressed back against the walls of the city.
Sulla himself, mounted on a white charger, his pimpled and blot-
chy face terrible in his anguish, his voice hoarse from shouting,
was within an ace of being killed. Two javelins at the same mo-
ment flew through the air towards him while he was looking the
other way; but his groom saw them coming and struck the horse a
sudden blow, at which it bounded forward, and the javelins missed
their mafk by inches. At this Sulla pulled from his bosom a little
golden image of Apollo which he had bought at Delphi, and
fervently kissed it, praying aloud to that god to come to his aid;
MARC ANTONY 43
but it was the falling darkness which saved him and Rome, for
the battle was suddenly discontinued by the enemy in order that
they might gather their scattered forces in preparation for the
final onslaught upon the gates.
Just then the news was received by both sides that young
Crassus had driven back the Samnites opposed to him, and was in
a position to outflank the remainder, whereupon the latter retired
in dismay; and by break of day Sulla and Crassus effected a
juncture, as a result of which eight thousand of the enemy sur-
rendered and were marched, disarmed, to the western side of the
city, where they were penned into a small area of the Circus
Flaminius between the Capitoline Hill and the river.
Close to this spot was the temple of Bellona in which the
Senate was accustomed occasionally to meet ; and here Sulla called
the senators together, after their night of terror, to receive their
thanks for the saving of the city, and to give his orders in re-
gard to the future government. But while he was addressing them,
the most terrible screams and cries penetrated the building, at
which the senators rose to their feet in alarm, thinking that a new
attack upon the city was being made. Sulla, however, without
raising his voice or changing the expression of his face, told them
to be seated and kindly to give their attention to him, not to the
disturbance outside. "What you hear," he said, "is merely due to
my having given orders for the punishment of some criminals."
Actually, Sulla had instructed his men to kill all the eight thou-
sand prisoners, his justification for this slaughter being that they
had, on their side, intended to massacre the citizens.
During the day four of the enemy's generals were brought in
and summarily executed, after which their heads were carried to
Praeneste, where Marius was besieged, and, having been fixed on
long poles, were bobbed about in front of the walls. On seeing them
Marius killed himself, 7 and the city surrendered. His head was
sent to Rome, and was stuck up on the Rostra, where Sulla went
to see it, and addressing it in scholarly criticism, quoted a line from
Aristophanes: "You should have worked at the oar before trying
to handle the helm." He then hastened to Prseneste where, next
day, he gathered the civil and military prisoners in an open space,
* Or was killed: Velleius, H, xxv'u.
44
MARC AJNTUJN
to the number of twelve thousand, and callously told his soldiers
to kill the lot, the women and children, however, being spared,
He had the politeness to exempt also the owner of the house in
which he had spent the night; but the unhappy man could not
bear the cries of the dying, and, rushing in amongst them, eagerly
submitted himself to the soldiers' swords.
Having come back to Rome, Sulla began at once to reestablish
the power of the republican aristocracy and the Senate and to re-
duce that of the People and the Comitia to a minimum, with which
end in view he decided, in the interests of the Republic, to kill
all the democrats of any note or standing, that being the surest
way of preventing political arguments. He therefore issued a list
or proscription of eighty names of persons who were to be killed at
sight, a reward being given for their heads and the penalty of
death being decreed against any who should aid their escape* The
property of the proscribed was to be confiscated, and their sons
and grandsons were to be prohibited from holding any public of-
fice.
Few of the unfortunates got away: most of them were killed
during the same day by soldiers or even by their own slaves, and
their pallid, blood-drained heads were arranged in rows on the
Rostra from which Sulla made his pithy speeches. Two days later
he issued a second list of two hundred and twenty names, and on
the following morning another list of the same number appeared.
In addressing the people after this third proscription had been
posted up, he told them casually that these were all the names he
could think of at the moment, but that if he found that any had
escaped his memory he would issue supplementary lists, which, in
fact, he continued to do for some weeks* Altogether more than
four thousand persons, 8 including fifty senators of democratic
sympathies, lost their lives as a result of these proscriptions; and
there can be no doubt that there were many who were the victims
of personal envy or spite, their names being sent in to Sulla even
because somebody coveted their property.
Quintus Aurelius, for example, the owner of a desirable farm
in Alba, near Rome a perfectly harmless man whose only crime
'The much larger number* given by Appiaa (i, 103} and Eutropius (v, 9) teem
to include those who fell in the previous figfcting, * Moramsen hat observed.
MARC ANTONY 45
was that he had offered his condolences to a family thus bereaved
went into the Forum to read the list, and, to his horror, found
his own name in it, whereupon he exclaimed, "O my God!
my Alban farm has convicted me," and a few minutes later was
murdered and his head added to the horrifying collection on the
Rostra.
These fearful proscriptions bring into our pages two more
persons who played leading parts in the subsequent drama, name-
ly, the great Julius Caesar and Cicero. Caius Julius Csesar was born
in July, 102 B.C., and was therefore about twenty years of age
at the time. He was the scion of a particularly proud patrician
family, but his own branch of it had not of recent years performed
any striking public service. His father, of whom practically noth-
ing is known, had been Prsetor and had died in 84 B.C.; but his
mother, Aurelia, who belonged to the Cotta family, was living,
and, indeed, survived to see her son the greatest man of his time.
Little is recorded of her in history, which is an indication, perhaps,
that her character was not outstanding; and Plutarch has un-
intentionally pilloried her for ever by describing her in later
life as "a discreet woman who was continually around her son's
wife/' His father's sister, Julia, had married the great Marius, who
was thus his uncle and Marius the Younger his cousin; and this
was enough in itself to damn him in Sulla's eyes. Again, he had
recently been married to Cornelia, the daughter of the late Cinna,
who, it will be recalled, had been one of the chief leaders of the
People and had been one of Sulla's arch-enemies. Moreover, for the
last three years or so he had been notoriously the lover of Ser-
vilia, the wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, a man whose whole family
was closely connected with the party of Marius; and it was even
rumoured that he was the father of her child, the little Brutus (who
ultimately was one of his murderers), although he was not more
than seventeen when the boy was born. Servilia was the sister of
that curious fanatic, Cato the Younger, who was later the mainstay
of the aristocratic party; but he, too, was opposed to Sulla.
Csesar, however, was such a curled and scented young fop,
so overdressed and effeminate in appearance, 9 that nobody could
then accuse him of being a supporter of the rough Proletariat,
* Suetonius: C*sar> xlv, xlix, Hi; Dion Casaius, xlin, 20.
46 MARC ANTOJN Y
or a menace to the aristocratic party whose most exaggerated man-
ners he emulated. Sulla therefore decided to deal leniently with
him, and merely ordered him to divorce the offending Cornelia;
but, to his great surprise, the pink-and-white young Ccesar abso-
lutely refused to do this, and fled from Rome, his property being
thereupon confiscated and his name, apparently, proscribed. His
aristocratic relations, however, including, no doubt, the mother of
the little Antony, who was a member of the family of the Cesars,
pleaded with Sulla to forgive him; and, after some hair-raising
adventures as a fugitive, he was pardoned, whereupon he went
away soldiering, which was the wisest thing he could do, even
though some lady's boudoir seemed to be a more natural place for
him than the camp,
Marcus Tullius Cicero, afterwards Antony's most deadly enemy,
was at this time a rising young barrister of twenty-five, having
been born in January, 106 B.C., the same year in which Pompey
first saw the light. His ancestral home was that same Arpinum, in
the Volscian Mountains, from which Marius had come. He was not
of patrician blood, but he belonged to the local bourgeoisie, and no
doubt he would from the first have sided with the aristocratic party
in Rome had not Sulla, the enemy of his great fellow-townsman,
been its leader. He was afraid, of course, to say anything against
so powerful and so dreaded a man ; but he now dared to plead the
cause of one who had suffered indirectly by Sulla's actions, * and
thereby he must have endangered his life. A certain wealthy citizen
of Ameria (Amelia) in Umbria, named Sextus Roscius, was mur-
dered by some distant kinsmen, who, in order to escape pun-
ishment, persuaded Chrysogonus, a man in Sulla's employ, to get the
name of their victim inserted in one of the proscription-lists; and
when this had been done, Chrysogonus bought the dead man's
confiscated property for a song and divided it with the murderers.
Roscius, however, had left a son of the same name, and, in order to
remove him, these scoundrels now accused him of having himself
killed his father for private motives before his proscription had
been published.
Cicero defended the younger Roscius before the senatorial
court, and boldly laid bare the wickedness of Chrysogonus, al-
w Cicero: Pro Roscio Amerino*
MARC ANTONY 47
though he knew well enough that the man was high in Sulla's
favour. With diplomatic flattery, he declared that Sulla himself
was no more to blame for the occurrence than God was for
man's frequent misfortunes, for Sulla, like God, was far too
busy to know always what his servants were up to; but he asked
whether the aristocratic party had won back its control of the
State only that rascally menials and lackeys should thus be able
to rob innocent men of their goods under pretence of obeying
their busy masters' orders. He demanded the punishment of Chry-
sogonus and the rehabilitation of Roscius, and he won his case so
brilliantly that he established himself at once both as a great ad-
vocate and as a man of some courage. Sulla, however, seems to have
been greatly annoyed by the affair, for his was not the type of
mind to overlook the reproach behind Cicero's likening him to
God; and the young barrister decided to get out of danger's way
by going to Greece, for the ostensible purpose of improving his
health and studying rhetoric. Neither he nor Julius Caesar returned
to Rome until after Sulla's death.
Meanwhile Sulla, who had caused himself to be made Dic-
tator, with absolute power for as long as he deemed necessary,
energetically set about the reorganization of the government. In
order to deprive the Comitia of its power, he decreed that no pro-
posed law should be put to the vote in that assembly until it had
already received the sanction of the Senate ; but he did not inter-
fere with the technical right of the Comitia to reject measures sent
down to them by the Senate, for now that the People's party had
not a single man of any standing left alive, this right, he knew,
would not be used. At the same time, however, he enfrancised ten
thousand of the slaves of the men killed in his proscriptions, and
thus created a solid body of voters who looked to him as their
patron and were capable of swamping any meeting of the Comitia
to which they were called. He also destroyed the powers of the
People's Tribunes by the simple device of decreeing that no Trib-
une could hold office for more than one year, and that the holding
of that office debarred him from occupying any other magisterial
post. Thus, only men of no importance and without political am-
bition would be likely to accept the Tribuneship, and dangerous
persons like Marius or the Gracchi would not again be found in the
48 MARC ANTONY
position to exercise the tribunitial veto or to shield themselves be-
hind the sacrosanctity of the office. Moreover, the Senate was em-
powered to impose a crushing fine upon any Tribune whose conduct
was deemed unbecoming.
It was further decreed that the great offices In the State were
to be held annually, in strict rotation, and at fixed ages, so that
a man in rising from Qusestor to Prator and from Prsetor to Consul
would have to be out of office for long periods between, nor was
he to be allowed to hold the Consulship twice unless an interval of
ten years had elapsed before his second election. Thus he guarded
the State against continuous goverance by one outstanding poli-
tician, and placed the real power in the hands of the senators, whose
influence as a body he increased in numerous ways, and whose elec-
tion he limited, in actuality, to candidates drawn from his own
party. His measures, in fact, insured the absolute control of af-
fairs by the aristocracy, and the People were reduced to complete
impotence. Everything that the Gracchi and Marius had stood for
went by the board; and, at the moment, the great fight between
the Senate and the Comitia, the republicans and the democrats,
was ended by the utter rout of the latter. For the time being Sulla
was like a king, and more than a king, in Rome; but it is certainly
to be said in his favour that he used his unlimited authority in
what he sincerely believed to be the best interests of the Republic,
He was not altogether to blame for some of the atrocities com-
mitted in his name. For example, the circumstances of the murder
of Marcus Marius Gratidianus, one of the remaining members of
the family of Marius, were probably beyond his control This
man was taken to the grave of Catulus, a victim of the great
Marius, and, after being kept there for some time, was tortured to
death as a kind of human sacrifice to the spirit of the dead. He was
first flogged, then his eyes were put out, next his nose, hands, and
feet were cut off, "that he might die as it were piecemeal/* " and
finally he was decapitated, the severed head being carried away
by Catiline, of whom we shall presently hear more. Another demo-
crat, Bsebius by name, was literally torn limb from limb by a mob
of the opposite faction.
Sulla's attempt to force the youthful Julius Gesar to divorce
11 Floms, ill, xrL
MARC ANTONY 49
his wife has already been mentioned; and he now interfered like-
wise in the matrimonial life of the brilliant young Pompey. Sulla's
wife at this time was Csecilia Metella, niece of that uncompromis-
ing supporter of the aristocrats, Metellus, whom Marius had ousted
from his command in the war against King Jugurtha. She had pre-
viously been married to Aemilius Scaurus, a former Consul, by
whom she had had a daughter, Aemilia, who was now Sulla's step-
child ; and this Aemilia had been married to Manius Glabrio, and
was about to have a child by him. But in spite of this fact, her
mother, Cecilia, and Sulla both decided to marry her to Pompey,
so that this rising young man might be brought into the family.
Unfortunately, Pompey was already married to a girl named Antis-
tia, daughter of the distinguished orator Antistius, who had been
killed by the younger Marius because of his aristocratic sympathies;
but a trifle such as that was brushed aside by Sulla, who obliged
Pompey to divorce her, whereat her mother, deeply feeling the
disgrace of it, committed suicide, Aemilia was then divorced from
Glabrio and married to Pompey; but she spoilt Sulla's plans by
dying a few weeks later when giving birth to her first husband's
child in her second husband's house.
Sulla's stern and despotic rule is well exemplified in an in-
cident which occurred at the close of 82 B.C. A certain Lucretius
Ofella, who had once belonged to the party of Marius but had
deserted to that of Sulla, offered himself as a candidate for the
Consulship of the following year, although he had not yet been
either Quaestor or Praetor, and was thus acting in defiance of the
new law made in that regard by the Dictator. Sulla, therefore, for-
bade him to stand for election ; but Ofella nevertheless went down
into the Forum, surrounded by his friends, to canvass votes. Sulla
saw him, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered an officer to
go and kill him ; and a few minutes later Ofella lay dead.
At the beginning of the year 81 B.C. Sulla celebrated his Tri-
umph, in honour, particularly, of his victories in Greece and Asia
Minor. The procession was one of the most splendid ever seen in
Rome, but its most striking feature was the group of returned
exiles .of the aristocratic party, banished under Marius and Cinna,
and brought back by Sulla* They were crowned with garlands, and
marched joyfully along the streets shouting the praises of their
50 MARC ANTONY
saviour until they were hoarse. Sulla then asked* and of course
received, permission to call himself by the name Felix, "the
Happy/' or, rather, "the Lucky"; for he declared that he was ob-
viously the child of good fortune, the favoured of the gods.
For many days after this he feasted the citizens so lavishly
that the surplus meat had to be thrown in quantities into the river,
while valuable wine, forty and more years old, was drunk as
though it were water. During the festivities, however, his wife,
Caecilia, who had recently given birth to twins, became fatally ill;
and Sulla was so upset at thought of anything so unlucky as a death
taking place in his home circle that he hastily divorced the dying
lady and had her removed from his house, refusing to visit her in
her last hours, but giving her a very fine funeral to show his
respect for her.
Meanwhile the young Pompey was covering himself with glory
in Sicily and Africa, where he had been sent in pursuit of the
remnants of the People's army. Having hunted down and killed
Carbo and other democratic leaders, he returned to Rome, and
went smiling to Sulla, mightily pleased with himself and quite at
his ease in the Dictator's awe-inspiring presence, Sulla at once con-
ferred on him the name Magnus, "the Great ; but he was staggered
when Pompey then asked for a Triumph, although he was hardly
twenty-five years of age and was not old enough even to be a
senator. Sulla told him that it was quite impossible to grant his
request, but Pompey, nothing daunted, reminded him that the
rising sun was more generally worshipped than the setting, thereby
indicating that his glory was only beginning whereas Sulla's was
on the wane. At this bold remark those who were present held
their breath in amazement and fear, while Sulla, who could not
believe his ears, asked him to repeat what he had said. Pompey
blandly did so, and Sulla was so astounded at his audacity that
he seemed for some moments to be quite stupifiedL But at length
he turned with a laugh to the others, and said: "O, very well, then;
let the boy triumph, let him triumph!** The irrepressible Pompey
thereupon crowned the incident by asking that his triumphal
chariot might be draw by four elephants instead of horses, so
that the spectacle might be really unique.
Thus, in September, 81 B.C., Pompey "the Great" celebrated
MARC ANTONY 51
his Triumph, and thenceforth was second only to the Dictator
in the estimation of his party. Meanwhile, Crassus, who had allied
himself with Sulla, it will be recalled, at the same time that Pom-
pey had done so, had made a great name for himself as a military
leader, but had incurred Sulla's grave displeasure by ordering the
execution of certain persons in the provinces without first asking
permission, and by seizing their money and also the pay-box of
the defeated forces, and enriching himself thereby. For this rea-
son Sulla gave him no further military command, and thereupon
Crassus turned his attention to money-making, and soon earned
for himself the names Dtves, "the Rich." He seems to have been
bitterly jealous of Pompey, and since he was now debarred from
rivalling that dazzling young man's military career, he did his
best to establish a commanding position for himself in the city's
financial life, and his success in that respect will presently bring
him before us as one of the big men of Rome.
It has been pointed out that Sulla, in spite of the hard work
of which he was capable, was fond of good living, and was, in
fact, a very heavy drinker, as his "mulberry" face testified; and
now that he had destroyed the power of the People and the Comitia
and had established that of the aristocratic and senatorial party,
he began to indulge his inclinations with increasing frequency. In
spite of the fact that he was nearly sixty years of age, pretty wo-
men and handsome young men continued to attract him as much
as they had always done, for, like so many Romans, he was strange-
ly indifferent to the sex of those who caught his roving eye. For
years he had expressed a passionate devotion to a romantic actor
named Metrobius, and though this personage was now long past
his beautiful prime, Sulla still delighted in his very intelligent
society. Roscius, a comedian, and Sorex, a mime-dancer, were also
his constant companions at dinner, not, however, by any means
to the exclusion of several well-known actresses and ladies of easy
virtue,
His fourth wife, Csecilia Metella, it will be recalled, had died
at the time of his Triumph; but now, notwithstanding his years
and his catholic interests, his erratic fancy was taken by a young
society-lady, Valeria, the daughter of Valerius Messala, one of
Sulla's noble supporters, and sister-in-law of Hortensius, the
52 MARC ANTONY
famous orator. 12 The story of their meeting is told by Plutarch,
and may best be related in his own words, "At a gladiatorial ex-
hibition, this Valeria, who was a beautiful woman of noble birth
but had lately been divorced from her husband, had a seat near
Sulla; and passing along to it behind him she leaned on him with
her hand, and, plucking a little bit of wool from his cloak, car-
ried it to her seat. Sulla looked round, wondering what was the
meaning of her action, whereupon she whispered: 'What harm is
there, sir, in my wanting to share a little in your good luck? It
was apparent at once that Sulla was not displeased, but was, in
fact, intrigued; for he immediately took steps to find out her
name, her parentage, and her past* During the performance many
side glances passed between them, each of them continually turn-
ing to look at the other, and frequently exchanging smiles; and
afterwards an introduction was effected* and, in the end, a marriage
was arranged." ls
At the beginning of the year 79 B.a, Sulla nonchalantly re-
signed his stern and pitiless Dictatorship* and retired with his
charming young wife to his villa near Puteoli, close to Baiae,
the fashionable resort on the Bay of Naples, where he hoped to
enjoy himself in his own way for the remainder of his life* He
had always been impatient of the restraints imposed upon him by
his office, and he could not be bothered any longer with the wor-
ries of autocratic rule. He had created new machinery of govern-
ment, which, in any case, he wished to test* but which could not
be tested so long as he kept the command in his hands- His
method had always been to kill off his political opponents, or to
scare them into obedience; but he was well aware that permanent
government could not be carried on by such rough and ready means,
and he wanted the senatorial party to learn to stand upon its own
feet without that aid from him, the giving of which was becoming
more and more tedious now that the pleasure of actual construction
was gone.
He wanted leisure in which to write his memoirs; he wanted
time for his various intellectual and artistic pursuits; but, above
all, he wanted to be left alone to enjoy himself in his own way, to
"The sister of Horteaslut had married Valeria** bro&er, 7aJer! Mesailt Niger,
** Plutarch i Sulla,
MARC ANTONY 53
make love, to be merry, and to get drunk to his heart's content,
without the critical eyes of the world being fixed upon him. He had
become enormously wealthy during his career, and his house and
gardens beside the Neapolitan sea were luxurious and beautiful.
The charming estates of his friends were dotted all over this part
of the country. Hortensius, for instance, lived near by, and had
so vast a wine-cellar that he left ten thousand casks of Chian 14
to his heir; while his parks were celebrated for their beautiful
trees, for the rare animals which they contained, and for the ponds
beside the sea which were stocked with fish. The best society of
Rome congregated at Baise and other watering-places round about ;
and thus Sulla could expect to be far more happy here than ever
he could be in his office in the capital.
But a year later, in 78 B.C., an early death cut short his hopes
of earthly happiness. It is said that he contracted the horrible dis-
ease of phthiriasis, that is to say his body became the breeding-
ground of lice ; but a similar misfortune is attributed to many well-
known persons in ancient history, and the story is not readily to
be credited. He certainly became very ill, however; and his death
was not unexpected. One day he was told that a magistrate named
Granius was deferring the payment of a public debt because he
believed that Sulla, who was the only man who could force him
to pay up, was about to die ; and thereupon Sulla sent for him and,
after an exchange of hot recriminations, ordered him to be stran-
gled in his presence. The excitement of this violent scene, however,
caused him to break a blood-vessel, and he died next day.
On hearing the news the mob went wild with excitement, think-
ing that the rule of the aristocracy would soon be at an end, and
that the party of the People would come back to power. They
surrounded the house, shouting that they would not allow the
dead man a public funeral ; but the young Pompey, who happened
to be in the neighbourhood, took matters in hand, and caused the
arrangements for the funeral to be made. Meanwhile the reading
of the will was proceeded with, and it was found that Sulla had
left legacies to every one of his friends and prominent supporters
with the one exception of Pompey, whose popularity he had evi-
dently come to resent. But the light-hearted young man pretended
"The wine of Chios, the island in die -^Egean Sea, was famous in antiquity.
54 MARC ANTONY
to take no offence at this slight, and himself escorted the body to
Rome, where, after a funeral of unprecedented magnificence, it
was cremated on the Campus Martius, while senators, nobles, of-
ficials, and soldiers marched in procession around the pyre, and
countless flute-players poured forth a wild and tender lament.
The little Antony, who now had two younger brothers, Lu*
cius and Caius, was five years of age at this time, and it is
hardly likely that in after life he remembered any of these events
yet the fact that his father was one of the Qusestors at about this
period, and was a man of social importance, suggests that the chilcj
and his brothers may have come under Sulla's polite notice from
time to time. The family, however, was not well off, and was gen*
erally in debt, on which account it is not to be supposed that their
shabby house in Rome was a rendezvous of statesmen and poli-
ticians. Nevertheless, Antony's subsequent actions cannot be un-
derstood clearly unless we follow further the movement of public
affairs which accompanied his growth to manhood.
CHAPTER IV
Antony's Growth to Manhood Amidst the Political Struggles which Culmi-
nated in the Catilinarian Conspiracy.
78-62 B.C.
THE Consuls for the year 78 B.C. were Quintus Lutatius Catu*
lus, son of one of the noblest of the victims of Marius and an ar-
dent supporter of Sulla's party, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a
wealthy and rather unscrupulous nobleman, who, partly owing
to a quarrel with Sulla, was inclining toward the leaderless
People's party at the time of the ex-Dictator's death. Lepidus had
obtained his Consulship by the aid of Pompey, who, for some un-
known reason, had canvassed votes for him in spite of Sulla's warn-
ing that the man was not to be trusted and would ultimately turn
upon him; and now the prediction proved correct, for Lepidus at
once placed himself at the head of the awakening democrats and
gathered around him all those discontented sons of Sulla's victims
who had attained manhood but were forbidden by the terms of the
proscriptions ever to hold office.
Amongst these was Cinna, whose sister, Cornelia, the young
Julius Csesar had married, and who was the son of the famous
democratic Consul, Cinna, the colleague of Marius; and immedi-
ately upon the death of Sulla this Cinna sent a private message to
Caesar, his brother-in-law, urging him to come home and to throw
in his lot with the People's party which, under the leadership of
the Consul Lepidus, was going to make short work of the late Sul-
la's republican government.
The elegant young Csesar was both ambitious and adventurous,
and came back post haste to Rome to see for himself how matters
stood, bringing with him a curiously paradoxical reputation. On
55
5 6 MARC ANTONY
the one hand, he had unexpectedly distinguished himself by his
soldierly qualities while serving at the siege of Mitylcne, the chief
city of the island of Lesbos, which had been in revolt against
Roman rule; and for gallantly saving a soldier's life he had been
given the coveted oak-leaf chaplet, the wearing of which on state
occasions entitled its possessor to a public salute, the entire audi-
ence at a theatre, for instance, rising to its feet on his entry. But,
at the same time, his behaviour at the court of the King of Bithyn-
ia, x whom he had visited more than once on oflicial business, was
such that people put the worst construction upon his relationship
to this potentate. King Nicomedes the Third, the monarch in
question, was then no longer a young man;" but his well-known
peculiarities, considered in conjunction with Caesar's notorious ef-
feminacy at this time, give color to a story which one would like
to discredit. At any rate, the youthful hero of Mitylene had to
submit in Rome to the jests of the ribald, who nicknamed him "The
Queen of Bithynia," and declared that his official duties at the
court of Nicomedes had been confined to the royal bedchamber. *
Yet, at the same time, he was still the recognised lover of Ser-
vilia, and people smilingly pointed to that lady's little son, Brutus,
and said that Caesar was certainly the father of the child, if not al-
so the mother. He was, moreover, a fine athlete, a strong swimmer,
a perfect horseman, and a brilliant swordsman; and these accom-
plishments, combined with his courage, his brains, and his self-
assurance, already suggested that he was no ordinary young man,
and that his phase of effeminacy would presently pass*
He was very good-looking. He was somewhat taller than the
average, and had a fresh, fair complexion and skin, a graceful
figure, a fine forehead, and dark, thoughtful eyes. The hair on his
head always displayed the art of the barber, but on other parts of
his body it was carefully removed by tweezers a practice which
afterwards became pretty general in Rome, but which was con-
sidered then, as it would be now, an unnecessary and slightly per-
1 The northern corner of the modern Turkey, east of Constantinople.
9 His father was grown up when he came to the throne In 149 ft. c and he him*
self seems to have been the eldest son and to have been more than a youth when
he succeeded in 91 B.C.
Suetonius: Casar, xlix; Dion Cawius, xliii, 20,
MARC ANTONY 57
verted onslaught upon the peculiar and primeval heritage of the
male. He had various little mannerisms imitated from those of the
fashionable youths of Rome and Greece, and, in particular, he used
to adjust his hair by running his fingers lightly and gracefully over
it with a feminine movement which in our own day is still char-
acteristic of subnormal man. "When I see his hair so carefully ar-
ranged," said Cicero at a later date, "and observe him adjusting
it with his finger, I cannot imagine that it should enter into such
a man's thoughts to subvert the Roman state." 4
He was what may be described as artistic in his dress, and
wore his rather showy garments loosely draped about him with a
carefully studied carelessness which had once caused Sulla to speak
of him as "that ill-girt young man." Yet he was always well-
washed and groomed; and if he was a little too heavily scented,
he at any rate never reeked of wine as did so many Romans, for he
was extremely temperate. His manners were perfect, he was usually
affable to all, and was scrupulously polite, although sometimes his
remarks could be very caustic.
He was about twenty-four years of age when he returned to
Rome, and, in spite of his love of adventure, was remarkably
astute. He saw at once that the revolt of the democrats which was
being engineered by the Consul Lepidus, assisted by Marcus Junius
Brutus, Servilia's husband, was premature, and he would have
nothing to do with it, although his aunt Julia, the widow of
Marius, probably joined her appeals to those of his brother-in-law,
Cinna, in the attempt to persuade him to take up the People's
cause. Lepidus raised an army outside Rome and recklessly marched
on the city, declaring that he was coming to bring liberty to the
citizens. The capital, however, was successfully defended by his
colleague in the Consulship, Catulus; and Pompey, having been
given the command of the other senatorial forces, attacked and de-
feated Brutus whom he put to death, and thereupon Lepidus fled
to Sardinia, where his misfortunes, which included the infidelity of
his wife, so preyed upon his mind that he fell sick and died, leav-
ing behind him, however, a son who will appear later in these
pages as one of Antony's colleagues. The hopes of the People's
party were thus speedily crushed, and the young Caesar must have
* Plutarch: C*sar.
58 MARC ANTONY
thanked his lucky stars that he had not followed the advice of his
brother-in-law, who was now a fugitive in Spain*
For a short time Csesar remained in Rome, puzzling his friends
as to whether he was to be regarded as a person of promising
character, or a fashionable man about town whose brilliance and
charm would prove to be his undoing; but after a while he re-
vealed a daring spirit by taking an active part in the prosecution of
the ex-Consul, Dolabella, an important figure in the aristocratic
party, on the charge of bribery. His speech against him, though de-
livered in rather a high, shrill voice, proved him to be a natural
orator, with a fine sense of language, a little cold and pedantic,
perhaps, but unquestionably eloquent. Dolabella was acquitted,
however, and thereupon Caesar made a second attempt at oratorical
honours by conducting the prosecution of Caius Antonius, Antony's
aristocratic but rather disreputable uncle, on a similar charge,
again without winning the case. It was seen, of course, that the
young man had the democratic leanings to be expected of a nephew
of the great Marius ; but since these views were out of season just
now in Rome, and many angry looks were turned upon him, he
wisely went off to study oratory in Rhodes for a while, with the ob-
ject of making for himself a career later at the Roman Bar. Servilia,
meanwhile, married a second husband, Decimus Junius Silanus, a
rising politician, but retained, nevertheless, a romantic affection
for the charming young dandy, the angle of whose approach to the
wide subject of sex evidently appealed to the peculiarities of her
own nature.
On his way to Rhodes, Csesar had the misfortune to be cap-
tured by Cilician pirates near the little island of Pharmacusa
(Fermaco) off the coast of Asia Minor. These men at once de-
manded a ransom of twenty talents, but with great bravado their
elegant young captive laughed at their ignorance of his social im-
portance, and, telling them that he was worth at least fifty, des-
patched his attendants to raise the larger sum at Miletus and other
not distant cities where his family was known* For five or six weeks
he lived in the pirates* camp, treating his bloodthirsty captors with
such a mixture of insolence and patronizing banter that it is a
marvel his throat was not cut. He insisted upon joining in their
sports and exercises, running races with them and jeering at them
MARC ANTONY 59
for not being able to beat him. Around the camp-fire at night he
used to read them his own poetry, and when they did not applaud
he smacked their heads and called them illiterate savages ; or, when
he wished to sleep, he sent them peremptory orders to make less
noise.
At length his messengers returned bringing the ransom-money;
and thereupon Csesar bade the pirates goodbye, cheerily promising
them that he would come back one day and have them all crucified,
at which they laughed heartily, having conceived quite a liking
for the audacious fellow. But he meant what he said, and having
raised a small force at the port of Miletus, sailed back to the
island, took the pirates by surprise, brought them in chains to Per-
gamus, and there, not waiting for authorization from the Roman
governor, had them all crucified. But having gone to jeer at them
as they hung on their forest of crosses on the hillside outside the
city, he was unexpectedly touched by their sufferings which, in the
ordinary course of events, would have lasted for several days until
fomger, thirst, and exposure had slowly killed them; and he there-
fore very kindly ordered his men to get up on ladders and cut all
their throats. He then went his way to Rhodes, where he entered
the school of Apollonius the orator, an institute which Cicero had
just left.
Cicero arrived back in Rome in 77 B.C., at the age of twenty-
nine a tall, thin young man, with a high and thoughtful fore-
head, a sallow skin due to indigestion, and a voice pitched so
far up the scale that when he spoke with any excitement people
feared lest he should injure his vocal chords; 5 and soon he be-
gan to make a name for himself in public life, being sent as
Qusestor to Sicily in 75 B.C. Meanwhile, Pompey had been ordered
to Spain to deal with a rebellion there, and was therefore not avail-
able when the government was looking for a capable officer to
command the military and naval forces which it had decided to des-
patch against the pirates, whose widespread activities had become
intolerable* Marcus Antonius, the father of the now eight-year-old
Antony, was Prsetor at this time; and at last it was agreed that he
should be given the command, although he probably had as little
taste for it as he had ability. He was the son of the great orator,
"Plutarch: Cictro.
60 MARC ANTONY
who had been an artistic, eccentric personage of improvident habits
notorious for throwing his money in showers to the people when he
happened to be in funds; and he himself was a careless, good-
natured, generous man, generally more or less bankrupt; and
much afraid of his patrician wife Julia, the kinswoman of the young
Julius Caesar, for she was a stern upholder of the honour of the
Caesars and the Antonii, about which her easy-going husband does
not appear to have cared very greatly.
An illuminating story is told of him by Plutarch. A friend came
to see him one day to borrow some money, but as usual, there
was very little in the house, and, even if there had been sufficient
for the purpose, it would have been in the charge of Julia. Marcus
Antonius therefore hit upon the novel expedient of sending for a
basin of water, saying that he wished to shave himself; and when
the servant, having regard to the presence of a guest, had brought
the water in the best silver basin the family possessed, Antonius
pretended to begin to shave, then sent the servant away, and
gave the basin to his friend to convert into money* Unfortunately,
however, Julia quickly missed it, and stormed about the house,
accusing everybody in the place of having stolen it; and at last
her husband was obliged to confess what he had done and to ask
her pardon.
The campaign against the pirates obliged him to make his
headquarters in the area of hostilities, and it seems that the little
Antony and his two brothers were left in their mother's care in
Rome. She was a proud woman, and she appears to have impressed
upon the boys the glory of their lineage, explaining to them that
they were the direct descendants, both through her and their father,
of the immortal gods, for the Julian family, that is to say the Caesars,
claimed descent from the goddess Venus, while the Antonii, although
remotely of plebeian stock, traced their pedigree back to Hercules.
But her pride must have received many cruel blows when from time
to time during the next two years news was brought to Rome that
her husband was hopelessly bungling the war, that he had been com-
pletely outmanuevred by the pirates, and that he had become
little better than a pirate himself, by reason of the endless demands
he was making for food and money for his men from the towns
'Cicero: Philippic li t xviii; HI, vi,
MARC ANTONY 61
within the range of his activities. People in Rome began sarcasti-
cally to call him Creticus^ because of his ineffectual actions against
Crete, the pirates' base; and at last, in about 73 B.C., came the
tidings that he had died. The little Antony, then ten years of age,
was old enough to feel the loss of his kindly and indulgent father;
and for some time he and his brothers were, no doubt, the object of
the commiserations of all the ladies and gentlemen of Rome's fash-
ionable world who came to the house to offer their sympathy.
Julia, the widow, however, was not broken-hearted: she was
glad, perhaps, to be rid of one who had so signally failed to add
any lustre to his line; and very soon afterwards she married an-
other man, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, a member of one of the
proudest patrician families, who had already been Praetor and
was expecting soon to be Consul. Lentulus was a rather shame-
less personage, often mixed up in society scandals, and notorious
for a kind of lazy impertinence at which people were pleased to
smile because he carried it off with such a charmingly aristocratic- air.
When he had been Qusestor in 8l B.C. he had been called be-
fore the terrible Sulla to answer charges of corruption brought
against him ; but he had merely shrugged his shoulders and, mak-
ing a half turn away from the Dictator, had extended the back of
his leg towards him, in a gesture which Plutarch explains as that
of a boy who has made a blunder in playing at ball and expects
a smack for it. The cheeky movement was called Sura, the pre-
senting of one's leg; and thenceforth Sura was his nickname. His
manners and appearance were so elegant that Cicero 7 coined the
word lentulitas to denote the outward qualities of the blue-blooded;
but he had more charm than wisdom, and was too bored and lan-
guid 8 to be taken very seriously, although, ever since a certain
soothsayer had told him that he was destined to rule Rome, he
had shown an unexpected interest in political movements which
offered any promise of an easy attainment of this half-hearted
ambition. As a stepfather to the young Antony he does not ap-
pear to have been a conspicuous success, and since he was neither
rich nor economical, the same struggle against debt 9 which had
T Cicero: Ad Familiarts, ui, 7.
* Cicero: In Qatilinam* iii, 7, 16; Dion Cassius, xxxvii, 32.
* Sallust: Catilina,
62 MARC ANTONY
troubled the household in the boy's infancy continued to form the
dark background of his growth to adolescence ; but Antony seems
to have been fond of him, and in later life showed much respect
for his memory.
In this same year, 73 B.C., Julius Osesar returned to Rome
from Rhodes, having daringly crossed the Adriatic In a little,
four-oared boat so as to escape the attentions of the pirates, 10 and
he was, no doubt, a frequent visitor at the house of Lentulus, over
which Julia, his kinswoman, presided; for the political discussions
in her salon may well have been to the young man's liking, since
they were inspired by a spirit of mild revolt from the hidebound
aristocratic party and a leaning towards democracy, wherein Len-
tulus saw a better chance of personal advancement. There was
now a widespread feeling that the government bequeathed by Sul-
la had not been at all successful, and that the massacre of the
leaders of the People's party had removed an opposition which was
necessary to the health of the State ; and in this house Ccesar was
able to criticise the men in power without arousing any animosity
in his host, whose loyalty to his fellow-aristocrats was not con-
spicuous.
In the house of Servilia, which he also frequented, he was
able to speak even more openly of the future of the People's par-
ty; for in spite of the fact that that lady had presented her
husband, Silanus, with three children since Gesar last saw her,
she was still very much in love with the clever young man, and
shared with him his keen interest Jn the reviving activities of
the democracy, although her brother, Cato, was becoming a strong
supporter of the aristocracy. Caesar, in fact, was beginning to feel
that his relationship to the late Marius, and to his surviving widow,
Julia, was no longer a drawback; and in several houses which he
visited there was a decided movement away from the government
instituted by Sulla, and a consequent attitude of respect to Caesar
as the nephew of Marius.
One of the most powerful of the younger men in Rome at this
time was Crassus, now thirty*four years of age. Ever since Sulla
had checked his military career he had given his attention, as has
been said above, to the making of his fortune. One of his ingen-
"Vellems, ii, xliiL
MARC ANTONY 63
ious methods of acquiring property is worthy of notice. He organ-
ized a highly-trained, private fire-brigade, some five-hundred strong;
and whenever a fire was reported he went to the spot with his men,
and offered to buy the burning house and the endangered build-
ings around, these generally being sold to him, in view of their
peril, at absurdly low figures. He then set his highly skilled men
to work to put out the fire. If, however, his offer was refused, he
called the firemen off and left the place to burn. In this manner,
says Plutarch, a very large part of Rome passed into his possession.
He also made a great commercial business of the supplying of
highly skilled slaves. He bought likely young men cheaply in
the open market, and trained them, in schools which he had in-
stituted, to be manuscript-copyists, letter-writers, secretaries, ac-
countants, household servants, waiters, cooks, gardeners, carpen-
ters, silversmiths, and so forth. He himself supervised their edu-
cation, and often personally lectured to them; and in the end he
sold at very high prices those whom his own houses and vast busi-
ness concerns could not absorb,
Now, in this year 73 B.C., a very remarkable insurrection broke
out which at one time seriously menaced the security of the state.
A certain Lentulus Batiates, following somewhat the methods of
Crassus, had organized a super-school for slaves in Capua, north
of Naples, where he trained a large number of Gauls and Thracians
as gladiators, and sold them at good prices to fight at the public
shows which were contantly taking place in Rome and other cities.
These men were no better than prisoners condemned to death, for
they were kept in captivity until ordered out to figlit, and one
by one they were then killed for the entertainment of the thought-
less crowds which watched their enforced and pitiful duels. Gladia-
tors usually had a great respect for their calling and were notorious-
ly obedient to their masters and trainers. "Even when sinking
under his wounds/ 7 says Cicero, "a gladiator will send a message
to his master to know whether he has any further orders, since, if
the master thinks he has done enough, he would be glad to be al-
lowed to lie down and die." u
But Batiates was a particularly heartless man, and his pu-
pils at length revolted. Under the leadership of a heroic Thracian
"Cicero: Tusculanarum Disputationwn, ii, 17, 41.
64 MARC ANTONY
named Spartacus, a number of them escaped to the hills, where
they were joined by all the outlaws and run-away slaves who
could reach them. In battle after battle they defeated the forces
sent against them, and took possession of their arms; and at length
Spartacus is said to have been able to place no less than forty
thousand well-armed men in the field, though how he collected
so great a force is a mystery which has never been solved.
Pompey was still away in Spain at the time, and Lucullus, the
only other military officer of distinction, was in the East, trying to
suppress a renewed insurrection of Mithradates. When both the
Consuls for the year 72 B.C. had been badly defeated by Spartacus,
the distracted government called upon Crassus to take command,
for his brilliant work under Sulla had not been forgotten; and
after a protracted campaign he succeeded in 7 1 B.C., in cornering
the rebels in southern Italy, and inflicting a complete defeat upon
them, the brave Spartacus being cut to pieces with the best of his
men. A certain number, however, escaped northwards, and, after
many adventures, were approaching the Alps, when Pompey, who
was returning with his victorious army from Spain, chanced upon
them and overwhelmed them. Six thousand prisoners were taken,
and these were crucified at intervals along the whole length of the
highroad between Rome and Capua, so that for days afterwards
those who travelled along that road were obliged to witness, every
two hundred yards or so, the agony of a delirious or fainting man,
fastened to a cross, slowly dying of thirst and exposure.
Both Pompey and Crassus reached Rome with their armies at
about the same time; but the former, in view of his victories in
Spain, which were painted by him in most glowing colours, received
the greater honours, and was at once elected Consul for the coming
year, 70 B.C. Crassus then, swallowing his pride, asked his help
in obtaining the other Consulship for himself, and, with this gen-
erously-given aid, was forthwith elected.
These two men, it will be remembered, had been strong sup-
porters of the aristocratic party, but Sulla had insulted them
both Pompey, by leaving him out of his will, and Crassus, by
obstructing his military career; and now each followed his own
inclination and also the trend of public opinion by coming out
on the side of the democrats and by undoing Sulla's work* It is
MARC ANTONY 65
true that Crassus was not so whole-hearted as his colleague in this
change of front; but if he acted every now and then as a break
upon the wheels of Pompey's popular progress, it was chiefly from
motives of personal jealousy that he did so. At any rate they to-
gether rescinded the law which obliged the measures placed before
the Comitia to be approved first by the Senate; and they raised
again to its former level the power of the Tribunes of the People,
who were now allowed once more to hold other magisterial offices
after that of the Tribuneship. They also restored the office of Cen-
sor which Sulla had abolished; and they approved of the first
measure proposed by him, namely that of turning out of the Sen-
ate all those aristocrats whose private lives were not above reproach.
This drastic action, which involved no less than sixty-four sen-
ators, fell particularly heavily upon the family of young Antony,
who was now a boy of thirteen, already old enough to understand
the disgrace of it ; for both his stepfather, Lentulus, who had been
one of the Consuls of the previous year, 71 B.C. and his uncle,
Caius Antonius, the younger brother of his late father, were ex-
pelled from the Senate in this political clean-up, on the grounds of
"luxury" and ill-living. As a consequence of this disaster, Lentulus
found himself cold-shouldered by the aristocracy, and scorned by
the party of the People towards which, as has been said, he had
been inclining slightly; and for the next few years Antony must
have heard nothing that was goocl of either side.
Meanwhile the famous trial of Caius Verres, in which the am-
bitious Cicero made his name, became the central point of the
struggle between the conservatives and the People. Verres had been
one of Sulla's trusted officers, and later, from 73 to 71 B.C., had
been governor of Sicily, where he had behaved with such arrogant
despotism that, immediately on his departure, the Sicilians had
brought an action against him. The prosecution was placed in the
hands of Cicero, who, gauging the trend of public opinion, had
found it expedient to become a supporter of the democrats; and
the defence was entrusted to the aristocratic Hortensius who, it
will be recalled, was related by marriage to the late Sulla. On the
one side* the People were determined that Verres should suffer for
his tyranny; on the other, the nobles were equally determined that
he should bt acquitted.
66 MARC ANTONY
The charges against him were manifold. He had amassed such
wealth from the unfortunate Sicilians that he himself declared
he would still be a rich man even if he were forced to disgorge
two-thirds of it. He had accepted money from everybody in the
form of bribes, or had taken it from them by sheer robbery. He
had appropriated public funds to his own use, and had so continu-
ously cheated the farmers and vine-growers of the sums due to
them that he had reduced the agricultural population to beggary.
He had seduced the daughters of respectable citizens by the score;
he had unjustly caused people to be put to death or imprisoned;
and, worst of all, he had refused to listen to the appeal of a certain
condemned prisoner who, as a Roman citizen, had claimed his
right to be sent back to Italy for trial, and had crucified him on
the seashore in sight of the Italian coast, so that in his last agonies
the wretched man might see before him his unattainable land of
refuge.
Like many Roman noblemen of this period, Verres *ras a keen
collector of works of art and antiques; and since Sicfty had been
full of works of art and antiques and objcts d*art*> he had carried
away with him a priceless collection of masterpieces which he
had acquired either by purchase at absurdly low prices dictated
by himself, or by actual extortion. Glorious pieces of sculpture by
the famous Greek masters Praxiteles, Myron, Silanion, and Poly-
cletus, had passed into his hands; he had made off with the mag-
nificent gold and silver plate from the tables of rich men with
whom he had dined ; he had filched the gold and ivory ornaments
from the gates of the temple of Pallas at Syracuse ; from the walls
of the same temple he had taken the historic paintings; he had
stolen the statue of Ceres from her own holy shrine at Enna (Cas-
tro Giovanni) ; and even the statues standing in public places in
the various cities had been taken down from their pedestals and
added to his collection.
The rich aristocrats of Rome smiled at these latter transgres-
sions, for most of them were themselves enthusiastic collectors, not
above a little villainy in the acquisition of artistic treasures; but
the democrats, who knew nothing of the connoisseur's delight in
competitive possession, appraised this man at his true worth and
called him a common thief- So greatly did they despise all artistic
MARC ANTONY 67
pretensions that Cicero, in denouncing these robberies, was obliged
to pretend that he himself did not know anything about art, and
had merely learnt the names of the famous Greek sculptors during
the preparation of his brief. "One of these statues," he said with a
smile, 12 "was by Praxiteles you see that in getting up my case
I have learnt the names of the artists. Another was a work by My-
ron y eSi> Myron was the name, I think. A third was by ...
Now what was the name of the artist? Let me see. O,yes, thank you
for reminding me; he was called Polycletus."
For thirteen days the trial of Verres proceeded amidst in-
tense excitement, and gradually it became apparent that the opin-
ion of plain men mere proletarians was going to prevail against
that of the aristocrats. On the fourteenth day Verres fled from
Rome.
There was now no doubt that the People's party was once more
to be reckoned with ; but it was the impetuous Julius Csesar, who,
at the age of thirty-four, first put public opinion openly to the
test. In the year 68 B.C. his aunt Julia, the widow of the great
Marius, died ; and at her funeral Caesar had the boldness to display
publicly the statues of Marius which nobody had dared to exhibit
since the days when Sulla had declared him an enemy of the State.
Their appearance caused a certain amount of booing on the part of
the opposing faction, but the crowd in general clapped their hands
and shouted their applause. Yet Csesar was not satisfied that the
tide had really turned, and he preferred to avoid committing him-
self. He was, moreover, immensely proud of his aristocratic an-
cestry, and if the People were beginning to see in him a future
leader of their party, he gave them no reason to regard him as one
of themselves. He was no plebeian, like Marius, and he let them
know it.
"My aunt Julia," he declared in his funeral oration, "derived
her descent, on her mother's (my grandmother's) side, from a race
of kings, and, on her father's (my grandfather's) side, from the im-
mortal gods. For the Marcii Reges, her mother's family, trace their
genealogy back to Ancus Marcius, the fourth King of Rome ; and
the Julii, our family, derive their descent from the goddess Venus.
We therefore unite in our lineage the sacred majesty of kings, the
" Cicero : In Perrem, iv, 2, 4.
68 MARC ANTONY
chiefest of men, and the divine majesty of gods, to whom kings
themselves are subject." 13 Such words, spoken by an elaborately
dressed and scented personage with peculiar and effeminate ges-
tures, were the reverse of democratic; and yet there were these fig-
ures of Marius to remind the crowd that the speaker was no other
than his nephew.
In this same year, 68 B.C., Cesar's wife, Cornelia, the daughter
of Cinna, the colleague of Marius, also died; whereupon he married
Pompeia, daughter of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and grand-daugh-
ter of Sulla. Pompeia's father was one of the men murdered by
Marius; and both on this account and because her mother was
Sulla's daughter, she must have been by every instinct an enemy of
the People's party. The marriage, therefore, suggested that Caesar
desired to belong neither to one political camp nor to the other,
but wished to hold an individual position as a man with equally
balanced aristocratic and democratic connections. He was already
a prominent figure in Rome; and he had now definitely begun his
political career by obtaining the post of Quaestor.
He had a great deal to live down. When people talked about
the exploits of the popular Pompey and said that he was a very
King of Rome, there were those who laughingly declared that Cae-
sar, then, was Queen of Rome; 14 and once when he was asking the
Senate to make a grant to the Princess Nysa, daughter of King
Nicomedes of Bithynia, and had spoken of that king's great kind-
ness to him, the highly respectable Cicero sharply replied "Please
say no more of that; we all know what he gave you and what you
gave him !" u
Moreover, his love-affairs with fashionable women in Rome
which, as he grew older, were crowding out the episodes of the
Bithynian kind, were causing a new crop of scandals- Everybody
knew that Servilia, the wife of Junius SUanus, and sister of
Cato, was his mistress, and most people guessed that her son* Bru-
tus, was his child; and now it was being rumoured, with apparent
truth, that he was ia love with Mucia, the wife of Pompey, while,
at the same time, his name was linked with those of Tertulla, the
; Julius Casar, vi.
.
, xlfx,
MARC ANTONY 69
wife of Crassus, Posthumia, the wife of a rising statesman named
Servius Sulpicius, and Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius, a man
who was afterwards to be the friend and patron of the young
Antony. 16
At about this time the government decided to make another
attempt to exterminate the pirates whose activities had been in-
creased by the failure of Antony's father to check them. The
above-mentioned Gabinius, therefore, proposed that Pompey should
be placed in command of the operations; and Gesar seconded the
motion so eagerly that people were unkind enough to say that he
evidently wanted the handsome husband of Mucia out of the way.
At any rate Pompey was duly appointed, being given such ex-
traordinary powers that a good deal of fear was felt in Rome that
he might take advantage of them to the detriment of republican
institutions. In a very few weeks he utterly destroyed the power
of the pirates, captured ninety of their battleships and innumer-
able smaller vessels, took prisoner no less than twenty thousand
men, and received the surrender of all their strongholds; but, being
now a good democrat, he dealt very leniently with his conquered
foes, and turned most of them into honest colonists, a proceeding
which greatly outraged the republicans in Rome whose militaristic
and aristocratic tradition was one of blood and iron, and who ex-
pected him to crucify every man who fell into his hands, as he
crucified the followers of Spartacus.
Meanwhile, the aristocrat, Lucullus, who was in command of
the Roman armies in the east, in spite of many victories was hav-
ing great difficulty in bringing the war against Mithradates to a
successful conclusion ; and now the Comitia proposed that Pompey,
their own beloved democrat, should be created generalissimo with
the powers of Dictator in the East, a measure almost tantamount
to making him "absolute monarch of all the Roman Empire." 17
The aristocratic party opposed the bill with vehemence, and Cras-
sus lent this opposition his support; but Cicero, who still belonged
to the People's party which later he deserted, was strongly in
favour of it, as also was Julius Csesar, and, indeed, the public in
a * Suetonius (Julius Casar, I) says that his relations with these ladies "are ad-
mitted by all/*
** Plutarch :Potnp*y.
70 MARC ANTONY
general was so confident that Pompey was the right man for the
job that when somebody suggested at a meeting that the com-
mand should be divided, the shout of "No!" was loud and sharp
enough so the story went to cause a bird which happened to be
flying overhead to drop stunned from the sky* In the spring of
66 B.C., therefore, Pompey was given the supreme command, where-
upon he set out upon a career of conquest which raised his already
tremendous reputation to sublime heights*
But during the next three years or so, while he was marching
from victory to victory, very serious events took place in Rome
which, in the end, involved the young Antony's immediate domes-
tic circle in ruin. The trouble was caused in the first place by the
fact that as soon as Pompey had gone, the aristocratic party began
to conduct a ruthless campaign against the democrats, with the
object of crushing their attempts to reorganize themselves. But
the democratic spirit had already infected once more the minds of
people of all ranks; and the nobles themselves were now sharply
divided into those who supported the existing government and the
strictly conservative institutions of their class, and those who,
like Antony's stepfather, Lentulus, were leaning towards the popu-
lar party.
A great many young patricians were breaking away from the
rigid traditions of aristocracy; and fashionable society now re-
garded it as rather smart to sympathise with the aspirations of
the People. But the reins of government were in the grip of an oli-
garchy of elderly senators of noble birth and hereditary wealth who
looked with disfavour upon this unconventional attitude of the
younger set, and were determined to keep out of office all those
who were tainted with democratic sympathies, and also all who
were leading the rather fast life which was at this time the fashion.
Thus the many young men whose extravagances had landed them
in financial difficulties saw no hope of recovering their fortunes
by the time-honoured expedient of obtaining lucrative govern-
ment posts; and these men all looked to the day when the power
should pass from the hands of what may be described as the Old
Brigade.
A new leader of the democracy, however, was rising into promi*
MARC ANTONY 71
nence. Lucius Sergius Catilina 18 Catiline, as he is now called
was a middle-aged man of noble birth, who, in spite of a some-
what tarnished reputation, moved in the highest society, 19 was
looked up to by most of the younger aristocrats, both those who
were in financial straits and those who were blessed with plenty, 20
and, at the same time, had an immense following amongst the
People. 21 He was an arresting figure : a man of powerful and com-
pelling character, violent, unscrupulous, and lacking in morals, but
a born leader of men. History, however, has heaped such abuse up-
on him, and has so established him as a sort of fiend in fact, the
Guy Fawkes of Rome that it is almost useless for me to defend
him as the facts impel me to do; but there is no doubt, at any
rate, that some of the most eminent Roman patricians of his time
courted him and were his enthusiastic supporters, 22 and the point
is not to be overlooked that what we have against him can all be
traced back to the envenomed tongue and pen of his bitterest enemy,
Cicero. 23
In the Consular elections of 66 B.C., the two Consuls chosen
for the following year were Publius Autronius and Publius Sulla,
both of whom were democrats, and their victory over the aristo-
cratic candidates threw the government into a state of panic, for,
since the death of the Dictator Sulla, the Consuls had always be-
longed to the conservative party* A trumped-up charge of bribery-
was therefore brought against these two men by the nobles, their
election was quashed, and the government announced that its own
two candidates, Aurelius Cotta and Manlius Torquatus, had been
chosen in their stead.
At this, Catiline, burning with indignation, conspired with his
democratic friends to prevent these two taking office at the new
year. It was whispered that he was prepared to have them killed if
"The chief authorities for the famous Catilinarian conspiracy are Cicero's Ora-
tions against Catiline, which were the main source of Sallust's monograph on the
subject; the Julius Caesar of Suetonius; Plutarch's Cicero; Appian's Civil Wars, book
ii; Dion Cassius; and Plorus.
ia Cicero: Pro Calio, 6.
"Sallust: Catilma, xvii; Cicero: Ad. Atticum, i, 14, 5.
^Sallust: Catilina, xxxvii.
**Florus, iv, i; Appian: Civil War*> ii, 2.
**In 1865 Prof. . S. Beesly put forward a solitary defence of him in the Fort~
Review* with which I find myself in agreement; but it had little effect.
?2 MARC ANTONY
necessary, and there were rumours that Julius Gesar, the budding
democrat, was in secret agreement with him a report which was
the more readily believed because Caesar had already been accused
of complicity in other plots of this kind, 24 and was regarded as
a very dangerous man. Be this as it may, the two aristocrats entered
upon their Consulship at the beginning of 65 B.C. without distur-
bance, and gossip had to be content to say that Catiline's dark
plans had miscarried.
Catiline now determined to stand, himself, for the next Con-
sulship that of the coming year, 64 B.C.; but just before the
elections in the summer of 65 B.C., the aristocratic party, repeating
its successful policy, brought a charge of corruption against him
a brazen piece of trickery intended solely to interfere with his
candidature. At this, Cicero, who intended to stand for a Consul-
ship himself in the following year, made the proposal that he
should defend Catiline, and obtained the consent of the prosecution
thereto, his purpose being to place Catiline under an obligation to
him, so that they might the more amicably work together if they
were both candidates at the next year's elections. * 5 Catiline ap-
parently declined his aid; but he was obliged to resign his candi-
dature pending the trial; and Lucius Caesar, Antony's uncle, who
was a conservative, was elected, with another aristocrat, Murcius
Figulus, as his colleague. Catiline cleared himself of the charge,
of course, but this fact only added to his bitterness and to the
rage of his supporters, who now saw clearly that the government
would not stick at anything to keep its opponents out of office,
Matters rapidly approached a crisis; and in the next year,
64 B.C., the young Antony must have found himself in the very
centre of the disturbance, and the disaster which was to come upon
him must already have been scented in the air. It was the irony of
fate that the dark clouds began to gather just when things were go-
ing so very well for the family of the Antonii, and when, in spite
of their chronic insolvency, they were being received everywhere
as people of the highest social distinction. Fashionable Rome had
agreed to forget that Lentttlus, Antony's stepfather, and Cains An-
tonius, his uncle, had been expelled from tine Senate a few years
ago; and, in fact, society now regarded that occurrence as a politi-
* Suetonius ; Ca sar, ix. * Cicero : Ad Atticnm, 1 2,
MARC ANTONY 73
cal contretemps which might have happened to anybody. In this
year, Lucius Caesar, Antony's mother's brother, was Consul; Caius
Antonius was a candidate for the Consulship of the following year ;
and Lentulus was a candidate for the Prsetorship, a post which
would serve as a stepping-stone to his candidature for a second
term of office as Consul. Antony, therefore, who was now nine-
teen, must have been cutting quite a figure in society, being so
well-connected; and there can be little doubt that he was one of
that ever increasing host of young men who regarded Catiline as
their hero. 26
Catiline, who was a close friend of Antony's family, put him-
self forward once more as a candidate for the Consulship for the
year 63 B.C.; and he and Caius Antonius were already planning
what they would do if they were elected together. The lazy and
elegant Lentulus was an interested party to these discussions;
and amongst the men of note who talked matters over were Julius
Csesar and the multi-millionaire, Crassus. In various ways, Catiline
attempted to win support for his candidature. To those who were
in the hands of money-lenders he said that it would be his first
business to relieve them of their burdens; and the fact that Crassus
was connected with the project indicates, I think, that the great
financier had some scheme of relief which would be profitable to
himself in the end, such as the paying off of the usurers and the
taking over of the debts on terms easier to the debtors. To the vast
numbers of small landowners, many of them old soldiers, who had
mortgaged their properties, 27 Catiline offered a bill which would
remove the immediate menace of ruin from them, though in the
end, I dare say, it would commit them to the mercy of Crassus,
And to the impoverished working classes in general he promised
that share in the pillage of the rich which every demagogue dan-
gles before the eyes of the electorate.
"Ever since the government has fallen into the power of a
few/' he said, as "all the rest of us, whether patricians or ple-
beians, have been regarded as a mere mob. All influence, power,
honour, and wealth, are in their hands; and to us they have left
* Sallust: Gatilm6 t xiv, xvi, xvii.
* Cicero: In C&tilinam> ii; Sallust: Catilina, xvi.
*SalIst: Catiliaa, xx xxL
74 MARC ANTONY
only rebuffs, difficulties, prosecutions, and poverty." He spoke
with all the more bitterness because he himself was deeply in
debt, and knew that before the year was out he would have to
meet his obligations. 29
The man he most feared was Cicero, who had lately abandoned
the democratic party as was inevitable in a personage of his pro-
foundly conventional outlook and now was also a candidate for
the Consulship, in the interests of the oligarchy. Being a pro-
vincial of modest family, and having thus espoused the cause
of the old-fashioned and exclusive aristocracy, he was far more
concerned about being a gentleman of the old school than any
born gentleman of that school could ever trouble to be. He prac-
tised high-principles not unconsciously, as a natural code dictated
by the heart, but consciously, as something to be proud of and to
boast about. "I never experience so much pleasure, 5 * he once wrote
with disarming candor, 80 "as I do in the contemplation of my own
incorruptibility. It is not so much the credit I get for it, though
that is immense, as the thing itself which delights me."
He was not so thin now as he used to be; his digestion was
better, and he was putting on flesh. He was, in fact, becoming a
pompous and imposing personage, very correct and ceremonious,
and astonishingly vain and self-important; 31 and with all his
heart he detested these gentlemen-adventurers Catiline, Lentu-
lus, Julius Csesar, and the like who were always being involved
in unsavoury scandals, who were reckless and dissolute, not car-
ing a bit what people thought of them, and yet whose misdeeds
were strangely insufficient to obscure the fact that they were
something which Cicero was not. Unprincipled though they were,
and playing at being democrats largely for their own ends, they
obviously belonged by a kind of natural right to Rome's most
fashionable society, whereas Cicero, with all his acquired dignity,
was aware that he had no such birthright, and, indeed, smarted
under the consciousness of the fact. It was only by a paradoxical
transference of allegiance which is not infrequently to be ob-
served in the political field, that he was the exponent of the
* Cicero: In Catilinam, i.
10 Cicero: Ad Atticum, v, 20, 6.
81 The ancient authorities are agreed as to this. Sir Charles Oman (Seven Roman
Statesmen, p. 189) describes him as a man of "idiotic vanity."
MARC ANTONY 75
ideals of the conventional Roman nobility, and that Catiline and
his friends were the representatives of the People; and he was
touched on the raw when Catiline disdainfully called him a
mere immigrant, 32 from the provinces.
As the consular elections drew near it became clear that Caius
Antonius was fairly sure of being chosen as one of the two Con-
suls, but the rivalry of Catiline and Cicero as candidates for the
other Consulship was intense. Cicero ostentatiously stood for
honour, integrity, and the highest traditions of Roman political
life; and he advocated a strong rule by a republican oligarchy
which would keep the frivolous young nobles under control, and
the masses in their place. Catiline, on the other hand, stood for
a more even distribution of wealth, easier treatment of the people,
the humanizing of the government, the widening of its sympa-
thies, and the wresting of the power from the hands of those ob-
stinate and old-fashioned nobles who had turned so large a part
of the nation into potential rebels. The People's party was being
steadily deprived of all the hopes which had lately begun to be
revived, and the Comitia seemed to be unable to make any head-
way against the hidebound Senate; for even the Tribunes of the
People were forced upon them by the government. In the year
63 B.C., for instance, Cato was Tribune, and he was an aristocrat
of the old school, whose hatred of democracy was intensified by
the galling fact that his sister, Servilia, was the mistress of Julius
Csesar.
Catiline was a man of restless, highly-strung temperament,
recklessly brave, clever, versatile, and eloquent. He was a ro-
mantic figure, having a pale, haggard face, and haunted eyes;
and he is described as being always in pursuit of the unattain-
able, 38 and perhaps a little mad. 34 When he was in luck he was
prodigal of his money, being at all times surrounded by hosts
of friends, particularly young noblemen of adventurous spirit
"young fops with youthful little beards," Cicero calls them; 85
and when hard times were upon him he endured hunger and cold,
and even want of sleep, without complaint. But ,he had a bad
"Sallust: Catilina, xxxi. The word is inquilinus, "lodger."
"Sallust: Catilina, v. "Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 2.
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, i, 14, 5.
7 6 MARC ANTONY
reputation; and had he not been of noble birth the last, indeed,
of an ancient race, 36 he would hardly have escaped punishment
for some of his escapades.
In his early life he had fallen in love with a young society
girl; and, in consequence, she had become the mother of a daugh-
ter, who in turn, scandal said that he had seduced. 37 His rival
for the Consulship had particular reason to dislike him, for Fabia,
a Vestal Virgin, or nun as we should now say, who was the sister
of Cicero's wife, Terentia, was one of the women whom he had
led astray, though she had been acquitted of the charge 38 and
had escaped the punishment of being buried alive, which was the
Vestal's penalty for allowing natural instinct to get the better
of her. He was now married to an exquisite creature named Au-
relia Orestilla, "in whom," as Sallust says, "no decent man at any
time of her life commended anything but her beauty"; and his
enemies said that he had committed murder to get her, "from
which cause distraction was plainly apparent in his every feature
and look." 30
Cicero, whose voice had wonderfully responded to a severe
training in oratory, was an extremely eloquent and persuasive
speaker, and he made so forceful an attack upon the character
of his rival that Catiline was rejected. His tirades against Caius
Antonius, however, were not so successful; and although Cicero
had described him as a mere gladiator and charioteer, in refer-
ence to sports which he enjoyed, and had said that he and Cati-
line were two daggers drawn against Rome, 40 the great orator
could not prevent his election. Thus Cicero and Caius Antonius
found themselves the two chosen Consuls; but when they came
into office at the beginning of 63 B.C. Cicero managed to persuade
his colleague to abandon his association with Catiline. Lentulus, An-
tony's step-father, however, maintained his friendship with the
unsuccessful candidate; and this fact must thus have brought
bitter dissension into Antony's home. Catiline then put himself
forward as a candidate for the Consulship of the next year; but
Crassus this time gave his support to somebody else; while Julius
"Ammiamis Marcellinus, xxv. OT Cicero: In Toga Candida, xvi.
88 Orosius, vi, 3, Sallust: Catiline, xv.
i0 Cicero: In Toga Candida,
MARC ANTONY 77
Csesar favoured a third candidate, Silanus, the husband of his
now middle-aged mistress, Servilia.
The new elections were characterised by the utmost bitter-
ness, for Cicero was furiously attacking Catiline in speech after
speech, and was constantly warning the electorate that the man
was a scoundrel who would not stop at murder to get the power
into his own hands. Catiline, deeply chagrined and hopeless of
gaining his ends by constitutional means, then began to plan a
revolution; and wild stories were soon in circulation that he was
going to assassinate Cicero, destroy Rome, and massacre all his
enemies in the Senate. There can be no doubt that he was soon at
the head of a widespread secret society, 41 the members of which
were sworn to the regeneration of Rome; but it is extremely un-
likely that their leader ever intended to perpetuate the atrocities
with which he was credited. True, he was deeply in debt and
was yearning for the power to enrich himself, and he was cer-
tainly enraged at the treatment he had received at the hands of
the government ; but the unquestionable fact of his great popular-
ity with large numbers of well-to-do people is a proof that his
plans were not so very demoniacal.
One of the conspirators, however, had a mistress, Fulvia, whose
suspicions were aroused by the fact that her. lover had lately begun
to talk very grandly about the wealth which would soon be his,
and about the wonderful jewels he would presently be able to
give her; and at last she confided her fears to Cicero, with the
result that, just before the elections, he was able to expose the
existence of a plot.
Then, on the day of the elections itself, Cicero appeared in
public wearing a military breast-plate concealed under his clothes,
and surrounded by troops; and when all eyes were upon him he
contrived to let his toga fall open, revealing this armour, at
sight of which the crowd realized that his life was in danger, and,
being thus made aware of what was to be feared, rejected Catiline
at the polls. Thereupon, the defeated candidate, mad with anger
and disappointment, sent one of his supporters, Caius Manlius,
a disgruntled veteran of the late Sulla's army, into the country
around Fsesulse (Fiesole) to raise a fighting force, there being in
"Sallust: Catilma, xxxvi.
7 8 MARC ANTONY
that region a great many old soldiers who had lately looked to
Catiline to relieve them of their debts. He himself, meanwhile,
boldly remained in Rome, and rumour said that he intended to
take the first opportunity to murder Cicero. A considerable sum
of money had been collected by the conspirators, much of which,
as Appian caustically remarks, 42 had been given by women who
hoped that their husbands would get killed in the rising; and
Catiline was thus able to buy the support of many waverers.
At length Crassus, whom Catiline had again approached, went
to Cicero's house by night, and revealed what he knew of the
conspiracy, and at this Cicero convened the Senate. Catiline, al-
ways audacious, went himself to the meeting, but everybody cut
him, and when he had taken his seat, all the Senators around him
moved over to other parts of the assembly, leaving him alone.
Cicero then delivered that impassioned speech which he after-
wards published, and which is now known as the First Catilina-
rian Oration; and Catiline, seated there in dramatic solitude,
with clenched teeth and defiant, unabashed eyes, 43 listened while
the great orator told all the secrets of the plot, knowledge of
which, even to the minutes of the conspirators' council of the
previous night, had been brought to him by Fulvia and his
other spies.
"I will have you put to death, Catiline," he said, pointing
his finger at his haggard victim, "but it shall be later on, when
it will be impossible to find anyone so vile, anyone so abandoned,
anyone so like yourself, as to deny that I am justified. So long as
there is anybody left to plead for you, you shall live; but you
shall live, as you live now, hemmed in by my agents, so that you
cannot stir a finger against the State. The eyes and ears of many
shall, in the future as in the past, spy out your doings when you
least expect it, and keep watch on your actions."
He then ordered him to leave Rome, and scathingly bade him
join his doomed army of reprobates who were gathered under
the standard of Manlius. At this Catiline rose to his feet, and
replied that surely the senators could not believe all that Cicero
had said against him, nor suppose that he, a patrician of ancient
lineage, should want to ruin the State. But his words were drowned
Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 2. *" Cicero: In Catilinam, i.
MARC ANTONY 79
by shouts of "Traitor!", and, muttering a threat, he walked out
of the assembly. That evening he took his departure from the
city, accompanied by many of his friends, leaving Antony's step-
father, Lentulus, in charge of his affairs in Rome. Cicero then
went to the Forum and addressed the people, delivering his Second
Catilinanan Oration, in which he advised Lentulus and Catiline's
other agents to go and join their leader at Fiesole. "There is no
guard set upon the gates, no ambush upon the road," he sneered.
"If anyone wishes to depart, he may do so. But if anyone dares
to stir a finger in the city, then I say that I will make him feel
that here in Rome there are Consuls who will not sleep, there
are magistrates who will do their duty, there is a Senate which
will stand firm, there are troops under arms, and there is a prison
which our forefathers built to be the place of vengeance for
wicked and bloody crime."
For nearly a month Catiline remained in camp with Manlius,
where an army of between ten and twenty thousand revolution-
aries was gathered; and here he assumed the dress and insignia
of a Consul, protesting that since Cicero had prevented his proper
election to this office, he was justified in seizing it. To a friend
in Rome he wrote a letter 44 in which he said : "Provoked by in-
juries and insults, I have taken up the public cause of the dis-
tressed; and because I have seen unworthy men enriched with
honours, and myself rejected on groundless suspicions, I have
adopted the only course for preserving what honour is left me."
And he added: "I now commend and entrust my wife Orestilla
to your protection, imploring you, as you love your own chil-
dren, to shield her from harm."
Meanwhile in Rome, Lentulus, Antony's stepfather, was lei-
surely preparing a coup which should be carried out at the mo-
ment when Catiline should begin his expected march on the
capital. It is said, though the story is probably exaggerated, that
he intended to set fire to the city so as to distract the attention
of the authorities, and then -to kill Cicero, massacre the Senate,
and seize the government with the aid of some Gallic mercenaries
whom he had arranged to call in. Although lazy by nature, he
had been galvanised into some sort of action by the great per-
"Sallust: Catilina, xxxv.
8o MARC ANTONY
sonal danger in which he was situated, and by his hatred of
Cicero who, in these days, was immensely proud of himself and
was behaving with an overweening vanity which ultimately
brought great ridicule upon him.
He, Lentulus, though wasting precious time and showing
signs of nervousness, 45 seems to have been hopeful of the success
of the revolution, for the Senate had trustingly placed the forces
upon which it relied under the command of Caius Antonius,
Cicero's colleague in the Consulship, and there was some reason
to believe that that personage would return to his former alle-
giance and would join, rather than fight, his old friend Catiline.
There was a rumour, too, that Pompey was returning from the
East; and in the hope that, as a democrat, he would take sides
igainst Cicero and the aristocratic party, Lentulus had planned
the seizure of Pompey's children, so that he might appear to be
their guardian and protector, and might hand them over to their
father, on his arrival, as an earnest of the political bargain to
be made with him, or, alternatively, might hold them as hostages
for Pompey's friendly behaviour.
It is not known whether Antony, who was now twenty years of
age, approved of his stepfather's plans; but it seems, as has al-
ready been said, that he was one of those who regarded Catiline
as a hero, and, at any rate, it is more likely that his sympathies
were with Lentulus than that they were with his turncoat uncle,
Caius Antonius, 46 while there is reason to suppose that he detested
the pompous and impressive Cicero, the perfect correctness and
prudence of whose behaviour, and the high-sounding nobility of
whose words, were so completely out of harmony with the ad-
venturous and unconventional spirit of Antony's home circle.
In any case, however, the young man's position must have been
most awkward; for he was at once the stepson of this widely
suspected conspirator and the nephew of the Consul who was in
command of the forces now moving against Catiline.
At last, at the beginning of December, Cicero caught some of
the agents of the conspiracy red-handed, with incriminating docu-
ments in their keeping, and, having convened the Senate, ordered
Lentulus and four of his confederates to be brought before them.
4B Sallust: Catilina, Iviii. "Cicero: Philippic ii, xxiii.
MARC ANTONY 81
Lentulus, under examination, pretended innocence, but his agents
turned against him to save their own skins, and confessed that
one of the seized letters, which was unsigned, had been written
by him to Catiline. In it the writer had said that all was in readi-
ness in Rome for the coup, and had advised Catiline to hasten
his advance on the city; and as soon as the document was read
Lentulus and his four friends were placed in custody. A sixth
conspirator was arrested next morning as he was leaving the city;
and, to the amazement of the Senators, confessed that he had been
on his way to Catiline with a message from the great financier,
Crassus, urging him not to lose heart, but to march with all the
more speed to Rome.
This piece of information appeared to be incredible, for a
great many of the senators, whom Catiline was supposed to wish
to massacre, owed Crassus large sums of money; and, in any case,
it seemed to be very unlikely that Crassus, considering his financial
interests, would have desired a destructive revolution. The whole
assembly, therefore, began to shout "False witness!" as the
prisoner was repeating his testimony, and in the end the man
was sent away, Crassus being declared innocent of the charge;
and it may be added that in after years Crassus gave it as his
opinion that Cicero had concocted the whole story out of enmity
against him. 47
The name of Julius Caesar was inevitably dragged in during
these enquiries, for so many persons involved in the affair were
his friends, and in character and associations he was readily to
be classed with the Catiline group, several of whom were aristo-
cratic libertines and spendthrifts like himself, in need of money,
worried, and politically restless. As a result of these suspicions
about him he was greeted with catcalls by the republicans, and his
life was threatened by Cicero's bodyguard of young gentlemen,
who came towards him as he sat in the Senate, and made spec-
tacular thrusts at him with their swords. Thereupon his own
youthful friends for, like Catiline, he always had a following
of admiring young exquisites clustered around him to protect
him, led by a certain Scribonius Curio, an undersized and effemi-
nate personage who was evidently far more courageous than his
* T Sallust: Catilina, xlviil
82 MARC ANTONY
appearance would suggest, and now, with his sword in one hand
and his cloak in the other, was prepared to give his rotten little
life for his hero. Cicero, however, called his retainers off, and
Curio then led the unruffled and ever dignified Caesar out of the
assembly, holding up the cloak behind him as a sort of shield.
It may be mentioned, by the way, that Curio, who was an ad-
mirer of Catiline, was at this time the young Antony's inseparable
companion, and it is therefore not unlikely that Antony was
present on this occasion. Curio's father, I may add, who was a
senator, and probably witnessed the scene, would have been happy
enough to see Caesar killed, for he deemed him a menace to the
morals of his son and all the younger generation, and, had once
publicly denounced him as "every woman's man and every man's
woman"; 48 and, indeed, in later years he and others often told
Cicero that he had made a terrible mistake in ordering his body-
guard to sheath their swords. There were people who said that
Csesar's complicity in the plot could be proved by letters he had
written, and his butchery there and then might have been justi-
fied; but he was able to call upon Cicero to affirm that he, Csesar,
was one of those who had actually warned him of the existence
of the danger, 49 and thus the Consul did not feel able to allow
him to be harmed.
On December 5th Cicero called the senators together once
more, and asked them what should be done with Lentulus and
the other prisoners. The first person to reply was Silanus, the
Consul-elect, who voted that they should be put to death; but at
this Csesar, undaunted by his recent experience, made a masterly
speech, urging that they should only be exiled and should suffer
the confiscation of their property. This speech is history's first
revelation to us of the future Dictator's great mental equipment;
and, after the unpleasing start of his career, it comes as a very
satisfying surprise.
"I am indeed of opinion," he said, "that the utmost degree
of torture is inadequate to punish their crime; but mankind in
general dwells on that which happens last, and, in the case of
criminals, forgets their guilt and talks only of their punishment,
should that punishment have been unusually severe. The proposal
* Suetonius: Casar, Hi. * Ibid., xvii.
MARC ANTONY 83
of Silanus to put these men to death appears to me, I will not
say cruel for what can be cruel that is directed against such
characters? but foreign to our policy. True, in trouble and dis-
tress, death is a relief from suffering, and not a torment: it puts
an end to all human miseries, and beyond it there is no place either
for sorrow or joy; and who, it may be asked, will blame any
such sentence against these traitors? I answer that time, the course
of events, and fortune whose caprice governs nations, may blame
it." The danger was, he declared, that in after years these men
should be regarded as martyrs by their supporters, and that the
present government, by unnecessarily taking their lives, would
reintroduce the bloodthirsty methods which had caused so much
misery in the time of Sulla.
Cato, however, whose narrow patriotism and ever hardening
support of the stern old conservative tradition had made him a
curiously callous partisan, ruthlessly demanded the death-penalty;
and his opposition to Csesar's proposal was stiffened by an incident
which then occurred. A note was privately handed to Csesar, which
he read with some embarrassment and then concealed; whereupon
Cato accused him of receiving a communication from the con-
spirators, and demanded to see the letter. Csesar handed it to him.
It was a love-letter from Servilia, Cato's sister; and Cato, having
read it, furiously flung it back, saying "Take it, you sot!" 50 He
then proceeded to make a bitter speech, in which he took the
opportunity also to castigate his fellow-senators for their love of
their pleasures and their comforts.
"In the name of heaven," he cried, "I call upon you, who
have always set a value upon your houses and villas, your statues
and pictures, higher than that of the welfare of your country
if you wish to preserve these possessions to which you are so at-
tached, if you wish to secure quiet for the enjoyment of your
pleasures, arouse yourself, and do something for once in de-
fence of your country. Does anyone talk to me of gentleness and
compassion? For some time past, it is true, we have ceased to
call things by their proper names; for to be lavish with the prop-
erty of others is called generosity, and audacity in evil-doing is
called heroism. But let those who thus misname things have a
w Plutarch: Brutus.
84 MARC ANTONY
care before they play with our lives, and, whilst they spare a
few criminals, bring destruction on all the guiltless." Thus, in
the end the House was induced to decide that the prisoners had
merited death.
Thereupon, Cicero, surrounded by senators, officials, and sol-
diers, went in majestic and funereal state to fetch Lentulus from
his prison on the Palatine hill, and thence conducted him through
the Forum to the Tullian dungeon beneath the Capitol, where,
some forty years earlier, King Jugurtha had been done to death.
Here Antony's unfortunate stepfather was solemnly let down
by ropes into the black and evil-smelling pit, in which three or
four soldiers were awaiting in silence to receive him; and, as his
feet touched the ground these men pounced upon him in the semi-
darkness, slipped a cord about his neck, and strangled him. When
Cicero, looking down from above, 51 was notified that life was
extinct, he went off to fetch the other four prisoners, and in like
manner supervised their lowering into the dungeon and their
strangulation. It was the great moment of his life. Usually hesi-
tant and not quite sure of himself, to-day he was a mighty man
dealing out death to the enemies of his country; and he was
quite carried away by this sudden consciousness of his ability to
be terrible.
In the late afternoon he returned to his house through streets
crowded with citizens who, having had their fill of rumours of
massacre, acclaimed him as their preserver and the saviour of the
city, to which salutations he graciously bowed his acknowledge-
ments to right and left.
Shortly afterwards, however, public opinion turned against
him, it being stated that he had acted illegally in executing these
men without allowing them the usual appeal to the People ; 52
and before the year was out he was shouted down when he tried
to defend his action at a public meeting. 58 But the troops under
the command of Caius Antonius pursued the desperate Catiline to
his doom, and early in the new year the fatal battle took place.
Antonius, refusing to lead his men against his former friend,
"Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 6.
"Mommsen, in his Roman History, has called Cicero's action a "brutal judicial
murder."
M Dion Cassius, xxxvii, 38.
MARC ANTONY 85
pretended to be ill, and handed over the direction of the fight
to his second-in-command; but Catiline took his place at the
head of his troops, and at the end of the day his body was found
far in advance of those of his own soldiers who were killed al-
most to a man and surrounded by a ring of the corpses of his
enemies.
The death of Lentulus, of course, had brought sorrow and
ruin into Antony's home; but though history tells us nothing of
the young man's life at this tragic time, we may conjecture that
his devotion to his kinsman, Csesar, who had tried at any rate
to save the prisoners' lives, and his dislike of Cicero, were greatly
increased by this calamity. The Catilinarian Conspiracy has so
generally been regarded by historians as a dastardly and insane
attempt to destroy Rome, that the association of Antony's family
with it, and particularly Julius Caesar's conduct in this connec-
tion, have been blushingly glossed over; but the above interpre-
tation, I think, supplies the explanation of an affair which so long
has remained inexplicable because of the discrepancy between the
extensive popularity of the movement and its leader on the one
hand and the supposed absence of any but criminally destructive
motives on the other. It was an understandable revolt against an
aristocratic tyranny; and in after years Antony had no reason to
be ashamed of his stepfather or of the cause for which he died.
CHAPTER V
Antony's Entrance into Politics on the Side of the Democrats.
62-58 B.C.
THE crushing of the Catilinarian revolution by no means re-
duced the democratic party to impotence. Most of the extrem-
ists, it is true, had been killed around their leader, Catiline; but
other suspected men, such as Csesar, were still alive, and the
whole party eagerly awaited news of Pompey, whose expected
return in glory, like a second Alexander the Great, at the head
of a glittering, irresistible army, was the subject of excited specu-
lation. After his military triumphs, after nearly four years of
absolute power in the East, was he still an unspoilt democrat, or
would he give some support to the aristocratic oligarchy? The
latter party, under its chief spokesmen, Cicero and Cato, was now
more powerful than it had ever been since the death of the Dic-
tator Sulla; but this very fact had given the People's cause the
impetus of resentment, and had lent them the boldness to show
openly their hostility to the astonished Cicero, who felt himself
just now to be a very king amongst men and was amazed to find
that there were those who did not agree with him upon this point.
During his Consulship, a certain Metellus Nepos, one of
Pompey's most trusted officers, had returned to Rome to stand
for a Tribuneship of the People for the year 62 B.C. His father
had been a first-cousin of that Metellus who was the patron of
Marius and afterwards his rival in the war against Jugurtha:
and though his family was of plebeian origin, it had had such a
long and illustrious history that, as in the case of Antony, Metel-
lus was accepted as one of Rome's socially elect. He was, how-
ever, an ardent democrat, and the conservatives therefore at-
86
MARC ANTONY 87
tempted to oppose his election, their own candidate being the
austere and fanatical Cato, who was an uncompromising and
slightly absurd aristocrat. There were other candidates, of course,
but in the end both these men were elected, and at the beginning
of 62 B.C., when they assumed office, everybody wondered how
long it would be before they came to blows.
Metellus was the first to start the fight. He had the hardi-
hood openly to attack Cicero on the grounds that his execution
of Antony's stepfather had been illegal; and he put forward a
proposal that Pompey should be asked to come back to Rome at
once "to restore order," that is to say to defend the People's
party against the tyrannical behaviour of the conservatives.
Csesar, whose efforts to save the Catilinarian prisoners had en-
deared him to the mob, strongly supported the motion; but Cato
attacked it with vehemence, and he and Metellus so thoroughly
lost their tempers that people began to think that they were both
a little crazy. 1 When the day arrived for the bill to be put to the
vote in the Comitia, Metellus, anticipating trouble, drafted a
strong force of armed men into the assembly, and took his seat upon
the rostra, with Csesar beside him, surrounded by a powerful
bodyguard. As they sat talking, however, Cato charged through
the crowd, sprang onto the platform, and sat himself down with
a thud between them, suddenly interrupting their conversation
and causing them the profoundest astonishment.
The clerk then rose to read Metellus's motion; but Cato at
once jumped to his feet and forbade him to do so. Metellus
grabbed hold of the document and was about to read it when
Cato snatched it from him and tore it up. Metellus, however, knew
the words by heart and began to recite them; but Cato pushed
him back onto his seat, and, with the assistance of a friend who
had come to his support, held his colleague's mouth shut with
his hand, so that only a stifled mumble passed his lips. Thereat,
his armed followers scrambled onto the platform to protect him,
and, after a free fight, Cato was dragged away to safety by some
of his friends. Metellus then began to recite the motion again;
but suddenly the battered Cato, who had collected some armed
men of his own, burst into the meeting once more, and Metellus
1 Plutarch: Cato.
88 MARC ANTONY
and Caesar were obliged to take to their heels. The upshot was
that the government stupidly asserted its despotic power by com-
mending Cato, and deposing both Metellus from his Tribuneship
and Caesar from the Prsetorship which this year was his. Metellus
thereupon fled from Rome, and with difficulty made his way to
Pompey; but Csesar, always daring, remained where he was, and
when an angry rabble marched to his house to offer him their
protection and support, he handled tliem so diplomatically and
dispersed them with such obvious regard for law and order, that
the startled Senate highly commended his conduct and used the
pretext to reinstate him in his office, his unexpected popularity
with the masses having brought them to their senses.
But Pompey was not yet ready to come home. He had just
crowned his career of conquest by capturing Jerusalem, where,
at the fall of the city, it may be mentioned, he had entered the
temple and had boldly walked into Jehovah's Holy of Holies to
have a look at the Ark of the Lord, the seven-branched candle-
stick, the golden table of the Law, and all the other mysterious
objects of that interesting faith, for which, however, he showed
his gentlemanly regard by looting none of these things nor touch-
ing the temple's treasury. 2 From Palestine he sent a report to the
Senate recounting his victories, and he also wrote a private letter
to Cicero wherein he said nothing complimentary about the ora-
tor's behaviour in the Catilinarian affair, of which he had just
heard; and this omission greatly offended that personage, who, in
view of the hostile behaviour of the mob towards him, was pain-
fully eager for commendation.
There are many features of Cicero's character which must
always arouse derision in the minds of those whose reverence for
the outward proprieties is not over-developed. He was so pre-
cisely what is now called a pillar of the church and state that
had he been living some ninety years later in the country from
which Pompey wrote to him he would assuredly have come under
the castigation of that Teacher who could not abide a parade of
virtue. Yet there was one quality at least in him which endears
a josephus: Antiquities of the Jew, xiv, 4; Cicero: Pro Flacco, acxviii, 67. Dion
Cassius (xxxvii, 16) is therefore wrong in saying that he took the money in the
treasury.
MARC ANTONY 89
him to us, notwithstanding his self-importance, his vanity and
his cant, namely his frank admission of his love of applause,
and his ability sometimes to laugh at himself on this account. In
a letter to his friend Atticus 3 he asks if there were ever a human
action in history so glorious as his handling of the Catilinarian
conspirators; but he says with a smile "I hope you don't object to
my blowing my own trumpet." As soon as his Consulship was
over he began to write a history of it both in Latin and in Greek;
and he told Atticus 4 that he was going to compose a poem about
it "so that I may not omit any form of self -laudation." He wrote,
too, to the historian Lucceius, begging that he would praise his
Consulship unstintingly, and if possible, write a special treatise
about it. 5
He was frankly hurt, therefore, at Pompey's casual letter,
and he replied 6 saying how sorry he was to observe that it con-
tained such scant expressions of regard. "My achievements have
been such," he complains, "that I did expect some recognition
of them in your letter, for I assure you that my action for the
preservation of our country has met with a chorus of approval."
The chorus to which he referred, however, was only that of the
aristocratic party, who, indeed, at Cato's suggestion had con-
ferred on him the title of "Father of his Country"; but he did
not mention the fact that the mob was now in the habit of booing
him. In regard to this title, by the way, he wrote in the above*
mentioned poem of self-praise the famous line "0 fortunatam
natam me consule Romam" 7 of which a good paraphrase is "O
happy fate of Rome to date her birthday from my consulate" 8
words which, in their vanity, are almost without parallel.
His unbounded conceit a conceit so ridiculously human as
almost to win our smiling indulgence now led him into financial
transactions which were not at all in keeping with his professed
ideals. During his Consulship he had made a compact with his
colleague Caius Antonius, Antony's uncle, that at the close of their
year of office Antonius should be given the governorship of the
province of Macedonia, and it seems to have been agreed between
8 Cicero: Ad Atticum, i, 19, 10. 4 Idem.
8 Cicero: Ad Familiar es t v, 12. 'Cicero: Ad Familiares, v, 7.
T Juvenal, x, 122. * Tyrrell.
90 MARC ANTONY
them that they stiould share whatever money could be wrung
from the Macedonians, 9 for every Roman provincial governor
expected to make a fortune out of his province. But before this
money arrived Cicero's sense of his own importance induced him
to buy from the millionaire Crassus a magnificent house on the
Palatine hill. The price was colossal, and to raise the amount
he had to borrow large sums from all those who wanted his serv-
ices in the law-courts, where his eloquence always commanded
high fees.
It is not possible to suppose that he could have expected to
pay back these debts, or even to live in a style commensurate with
this mansion, without setting about the making of his fortune
by more or less corrupt means; and there can be no question that
from now onwards his professions of high principle in financial
matters were somewhat hypocritical. The common people knew
this, and henceforth they regarded him as one of the thieving
rich. It is true that Csesar was also deeply in debt at this time;
but the difference was that Csesar had spent his money on the
People in pursuit of their votes and support, whereas Cicero, who
did not need to do this so long as the wealthy aristocracy was
behind him, was incurring his financial obligations entirely for his
own social aggrandisement. The unfortunate Antony, meanwhile,
and his mother and brothers, were more or less impoverished,
and, if we are to take literally a later sneer of Cicero's, 10 had not
even a home they could call their own.
Antony, however, was a light-hearted young man, and having
been brought up from childhood in an atmosphere electric with
the demands of creditors, gave little attention to the dark menace
of his ever-growing debts. He could not pay for the good time to
which he was accustomed to treat himself; but neither his father
nor his stepfather had ever allowed an actual or a partial bank-
ruptcy to interfere with their social life, 11 and Antony did not
know what it was to deny himself. Indeed, he may well have asked
why on earth he should do so, for most of his young friends were
This is the interpretation generally placed upon the references to Teucris in Ad
Atticum, i, 12, 13, and 14, and Ad Familiar es> v, 5 and 6, that being apparently Cicero's
code-name for Caius Antonius.
10 Cicero : Philippic li, xix. u Ibid., rviii.
MARC ANTONY 91
in debt, and yet were sowing their wild oats with the utmost
prodigality; 12 and, in his own case, his relationship to Caius
Antonius and to the Caesars indicated that one day he would
find means to make a fortune an expectation which was usually
sufficient for the money-lenders.
Moreover, Antony happened to be a very attractive strip-
ling, and for the last few years various men older than himself
had attached themselves to him and had seen that he did not
want; 13 for fashionable society at that time was even more prone
to curious, romantic attachments of this sort than it is at the
present day, and a youth without such a companion was almost a
phenomenon. In spite of the fact that Antony in after years was
only abnormal in the excessive masculinity of his behaviour, there
is no doubt that in early life he was all too similar to his friend
Julius Csesar at the same age.
Scribonius Curio was to Antony what the King of Bithynia
had been to Csesar. Curio was some years older than Antony, but
was described by Cicero as "a slip of a girl," 14 which indicates
that he was an effeminate little man, although, as we have al-
ready seen, he had been prepared to defend Csesar that day in
the Senate even at the cost of his life. He had been a friend of
Catiline and was a keen democrat, having by his very nature a
hearty distaste for the habits of the conservative. His father, still
living, was a man of wealth who had been Consul in 76 B.C., and
was the son of a famous orator, who, like Antony's grandfather,
the orator Marcus Antonius, was of illustrious plebeian family.
"No boy," says Cicero, "was ever so wholly in the power of an
elder man as Antony was in the power of Curio, who, burning
with devotion, was unable to bear the misery of being separated
from him." 15 They went about together everywhere, and into
such wild extravagances did Curio lead him, or he Curio, that
soon his debts amounted to a considerable fortune, and he was
obliged to borrow a large sum from money-lenders, Curio stand-
ing as surety for the loan. On hearing of this, however, the elder
Curio refused to invite Antony into his house, and told the serv-
"Sallust: Catilina, xiii, xiv.
^For this phase of his life see Cicero: Philippic ii, xviii; and Plutarch: Antony.
14 Cicero: Ad Atticum, i, 14, 5. w Cicero: Philippic ii, xviii.
92 MARC ANTONY
ants not to let him in, after which his friend, always ready for
adventure, was obliged to smuggle him into his own quarters by
way of a ladder and the roof.
In due course the money-lenders demanded repayment, and
Curio was faced with the prospect of having to pay up, where-
upon his angry father threatened to bring an action against Antony
in this event for the recovery of as much of the money as pos-
sible. At this Curio went to Cicero, who was an old acquaintance
of his father's, and begged him with tears in his eyes to try to
set the matter to rights, for, he declared, if Antony were to be
condemned as a debtor and expelled from Rome he himself would
go into banishment with him, having been the real cause of the
trouble, and being unable, anyway, to tolerate the thought of
existence without his friend. Such, at least, is Cicero's account
of the interview; but it is not unlikely that Curio's object was to
ask Cicero to help Antony and his family to recover some of the
money lost, if not actually confiscated, at the time of his step-
father's conviction, or, alternatively, to induce Caius Antonius to
help the young man. Cicero, however, if he is to be believed,
persuaded the elder Curio to pay the debt himself, but advised
him to forbid his son ever to meet Antony again. It is unknown
whether or not this advice was put into execution; but it may
be supposed that the intimacy, in any case, came to an embarrass-
ing end as Antony began to grow a beard and to develop that
prize-fighter's physique and those robust manners which presently
earned for him the name of Hercules.
Towards the close of the year 62 B.C. while all Rome was
anxiously awaiting the return of Pompey and his victorious army,
and while Caesar, who was engaged in a violent love-affair with
Mucia, Pompey's wife, was gradually becoming the acknowledged
leader of the democrats in their struggle against a tyrannical
aristocracy led by the plausible Cicero and the fanatical Cato, a
very curious incident occurred which developed into a first-class
political scandal. One of the outstanding figures amongst the
younger politicians at this time was Publius Clodius, nicknamed
Pulchellus, "The Beauty," who although he must have been
some thirty years of age, had a face like a girl a fact which often
led him, for the entertainment of his friends, to dress up as, and
MARC ANTONY 93
to imitate the manners of, a woman. 16 It is generally thought that
he was, indeed, an effeminate creature whose undoubtedly licen-
tious and immoral habits were of the emasculated kind so common
in Rome at that time, but I believe this to be a mistake : he was,
as our authorities really make quite clear, so masculine in his
behaviour that his feminine appearance must have been a matter
for laughter rather than disgust.
Of extremely aristocratic ancestry, he was the son of one of
Sulla's patrician officers who had died at the Colline Gate in 82
B.C., and in 70 B.C. he had served in Asia under Lucullus to
whom his sister, Clodia, was married. A few years later, being a
born fighter, he had joined the Syrian army in their war against
the Arabs, and, after many breathless adventures, had returned
to Rome in 65 B.C., where he came into prominence as one of the
aristocrats who brought the charge of extortion against Catiline
for the purpose of preventing his candidature for the Consulship;
but in 63 B.C., after a year of service in Gaul, he gave his sup-
port to the conspirators, 17 and, in spite of some further changes
of face, came out at last on the democratic side for good. Plutarch
describes him as a man of brave and resolute character, 18 eminent,
too, both for his wealth and his eloquence; 19 but although there
were some who considered him a very decent, and even religious,
member of society, 20 it seems to be widely agreed that when he
was not gallantly fighting or violently engaging in politics, his life
was really outrageous in its profligacy.
Now it so happened that in this year 62 B.C. his latest mis-
tress was none other than Caesar's wife, Pompeia, the great Sulla's
granddaughter, who, having been married for some six years to
a man incapable of being faithful to her for as many weeks, had
at last retaliated by responding to the overtures of this wealthy
and dashing young nobleman with the girlish face and the lion's
heart. The fact that Caesar's mother, Aurelia, lived in the house
with Pompeia, and kept an annoyingly watchful eye upon her,
only added to the ardour of Clodius; and at length, in December,
18 Cicero : De Haruspicum Responsis, xxi, 44.
1T Asconius: In Ciceronis Milonianam, 55.
** Plutarch: Cicero. * Plutarch: Casar.
00 Cicero: Philippic <viiij v.
94 MARC ANTONY
he planned a daring escapade by which he hoped to find him-
self alone with his lady-love in her own house, in the middle of
the night, and under very exciting conditions.
One of the great goddesses of Rome, whose worship under
various names was almost world-wide, was Bona Dea, the patron-
ess of women, particularly in their character of actual or potential
mothers; and twice in the year in May and December there
was an important festival in her honour, the former being, I
fancy, the date of its original celebration in Rome, and the latter
that adapted from foreign usage. 21 At the December festival the
women were wont to gather at the house of one of the Consuls
or Praetors, where the Vestal Virgins performed certain very secret
rites relative to the propagation of the race, and the whole com-
pany kept a night-long vigil, playing games and listening to music
to pass the time, nobody of the other sex being allowed in the
house from nightfall until the following morning. This year the
ceremonies were to be performed at the house of Caesar, who was
Prsetor; and since he would have to sleep elsewhere that night,
the daring idea of attending the secret rites, disguised as a woman,
presented itself to Clodius, who supposed that he would thus be
able to enjoy a little time alone with Pompeia.
By arrangement with her maid he was admitted into the
house, when the time came, disguised as an Egyptian singing-
woman, wearing an Egyptian headdress and veil, a sleeved gown,
and a sash around his middle, his feet being bandaged to make them
look smaller; 22 but while he was awaiting the return of this
maid, who had gone to see whether her mistress were ready to
receive him, the glances directed at him by passing women made
him feel so uneasy that he decided to find his own way to Pom-
peia's room. He had not gone far, however, when one of Aurelia's
own maids encountered him and asked him whom he was looking
for, whereupon his stammered reply, uttered in a very masculine
31 May is the date attested by Ovid (Fasti, v, 147), but the festival to which
reference is here being made was, I think, evidently in December, as shown by
Cicero, Ad Atticum, i, 12, etc., and, I suppose, corresponded to the "Mothers' Night"
celebrated with an all-night vigil on December 24th-25th in various countries,
which was one reason why that date was chosen for our Christmas (See my
Paganism in Our Christianity, chap, xxiii).
38 So Cicero says in his speech against him, of which a few fragments alone
remain.
MARC ANTONY 95
voice, revealed his sex, and soon the place was in an uproar,
Aurelia rushed into the hall wherein the rites were to be per-
formed and covered* up the sacred images and symbols; the doors
of the house were shut; and at last Clodius was discovered hid-
ing in a dark room into which he had been dragged by Pompeia's
maid. His clothes were half torn from him by the furious women;
his identity was revealed; and he was driven into the street again
with a chorus of screams and imprecations following him as he
ran painfully through the darkness in his tight shoes.
Next morning everybody was talking about his impious prank,
and a few days later the very serious charge of sacrilege was
brought against him, to which was added that of adultery with
Pompeia. Thereupon Caesar let it be understood that he did not
think she was guilty, but divorced her nevertheless on the after-
wards famous grounds that Caesar's wife ought to be above sus-
picion. The aristocratic party were glad to discredit Clodius, who
had recently been making himself obnoxious to them; and, raking
amidst the refuse of his past, they produced the further charge
that he had had incestuous relations with his three sisters, one of
whom, at any rate, was so notorious for her immoralities that
anything might be believed of her she was, in fact, nicknamed
Quadrantia, which may be translated "Pennyworth," because of
the low price at which her favours had been valued by a certain
disillusioned lover of hers, and she had lately caused a scandal
by buying a villa from which she could obtain a good view of the
place where the young men bathed.
The trial which ensued, early in the new year, 61 B.C., be-
came a cause celebre, like that of Verres eight years before. The
aristocratic party, headed in this case by Cato, was determined
that he should be punished; the People were determined that he
should be acquitted, and were very pleased with Caesar when he
refused to make any charge against him. Cicero was all for hush-
ing up the whole affair, but his wife Terentia, who at this time
dominated him, urged him to support the prosecution; and when
Clodius audaciously put forward an alibi, saying that he had
been at Interamna (Terni), fifty miles from the capital, at the
time in question, Cicero gave evidence that, on the contrary, the
accused had visited him at his house in Rome on that day. Crassus,
9 6 MARC ANTONY
on the other hand, not only gave his support to Clodius, but so
heavily bribed everybody who would take his money that most
of the large body of jurors voted for his acquittal, and those
whose consciences would not permit them to do so scrawled their
written verdicts so illegibly that nobody could read them. Clo-
dius thus escaped punishment, and the democratic party was
able to congratulate itself upon an important victory over the
republicans or conservatives.
While this affair was engaging the attention of the public,
Pompey arrived back in Italy; but to the blank astonishment of
both parties he immediately disbanded his army instead of march-
ing it to the gates of Rome, as everybody had breathlessly ex-
pected, to support either one side or the other in the political
troubles with which the city was seething. The conservatives
were delighted, and Cicero prepared himself to take advantage
of Pompey's pacific gesture by attempting to win him over to the
side of the aristocracy; but these plans were thwarted by Cato,
who, mistrusting the great general, abused him so openly that
Pompey was thrown back upon the democrats. He was in some-
thing of a dilemma because, on the one hand, he did not like the
rigid conventionality and despotic tendencies of the aristocratic
party, and, on the other, he detested the unruly habits of the
mob which formed an important part of the democratic party.
Moreover, although he was at heart a true democrat, the situa-
tion was a little complicated for him by the fact that Csesar, who
was now the real leader of the People, had been making love to
his, Pompey's, wife Mucia during his absence, as has already been
said. That matter, however, was amicably settled. Pompey di-
vorced Mucia because of her adultery with Csesar, and shortly
afterwards arranged to marry Caesar's girl Julia instead, to show
that there was no ill-feeling. Julia was the daughter of Caesar's
first wife, Cornelia, daughter of the famous democratic leader,
Cinna: she was a beautiful young woman in the early twenties,
and Pompey was twice her age; but, fortunately, she found him
so attractive as a lover that she was able to respond with genuine
warmth to his equally genuine ardour, and was evidently de-
lighted to make amends in person to him for her father's theft
of Mucia,
MARC ANTONY 97
Caesar, however, very wisely did not remain in Rome to
attempt the impossible task of sharing the leadership of the
People with Pompey. Now that his term of office as Prsetor was
over, he was anxious, too, to go abroad to try to make some money
by means fair or foul, for at the moment he required about twenty-
five million sesterces 23 to make him worth precisely nothing, as
he put it. He therefore accepted a governorship in Spain, and
although he had great difficulty in pacifying his creditors, and
had in the end to ask Crassus to stand surety for him for a huge
sum of money to keep the most dangerous of them quiet, he was
enabled in the end to make a successful escape from the others,
although, to do so, he had to slip away before his baggage and
a military escort were ready. 24
In the autumn of 61 B.C. Pompey celebrated his Triumph,
and for two days the Roman populace gazed in wonder at a
seemingly endless procession of soldiers, booty, and captive kings
and princes. It was the barbarous Roman custom to kill the im-
portant prisoners after they had been led in chains through the
streets; but Pompey again revealed his humanity by putting to
death only two such persons out of the three hundred and more
who had been brought to -Rome, and by sending almost all the
others back to their own countries at the public expense. He also
displayed an exalted sense of citizenship by divesting himself of
his military apparel and marks of rank at the end of the Triumph,
and going quietly to his house, dressed as an ordinary civilian.
His behaviour at this time, in fact, was like the abdication of a
monarch at the height of his glory; but it was far too altruistic
for the taste of Rome, and his popularity was doffed with his
raiment. 25 The democrats did not altogether trust him, and the
conservatives, unable to win him over, did their best to crush
him.
Matters, however, now hung fire for a while in Rome, though
in Spain Caesar proved himself to be a very energetic military
commander, and conducted some minor campaigns with distinc-
tion; but in the middle of the next year, 60 B.C., Caesar, aching
38 About $1,250,000, but with a greater purchasing value then than now.
'"Plutarch: Casar; Suetonius: Casar, xviii; Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 8.
86 Cicero: Ad Atticum, ii, 19, 2-3.
9 8 MARC ANTONY
with ambition, returned home in order to become a candidate for
one of the Consulships of 59 B.C. The aristocratic party did its
best to oppose his election, but the most it could do was to put
forward its own candidate for the other Consulship, a man named
Calpurnius Bibulus; and the result of the elections was that
Csesar and Bibulus, representing the two political extremes, be-
came Consuls together, entering into office at the beginning of 59
B.C. to the accompaniment of the rival acclamations of the two
parties. They were like opposing fighting-cocks rather than col-
leagues, the one being backed most prominently by Pompey and
Crassus, and the other by Cicero and Cato. The democrats, how-
ever, obviously had the better champion; and they felt sufficiently
confident of their strength to try to pay off their old scores against
the opposing faction in regard to the treatment of the late Catiline
and his friends.
If there be any lingering doubt in the mind of the reader as
to the correctness of the assertion which I made in the previous
chapter that Catiline, with all his faults, was the beloved leader
of the People, and not merely the irresponsible monster which
official history has deemed him, it must surely be dissipated by the
fact that the bulk of the democratic party behind Gesar now be-
gan to devote its energy to the punishment of those who had
brought about the destruction of the so-called Catilinarian con-
spirators, and Caesar, himself more moderate in this matter, had
difficulty in keeping his followers in control. One of the first
moves was the impeachment of Caius Antonius, Antony's uncle,
for the second time, on the nominal charge of having extorted
money from his province of Macedonia, but for the real reason
that he had turned against Catiline and had commanded the forces
sent to overthrow him- Cicero, of course defended him; but he
was condemned nevertheless, and was exiled to the island of
Cephallenia, in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Greece, where he
remained, it may be added, for the next fifteen years. The young
Antony, now twenty-four years of age, seems to have sided with
those who condemned his uncle, for he had already attached
himself enthusiastically to the democratic party and had struck
up a great friendship with Clodius, 26 who, in spite of his affair
38 Cicero: Philippic ii f xix.
MARC ANTONY 99
with Caesar's wife, was now his most active supporter. Antony's
mother, Julia, widow of that Lentulus whom Cicero had caused
to be put to death as Catiline's chief agent, was also glad enough,
no doubt, to witness the punishment of her former brother-in-
law. She was herself of the family of the Gesars, and her sympa-
thies would naturally have been with her kinsman, Julius Caesar,
and his party, even if his political opponent, Cicero, had not been
her personal enemy. As soon as Caius Antonius was condemned a
crowd of people hurried off to the tomb of Catiline, and trium-
phantly decked it with flowers ; 2T and it may well be that in that
crowd Antony and his mother were to have been seen.
The various measures which Caesar, as Consul, brought for-
ward were of a popular character, and were designed to benefit
the masses; but they were all opposed by his colleague Bibulus,
and at length a serious riot took place. One day, while Caesar
was speaking in the Forum, Bibulus, who had just had a basketful
of dung emptied over his head, burst into the meeting to stop
him, whereupon a free fight ensued. Bibulus leapt upon the plat-
form, and thrusting his head forward and pointing to his throat,
shouted out to Caesar's supporters to kill him if they dared. c lf I can-
not persuade Caesar to do right," he cried, "I can at least affix
upon him the stigma of my death !" His friends, however, dragged
him away; and thereupon the irrepressible Cato mounted the
platform and began to denounce Csesar and all his works. The
democrats at once pounced upon him, and carried him off kicking,
depositing him outside the circle of the crowd. Cato, however,
made his way by side streets around to the back of the rostra,
and suddenly climbed up onto it again, and there stood shouting his
denunciations until once more he was lifted off his feet and
thrown down at a safe distance, while the meeting, after further
uproar, ended in a victory for the democrats.
One of Cesar's measures was that of approving all the dis-
27 Cicero: Pro Flacco, xxrviii, Dion Cassius (xxxviii, 10) states that a second
charge against Caius Antonius was that of conspiring with Catiline; but if this had
been so the verdict would not have been a triumph for Catiline, nor would Cicero
have defended him, since it was Cicero who, a little earlier, had accused him of being
a party to the conspiracy in an oration of which only fragments have survived
(In Toga Candida).
ioo MARC ANTONY
positions made by Pompey in the countries he had conquered,
these having been refused ratification by the aristocratic party
on the disgruntled advice of Lucullus, their own deposed general
whom Pompey had replaced in the East. Csesar and Pompey, in
fact, were now working together on terms of apparent friend-
ship, although Pompey, who had now completely lost his heart
to his new wife, Julia, Caesar's daughter, was far more interested
just now in her than in politics, and could with difficulty be
dragged from her side 28 a condition of mind which Csesar at
once turned to his own advantage by borrowing a handsome sum
of money from the ardent lover. 29 Caesar himself had just married
Calpurnia, daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the democratic
Consul-elect for the following year; but this was a political union
and in no way interfered with business the marriage, in fact,
had led Cato to make the caustic remark that the State nowadays
seemed to be nothing more than a matrimonial agency.
During the second half of the year Csesar's behaviour became
very autocratic, and at last Bibulus, finding himself deprived of
all power and not a little in danger of his life, shut himself up in
his house and could not be induced to show his nose at any public
meetings or functions. The Senate, which, almost to a man, be-
longed to the aristocratic party, was powerless to act; and, indeed,
so entirely was the control of affairs in Csesar's hands, and so
blindly did the Comitia, the People's assembly, follow him, that
the democrats jestingly referred to this Consulship of Caesar and
Bibulus as that of Julius and Caesar.
Presently he caused a law to be passed that any senator who
obstructed the passage of one of his popular measures should be
put to death, after which he had little further trouble with any
member of that body, except, of course, with Cato, who did not
cease to challenge everything he did, until at last he was carried
off struggling, and pitched into prison for a while. The Comitia
having now more or less taken over the functions of the Senate,
Gesar thought it would be as well for his chief lieutenant, Clo-
dius,"The Beauty," to serve as a Tribune of the People; but since
this office could only be held by a man of plebeian family, and
the family of Clodius was patrician, Csesar caused him to be
"Plutarch; Pompey. "Cicero; Ad Attiwm, vi, 1, 25.
MARC ANTONY 101
adopted by a certain plebeian gentleman as his son, and thus, by a
stroke of the pen, made him eligible.
It is a very remarkable fact that at this time the leaders
of the now dominant democratic party, with its rough, working-
class following, were men of elegant, effeminate appearance. Curio,
that "slip of a girl," as Cicero called him was one of Caesar's
chief supporters. Clodius looked like a woman, and had passed
himself off as one at the Bona Dea rites in Caesar's house. The
debonair Pompey, although a normal man in his habits, is described
by Plutarch as having "languishing eyes," and a gentle, grace-
ful bearing. Csesar himself, in spite of his vital energy, his com-
manding character, and his reckless bravery, was still laughed at as
an effeminate fop. In the Senate, at about this time, when he
had declared that in spite of his enemies he would obtain what he
desired and would make that assembly submissive to his pleasure,
one of the senators sneeringly retorted: "That will not be an easy
task for a woman!" 30 And Antony, who, as the close friend now
of Clodius, was beginning to play an active role in the party, had
only lately begun to reveal those manly qualities which later were
his particular characteristic, but which in his youth had been con-
cealed behind the soft manners and appearance typical in all ages
of the male of the intermediate sex. In his case, obviously, this was
to a great extent a fashionable pose; but it is not without a sense
of surprise that one observes how the rude proletariat had allied it-
self with these charming exquisites, and how the aristocratic party,
on the other hand, was identified with the more severe and manly
tradition of ancient Rome.
The highly respectable Cicero was all at sea in this para-
doxical situation. Shocked and frightened at the bitter criticisms
levelled against him by the democrats, he bored his friends almost
to distraction 81 by repeating to them at great length the story of
the Catilinarian conspiracy and of his behaviour at that time,
stating over and over again that he had saved the fatherland on
that occasion. He tried hard to fortify his failing courage by
telling himself what a very noble person he was, and by writing
to his friends describing his successful speeches and the approval
they evoked in the minds of all virtuous men.
* Suetonius: Casar, scii. R Plutarch: Cicero.
102 MARC ANTONY
"I am maintaining my position with dignity," he declared. 82
"I am supported by everybody's good will." "You know how I
can deliver my thunders," he wrote to his friend Atticus in refer-
ence to his defence against his enemies. "Well, this time I brought
the house down! Great heavens! how I battled and spread deso-
lation around me! What onslaughts I made on my opponents! I
wish you could have seen how grandly I was fighting." 33 Herein
he was deliberately refusing in his vanity to face the fact that he
was now hated by the masses; but when his letter-writing was
finished, and ugly reality returned to brush aside this pathetic
pretence, his depression was deep, and, as in the case of most boast-
ful men, his bombast collapsed like a pricked balloon. As Appian
says, he was "utterly unnerved." 34
It has already been pointed out that Caesar was closely co-
operating with Pompey at this time, and presently these two drew
the enormously wealthy Crassus into their mutual league, as a
result of which the three of them became the absolute rulers of
Rome. The coalition was nicknamed the Tricaranus, the "Three-
headed Monster"; and for their chief agent they used Antony's
great friend, Clodius, who, as soon as he entered, in December,
59 B.C., upon his duties as Tribune of the People, launched a
violent attack upon the fallen Cicero, having for its object nothing
less than the ex-Consul's banishment from the city. In this on-
slaught Antony played a very prominent part, and was, indeed,
described as the brand which fired every conflagration. 85 Daily
Clodius pressed more vigorously the charge against Cicero of hav-
ing acted illegally in putting Lentulus to death; and Antony, ex-
cited by the thought of avenging his stepfather, helped him in every
way to arouse the anger of the people.
Time after time Cicero came to verbal blows with his antagon-
ists, and not all the scurrilous invective for which he was famous 86
saved him from frequent humiliation. Once when it had been men-
tioned that Cicero had paid a recent visit to Baise, the fashionable
and exclusive watering-place on the Bay of Naples, the elegant
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, ii, 24, 4.
Ibid., i, 14,4; i, 16, 1.
14 Appian: Civil Wars, ii, IS. "Cicero: Philip&c u, xix.
"Plutarch: Cicero.
MARC ANTONY 103
Clodius cut him to the quick by asking with a sneer what on earth
a mere person from Arpinum could find to do at a place patronised
by society. And when Cicero talked of laying his case before a jury,
Clodius replied with the remark all the more scathing because
it was rather true that no jury would believe a word he said
even when he was speaking on oath. 3T
At the close of the year 59 B.C. Caesar's somewhat uninspired
Consulship came to an end, and by arrangement with Pompey and
Crassus he obtained for himself the governorship of Cisalpine
Gaul, that is to say the part of northern Italy corresponding more
or less to Lombardy, to which was added an indefinite region be-
yond the Alps; and at his special request a law was passed giv-
ing him the military command of these regions for five years.
Just as he was about to leave Rome a law was proposed in the
Comitia by Clodius that any man who had condemned a Roman
citizen to death without allowing him the right of appeal to the
People should be exiled; and at this the unfortunate Cicero aban-
doned all attempts to maintain his dignity or self-respect, and, with
the dread of exile hanging over him, dressed himself as a suppli-
cant and visited his friends or accosted them in the street, pour-
ing out his woes to them and weeping over his lot until his un-
seemly behaviour aroused general disgust and ridicule. 38 The mob
booed and hissed him whenever they saw him, calling him the
murderer of Lentulus and his comrades ; and sometimes they flung
mud and garbage at him as, blinded by tears, he groped his im-
portunate way from door to door under cover of night. The old
conservative or republican party, however, lay powerless beneath
the weight of the Three-headed Monster, and could not save him
from the wrath of Antony and Clodius; while Caesar, Pompey, and
Crassus, although rather sorry for him, could not now check the
storm of popular hatred against him which at first they had al-
lowed Clodius to raise. Caesar, in particular, tried to find him a
loophole of escape by offering to give him a job on his staff in
Gaul, a kindly action inspired, one may suppose, by a genuine
admiration for Cicero's oratory and mastery of elegant language
an admiration which was reciprocated by Cicero, who, in later
years, admitted that Caesar was in command of "a splendid, noble,
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, i, 16, 10. "Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 15.
104 MARC ANTONY
and magnificent vein of eloquence." 39 Cicero, however could not
bring himself to accept a minor post of this kind, and the matter
dropped.
At last, in the first days of March, 58 B.C., Cicero igno-
miniously fled from Rome; and as soon as Cesar had gone to his
new post in Gaul, and Pompey and Crassus to their country seats,
Clodius and Antony led a mob to the orator's gorgeous mansion
on the Palatine, and, turning his wife Terentia and her children
out of it, set the house-wreckers to work to raze it to the ground.
When the destruction was complete, builders were called in to erect
a temple to the goddess of Liberty upon the site; and at its dedica-
tion one may suppose that Antony and his widowed mother, Julia,
were the guests of honour.
The two Consuls for this year were Piso, whose daughter
Csesar had married, and Aulus Gabinius, the man who in 65 B.C.
had proposed Pompey as commander-in-chief against the pirates:
both of them were democrats. It was arranged that at the end
of their term of office Gabinius should be given the governorship
of the province of Syria; and now this personage invited Antony
to join his staff there when the time came. Antony, however,
did not like the idea of a staff appointment, but said that he
would willingly accept a cavalry command, so that there might
be some chance of active service for him; and eventually this was
arranged.
Meanwhile, however, he was feeling somewhat uncomfortable
in Rome; for not only were his creditors pressing him, but he
had involved himself so deeply with the more violent elements of
the democratic party that he could see a good deal of trouble
brewing for him in the future. His friend Clodius was altogether
out of hand; and, although Antony had enjoyed the overthrowing
of Cicero, now that he had avenged his stepfather he was not hap-
py in the situation which had developed. Caesar, Pompey, and
Crassus were all moderate democrats, who might at any moment re-
pudiate the reckless Clodius; and a change in public opinion might
bring Cicero back from exile.
He therefore decided that the best thing for him to do would
be to go over to Greece for the purpose of taking lessons in ora-
** Suetonius : Casar, \v.
MARC ANTONY 105
rory at Rhodes or somewhere, just as Caesar had done; and then,
when Gabinius should pass through Greece on his way to Syria at
the beginning o the next year, he would meet him and go with
him to take up his cavalry command. He was now twenty-five
years of age, and he must have been conscious that so far his ca-
reer had not been at all reputable. He had in recent years involved
himself in a serious love affair with a girl named Fadia, whose
social standing was deplorable 40 ; and the fact that he made quite
a boast of his being the father of her two or three babies seems
to have been thought a little more unconventional than was neces-
sary. The phase of his effeminacy, at any rate, was over, but it
had been followed by a period of violent tub-thumping and mob-
leading which had culminated in the recent scenes o destruction
on Cicero's Palatine property; and perhaps Csesar, who was his
hero, had warned him to mend his ways, and had advised him to
learn that self-control which a school of oratory best could teach.
At any rate it is to the young man's credit that he set forth
from Rome, in this year 58 B.C., with the intention not only of
returning thus to tutelage for a while, but of passing on thence
to the discipline and the hardships of military service in far lands.
As Plutarch puts it, he was weary of madness.
40 Cicero: Philippic xiii, x.
CHAPTER VI
Antony's Military Service in Syria and Egypt, and his Appointment to the
Staff of Caesar in Gaul.
58-54 B.C.
HISTORY has little to say as to how Antony passed his time
in Greece during the remainder of the year 58 B.C. and the early
part of 57, while waiting for the coming of Gabinius ; but Plutarch
tells us that he made some use of this opportunity to study the art
of oratory at one of the celebrated Greek schools. He had a natural
talent in that direction, inherited from his grandfather, the fa-
mous orator, which, no doubt, he was anxious to develop; and,
in fact, in later years, according to the same author, he proved to
be unequalled in the art of addressing a crowd and carrying them
with him by the power of his words. The style of speaking which
he cultivated was that known as the Asiatic, then very popular a
rather poetic, careless, flowery style, full of heroics, but greatly
differing from the sonorous, pompous, carefully worded bombast
of Cicero. Cicero always spoke from the head, Antony from the
heart. Cicero prepared what he called his "thunders'* and studied
the form in which they were delivered, using pure and beautiful
Latin and giving close attention to "period" and "turn," "antithe-
sis" and "trope" ; 1 but Antony, on the other hand, seems to have
poured out his words with native eloquence, relying upon that and
the few tricks which he was now learning to create the effects so
diligently rehearsed by Cicero.
Plutarch says that he also occupied himself in Greece with
military exercises, that is to say swordcraft, horsemanship, and
so forth; but one may guess that the bulk of his time was spent
in enjoying himself as thoroughly as his small means would per-
1 Cicero: Ad Atticum, i, 14, 4,
106
MARC ANTONY 107
mit. He had grown into a fine-looking, muscular, young man of
strikingly noble carriage, moderately tall, exceptionally well-
developed, and having the shoulders and arms of a pugilist.
It was the Roman custom at this time to allow the youthful hair
upon the chin and jaws to grow untouched by a razor until some-
where about the twenty-fifth year of a man's age; and Antony,
who had not yet decided upon his first shave, was now possessed
of quite a handsome beard, 2 which, with the thick, curly hair of
his head, his powerful frame, and what Plutarch calls his "bold,
masculine look," made people say that he reminded them of a
young Hercules.
As has already been mentioned, the Antonii traced their gen-
ealogy back to Hercules, Anton, the founder of the family, having
been the reputed son of that fabulous hero ; and Antony, being in-
genuously proud of the fact, and glorying now as much in his brawn
as once he had gloried in his lack of it, began to dress for the part,
often wearing his tunic girt low about his hips, a heavy sword
hanging at his side, and a cloak of coarse material tossed magnifi-
cently over his great shoulders. His expression, however, was boy-
ish, kindly and slightly humorous, his eyes were thoughtful and
frank, his forehead was broad and intelligent, and his mouth a
good deal more sensitive than his rather heavy chin would have led
one to expect. 8 His nose was somewhat hooked, 4 and his upper
lip short; and these features, considered together with his thick
eyebrows, added a certain aquiline strength to his otherwise jovial
and good-natured face.
His nature was very loveable. "His generous ways," writes
Plutarch, "his open and lavish hand in gifts and kindnesses to
his friends, did a great deal for him in his first advance to power,
and, after he had become great, long maintained his fortunes when
a thousand follies were hastening their overthrow. In love affairs,
also, he was very agreeable, gaming many friends by the assistance
he gave them in theirs, and taking other people's jokes about his
own with good-humour. What might seem to some very insupport-
2 Plutarch: Antony. .
'See the Vatican bust, said to have been found at Tor Sapienza, Rome, about
1830.
*As shown on coins and medals.
io8 MARC ANTONY
able his showing off, his fun, his drinking in public, his sitting
down with common soldiers while they were having their meals,
or eating, as he stood, off their tables made him, later, the de-
light and pleasure of the army." There was no snobbishness about
him, and he was as much at his ease with people of no social stand-
ing as with the high and mighty. He enjoyed the luxuries and
refinements of life, but, like Catiline and Csesar, could endure hard-
ships and privations without complaint; and, as Plutarch says, "in
necessity and adversity he came nearest to perfection." He was a
tender-hearted, sentimental, and sometimes chivalrous young man;
and, as the following pages will reveal, he stands out as one of the
few notable vehicles of occasional humane dealing in a savage and
intensely cruel age.
His simplicity, however, is the feature of his character which
most fully wins him our sympathy; for, from this time onwards, he
is never unintelligible, nor ever functions in a mental atmosphere
which is not transparent to the critical eye. To his biographer, in-
deed, the only phase of his life difficult to understand is that which
links his effeminate adolescence to his masculine maturity; and,
for my own part, I find it hard to visualise the transformation of
the beautiful youth whom Curio loved into the giant who was
adored by women. But perhaps the explanation is to be found in a
certain aptitude for play-acting which was undoubtedly a marked
feature of his character. As a boy, he played at being an elegant
young fop because it was the fashion to do so; and as an adult he
played at being a cave-man because it was a part for which nature
had outwardly built him. Actually, however, he was at heart un-
suited to either role; for he was too rough for the one and too
gentle for the other. In after years he became famous for his hard-
living and his clumsy disregard of other people's feelings; yet
apart from one or two notable falls from grace, he was the type of
burly ruffian of whom one says that he would not hurt a fly.
Some time in 37 B.C. he took up his commission as the com-
manding officer of a troop of rough Gallic cavalry, and went with
Gabinius to Judea, where affairs were in an uproar. On the death
of Alexander Jannseus in 78 B.C., the Jewish royal authority had
passed to his widow, Alexandra, who gave the office of High-
Priest of Jehovah to their son, Hyrcanus; and this personage re-
MARC ANTONY 109
ceived also the Jewish sovereignty at his mother's death in 70 or
69 B.C. But in 68 B.C. his younger brother, Aristobulus, drove him
from the throne, and forced him into exile. In 63 B.C., however,
Pompey captured Jerusalem, as has already been mentioned, rein-
stated Hyrcanus, and carried Aristobulus and his son to Rome as his
captives. But shortly before Gabinius entered upon his governorship
of Syria, the two prisoners escaped, and, returning to Judaea, headed
a revolt against Hyrcanus, this civil war being at its height when
the new governor arrived.
Gabinius sent Antony ahead with his picturesque Gallic cavalry
to attack Aristobulus, who shut himself up in the fortress of Alex-
andrium in Samaria, not far from the north efid of the Dead Sea.
The Romans assaulted this place, and Antony covered himself
with glory by being the first man to scale the walls. 5 The Jewish
leaders, however, escaped, and made for Machaerus, a day's march
to the south; but Antony followed them, fought a pitched battle
with the reserves they had there mustered, annihilated them, and
captured Aristobulus and his son, who, at the beginning of 56 B.C.,
found themselves back in their prison in Rome, while Hyrcanus
ruled once more in Judaea.
Antony's dashing leadership and reckless bravery in this his
first campaign won him the devotion of his men and the warm
regard of his commanding officer, Gabinius, who in future thought
that whatever the young man did was right. 6 The army, too
Romans as well as Gauls made a hero of him, and were ready
to follow him upon whatever adventure he should wish to take
them. Nor was such an adventure long in presenting itself.
South of Judsea lay the Idumaean desert, the Biblical land
of Edom, which separated Palestine from the wealthy and power-
ful kingdom of Egypt, which was one of the few remaining coun-
tries of the civilized world still independent of Rome. A dynasty of
Greek sovereigns, or Pharaohs as they were called by their native
Egyptian subjects, had now ruled the land of the Nile for nearly
three centuries, each being named Ptolemy after the founder of
the line, who had been one of the generals of Alexander the Great;
but upon the death of King Ptolemy Alexander in 80 B.C., it was
found in his will that he had bequeathed his kingdom to the Ro-
Plutarch: Antony; Josephus: Antiquities, xiv, 5, 3. 'Cicero: Philippic ii, xix.
no MARC ANTONY
man Republic, just as King Attalus of Pergamus had done in the
time of the Gracchi. His nephew, Ptolemy Neos Dionysos, nick-
named Auletes, "the Flute-player," seized the throne notwith-
standing, and very soon began to negotiate with Rome for his
recognition by that paramount Power, having heard that the Sen-
ate was not at all inclined to accept the inheritance owing to the
disturbances which were certain to ensue if they did. For twenty
years and more Auletes reigned on sufferance in Alexandria, the
Egyptian capital, always expecting to be deposed by Rome; but in
59 B.C., during the Consulship of Csesar, who was ever in need of
money, he managed at last to buy at enormous cost his right to the
throne, the will of his uncle being declared invalid.
In the following year, 58 B.C., however, his own subjects de-
posed him, mainly because he was so seldom sober; whereupon
he went to Rome to attempt to effect his restoration, while his
daughter, Berenice, his deadly enemy, reigned in his stead. The
negotiations were protracted throughout 57 and part of 56 B.C.;
but at last, having uselessly spent a vast fortune on bribes to the
senators, Auletes left Rome in disgust, and retired to Ephesus, in
Asia Minor, while, at just about the same time, Queen Berenice
married Archelaus, 7 the High Priest of Komana in Cappadocia,
who thus became King of Egypt.
Auletes then decided to make a last, desperate bid for his
crown. Having obtained letters of recommendation from Pompey,
he approached Gabinius, and offered to pay him ten thousand tal-
ents 8 if he would lead his Roman legions and Gallic cavalry
across the Idumsean desert to Egypt and replace him upon the
throne, the suggested pretext for the campaign being that Arche-
laus and Berenice were encouraging piracy along the North African
coast, and, moreover, were building a fleet which was likely to be a
menace to Rome. Gabinius, deeply in debt like so many others, was
greatly tempted by the money, but was afraid of the dangers of
the desert march, and, in spite of the support which Pompey had
given to the undertaking, was pretty sure that it would not have
the full approval of the Roman public owing to the curious fact
that any meddling with Egyptian affairs was regarded as ill-
omened. While Auletes was in Rome trying to obtain military aid,
T Son of the General of Mithradates whom Sulla defeated. 'About $12,500,000.
MARC ANTONY 111
the statue of Jupiter on the Alban Hill had been struck by light-
ning, and when the Sibylline Books were consulted as to the mean-
ing of this sign from heaven, attention was called by the meddle-
some Cato to a passage which read thus: "If the King of Egypt
come requesting aid, neither deny him friendship nor assist him
with any great force/* Gabinius did not regard the small army at
his disposal as constituting a "great force"; but, at the same time,
he was not easy in his mind as to the project.
Antony, however, was all for the campaign; and the excep-
tional trust imposed in his judgment at headquarters enabled him
to carry the day. Perhaps he had met Auletes in Rome and had
taken a fancy to the drunken little man, for Plutarch says that he
was anxious to do him a service ; and, at any rate, Csesar had once
befriended him, which was enough for Antony, who was prepared
to follow wherever Caesar led. Moreover, there was his share of the
ten thousand talents to be considered; and, above all, there was
the excitement of the adventure, and, when the job was done, the
possibility of some pleasant weeks or months in Alexandria, a
purely Greek city, reputed to be the gayest and most luxurious in
the world.
Thus, 10 to the unbounded delight of Auletes, Gabinius agreed
to help him; and in the autumn of 56 B.C., when the heat of sum-
mer was over, the legions were concentrated at Gaza or some such
point in the south of Judsea, while Antony was sent ahead with
his cavalry to cross the desert and to capture the fortress of Pelu-
sium (the Sin of the Bible) at the Egyptian end of the caravan-
road, so as to make safe the route which the legions would have
to traverse. Antony performed this task with great credit. Pass-
ing through Rhaphia on the sea-coast, the last outpost of Palestine,
he probably accomplished in one day the ride to Rhinokolura,
the modern El Arish, where water was to be obtained from a well
which is still in use. Thence, two days hard riding across the most
dangerous and waterless part of the route brought him, probably
at nightfall, to Pelusium. Fortunately for him this fortress sur-
rendered after a brief resistance fortunately, because, had it held
9 Dion Cassius, xxxix, 15.
10 The authorities for the Egyptian campaign are Plutarch (dntony), Dion Cassius,
Appian, and Josephus; but none supply detailed accounts.
112 MARC ANTONY
out for long, his men would have soon become the prey of thirst.
By his orders the garrison was treated honourably as prisoners-of-
war; and here he settled down to await the coming of the main
army.
But when Gabinius, accompanied by Auletes, had arrived with
the legions, Antony was hard put to it to prevent the dethroned
monarch from regarding the Egyptian prisoners as traitors for
not having opened their gates at once. Auletes wanted Gabinius
to put them all to death; but Antony, with ^great kindness of
heart, pleaded for their pardon and finally obtained it. The whole
army then advanced into Egypt, Antony's cavalry leading the
way; and in various skirmishes he revealed his personal contempt
for danger. In the first pitched battle with the Egyptians the Ro-
mans could make no headway until Antony outflanked the enemy
with his cavalry, attacked them in the rear, and thus brought about
their complete defeat. The advance was then continued towards
Alexandria; and on the banks of one of the branches of the Nile,
not far from the sea, the main Egyptian army was encountered and
routed, Archelaus himself being killed. Here again Antony dis-
played his humanity; for, after the fight, he sought out the body
of Archelaus, and, in spite of the protests of the revengeful Auletes,
gave it a funeral with royal honours.
Having entered Alexandria in triumph, Gabinius replaced
Auletes upon the throne, whereupon the Egyptian monarch at once
put his daughter, Queen Berenice, and her chief supporters to
death. By a second marriage, however, Auletes had four other
children, two sons and two daughters, of whom the eldest was the
famous Cleopatra, at this time a girl of some fourteen years of
age; and, according to the matriarchal system of the Egyptians,
this young lady now became the all-important heiress of the king-
dom. As such, there can be little doubt that Antony made her
acquaintance during his stay in Alexandria; but no importance
is to be attached to the meeting. It is probable that she was then
quite a plain little girl with rather a large nose; and her cele-
brated charms of which her actual beauty was never a conspicu-
ous feature had probably not yet begun to reveal themselves in
any very noticeable degree. Antony, however, was such an ex-
ceptionally fine-looking young man, and, though only twenty-seven
MARC ANTONY 113
years of age, held such an important position in the estimation of
Gabinius and the army, that one may imagine him coming, at any
rate, under the interested scrutiny of this child of destiny. Girls in
her family, after all, were often married at fourteen, with children
of their own to remind them of their already fading romances.
The outbreak of another revolt in Palestine early in 55 B.C.
called Gabinius back to his Syrian province, and with him Antony,
who is said by Plutarch to have left behind him a very great
name amongst the Alexandrians. In Rome, however, both he and
his chief came in for considerable adverse comment on the part of
the conservatives, who regarded the Egyptian adventure almost
as a sacrilege in view of the Sibylline oracle, and who were egged
on by Cato to record their at present impotent protest against it.
But Pompey was still powerful, and for the moment Gabinius
escaped official censure for his hardihood in accepting Auletes'
money and risking a Roman army in the perilous march to and
from Egypt across the desert.
The situation in Rome had undergone considerable change
since Antony left the capital in 58 B.C.; and it is necessary now
to go back a while to see what had happened. In the spring of that
year Cicero, it will be recalled, had gone into a voluntary exile
which, so soon as he had departed, was extended into an official
banishment. It was his wish to retire to Athens, and, in his great
despair, he tried to console himself with the baseless thought that
his wide reading in philosophy had made a philosopher of him,
and that in Athens he would find his heart's comfort in the
society of the famous Greek thinkers. But, as Plutarch remarks,
the love of glory has great power in washing the tinctures of phil-
osophy out of the souls of men; and the memory of all he had lost
rendered him incapable of deriving consolation from this source.
He had sunned himself too long in the warmth of Rome's flattery
to be able to endure the coldness of exile: he could not forget the
days of his glory.
His vanity, "always clinging to him like a disease," 11 caused
him to think of his case as history's prime example of man's in-
gratitude. Never since the world began had there been such a
fall as his, he declared; 12 and the tears ran down his cheeks as he
"Plutarch: Cicero. "Cicero: Ad Atticum, iii, 15, 2.
114 MARC ANTONY
pictured to himself the sorrow of his family and his friends at the
misfortunes of so great, so good a man as himself. Even so, how-
ever, his letters to his wife, Terentia, at this time cannot fail to
arouse our pity for the exile, whose collapse into the Slough of De-
spond was as astonishing as had been his flights into the clouds of
self-glorification. "Night and day you are always before my eyes,"
he wrote to her; 1S "but, as you love me, do not let your anxiety in-
jure your health, which is so delicate." As a matter of fact, Teren-
tia was as strong as a horse, and lived to be a centenarian; but
Cicero could hardly have been speaking in sarcasm. "I cannot
write to you without shedding many tears," he told her, "when
I picture you to myself as plunged in the deepest affliction you
whom my dearest wish has been to see perfectly happy. Alas, my
light, my love ! that you should be in such misery, and all through
my fault!"
He abandoned the thought of going to Athens, at length, be-
cause he had heard that some of the men whose banishment he
had caused on account of their sympathy with Catiline and An-
tony's stepfather, were living there, and he did not dare to face
them; and in the end he took up his residence at Thessalonica
(Salonika) in Macedonia, where the chief Roman official was a
conservative and was likely to treat him with respect. For the
best part of a year he lived there, pouring out his lamentations
in letters to his friends; but in the spring of 57 B.C. hope dawned
again in his heart as the answering letters from Rome began to
tell him of the development of the political situation at home.
It will be remembered that Antony's friend Clodius, who was
Cicero's bitterest enemy, was the protege of Csesar, the little af-
fair with Caesar's wife having been forgiven and forgotten; but
now that his patron was away in Gaul, Clodius had come to
blows with Pompey, who, as a very gentlemanly and moderate
democrat, had aroused his impatience, and matters reached such a
pass that Pompey believed himself to be in danger of his life,
and even went so far as to shut himself up in his house for some
time, while gangs of men in the employ of Clodius paraded the
streets. As a result of this split in the democratic ranks, which left
Clodius with no more than the rabble behind him, Pompey was not
"Cicero: Ad Familiarts, xiv, 2.
MARC ANTONY 115
unwilling to consider the recall of Cicero, whose exile had been
brought about by this reckless mob-leader.
One of the Consuls for the year 57 B.C. was that same Metel-
lus Nepos, Pompey's former agent, who had led the first at-
tack on Cicero five years previously; and this man, at his patron's
instigation, now declared that he was ready to forget his feud
with the fallen orator and to allow him to come back. The Trib-
unes of the People for this year, and in particular, one named Titus
Annius Milo, also signalized their disapproval of Clodius by stat-
ing that they would not stand in the way of Cicero's recall; and
at last Csesar himself was induced to turn upon his former agent
and to send from Gaul his written approval of the exile's pardon.
All the more sober leaders of the democracy, in fact, were dis-
sociating themselves from Clodius, and could think of no better way
of demonstrating their attitude than by allowing the decree of
banishment to be rescinded, even though to do so were to play into
the hands of the conservatives.
The news of these events, it may be mentioned in passing,
must have been received at the time by Antony in Syria with very
mixed feelings. Clodius had been his friend : Cicero was his enemy.
But when Csesar, his hero, also broke with Clodius, he, too,
repudiated him, and swallowed the bitter pill of Cicero's coming
pardon with as good a grace as possible.
When the bill for the exile's recall was at last brought for-
ward, Clodius filled the streets with his roughs, and so fierce a bat-
tle was fought in the Forum that the ground was soaked with
blood and many lives were lost, Cicero's own brother, Quintus, be-
ing amongst the wounded. The Tribune Milo, whose sympathies
were with the conservatives, then organised a private fighting-
force of his own to counter that of Clodius, and soon the whole
city was in a state of daily uproar, the question of Cicero's recall
thus receiving a prominence which it would not otherwise have
obtained. Cicero, of course, attributed the intensity of the strug-
gle to his own importance; but this was by no means the case. Like
his colleague in the Consulship, Antony's uncle, he might have
remained for many a year a more or less forgotten exile, had not
the resentment against Clodius raised him, as that man's victim, to
the status of a martyr.
ii6 MARC ANTONY
At length, in August, 57 B.C., after somewhat less tHan seven-
teen months of exile, Cicero was recalled; and when he set foot
once more on his native shores he declared, with tears of pride in
his eyes, that Italy herself had brought him on her shoulders home.
On all sides he was warmly congratulated, 14 and Pompey made a
nice little speech in his praise, while even Crassus, the financier,
who used to quarrel with him continuously, patted him on the
back. Crassus had once made the remark that no member of his
family lived beyond sixty, and to this Cicero had replied that in
saying so Crassus was evidently trying to gain popularity, knowing
how pleased people would be to hear it a jest which, with other
rude remarks, had led to the complete estrangement now happily
ended.
One of the returned exile's first acts was that of inducing the
Tribunes to expunge the records of the tribunate of Clodius in
the previous year, on the grounds that his adoption into a plebeian
family, by which stratagem he had satisfied the public that he
was eligible for the office, had not legally qualified him for the
post; but here that Jack-in-the-box, Cato, jumped up to protest
that this deletion of a whole year's doings in the Comitia was
much tod high-handed. Cicero next attempted to revenge him-
self upon Clodius in another way: he pleaded that his beautiful
house on the Palatine, which Clodius, with Antony's aid, had
razed to the ground, should be rebuilt at public expense; and so
bitter was the feeling against Clodius that this measure was agreed
to. The temple of Liberty, which had been erected on the site, was
pulled down; and the figure of the presiding goddess, which, as a
matter of fact, was a Tanagran sculptor's portrait of a certain
well-known prostitute, 15 was removed elsewhere, the wrath of
Clodius notwithstanding. But the re-erection of the former mansion
was not carried out without interruption, for Clodius and his mob
attacked the workers on one occasion, and destroyed the walls they
were building. They also pelted Cicero himself more than once with
brick bats, but, as luck would have it, without hurting him; and
they set fire to the house of his unfortunate brother, Quintus, who
but lately had been knocked senseless in the Forum.
"Beesly (Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius), however, thinks that his reception was
only half-hearted. "Cicero: Pro Domo, xliii, 111.
MARC ANTONY 117
After the first excitement of the return of Cicero had died
down, public opinion began to be more divided about him. He was
so ludicrously pompous and vain. "He offended so many people/'
writes Plutarch, "by continually praising and magnifying him-
self ; for neither Senate, nor Comitia, nor court of law could meet
without him being heard to boast of his action against Catiline
and Lentulus; and he filled his speeches and writings with his
own praise to such an extent as to render a style, in itself most
pleasant and delightful, tiresome and sickening." Many of the
democrats who had been sorry for him now found him rather im-
possible; and, as a consequence, Clodius began to receive more
sympathy, even Crassus giving him some support. 16 The relation-
ship between Cicero and Pompey at this time was very friendly,
and it looked as though Pompey were inclining towards the aris-
tocratic party, particularly since he was known to be on rather
bad terms just now both with Crassus and the absent Caesar.
Csesar's position had undergone a complete change since he
had been away. He had left Rome for Cisalpine Gaul, after his
Consulship, with no very nice reputation: his effeminate youth,
his later affairs with other men's wives, his immense debts, his
implication in various plots and intrigues, his patronage of the
fire-eating Clodius, his fights with his consular colleague, Bibulus,
and so forth, had caused a good deal of adverse comment. He had
set out under a decided cloud; and people had smiled, too, to
think of him as the commander of the Roman armies in Gaul
this elegant, unscrupulous spendthrift, who knew nothing about
Gaul and hardly anything about military tactics except what he
had learnt in Spain, and was, moreover, a man of delicate health,
subject to occasional fits of some sort. Within a few months news
had come that he had recklessly attacked a huge horde of Swiss
barbarians the Helvetii who were peacefully migrating towards
the Rhine, and, after being very nearly defeated by them, had
concluded a by no means triumphant peace with them. People
shook their heads, and wondered what disasters were in store for
him.
Then came the change. The German King, Ariovistus, who
had crossed the Rhine and was moving into Gaul, was attacked
** Cicero : A d Q. Fratrem, ii, 3, 4.
ii8 MARC ANTONY
and completely defeated by Caesar, who killed eighty thousand of
his men and drove him back into his own country from which he
never dared again to venture. Next he dispersed a general gather-
ing of the Belgse, and then the Nervii were routed, with a loss
of fifty thousand men and nearly four hundred chieftains. For
centuries the so-called barbarians who lived in the almost unknown
lands north and north-west of Italy had been a menace to the
safety of the Republic; and stories of their gigantic stature and their
appalling bravery were still told in Rome by old soldiers who had
fought against them under Caesar's uncle, the great Marius, forty-
five years ago. But now the exploits of Marius were being excelled
by those of his nephew; and Rome was amazed to hear that he was
showing not only entirely unexpected skill as a military commander
but also the most wonderful energy and endurance. "There was
no peril," says Plutarch, "to which he did not willingly expose
himself, no labour from which he pleaded exemption. His con-
tempt of danger was not so much wondered at, but his enduring
so much hardship very much surprised his soldiers, for he was a
slightly-built man, with a skin which was soft and white."
Stories about him and his adventures began to circulate in
Rome. It was said that he made incredibly long and rapid journeys
on horseback or in his four-wheeled carriage, slept in the open, and
ate the roughest food. One story related how, during a storm, he
had given the only available shelter to an officer of his who was in
bad health, and had himself spent the night outside in the rain;
another anecdote told how, from motives of politeness, he had
eaten without complaint some asparagus which the man on whom
he had billeted himself had, in his excitement, dipped in scented
ointment 17 instead of olive-oil; and yet another tale affirmed that
he had covered a distance of some seven hundred miles in eight
days, sleeping by night in his carriage, and spending part of the
day in dictating correspondence, as they trundled along, to two
secretaries at once. It was said that he went bare-headed in sun-
shine or storm; galloped his horse along the roads, sometimes, with
his hands clasped behind his back; 1S dived into the rivers which
impeded his progress and swam across them ; had arrested with his
17 So Plutarch ^(C*sar)\ but Suetonius (Casar) says it was merely rancid oil.
** Nor were stirrups used by the Romans.
MARC ANTONY 119
own hands the flight of some of his men in battle, taking them by the
scruff of the neck and turning them round; and had again and
again performed prodigies of valour.
These tales aroused a variety of emotions in the leading men
of the time. Pompey was too much of a gentleman to reveal the
professional jealousy which he undoubtedly felt; but it was morti-
fying to him to find his own famous victories eclipsed by these ex-
ploits of a younger man, and to feel that, at the age of fifty, he
was not able to free himself from the ties of home to seek ad*
venture abroad. He knew in his heart that his former daredevilry,
his initiative, his self-assurance, had left him; he could not even
be sure of his own political views; and the only certainty in his
life was his inability to tear himself away from his adored young
wife, Julia, the daughter of this new idol of the people whose
stature was daily increasing as his own diminished.
Crassus was chiefly stirred by the reports of the enormous
wealth which Caesar was collecting from the conquered nations of
the north : he had looted the temples and treasuries of the barba-
rians, and had stripped the living and dead of their jewellery and
ornaments, until his coffers were full of gold, and he was selling it
in Italy by the pound at a price far below its value. The finan-
cier's mouth watered to hear of it; and he told himself that if
the delicate Caesar could accomplish these lucrative victories, so
could he. His commercial interests had brought him frequently
into contact with the merchants from Asia, and having thus heard
tales of the fabulous wealth of Partbia, Persia, and India, he
began to dream of leading a Roman army into those far-off lands
and of plundering the east as Caesar was plundering the north.
After all, in his youth he had won a splendid victory at the
Colline Gate, and had only been turned from a brilliant military
career by the obstruction of the late Sulla: perhaps it was not
too late to become the Caesar of the Orient.
By Cicero the news of Caesar's victories was received with
a surprise which soon gave place to a determination to make a
friend of him as already he had done in the case of Pompey; and
presently he wrote a letter to him asking him to find an appoint-
men on his staff for his brother, Quintus, his pleasure being ex-
treme when Caesar replied that he would be delighted to do so.
120 MARC ANTONY
Cato, too, was stirred by the tidings, and, in his own begrudging
way, gave the new conqueror some meed of praise by saying that
Csesar, at any rate, "was the only man amongst all those who were
engaged in ruining the State who was not addicted to drink," 19
Csesar always being notorious for his abstemiousness.
Antony's enthusiasm over the victories seems to have been in-
tense; and now that he had made a name for himself as a caval-
ry leader in the war in Palestine and Egypt his dearest wish was
to serve under Csesar in Gaul. It would appear that he wrote to
him to this effect, but for the time being he was obliged to remain
with Gabinius, who was by no means a brilliant general and was
much more interested in making a fortune for himself than in
fighting or governing.
The news of Csesar's successes was followed by the breath-
taking announcement that he had formally annexed the whole of
Gaul to the Roman empire. It is true that this step was ridicu-
lously premature, for there were several small nations in that vast
country which were unconquered, and others which had made
peace with him on terms not affecting their independence. But
Csesar was now confident that he could make the so-called annexa-
tion practical without much more fighting, and, even if further
campaigns were called for, he could always describe them as being
necessitated by subsequent revolts. He did not hesitate, there-
fore, to proclaim that Gaul was henceforth a Roman province;
and the consequent rejoicings and celebrations in Rome included
a Thanksgiving-festival of fifteen days duration the longest ever
decreed. The whole city went mad with excitement; and in that
storm of popular enthusiasm the new Caesar was born the national
leader, the master-statesman, the unwearying autocrat, in whom the
dandified and rather disreputable politician was lost to sight. When
he had left Italy in the spring of 58 B.C. he had declared that he
would rather be the leading man anywhere in Gaul than the
second man in Rome; but now, suddenly, he had forged ahead of
Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, and everybody else, and was unquestion-
ably the first citizen of the Republic.
As such, in the spring of 56 B.C., he summoned a meeting
"Suetonius: Casar, liii.
MARC ANTONY 121
at Luca (Lucca), the southernmost city of Cisalpine Gaul, 20 to
which not only Pompey and Crassus came, but also some two-hun-
dred senators, these latter tumbling over one another to be the
first to congratulate him, democrat though he was. In the secret
talks between the three Triumvirs it was agreed that Pompey and
Crassus should compose their private differences and should get
themselves elected as the two Consuls for the coming year, 55 B.C.,
and that at the end of their term of office, Crassus should succeed
Gabinius as governor of Syria, and should have his heart's de-
sire, namely, to lead an army against Parthia and on into India if
the fates were willing, while Pompey should be assigned the gov-
ernorship of Spain for five years, with the right to reside in Rome
and to administer his province through the agency of his lieuten-
ants. Csesar, meanwhile, was to retain his Gallic command also for
five years, so as to consolidate his labours in the new province, this
being really the piece of work which most interested him at the
moment he was enthusiastic about it and had no fears that either
Pompey or Crassus would ever be able to supplant him now as the
hero of Rome.
In due course these proposals were put into execution, though
not without opposition from what remained of the republican
party. When the consular elections were due to take place in the
summer of this year 56 B.C., Cato persuaded his little party of
irreconciliable conservatives to put forward his aristocratic brother-
in-law, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, 21 as a candidate in op-
position to one or other of the Triumvirs ; but the only result was
that riots broke out in which this personage was nearly killed, and
Cato, with a broken arm, was thrown bodily out of the election-
meeting a contretemps to which he was by now quite accustomed.
Pompey and Crassus were then duly elected, but when they entered
office at the beginning of 55 B.C. there could have been little Iiope
that their Consulship would be fruitful in reforms or in any sort of
administrative work, for Crassus was now obsessed with his Par-
thian schemes, and Pompey could think of nothing else but his
wife, Julia, and her happiness. He was violently in love with her
30 At a later date it was included in Etruria, the province south of Cisapline
Gaul.
21 Greatgrandfather of that Ahenobarbus whose son was the Emperor Nero.
122 MARC ANTONY
and she with him; and as her health was delicate at this time, ow-
ing to the fact that she was going to have a baby, he was devoting
himself to her more entirely than ever before. In one of these riots,
however, he was splashed with the blood of a man whose head was
broken close to him, and having sent his stained clothes back to
his house, he was horrified to hear shortly afterwards that Julia
had seen them, and, thinking he was murdered, had fainted dead
away. As a result of the accident she had a miscarriage and nearly
died.
In the spring of 55 B.C. Caesar went north across the Alps again,
to fight out this matter of the annexation of Gaul with those tribes
which declined to be annexed ; and having been thoroughly scared
by the invasion of two German tribes the Usipetes and the Tenc-
teri he attacked them when they were off their guard and be-
lieved themselves to be under the protection of an armistice. It was
afterwards reported in Rome that he had slaughtered no less than
four hundred thousand of their men, women, and children; and at
this news Cato, believing that the law of nations had been broken,
proposed in the Senate that Csesar should be arrested and handed
over in chains to the Germans a not altogether improper sugges-
tion which, however, was laughed out of court. Csesar, indifferent
to criticism, followed up this massacre by making a raid across the
Rhine into the territory of other Germans, whom he thoroughly de-
feated once more near Bonn on the Rhine that is to say, in their
own country. In the summer of 55 B.C. he made a raid on the coast
of Britain to find out what chance there was of conquering the
island; and though the expedition was something of a fiasco he
was able to report it to Rome as a triumph. These new successes
made Crassus so impatient to be off on his own plundering adven-
ture that he could not be prevailed upon to wait even until the
end of his term of office as Consul, but set out in November 55 B.C.,
at the head of the army which he had collected, in spite of the des-
perate opposition of the conservatives, who declared that Rome had
no quarrel with Parthia. This opposition was chiefly voiced by a
certain Tribune of aristocratic sympathies, named Ateius Capito,
who, when he could do no more, followed Crassus out of Rome,
solemnly cursing him and the expedition in general, and, at the gate
of the city, "took a chafing-dish with red-hot charcoal in it," as
MARC ANTONY 123
Plutarch relates, "and, burning incense and pouring libations upon
it, cursed him with dreadful imprecations, calling upon several
strange and horrible deities." It was a shocking send-off for the
great financier, and the subsequent disaster to the expedition was
by many blamed upon the hysterical Tribune.
In the meantime Cicero was engaging himself in courting the
friendship of Csesar, who, on his part, responded with warmth to
these overtures, realising that the great orator might become the
link between the party of the People and the aristocracy in that
coalition which was already his dream. It must be admitted that
Csesar was rather wicked in the brazen way in which he played upon
Cicero's vanity, flattering him in the most audacious manner, and
evidently smiling sardonically as he heard how the orator was
now wont to speak of "my dear old friend Csesar." "I have taken
Csesar to my bosom and will never let him slip," wrote Cicero 22
to his brother, Quintus, in a letter which he expected Csesar to see.
"He comes next to you and my children in my affection, and not
far behind." 23 To his friend Atticus he said: "I have full evi-
fidence of Csesar's love for me" ; 24 and to another he boastfully
wrote: "I have the benefit of Csesar's influence, overwhelming as
it is, and the enormous wealth he now possesses, as though they
were my own." 25
When Cicero recommended any friend to Caesar's notice the
latter would take pains to do him honour. "As for Mescinius
Rufus, about whom you have written to me," said Csesar in a
letter which Cicero proudly quotes, 26 "I will make him king of
Gaul, if you like." And when the orator found himself deep
in debt owing to the money he was spending like water upon the
beautifying of his rebuilt mansion on the Palatine, and the erec-
tion of grand houses for himself at Pompeii and elsewhere, Caesar
at once lent him a large sum. 27
The result of all this was that Cicero began to show less
anxiety to maintain his friendship with Pompey a breach which
was just what Gesar was aiming at, for he wished all eyes to be
"Cicero: Ad Q. Fratrem, ii, 11, 1. "Cicero: Ibid., iii, 1, 18.
* Cicero: Ad Atticum, iv, 15, 10. * Cicero: Ad Familiar es, i, 9, 21.
M Ibid. t vii, 5, 2.
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, v, 4, 3; v, 5, 2; v, 6, 2.
124 MARC ANTONY
turned upon himself, and did not want any sort of rapproche-
ment between Pompey and the aristocratic party: if ever the
democrats and conservatives were to come together it must be
under his leadership, not Pompey's. But though Csesar was thus
scheming to keep Pompey's position subordinate to his own, Pom-
pey was never inclined to assert himself at the expense of Csesar,
for he could not for one moment forget that his adored Julia
was Csesar's daughter, and her delight in her father's pre-eminence
was something which the fond lover was not willing to jeopardise.
He was not as great a man as his father-in-law, and he knew it,
but he was very much more honourable.
In August, 54 B.C., Caesar made a second invasion of Britain,
and penetrated as far inland as Verulam (St. Albans), north of
London; but on his return to Gaul in the middle of September,
he received letters from Rome which struck him a double blow.
In the first place he heard that his mother, Aurelia, had died; and
hard on the heels of these sad tidings came the terrible news of
the death of his daughter Julia, who had presented Pompey with
a baby girl and had died as a consequence, the child following her
to the grave shortly afterwards. Caesar's grief was only exceeded
by that of Pompey, who, of course was distracted; but to the
Romans in general the disaster was tragic chiefly because it
severed a family tie between Pompey and Csesar, and seemed to
presage a mutual movement away from one another which might
have the most perilous consequences for the State. Csesar, him-
self, however, had little time for tears. Revolts broke out in Gaul
which required his full attention, and soon he Was once more in
the thick of battle.
Crassus, meanwhile, had replaced Gabinius in Syria, and was
making his preparations for the invasion of Parthia from that
base early in the new year. Gabinius himself was making a lei-
surely progress towards Rome, being unwilling to hurry himself
since he had heard that the conservatives, headed by Cato, were
likely to give him a warm reception and to try to bring him to
trial for his Egyptian adventure. It was reported to him, more-
over, that in consequence of a serious flood in Rome, and the
vulgar belief that it was heaven's punishment for the disregarding
of the Sibylline oracle, the mob was liable to demand his death
MARC ANTONY . 125
or to lynch him itself. He was a brave man, however, and he
duly presented himself in the capital in September, though, it is
true, he entered it by night, and shut himself up in his house
thereafter for some days. Csesar, meanwhile, had sent an urgent
request to his friends in Rome to defend the unfortunate man, and
to this end Pompey also lent his aid; and when the trial took place
he was acquitted, in spite of the fact that the speech for the prose-
cution was delivered by Cicero who had not then realized that
Csesar was on the other side, and who was urged to heights of ora-
tory by a yelling rabble outside the courthouse, eager for the
sacrifice of Gabinius to the wrath of the gods.
Having failed to convict him on this charge the conserva-
tives, aided for once by the superstitious mob, pressed another
charge that of bribery, corruption, and extortion against him;
but on hearing of this, Csesar seems to have written to Cicero
asking him to use his wonderful eloquence this time in the de-
fence of Gabinius, and Pompey at the same time urged him to do
so. Cicero was not the man to resist such pressure. True, Gabinius
was an old political and personal enemy whose defence would be
all the more difficult because Cicero had just been denouncing him
on the other count; but he had no wish to offend Pompey and he
was eager to do Csesar this favour. He therefore undertook the
defence; but his heart was not in his work, and Gabinius was
found guilty and sentenced to exile a not altogether unpleasant
rustication from which he was recalled after a while by Caesar.
In regard to Antony, the only fact which is known as to his
movements at this time is that, having been summoned by Csesar,
he made the journey from Syria to Gaul without passing through
Rome. 28 Gabinius had made a slow business of handing over his
province to Crassus, and it is known that he left some of his of-
ficers there to clear up the affairs of the country before resign-
ing their posts to the newcomers. It is to be supposed, therefore,
that Antony did not leave for home until the late summer of 54
B.C., and that a timely letter from Csesar, permitting him to join
his staff, diverted his journey towards Rome and sent him north-
wards to the Alps with light heart and high hopes to serve under
his hero.
^Cicero: Philippic ii, xix.
CHAPTER VII
Antony's Service with Caesar in Gaul, and his Tritmneship in Rome which
was Interrupted by .the Outbreak of Civil War.
54-49 B.C.
AT the time when Antony took up his new work in Gaul,
Csesar's popularity, as has been said, was very great greater than
Pompey's. Cato might angrily call him a blackguard and a
butcher; but these were not the sentiments of the general public,
whose feelings for him were like those of their fathers for his
uncle Marius. Pompey in Asia Minor might have overthrown
kings and princes by the score, but he had never been confronted
with such perils as Caesar had faced, nor had he brought such
wonderful new lands and unknown peoples under Roman sway.
Cicero, basking in the apparently warm friendship of the
popular idol, voiced the opinion of the country when he said
in the Senate : "He has striven on glorious battlefields with fierce
tribes and mighty hosts, while others he has terrified, checked,
tamed, and taught to obey the command of the Roman People;
over lands and countries with which no book, no traveller, no
report had acquainted us, Caesar has led the way for our soldiers ;
and now at last he has brought us this consummation, that our
empire extends to the uttermost limits of the earth, so that beyond
those Alpine peaks which Providence has thrown up to be a ram-
part for Italy, as far as the extremest verge of the outer Ocean,
there is nothing left for us to fear." * This oration was one of
Cicero's most magnificent, and as the rolling sentences fell from
his lips his eyes and those of the senators were wet with tears of
patriotic pride.
1 Cicero: De Provinciis Consularibus, xili, 33. In a letter, to Atticus (iv, 5) Cicero
speaks with some shame of a recantation he had recently made, and some critics sup-
pose he is referring to this speech; but this is unlikely in view of his genuine
pride in Caesar's friendship.
126
MARC ANTONY 127
Antony's admiration for his new chief, and his eager desire
to please him, are not to be wondered at; for Caesar's quick intel-
lect, his tireless energy, his clever administration of the new
lands, his brilliant generalship, and his unexpected supremacy in
so many fields, had, from a bad beginning, raised him now im-
measurably above his fellow men, while, at the same time, his
weaknesses, especially in regard to women, made him not un-
pleasantly human in the view of his young admirer. Caesar was at
this time forty-eight years of age, and was, to his great annoyance,
fast becoming bald; but he was still a very handsome man, whose
whimsical smile and dark, penetrating eyes few women could re-
sist. Antony, aged twenty-nine, was also having his successes in
this respect; for his handsome face, much improved by the re-
moval of his beard, his tremendous physical strength, and the bold
and rather swashbucklering manner he was now cultivating, made
him very attractive to the other sex. When Csesar marched into
a city his soldiers used to sing a ribald ditty, 2 the first line
of which was Urbani, servate uxores: calvum mcechum adducimus,
"Citizens, look after your wives : we are bringing in our bald-
headed old adulterer !" And though history does not tell us what
they sang of their chiefs lusty lieutenant, the fact is on record,
as has already been said, that they made many a jest about his
various affairs of the heart. A pretty couple ! and yet these two,
the ruthless master and the loyal servant, were soon to shake the
world to its foundations.
It must be remembered, of course, that Roman society was at
this period hopelessly immoral, and that the treatment of women
was callous in the extreme. An absurd incident occurred in about
this year which well illustrates the indifference felt for the ties
of matrimony even in old-fashioned aristocratic circles; and,
strange to say, the chief actor in the comedy was none other
than the austere Cato. The second wife of that odd personage
was a young lady named Marcia, daughter of Marcus Philippus, 8
who had been Consul in 56 B.C. ; but by his first wife, Atilia, Cato
had a grown-up daughter, Porcia, who was married to the ex-
* Suetonius : Casar, li.
* Philippus afterwards married Atia, the widowed mother of Octavian, and thus
became the stepfather of the future Emperor, as will presently be recorded.
128 MARC ANTONY
Consul, Bibulus, Csesar's former antagonist, whom she had al-
ready presented with two children. A great friend of Cato's family
was Hortensius, the wealthy conservative orator who has already
entered these pages as the defender of Verres against Cicero: he
was now a man of nearly sixty, and happening at the moment to
be a widower in search of a new wife, he had cast a covetous
eye upon this Porcia, Cato's daughter, in spite of the fact that
she was already married to Bibulus. He therefore asked Cato for
her hand, giving as his reasons the fact that she was obviously
likely to bring a lot of children into the world, that Bibulus, who
was not a wealthy man, could ill afford them, that he, Hortensius,
on the contrary, was rich and wanted children, and that, any-
way, he would very much like to use Porcia "as a fair plot of
land to bear fruit for him," and thus to unite his race with that
of Cato. He added that if Bibulus would not part with Porcia
for good and all, he might at least consent to lend her to him
for a few years on the understanding that Hortensius would hand
her back after she had produced two or three little Hortensii,
Cato answered gravely that, much as he loved Hortensius, he
really could not ask Bibulus to hand Porcia over; and thereupon
Hortensius made the alternative proposal that Cato should give
him his own wife, Marcia, instead. It was true, he admitted,
that the fact that Marcia was then with child by Cato made the
change of husbands a little awkward; but he said that when
tlie baby was born he would adopt it, since Cato did not really
need any more children, and that he would then try to have some
children of his own by Marcia, after which he would be quite
willing to return her to Cato. Cato replied that Marcia's father,
Philippus, ought to be consulted; and they therefore sent for him,
and at once received his consent. Marcia was then divorced and
married to Hortensius, Cato being the "best man" at the wed-
ding; and I may add that when the elderly bridegroom died, six
years later, Cato remarried Marcia, while, on the death of Bibulus,
Porcia married her cousin Brutus, the son of Servilia and Csesar. 4
The customary matrimonial bargaining of which this is an
*The story is given in Putarch's Catv, on the authority of Thrasea, an emulator
of Cato who was put to death by Nero, Thrasea having received the details from
Munatius, Cato's great friend.
MARC ANTONY 129
instance, presently led Csesar to make a proposal to Pompey that
a new alliance of this kind should be effected between them to
replace that broken by the death of his daughter Julia, Pompey's
wife. Caesar's elder sister, another Julia, had been married to a
certain Atius Balbus, by whom she had a daughter, Atia, who
had been married first to Caius Octavius, a widower, who had
died in 58 B.C., leaving a daughter, Octavia, by his first wife,
and a son, Octavian, by Atia; 5 and, secondly, to Marcus Philip-
pus, the above-mentioned father of Cato's wife, Marcia. Octavi-
anus, now generally called Octavian, played an important part in
the later drama of Antony's life, and was afterwards the Emperor
Augustus, while Octavia, his half-sister, was ultimately married
to Antony; but at the time with which we are now dealing, she
had recently been married to Caius Marcellus, a rising politician.
Caesar now suggested that this Octavia, his niece's stepdaughter,
should be divorced from Marcellus and married to Pompey in
place of the late. Julia; and that Pompey's daughter by an earlier
marriage, who was betrothed to Faustus Sulla, son of the great
Sulla, should be released from this proposed union and should be
married to Caesar, who, for this purpose, would divorce his own
wife, Calpurnia. Pompey, however, did not take kindly to the
suggestion, and deeply offended Caesar by refusing to consider it,
and by marrying his daughter to Sulla forthwith. To Caesar it was
as though Pompey had refused an offer of alliance, and had ex-
pressed his preference for a definite independence and rivalry.
Antony's first year with Caesar was passed in a series of hard
campaigns forced upon the Romans by the various revolts in Gaul ;
and although we have no details of his movements at this time,
it is to be supposed that he was kept exceedingly busy by his
greatly harassed chief. Then, in the summer of 53 B.C., the most
appalling news from the East reached Rome and struck dismay
into the whole Empire's heart. The financier Crassus had crossed
the Euphrates and had advanced towards Parthia in the spring;
but near Carrhae (Haran), in northern Mesopotamia, half way
between Syria and Armenia, he had been overwhelmed by the
enemy, his army had been almost annihilated, his son, Publius
Crassus, had been killed, and in the frenzied negotiations with
"Plutarch: Antony.
13 o MARC ANTONY
the victors which had followed, he himself had been treacherously
murdered, and his severed head sent in triumph to the court of
the King of Parthia.
The result of this disaster was that the public began to be
troubled also about the fate of the Roman armies under Caesar.
If the barbarians of the Orient could so utterly outwit a cautious
man like Crassus and destroy the magnificent troops under his
quite capable command, the Gauls and Germans might do the
same with Caesar and his forces. At any rate, they said, Caesar
seemed to be barely holding his own. They were no longer de-
lirious about his annexation of Gaul : they doubted now whether
he had ever properly subdued it, and they began to wonder if
he really were the superman they had supposed him to be. After
all, Pompey's victories had produced pretty permanent results,
and there had been no need to go on fighting and refighting over
the territories he had conquered. It seemed that Pompey was the
better man, and now that Crassus was dead the public began to
turn to him as the most trustworthy leader of the nation. Pompey
responded by showing a renewed interest in events and a fresh
access of energy; and so as to dismiss from his mind the depres-
sion which had followed the death of Julia, he decided to marry
again, the lady of his choice being Cornelia, daughter of Metellus
Scipio and widow of the younger Crassus, recently killed in the
Parthian disaster, who must have been enormously wealthy. Plu-
tarch describes her as a very well-educated young woman, who
played the guitar, was rather good at geometry, and regularly
attended lectures on philosophy, but "had not become in the least
unamiable or pretentious as sometimes young women do when
they take up such studies." She was pretty, too; but people said
that she was far too young for Pompey, who, they thought, looked
somewhat undignified, crowned with garlands, at the wedding,
and joking with his youthful bride.
The elections for the Consulships and other important offices
for the coming year 52 B.C. were now at hand, and amongst the
candidates for the Prsetorship was Clodius, "The Beauty," who
had been dropped by Caesar, but was still the most outstanding
mob-leader in Rome. From his headquarters in Gaul Caesar was
watching the movements of political events in the capital with
MARC ANTONY 131
anxious eyes, and some of the vast wealth which he had acquired
was being spent by his agents in secretly maintaining his inter-
ests there against those of Pompey, who, though outwardly his
friend and colleague, seemed now to be his rival. During the past
year Csesar had come to place very great confidence in Antony,
and at this juncture he decided to send him home to Rome to
stand for the Qusestorship, so that he might begin a political
career which, as it advanced, would become more and more valu-
able to his patron.
Antony therefore returned to the metropolis, and very soon
was in the thick of the disorders and riots incidental to the elec-
tions, nor was it long before he discovered that Csesar's most
dangerous enemy was his former friend Clodius, who was thirst-
ing for revenge on the leader who had repudiated him. Any enemy
of Csesar was Antony's enemy, too, and one day in the Forum,
in the heat of some forgotten riot, the ardent young man drew
his sword and rushed at Clodius, intending to kill him. Clodius,
however, managed to escape, and that is all we know of the
incident, except that Cicero, always the deadly enemy of Clodius,
appears to have commended Antony for his action, calling him "a
most noble and gallant young man," and Antony seems to have
told Cicero that since he, Cicero, was now so friendly to Csesar,
Antony would have been glad of the opportunity to serve him at
the same time that he served Csesar, by killing their common
enemy. 6 Thereafter Cicero was wont to tell people how much he
liked this handsome young admirer of his dear friend Csesar; 7 but
Antony's feelings towards the orator do not seem to have carried
him beyond the instructions he had received from Csesar namely,
to avoid offending the pompous old wind-bag. 8
Antony was duly elected Qusestor, and therewith returned to
Gaul; and shortly afterwards, in January 52 B.C., Clodius met
at the hands of Milo the end he had so recently escaped at those
of Antony. Milo, it will be recalled, was a man of aristocratic
sympathies who had organized a gang of roughs to oppose those
The incident is referred to by Cicero, Philippic ii, xx, and Pro Milone, xv, 40,
and in a quotation from Cicero by Dion Cassius, xlv, 40; but there are no details.
7 Dion Cassius, xlvi, 3.
8 As Prof. Beesly calls him.
132 MARC ANTONY
under the orders of Clodius ; and for a long time now these two
firebrands had each been looking for an opportunity to kill the
other, their endless fights often making the streets of Rome un-
safe for law-abiding citizens. Clodius was far and away the more
popular of the two, and had the sympathy of the rabble; but
history has taken such an unfavourable view of his character that
it is hard to find anything good to say of him. I have already
pointed out, however, that he was at any rate a brave and ad-
venturous leader, and was certainly not the startling specimen of
the intermediate sex which his once girlish face might lead us to
suppose him to have been. Caesar had thought very highly of him
at first, and had trusted him as he was now trusting Antony, only
dropping him when his riotous behaviour had passed all bounds;
and it must be admitted that the retaining of so shrewd a mas-
ter's favour, even for a few years, says more for his character
than history can deny.
His death occurred in this wise. Milo was riding with his wife
and a large escort along the Appian Way, bound for his house in
Lanuvium (Lavigna), a day's march south of Rome, when, near
Bovillae, about half-way, he encountered Clodius and a smaller
company riding towards the capital. As they passed each other
they exchanged no more than the customary scowls and oaths,
but one of Milo's retainers managed to slip in, unseen, amongst
the hostile party, and stabbed Clodius in the back with his dag-
ger. The dying man was carried into a wayside inn, and for some
moments Milo hesitated as to what should be done; but presently,
realizing that in any event he would be accused of the murder,
he led his followers into the house for the purpose of finishing
his opponent off. The reckless "Beauty," however, had already
breathed his passionate last, so it seems, and Milo's own hands
were not, therefore, stained with his blood.
The corpse was carried to Rome, and its arrival produced such
a wild outburst of anger on the part of the mob against the
conservative party which Milo represented that on all sides the
members of the latter were murdered : any well-dressed person, in
^'Asconhis (In Milonianam) says that Clodius was dragged out of the inn still
alive, and dispatched outside, but Cicero (Pro Milone) gives the other version. See
also Appian, Civil Wars, ii, 21.
MARC ANTONY 133
fact, who chanced to be encountered was attacked and killed for
an aristocrat. The body of Clodius was then placed on the rostra
in the Forum, after which it was carried to the Senate-house,
where the frenzied mob heaped up a great pyre of chairs and
benches, and, setting fire thereto, consumed not only the corpse
but the entire building and the houses around as well. Milo him-
self, after making a brief appearance in public, went into hiding,
and for several days the rioting continued, the people demanding
that Pompey, or else Caesar, should be made Dictator and that
Milo and his conservative supporters should be punished.
When some sort of order had been restored he was formally
brought to trial, and Cicero was asked by the aristocratic party to
undertake his defence, which he consented to do in view of the
fact that both Csesar and Pompey whom not for anything would
he offend had long ago become tired of the lawless behaviour of
Clodius, and could hardly disapprove of Milo's action. The ora-
tor, however, was not at his best, for, in spite of the presence of
large bodies of soldiers, he was naturally nervous of the mob;
and, in fact he seems to have found it difficult to rake up any-
thing very culpable about Clodius except his pugnacity and quar-
relsomeness. 10 Thus, although Cicero worked himself up to an
emotional climax, and ended by saying that he was choked with
sobs and could speak no more, Milo was found guilty and exiled
to Massilia (Marseilles). Cicero afterwards wrote up his speech
into a splendid oration, and sent a copy to the exile; but it so
differed from the feeble defence actually delivered at the trial
that Milo was constrained to remark: "It is just as well that
Cicero did not succeed in delivering this harangue, or I should
never have known the taste of these excellent mullets of Massilia !"
Meanwhile, Antony was sharing the fresh troubles which were
crowding upon Csesar owing to the revolt led by Vercingetorix, a
Gallic prince whose father had been at one time the paramount
chief of the whole country. It must have been at just about the
time when Clodius was killed that the rebellion broke out; and
Csesar, who was in northern Italy was obliged to cross the Alps
with his army in mid-winter in order to relieve the garrisons cut
off by the rising. But having done this he took the city of Avaricum
"Cicero: Pro Milone, rxvii.
134 MARC ANTONY
(Bourges) by storm, leaving less than eight hundred persons alive
out of a population of forty thousand. At Gergovia however, he
was repulsed, and after a period of the greatest anxiety, when
his annihilation seemed imminent, he at last got the upper hand
and bottled Vercingetorix up in the hill-fortress of Alesia, not
far from Dijon.
But soon a Gallic army of nearly a quarter of a million men
came to their leader's relief, and Cgesar was obliged to face about
to meet them. A terrific battle ensued in which we catch a glimpse
of Antony fighting with desperate courage, and keeping up the
spirits of his men in a situation of the extremest peril; but at
last the day ended in a complete Roman victory and an awful
slaughter of the enemy, and thereafter the heroic Vercingetorix
surrendered. He came riding out of Alesia fully armed, and hav-
ing dismounted in front of Caesar, laid his weapons down, removed
his armour, and silently seated himself at the conqueror's feet,
after which he was sent as a prisoner to Rome.
During the remainder of the year 52 and part of 51 B.C. fur-
ther revolts had to be suppressed, and Caesar, having been un-
nerved by the dangers through which he had passed, now behaved
with pitilessness in ending the rebellion. He caused the captured
chief of one tribe to be flogged to death in the presence of the
legions; at the surrender of another city he cut off the right hands
of all the prisoners ; and elsewhere he acted with a severity which
at last cowed the whole country into sullen submission, and so, to
some extent, justified itself that is, of course, if we care to em-
ploy the ethically questionable argument that mercilessness to
the few, being sometimes productive of a terrorized quiescence
which saves the lives of the many, is more humane in the end.
than a leniency of which foolish advantage may be taken.
The almost ceaseless fighting and slaughter in Gaul since
Caesar had first descended upon that country in 58 B.C. leaves
upon the mind a picture so savage that we are inclined to forget
that these campaigns had also their more civilized aspect. Csesar
was a man of great culture, and whenever his military duties
permitted him to settle down for a while at one of his head-
quarters, the vast wealth which was now flowing into his private
coffers enabled him to live in magnificent state. The men whom
MARC ANTONY 135
he gathered about him were, many of them, not merely soldiers
but well-known representatives of the progressive and intellectual
section of high Roman society persons that is to say, of refine-
ment and education, if not of strict morals, and the company as-
sembled around his .table was often brilliant. Csesar himself was
as fastidious a scholar and man of letters as he was a finicking
man of fashion. He spoke a very perfect Latin, and had a most
polished style of writing which, by the way, he was now employ-
ing in preparing his famous De Bello Gallico, a work written to
vindicate himself before his critics in Rome, who had begun to
think that only by luck had he escaped the fate of Crassus. He
enjoyed the society of authors and men of learning, so long as
they were also men of the world, and he was usually ready to
find a post near him for anybody recommended to him as a per-
son of distinction in this respect.
Among his officers there were Plancus, an eloquent and witty
young man, who had made a name for himself at the Roman Bar;
Trebonius, who later collected and published the witticisms of
Cicero; Matius, who translated the Iliad into Latin verse; Hir-
tius, the historian, of whom we shall hear later, as Consul and
military leader opposed to Antony; Quintus, Cicero's brother,
who was something of a poet and playwright; Balbus, a great
patron of literature and philosophy; and so on. Antony himself,
too, if not intellectual, was a fine speaker, and a man of taste,
who had received a particularly good education, 11 and had, from
his youth up, moved in the best society in Rome, wherein at this
period it was the fashion to be a connoisseur of works of art and
a judge of Greek and Latin literature ; and the fact that in later
life he was the leader of a group of men who believed them-
selves to represent the last word in the material refinements of
civilization, indicates that already he was not out of place in the
sparkling entourage of this many-sided ruler of Gaul.
Csesar was very particular in the choice of the men who sur-
rounded him, and since he was primarily a statesman, an ad-
ministrator, and an intellectual, and only as it were by chance a
soldier, he demanded a high standard of brains and accomplish*
ments in the members of his suite. His generals might sometimes
11 Dion Cassius, xl*oi> 4.
13 6 MARC ANTONY
be chosen for their sterling military abilities alone, but his inti-
mate companions, even here in Gaul, were selected in considera-
tion of much wider qualities, of which some of the essentials were
an up-to-date education and culture, a sort of social elegance, a
knowledge of the world, a progressive and democratic vision
linked to, but unfettered by, an aristocratic ideal, and, especially,
a certain audaciousness and high courage. It is sometimes said
that he merely gathered a crew of fashionable reprobates around
him; but this was the opinion only of the old conservatives who
could not distinguish between unconventional views and criminal-
ity, nor between courage and effrontery.
Curio, for instance, was a man of fashion who was regarded
as a shocking libertine; but we have seen him with drawn sword
gallantly defending Caesar in the Senate-house, and his stout
little heart won him a place in the great man's affections. Dolabella,
who shortly after this time married Cicero's already twice mar-
ried daughter Tullia, and was now beginning to enjoy Caesar's
particular regard, was an elegant young man whose profligacy
greatly troubled his father-in-law; but, as will be seen later, his
reckless bravery cannot be denied. Cselius, another fashionable
young intellectual, who was closely attached to Csesar though
this was a little later was not only a wit, a brilliant speaker, an
inimitable dancer, 12 and one of the best-dressed men in the country:
he was also almost idiotically brave, and was never so happy as
when he was in peril of his life.
It was this courageousness in Antony, likewise, which together
with his abilities, endeared him to Csesar. He came to Gaul with
a great reputation for bravery in the field, and in many a battle in
that country he had shown his heroism. Yet in this regard, as in what
may be called his drawing-room accomplishments, he was at this
time but one of the brilliant group of well-dressed, well-groomed,
pleasure-loving, licentious, adventurous men of culture and fashion,
who heroically followed their heroic leader over the mountains and
through the plains and forests of rebellious Gaul, enduring hard-
ship like the toughest veterans. He differed from the others chiefly
in respect of his Herculean strength, his mighty muscles, and a
kind of studied roughness with which he concealed the sensitive-
"Macrobius: Saturnaliorum, ii, 10.
Photograph by Anderson
POMPEY (?)
Capitol Museum, Rome
MARC ANTONY 137
ness of his nature. He was the bull-dog amongst the poodles; but
even the poodles in this unique company of adventurers knew how
to fight and how to die gallantly. Antony's trouble was that he
drank too much, and was inclined to become noisy; but the in-
fluence of Caesar, who, like many men of genius, found all the
stimulants he required in his own active thoughts and keen feel-
ings, no doubt kept him in order.
In his province of Gaul, Csesar was, of course, like a king. His
power was absolute. But in Rome> as has been said already, there
were doubts now about his super-eminence, and greater reliance
was placed upon Pompey. The disorders in the city which had fol-
lowed the death of Clodius had been so serious that the law-abiding
citizens, both republicans and democrats, demanded some kind
of dictatorship ; and presently Pompey was invited to act in that
capacity. Sulla, however, had made the very word "Dictator"
objectionable, and Cato therefore proposed that Pompey should
be given dictatorial powers under the name of Sole Consul; and to
this everybody agreed. His appointment, naturally, was very dis-
tasteful to Csesar, who, after his long autocracy in his province,
was not prepared to play second-fiddle to any man; and it was a
bitter thought to him that he himself was not regarded in Rome as
the nation's one hope.
Now that he had at last completed the conquest of Gaul he
had expected to come back to the capital in such a blaze of popular-
ity that he would be able to effect the union of the republicans and
democrats under his leadership. That was the chief reason why he
had shown such friendship to Cicero of late, he being one of the
leading representatives of the aristocratic party. But in this he
had overlooked the fact that the conservatives always thought of
him as a "dangerous" man, a demagogue, who had once been mixed
up in the Catiline affair, and had been the former patron of the
fire-eating Clodius. It was to Pompey that cautious people turned.
And now Pompey had forestalled him, and was himself play-
ing up to the aristocrats so successfully that a real coalition under
his leadership was almost an accomplished fact. For the first time
in several years Cato, the recognized leader of the republicans,
was showing marked friendliness to Pompey, and was constantly
warning him to beware of Csesar,
138 MARC ANTONY
Cicero, of course, presented something of a difficulty to Pompey,
for he had apparently fallen under the spell of Caesar, and, in
the event of an open rupture between the two great men, was more
likely to back the Gallic autocrat than the Roman. Thus, Pompey,
it seems to me, felt that it would be best to get him out of the way
by offering him a provincial governorship, and bringing pressure to
bear on him to accept it. It was with this purpose in view, I think,
that he ingeniously caused a law to be passed that ex-Consuls and
other high officials eligible for provincial governorships, who had
passed more than five years without taking up such offices, should
be obliged to do so when a vacancy had to be filled. Now Bibulus,
the son-in-law of Cato, was also due for a province, but there was
only the choice of Syria and Cilicia at the moment, the latter being
the country which formed the south-east corner of Asia Minor,
adjoining Syria; and, as luck would have it, when lots were drawn,
Syria fell to Bibulus, and Cicero had to be told to take the other
much less interesting province, to which the island of Cyprus was
appended, He did not at all relish the thought of leaving Rome and
making his residence at Tarsus, the Cilician capital, but the great
inducement offered him was that he stood a very good chance of
making a fortune out of the usual perquisites of a governor, and
just now he was sorely in need of money. He was not sorry, more-
over, to have the opportunity of separating himself for a while from
his wife, Terentia, a hard, imperious, and, what was worse, pious
woman to whom he had been married for some twenty-six years and
who failed to make his home attractive to him now that his beloved
daughter Tullia was grown up and gone. His son Marcus, though
only about fourteen years of age, he took with him, however, and
also his brother Quintus, who had recently been serving with
Csesar in Gaul.
During the summer of the year 51 B.C. Pompey felt himself to
be strong enough to clip Csesar's wings, and through his agency pro-
posals were made in the Senate that the conqueror of Gaul should
be recalled when his five years' term of office expired in March of
the coming year, 50 B.C. Caesar, on his part, hoped to prolong his
command until 49 B.C., and then to get himself elected Consul for
the second time for the year 48 B.C., that is to say after the ten
years required by law had elapsed since his first Consulship; but
MARC ANTONY 139
Pompey, now definitely bent on retaining his own supremacy by
forcing his rival into private life, secretly took all the necessary
steps to deprive Csesar of his Gallic province in the spring, although
publicly professing friendliness to him.
When he was asked in the Senate, however, what he would do
if Caesar insisted on remaining at the head of his army beyond that
date, he revealed his thoughts by replying: "What should I do if
my son boxed my ears?" 13 by which he implied that such an act
on the part of Caesar, whom he regarded as a younger and less im-
portant man than himself, would seem to him to be like an im-
pudent declaration of war. And when Cato stated that if Csesar
desired the Consulship he should be made to disband his army and
come to Rome as a private citizen to canvass votes in the usual way,
Pompey shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply, thus indicating
that he accepted Cato's opinion as being constitutionally correct^
At this dangerous juncture the plucky little Curio made up his
mind to take a hand in Caesar's interest, and, for that purpose,
managed to get himself elected as one of the Tribunes of the People
for the year 50 B.C. It is usually said that he was bribed by Caesar to
espouse his cause, 14 and it is true that Caesar, out of his great wealth,
had recently discharged all Curio's debts; but this was not neces-
sarily more than a friendly act towards the man who had once
saved his life, and the accusation of direct bribery cannot be
proved. 15 Curio, it will be remembered, had once been romantically
attached to Antony; but all that sort of abnormality was as much
a thing of the past as it was in the case of Caesar himself.
Curio had recently married Fulvia, the widow of the murdered
Clodius, a turbulent, masculine, ambitious woman, as hard as nails,
the daughter of a certain Fulvius Bambalio of Tusculum (Fras-
cati), a hill-town near Rome which was also the native home of
Cato. By Clodius she had a young daughter, Clodia, who was after-
wards the first wife of Octavianus, Caesar's grand-nephew; and it
seems likely that she was already anxious for her new husband to be
on good terms with the great man whose friendship her late la-
mented Clodius had unfortunately lost, and it may have been on her
"Cicero: A<T Familiar es, viii, 8.
"Appian: Civil Wars, ii, 26; Plutarch: Pompey; etc.
"Velleius, ii, 48.
140 MARC ANTONY
advice that Curio now took the daring step on Cesar's behalf which
jeopardised his relations with Pompey.
By skilful handling of the problem of Csesar's future, he man-
aged to get the whole discussion postponed beyond the date in the
spring of 50 B.C. when the conqueror of Gaul was supposed to
lay down his command; and having succeeded thus in obtaining
breathing- space, he made the alternative proposal either that Caesar
should be left for the time being at the head of his army or else that
both Csesar and Pompey should resign their offices and should to-
gether become private citizens once more, on an equal footing. The
public had become very apprehensive of the rivalry between the
two men, and, dreading the possibility of a quarrel which would
lead to civil war, they welcomed Curio's suggestion with enthusi-
asm, congratulating him on his pluck in daring to make such a
proposal. After his speech in which he had done so, they escorted him
to his house in the greatest excitement, throwing flowers before
him, and hailing him as a hero, which, indeed, he was, for the
thought of resigning office was likely to infuriate Pompey just now
when he felt that Csesar had lost public favour and had left the
road to his own lifelong supremacy easy to tread. Thereafter, with
increasing audacity, he attacked Pompey in speech after speech, de-
claring that he, Pompey, had no right to call Caesar's behaviour in
not disbanding his army unconstitutional, when Pompey himself had
broken every law by allowing himself to be made Sole Consul at
the same time that he was governor of Spain, an office which he still
improperly filled without residing in that province.
Pompey, indeed, had light-heartedly overridden the laws in
many respects. There was a law, for example, that no public speech
should be made in favour of a man awaiting his trial ; and yet a
certain official, who was in this situation, had been praised by him
in that manner, and this was so flagrant an illegality that Cato, the
invariable stickler, had ostentatiously put his fingers in his ears and
had refused to listen, in spite of his desire at this time to be friendly
with the speaker. On other occasions, too, Pompey had attempted
to interfere with the course of justice where friends of his were
concerned; for his consciousness of his power had made him impa-
tient of restraint, and, anyhow, it was a characteristic of his nature
to act on the impulse of the moment without following a precon-
MARC ANTONY 141
sidered line of action. Not even Caesar, he thought, could prevent
him doing whatever he chose, and on one occasion he declared that
he only had to stamp his foot and in an instant there would be an
invincible army at his command.
But when Curio thus requested him to lay aside all this power
which he had misused, he was staggered, and did not know what to
answer. He concentrated his attention, however, on the elections at
the end of the summer for the magistracies of the following year,
49 B.C. ; and, hearing that Csesar was supporting the candidature of
one of his generals, Galba, for the Consulate, he put two candidates
into the field to oppose this man, while for the other posts he had
his nominees ready to contest the seats with Caesar's men.
Curio's Tribuneship would end a few days before the close of
50 B.C., and Csesar therefore decided to invite Antony to stand for
that office so that he might carry on Curio's good work. For this
purpose he sent him back to Rome, and soon he was once more
in the thick of the political battle. The townspeople, who had not
seen him for three years, and then only for a short time, were de-
lighted with him. His eloquence, his splendid physique, his manli-
ness, his reputation for bravery, and withal, his complete absence of
conceit and his indifference to social barriers and distinctions, en-
deared him to the crowd; and he was without difficulty elected
as one of the Tribunes of the People for 49 B.C., though Galba and
Csesar's other candidates for office were defeated, Pompey's men
being triumphant all along the line. He then successfully stood for
the additional office of Augur, that is to say the directorship of the
board of priests who studied the official auspices ; after which it is
to be supposed that he went back to Csesar in Cisalpine Gaul to take
his instructions from him, returning to Rome in December to be
ready to assume office.,
The close of the year 50 B.C. was a period of extreme excite-
ment in Rome, for Pompey's success at these elections in defeating
nearly all Caesar's nominees caused him to lose his head, and to
feel that his rival in the north had no chance against him. Early in
December, Caius Marcellus, 18 who was one of the Consuls for that
year, made a violent speech in the Senate in which he denounced
Caesar as having designs on the peace of the State, and proposed that
"Husband of Caesar's niece's stepdaughter, Octavia.
1 4 2 MARC ANTONY
Pompey should be given supreme military command at home to de-
fend the city in case Csesar should raise a revolution rather than
give up his army ; but when the measure went before the Comitia,
Curio bravely used his right as Tribune of the People, and placed his
veto on it. Thereupon Marcellus went off with a band of excited
young aristocrats to Naples, where Pompey was staying, to offer
him this command in spite of the veto. A week or two later Curio's
Tribuneship expired, and he at once set out for Caesar's headquarters,
leaving Antony to face the music in the capital.
Then came the news that Pompey had accepted the command,
and, though deprecating war, had set out to place himself at the head
of the available troops; and at this, Antony made use of his sacro-
sanctity as a Tribune to denounce Pbmpey and all his works. He
knew now that civil war could hardly be prevented, and that al-
though the mob was on Caesar's side, all the rest of the people
in the city were for Pompey ; he knew that in the event of a sudden
outbreak of hostilities his Tribuneship would be annulled, and he
would be arrested and probably executed ; yet he could not hear his
beloved Csesar traduced by speaker after speaker in all public meet-
ings without making some reply. Furiously he urged the crowds to
stand by Caesar and not to give their support to Pompey, who was no
democrat but an aristocrat, if ever there was one ; but only the rab-
ble would listen to him.
Meanwhile Cicero had just returned to Rome, having com-
pleted his short term as governor of Cilicia. He came back burst-
ing with self-satisfaction, as well he might, indeed, for he had
not only governed his province in a most exemplary manner, but
he had managed to make a little fortune out of it and yet had kept
within the law. Apart from this matter of money and in regard
to money it may be said that Cicero was never intrinsically, but al-
ways speciously, honourable the government of his province had
certainly been both correct and wise ; and history would have praised
him for it in unqualified terms had he not himself spoilt the pic-
ture by daubing it over with the glaring colours of his own vanity.
With the aid of his brother Quintus, who had learnt soldiering un-
der Csesar in Gaul, he had inflicted sharp punishment upon some
hill-tribes notorious for brigandage; and at the close of this little
punitive expedition he had allowed his soldiers to confer on him
MARC ANTONY 143
the title of Imperator, which was only applied to victorious generals
after very great victories; and thereupon he wrote home asking that
he might be decreed an official Triumph on his return to Rome. In
his mind's eye he saw himself driving in state through the streets of
Rome, hailed as a conqueror by the populace; and he was bitterly
hurt when Cato told him that he was asking too much. "Cato has
been disgustingly unfriendly to me," he complained to his friend
Atticus; 17 "he bears testimony to the purity of my life, my justice,
kindliness, and integrity, which are self-evident, but refuses what
I asked for!"
In regard to the political situation, the development of which
had been reported to him in Cilicia and on his journey home, he was
extremely worried; for it seemed to him now that Caesar was likely
to be the loser in the coming struggle, and Pompey the winner. It
was most unfortunate for him; for he had been expressing such un-
bounded admiration for Csesar in recent years, and had accepted
money from him, but had been by no means careful to flatter Pom-
pey. The apparent mistake, however, must now be rectified ; and thus
we find him declaring in his letters : "My regard for Pompey in-
creases every day of my life," 18 and "I am heart and soul for Pom-
pey." 19 But when he arrived in Rome, and realized that he would be
forced soon to make his choice of sides, he was terribly perplexed;
nor were matters helped by a letter he received from Csesar, advis-
ing him to go back to Greece and keep out of the mess altogether:
he pretended to be indignant at the suggestion, but he was too afraid
of Pompey even to do this. Moreover, he could not make up his
mind how to treat Antony, who, as Caesar's defender in Rome,
had managed to gain the support of the mob but had incurred
the bitter enmity of the Pompeians and the aristocrats. Not so
long ago he, Cicero, had been telling people what a fine young
man Antony was : how was he going to laugh that off?
The attitude of Pompey and Csesar, meanwhile, is tragically
clear. For years Pompey had watched his rival's movements with
troubled eyes, but so long as Caesar's daughter, Julia, had been alive
there had been a tie between the two men which could not be broken.
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, vii, 2, 7.
18 Ibid., vi, 2, 10.
ift Cicero: Ad Familiares, ii, 13, 2.
144 MARC ANTONY
Since her death, however, and since Caesar's loss of popularity in
Rome owing to the troubles in Gaul, Pompey had come to feel that
he himself was destined to be all his days the sole ruler of his
country; and he had become so accustomed to the thought, so used
to autocratic power, that now the demands of Csesar to be allowed to
retain his command of his army and his province until he could ex-
change them for a second Consulship, seemed an outrageous piece
of impertinence. What was Csesar, after all, but an adventurer who,
as the nephew of the great Marius, would use this democratic lever
to overthrow the constitution? Pompey had always thought of him
as unscrupulous and not quite a gentleman, a man of brains and cul-
ture but of little honour; and he dreaded to think of the fate of his
country in such hands. Was he, Pompey "the Great," to go into
retirement, and to leave Rome to the mercy of such a man? Would it
not be better to fight it out, now that the home forces were at his
disposal, and the bulk of the citizens with him? It was inconceivable
that Caesar could be victorious in the struggle.
At this period Pompey was fifty-six years of age, but time
had dealt kindly with him, and he was still a handsome man, of
buoyant, light-hearted character, and of kingly manners. He was
what is called "a great gentleman,** the soul of honour; a man, too,
whose romantic passion for Julia, and whose overwhelming sorrow
after her death, had won him the sympathy of thousands of senti-
mental hearts. Unlike Csesar he could count the number of his adul-
teries ; but, like him, he was temperate in regard to food and drink.
Csesar had been guilty in Gaul of great cruelty, and had ruthlessly
slaughtered his enemies ; but Pompey was usually humane to a fault,
and had on many occasions spared the lives of those who expected
death at his hands. Nor had he appeared to seek the greatness which
fate thrust upon him ; and once when a new command was offered to
him he had been heard to cry out: "Am I never to end my labours,
nor escape from this offensive greatness, so that I can live quietly
in the country with my wife? I wish I were an unknown man!"
Yet, having attained autocratic power without conscious effort, he
could not brook a rival, and certainly not one who, like Csesar, had
schemed and fought and almost worn himself out, impelled by a
burning ambition to be what the casual Pompey now was the first
man in Rome.
MARC ANTONY H5
Csesar was Pompey' s junior, being now fifty-two years of age.
Like his rival, he was dignified, regal, and always courteous and
polite; but he was infinitely harder, more stern, more purposeful.
People could easily tell what Pompey was thinking, but they could
not keep abreast of Caesar's quick intellect, nor know from the ex-
pression of his thin-lipped mouth and his dark, inscrutible eyes what
was going on in that tremendous head of his. His polished, incisive
language, his keen and sometimes cruel wit, his intellectual bril-
liance, were in marked contrast to Pompey's rather easy-going man-
ner of speaking. At a later date, when a certain young politician had
opposed some of his measures, Csesar quietly told him that he would
put him to death if any more were heard of his dissent; "and this,
you know, young man," he said, "is more disagreeable for me to
say than to do." The grim remark was characteristic. Yet he could
be very forgiving and graciously lenient, and his anger was not easily
aroused : even now, in fact, at this crisis of his career, he felt no bit-
terness against those who were slandering him in Rome and pre-
tending that he was a public enemy. He did not hate Pompey: he
rather admired him.
He was staying at this time at Ravenna, in the south-east cor-
ner of Cisalpine Gaul ; and from there he now dispatched Curio with
a letter to the Senate and another to the Comitia, saying in the
latter that, in order to avoid hostilities, he would be willing to re-
sign his command and become a private citizen again if Pompey
would do likewise, Even then he did not believe that war could not
be avoided, 20 and he was prepared to make every possible conces-
sion. But when Curio, after racing to Rome at top speed, presented
these letters, there was a concerted attempt to prevent their being
read, and neither Curio nor Antony could at first make themselves
heard, though in the end Antony managed to obtain a hearing for
Csesar's messages. A decree was then drawn up by the Pompeians
that Csesar should be given until July the first to lay down his com-
mand, and that if he then refused to do so war should be declared
upon him; but here Antony intervened in the Comitia, and, reckless
with anger at this insult to his chief, and heedless of the conse-
quences to himself, placed his tribunitial veto upon the bill. It was
one of the great crises of his career, and his action in obstructing
^Hirtius: De Eello Galileo, viii, 52.
146
MARC ANTONY
this decree at the risk of his life was not forgotten by his grateful
chief. .
Cicero now made an attempt to effect a compromise. He pro-
posed that Csesar should be allowed to retain his command in his
province and to stand for the Consulship without coming to Rome,
and that, in the event of his being elected, Pompey should spend
the year in his Spanish province; but Cato and the conservatives
would not listen to these moderate counsels, and proposed that An-
tony should be deposed from the Tribuneship. Nevertheless, the
exasperated young man boldly went to the Senate-house and re-
peated to the sullen senators Caesar's offer to disarm if Pompey
would do likewise; but the Consuls for that year, refusing to listen,
rudely ordered him to leave the assembly, and thereat Antony lost
his temper, hurled execrations at them, and stormed out of the build-
ing "like one possessed/' as Appian says, 21 "predicting war, mass-
acre, prescription, banishment, confiscation, and various other im-
pending horrors, and invoking terrible curses." He and Curio then
disguised themselves, and, procuring a carriage, fled from the city by
night, galloping off on the road to Ravenna to tell Csesar that the
sacrosanctity of the Tribuneship had been violated, the tribunitial
veto disregarded and all hope of peace destroyed.
"It was you, you, Marc Antony/' declared Cicero in later years, 22
"who gave Caesar the principal pretext for war; for what else did he
allege except that the power of interposition by the veto had been
ignored, the privileges of the Tribunes taken away, and Antony's
rights denied by the Senate? The cause of the war was you! The
fact is recorded in history, is handed down by men's memories, and
our most ultimate posterity in the most distant ages will never forget
it. Yon were the origin of that war. Do you, Senators, grieve for the
soldiers slain? it is Antony who slew them ! Do you regret your
lost comrades? it is Antony who deprived you of them ! Every-
thing which then happened we must attribute wholly to Antony/'
When Caesar heard what had happened it was then the middle
of January, 49 B.C. he sent orders to his legions in Gaul to come to
his support immediately, and, taking with him the troops available
* Appian: CM Wars, ii, 33.
** Cicero: Philippic ii, xxii.
MARC ANTONY 14?
at Ravenna, he set out to march upon Rome. As he crossed the little
river Rubicon which separated his province of Cisalpine Gaul from
Italy, he exclaimed "The die is cast!" and, with Antony, his gal-
lant kinsman, by his side, he set his face towards the capital.
CHAPTER VIII
The Civil War between Csesar and Pompey, in which Antony Acted as
Caesar's Chief Lieutenant.
49-48 B.C.
CESAR'S advance into Italy with only a small force was a
perilous move, and was intended more to give his enemies a taste
of what he was prepared to do .than to precipitate a general con-
flict. He still hoped to be able to negotiate a satisfactory peace ; and
when, having entered Ariminum (Rimini), just over the border, he
was presently approached by two messengers from Pompey who
suggested terms of peace, he % was in high hopes of a settlement satis-
factory to himself. The two men were Roscius Fabatus, who had
served under him in Gaul and was now Prsetor, and Lucius Csesar,
Antony's cousin, son of his mother's brother. He received them
courteously, and sent them back with his offer to adhere to the terms
of Cicero's proposal, namely that both he and Pompey should dis-
arm, and that Pompey should remain in Spain cjuring the year of
Caesar's Consulship.
While waiting for a reply he marched on down the eastern
coast of Italy, taking possession, without bloodshed, of the towns as
far south as Asculum (Ascoli), which was more or less opposite
Rome ; and those Pompeian officers who fell into his hands he treated
with the utmost politeness, sending them back to their master with
his compliments. When Pompey's messengers returned, however,
with the impossible answer that terms could only be discussed after
Caesar had disbanded his army and had recrossed the Rubicon, it was
obvious that war could not be avoided.
Csesar therefore despatched Antony at the head of a force of
Gallic cavalry across the mountains to seize Arretium (Arezzo), a
148
MARC ANTONY 149
town in Etraria on the main road to Rome ; and meanwhile he him-
self waited to see which way Pompey would move. He was much
discouraged, however, when one of his chief officers, Labienus, who
had held high command under him in Gaul and had been his inti-
mate friend, now deserted him and fled to Pompey; but he con-
trolled his indignation, and contemptuously sent the renegade's bag-
gage and money after him. It seemed that even his own officers did
not think that he had much chance of success against the supposedly
large forces at Pompey's command; and when dispatches arrived
announcing that the faithful Antony had captured Arretium with*
out a fight and was there awaiting his chiefs further instructions
Caesar could have had no idea yet what those instructions would be.
Meanwhile, in Rome, however, an astonishing situation had
developed. At the news that Antony, the insulted Tribune, was
astride the road to the capital, at the head of his invincible Gallic
cavalry, everybody in the city thought that Caesar was contemplating
a rapid march on Rome, and thereupon the wildest panic occurred.
Senators and officials swarmed into Pompey's house, and, brushing
aside the frightened servants, pushed their way into his presence,
imploring him to bestir himself and do something. What orders
had he given to the troops, they asked? What troops were available,
anyway? Where was the vast army which he had declared would
arise when he had need of it? Why did he not stamp his foot, as he
had boasted, and produce them? Why had he allowed matters to
come to this pass when he was wholly unprepared to defend the
capital?
Pompey was bewildered, and he needed all his gentlemanly self-
control to prevent himself being infected by the prevailing terror.
Suddenly he realized that Caesar was a greater man than he, and
his heart must have sunk as the abuse hurled at him by these fright-
ened men revealed to him how precarious was that position of su-
premacy to which he had so long accustomed himself. With all the
dignity he could command he told them not to worry, but to rely on
him to take the necessary steps for the safety of the State; but he
had no more idea what those steps would be than had Csesar how to
oppose them. Cicero pushed his way in a big, ponderous, grey-
haired man, haggard with anxiety and implored him to send am-
bassadors to Csesar to treat for peace : he was horrified at the turn af-
150 MARC ANTONY
fairs had taken, just when he had hopes of being allowed to celebrate
his public Triumph for his precious expedition against the Cilician
brigands. Those fond dreams must now for ever be banished, l and in
their place must remain for many a day this nightmare of fear that
by backing the wrong side he should incur a second exile or even
death. Cato, too, came stalking in like a spectre of doom, telling the
distracted Pompey that war was the only honourable course, and
that he must bravely do or die.
After a day or two of indecision, Pompey announced his plan.
Rome must be evacuated, and the government removed to Capua, a
few miles inland from Naples.
This decision caused a mad panic, and the horror and confu-
sion in the city were heightened by wild stories of terrible portents
which had been observed. Somebody said that it had rained blood
during the night; somebody else spread the report that the statues
of the gods had been seen to sweat; yet another declared that an
unearthly flash of lightning had descended upon one of the temples;
and, most horrible of all, a stable-hand announced a prodigy a
mule had foaled. People were praying in the streets; but the sena-
tors, frantically packing their belongings, forgot to pray or to per-
form the daily sacrifices to the gods. Soon the Appian Way, the
highroad to Capua and the south, was blocked with important fugi-
tives and their slaves and baggage. The women and children were
left behind, and at the gates of the city there were indescribable
scenes of emotion, men sobbing and women shrieking as they bade
goodbye.
Cicero was one of the first to depart, leaving his unloved wife,
Terentia, to mind his great mansion in Rome. Pompey, not know-
ing what to do with him, had told him to go down into Campania,
the province in which Capua was situated, and to act as best he
could as a sort of semi-official governor of that district; but before
he left he received news that his son-in-law, Dolabella, the new hus-
band of his daughter Tullia, had declared for Csesar. The unfortu-
nate orator was stunned at the evacuation, and at Pompey's col-
lapse, 2 and, in private, he poured out his abuse alike upon him and
upon Csesar, the one as incompetent, the other as mad. Then, think-
ing that it would be best to go into retreat and try to keep out of
1 Cicero: Ad Atticum, ix, 7, 5. * Illd., vii, 10.
MARC ANTONY 151
harm's way, he settled himself at a villa of his near Formise (Mola),
half way between Rome and Naples, and in utter dejection awaited
what fate would bring him, sending messages to Pompey saying that
he was discharging his duties faithfully in Campania, but at the
same time writing to Csesar to say that he was neutral and was liv-
ing quietly on his estate.
Presently, however, he received a reply from Csesar, suggesting
that he should return to the capital as a non-belligerent; and at this
he wrote frantically to his friend Atticus, begging for his advice.
"Would it show me a brave man," he asked, "if I were to remain in
Rome where I have filled the highest office in the State, have
achieved immortal deeds, and have been crowned with honours, but
now would be but an empty name, and would moreover incur some
danger, and the stigma of disgrace if Pompey should be victorious?
Or shall I follow Pompey in his ignominious flight? and, if so,
whither? But if I do this, what a raid Csesar, if the victor, will make
on my possessions when I am out of the way fiercer than on those
of other people, because he will think perhaps that such attacks on
me will be popular with the masses," 3 who had never forgotten
or forgiven Cicero's action against the Catilinarian conspirators.
Antony always had that grudge against him, and it was Antony who
was now leading the supposed descent on Rome.
Meanwhile Cato had been sent to Sicily to keep that island
quiet, and Pompey had gone to Luceria (Lucera) on the eastern side
of Italy, opposite Naples, where the bulk of his forces was concen-
trated. Eighty miles to the north of this place was the fortress-town
of Corfinium (Popoli) ; and here Pompey had placed a strong body
of troops under the command of the aristocratic Domitius Ahenobar-
bus, husband of Cato's sister, Porcia, who had been selected by the
Senate before the debacle to succeed Csesar as governor of Gaul.
But by the middle of February, Csesar had decided not to march on
empty Rome, had recalled Antony from Arretium, and, having
made up his mind to come to grips with Pompey at once, had in-
vested Corfinium as the first step in his new plan.
After a siege of a few days Domitius surrendered, giving his
parole to Caesar, who thereupon allowed him to go unmolested back
to Pompey, while all his troops went over to the conqueror and were
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, viii, 3*
152
MARC ANTONY
enrolled in his ever increasing army. Several senators and young
aristocrats were captured in the town, but all were allowed to de-
part with their baggage and their money, for, said Csesar, 4 "I am
quite indifferent to the fact that those whom I release are said to go
away to make war on me again : my only wish is that I should act
like myself and they like what they are."
This extraordinary clemency won the gratitude of thousands,
and its effect was more valuable to Csesar than many victories. He
published abroad the announcement that he would never imitate
the harshness of Sulla at the overthrow of his, Csesar's, great uncle,
Marius, but was determined to be generous and merciful, since, he
declared, he was always hoping for a reconciliation with Pompey.
"What a man!" wrote Cicero 5 on hearing of this leniency. "How
keen, how careful, how well-prepared! I declare that if he puts no
one to death and robs no one of his goods, he will soon become the
idol of those who most dreaded him." "The country-towns," he
added in a later letter, 6 "are beginning to hold Csesar for a god, and
there is no pretense about their feelings as there was when they
made their vows for Pompey."
At the fall of Corfinium Pompey retired from Luceria south-
wards to Brandusium (Brindisi), which city Csesar reached in the
second week in March, giving out that he was still anxious for an
interview and a reconciliation with his rival; but in the following
week Pompey, who retained command of the seas, skilfully evacu-
ated the town by night and shipped his army and the many sena-
tors who were with him across the Adriatic to Greece, and when day
dawned Gfisar found the enemy gone, the first phase of the Civil
War being thus brought to a bloodless but unsatisfactory end.
Pompe/s flight to Greece may be described as a strategic retreat
according to plan." He had hoped at first to be able to hold south-
ern Italy, but, failing to do this, he was clearly wise in making his
new base in Epirus, across the sea; for his reputation in eastern Eu-
rope, Asia Minor, and Syria was enormous, and the fact that he
had with him the two Consuls and most of the senators, would make
Jus cause seem to the native rulers and subservient peoples of these
lands to be worthy of aid. Cicero, in fact, was greatly troubled on
Cicero: Ad Atticum, Ix, X*A. '/**., viii, 13.
ttntL) vm, 16.
MARC ANTONY 153
this account, and pictured Pompey "leaving no sea or land unrari-
sacked, arousing the passions of barbarian kings, and bringing whole
nations of armed savages into Italy in immense armies." 7 Moreover,
having absolute command of the seas, Pompey assumed that he
would be able freely to dispatch messengers, or make the journey
himself, by way of Sicily, and North Africa to Spain, where his
two generals, Afranius and Petreius, were in command of large
armies.
Csesar's position, indeed, was hardly as satisfactory; for he was
bottled up in Italy without a fleet, with Greece and the east on one
side and Spain on the other, both in Pompey' s favour, and Gaul, to
the north and west of him, ready to revolt. The first thing to do, ob-
viously, was to seize Rome, after which he would have to secure
Sicily and Sardinia, if he could find the ships in which to transport a
few troops thither, and, then, leaving a force to guard Italy and an-
other to protect the Dalmatian coast against invasion by land, he
would have to march into Spain, relying on a victory there to keep
Gaul quiet. It was a stupendous task; but only when it was accom-
plished could he hope to be in a position to invade Greece and fight
it out with Pompey.
He was worried and anxious, therefore, as he turned towards
the capital; and he was not much relieved when he heard stories
of the bad omens which had manifested themselves on Pompey's
landing in Greece how spiders had been found upon some of the
military standards, how a snake had- glided across Pompey's foot-
steps, and so forth. He was too intelligent to pay much attention to
such portents ; but Antony was probably heartened by them, as, of
course, were the troops.
On his journey to the metropolis by the Appian Way, Csesar
paid a call upon Cicero at Formiae, and invited him once more to
come to Rome so as to give tacit support to his cause; but the un-
fortunate man was still in a quandary, not knowing which side
would win in the end, and the interview gave him the fright of his
life, because he dared neither offend Pompey by going to Rome nor
Csesar by refusing to do so. Csesar, however, was extremely consider-
ate, and, realizing Cicero's predicament, offered him time to think
the matter over, which led the orator to feel that he had won a dip*
T Cicero: Ad Atttcum, viii, 11, 2,
154 MARC ANTONY
lomatic victory, and caused him to write that evening: "I fancy
Oesar is not much in love with me, but no matter : I am in love with
myself " 8 He did not think much of Caesar's staff, the members of
which seemed to him to be very much like a gang of desperadoes;
and the Herculean Antony, travel-stained, and clanking fearsomely
in his military armour, must have been peculiarly upsetting to his
nerves.
When Caesar reached Rome he camped outside the gates, while
Antony rode into the city at the head of a troop of his awe-inspiring
Gallic cavalry, receiving, no doubt, a vociferous welcome from the
mob. It was now the end of March, and not much more than two
months had elapsed since the Senate had driven Antony away like a
dog; yet, today, here he was, riding through the streets as a con-
queror, and the Senate was in exile. He was still Tribune of the
People, and the crowd hailed him as their rightful representative;
and when he gave orders that all senators and members of the gov-
ernment who had remained in Rome were to come to him, the excited
rabble dashed off in all directions to round them up. They were a
mere hanclf ul, but Antony marched them out through the gates to
Caesar's tent with great gusto, and there Csesar addressed them as
though he were speaking to the full Senate and government, declar-
ing that it was his object to avoid bloodshed and that he wished to
open negotiations with Pompey and his misguided followers.
He then entered the city, which he had not seen for nine
long years, while Antony rode at his side, pointing out to him the
new buildings erected in his absence, these including the great
theatre in the Campus Martius, built six years ago by Pompey at
his own expense to hold forty thousand spectators. Some sort of
provisional government was then set up, and Marcus Aemilius Lepi-
dus, Praetor for that year, who had remained at his post, was made
acting-Consul. Lepidus was a patrician, but had been brought up in
the democrat party, his father having been that Lepidus who in 77
B.C., just after the death of Sulla, had led the premature and un-
successful rebellion against the conservatives, as already recorded ;
and he had married the daughter of Servilia, Caesar's mistress, thus
linking himself with the Caesarian party. Curio, meanwhile, was
sent off to deal with Cato in Sicily; Dolabella was dispatched with
'Cicero: Ad Atticum, ix, 18, 1.
MARC ANTONY 155
Antony's younger brother Caius to Illyria, at the top of the Adriatic,
to prevent Pompey marching northwards towards Italy by that
route; and another officer, Quintus Valerius, was sent to obtain the
surrender of Sardinia.
To Antony, however, fell the plum of Caesar's nominations:
he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in Italy
which appointment, together with his Tribuneship, would, during
Caesar's coming absence in Spain, place him in absolute control
of Rome and the whole country. That he should have been chosen
for this work shows clearly enough the high regard Csesar enter-
tained for his abilities; and though Antony's human weaknesses
in after life, and the simplicity of his nature, tend to make us
think of him as a man of no very high attainments of mind or char-
acter, we must not forget as every historian seems to do that
at this great crisis the amazingly sagacious Csesar chose him out of
all his officers for this most responsible and dangerous position.
In accepting the post Antony must have known that he staked
his life; for if Caesar were to be defeated in Spain and his cause
overthrown, all the force of the Pompeian storm would fall di-
rectly upon his, Antony's, head. But his faith -in Caesar never
wavered, and it was with a light heart that he faced his difficult
duties when, during the first week in April, his chief set out for
Spain to attack Pompey's lieutenants, Afranius and Petreius, in
that country. It was all very weH*ftr; Osar tr c iy, with a confident
smile, that he was marching out against an army without a general
and that he would soon come back to fight a general withoM^ui
army : the hazard was far greater than that, and well Antony must
have known it.
His first business was to help Lepidus to enlarge the dimin-
utive Senate into a sound working body, and to fill the various
offices left vacant by the flight of the government. The law made
by Sulla that the descendants of the men proscribed by him could
not hold office, was still in force, in spite of the various attempts of
the democrats to abolish it; but Antony, at Csesar's order, now caused
it to be removed from the statutes, and thereby was able to make
numerous appointments from the democratic ranks. Rome, indeed,
was soon entirely in the hands of the democracy, and Gesar's cause
9 Suetonius : Casar,
156
MARC ANTONY
came to be definitely the cause of the People, while Pompey's party
became as definitely a conservative or republican movement, since
the old nobility and the traditionists had embraced it whole-hearted-
ly and its members had gone with Pompey to Greece.
The political situation, in fact, was now thoroughly clarified,
and the civil war had assumed the character of a straight political
fight between the ideals of the People and those of the republicans,
Gesar and Antony, his right-hand man, being the two arch-demago-
gues, and Pompey being the leader of the coalition of old-fashioned
conservatives and conservative-minded democrats. This being so,
some of the senators who had vaccilated and had remained in the
capital, now slipped away to Greece in spite of Antony's efforts to
detain them; and soon there was hardly a man of politically aristo-
cratic sympathies left in Rome, though the city was full of men of
socially aristocratic standing who by being democrats were in the
fashionable movement of the time. Pompey might claim to be the
representative of the old order; but smart, up-to-date society, as per-
sonified in the younger generation of intellectual and elegant men of
fashion, looked to Csesar as its leader.
Thus, Rome retained its gaieties and its emancipated and rathei
loose social life, even though it M^$ the headquarters of a democracy
with the rabble in tow. Now Antqpy was decidedly a man about
town, a leading light in the fast^society of the metropolis; and
though Caesar placed his trust in him more completely than he did in
aay ptber living spul, he was not consistently a hard-worker, and
't^as^uc^ concerned with giving himself what he considered a
jgp&cj time as he was with advancing his career. Politics, as such,
did not deeply interest him, but he enjoyed power, was elated bj
excitement and turmoil of public life, and was always happj
was serving Csesar, whose trust and affection he repayec
a blind deyptipn. Here in Rome he was temporarily under nc
iftt, and after so many years of campaigning, he threw himselJ
If tfi all the f atali^tie fun of the town in such a spirit of youth thai
of .his mother, Julia, in him must have been tempered b]
-vr^f^ x-r, ,--, ~j whom he had had two or three childrer
wto Ji was a young i&a&, was now dead or in retirement, and ther<
was talk of him making a match of it with his cousin Antonia, th<
MARC ANTONY 157
daughter of his exiled uncle, Caius Antonius; but meanwhile he
amused himself with various women, and, when he was not busy
with his public duties, led the wild life which was then common
amongst the members of Rome's fashionable set, and which now de-
rived a new zest from the uncertainty of the future. To be bacchanal-
ian at such a time had all the mordant thrill of a game of dice with
Death.
There was a Greek actress named Cytheris 10 who was at this
time Antony's mistress, and he gave some offence to respectable
people by gallantly calling her Volumnia, n a name almost sacred
to the Romans because it was that of the wife of Coriolanus, the
woman who, in 489 B.C., saved Rome from her husband's vengeance.
Antony took her about with him on the various political journeys he
had to make to towns in the neighbourhood of the capital, and
caused a good deal of outraged comment by introducing her to the
local notables who received him.
He was, in fact, very proud of being her lover, for the stage and
its celebrities thrilled him newly come as he was from the camp
as greatly as it thrilled men ten years younger than himself who
lived in Rome; and his was not the nature to conceal his feelings.
It has often been said that Antony never grew up, but remained, as
Renan puts it, "a colossal child, capable of conquering a world, in
capable of resisting a pleasure" ; yet at this period of his life, at any
rate, that criticism does not quite meet the case: his boyish attitude
towards Rome's gaieties was due, rather, to his having been out of
reach of them during the years in which young men were generally
having their fill of them and becoming blase.
When he had thus to go out of Rome he used to take his mother
with him, assigning her a carriage or litter and its escort not any more
splendid, as Plutarch tells us, than that given to Cytheris, a circum-
stance which led Cicero in after years to pretend that the elder lady,
utterly neglected, was forced to follow the mistress of her profligate
son as though the hussy had been her daughter-in-law. 12 But the fact
that he did take his mother about with him suggests, on the contrary,
that he was a very affectionate son whose goings-on were indulgently
smiled at by the broad-minded Julia, accustomed as she had been all
"Plutarch: Antony. "Cicero- Philippic ii, xxiv.
"Ibid.
15 8 MARC ANTONY
her life to the lax morals of the fashionable world. It is conceivable
that she was very fond of Cytheris.
Plutarch says that on these outings "he took with him golden
cups and dishes fitter for the ornaments of a state procession than
for wayside picnics, and had pavilions set up and sumptuous re-
pasts laid out on the banks of rivers or in the woods/' music being
provided by a company "of singing-girls who, in the towns, were
billeted in the houses of serious fathers and mothers of families" ;
while Cicero adds that in his entourage were carriages full of his
jolly companions and the caterers in charge of the festive arrange-
ments.
In Rome Antony enthusiastically patronized the theatres, and
went to a great many parties ; but, with characteristic indifference
to social propriety, he was as often the guest of mere men on the
stage as of the leaders of the social world, two of his great friends
being Sergius, the actor, and Hippias, the comedian. At these en-
tertainments he sometimes drank more than was good for him,
and "spent the next day in sleeping gr walking off his debauches/'
But at last a shocking misadventure befell him. He had been out
all night at the wedding-party of Hippias, and early next morning
had to address a meeting. He was feeling deadly sick when he
stepped up onto the platform, and he had hardly uttered a sentence
before he was overcome with nausea in the sight of his entire au-
dience, one of his friends snatching away his gown only just in time
to prevent it being ruined.
After this disgusting incident it is to be supposed that he mended
his ways somewhat, for he knew that Caesar, while having a sym-
pathetic understanding of the libertine, could not tolerate a drunk-
ard; and it was not long before his mother persuaded him to marry
his cousin Antonia and to make some effort to settle down. If one
may judge by the fact that after a while he became very jealous of
her men-friends, it may be supposed that, as sometimes happens, he
found himself in love with the wife chosen for him : and, at any rate,.
a year or so later, she had become the mother of a little Antonia, and
wa& being angrily accused by Antony of flirting with Dolabella, who
was married to Cicero's daughter, Tullia all of which suggests
that he was an exemplary husband.
But whatever was the nature of his private affairs at this
MARC ANTONY 159
time, he was active enough in the interests of Caesar in his public
life, and incurred without flinching the personal, if distant, hos-
tility of Pompey, Cato, and all the other prominent men residing
out of Italy. He was the first man in Rome, and the Pompeian
spies reported all he did, exaggerating his public deeds and his
private misdeeds until the conservative senators and officials, fret-
ting at their exile, must have writhed in their impotence.
But as spring passed into summer the news from Csesar became
increasingly bad. His route to Spain had obliged him to pass by
Massilia (Marseilles), but here the scoundrelly Domitius Aheno-
barbus, whom he had released on parole after his surrender at
Corfinium, had established himself with a powerful army, and for
weeks held up Caesar's advance, while the Pompeian forces in
Spain were able to prepare themselves for battle. It is true that in
Sicily Curio had found no difficulty in driving Cato out of the
island and forcing him to cross the sea in flight to Pompey; but
this small success was poor compensation for the thwarting of
Caesar's plans, and such an atmosphere of gloom and apprehension
descended upon Rome that even Antony's efforts to be gay were
decidedly macabre.
Cicero, of course, was one of the first to sense this feeling of
nervousness, and he began to congratulate himself upon having
maintained his outward neutrality; yet, as Pompey's chances of
ultimate victory brightened, he was filled with dread lest his con-
tinued residence in Italy might put him in bad odour with
the exiles in Epirus. "The one thing which tortures me now," he
had already written some weeks before this, 13 "is that I did not
follow Pompey into Greece. When I saw him in January he was
a panic-stricken man, and the ugly appearance of his flight with-
out caring what happened to me put a stop to my affection for
him ; but now that affection is coming again to the surface, and I
cannot endure our separation. For whole days and nights, like a
caged bird, I gaze at the sea and long to fly away."
Csesar himself had written to him sternly advising him to re-
main neutral, and, after the check at Marseilles, Antony also wrote
the following carefully worded and diplomatically friendly letter 14
to him :
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, ix, 10. "Copy enclosed in Cicero's Ad Attlcum, x, 8.
i6o MARC
"But that I have a strong affection for you much greater, in-
deed, than you suppose I should not have been seriously alarmed
at the rumour of your proposed flight which has been circulated,
particularly as I took it to be a false one; but my liking for you
is far too great to allow me to pretend that even the report, how-
ever false, is not to me a matter of much concern. That you will
really go across seas I cannot believe when I think of the deep re-
gard you have for Dolabella and his admirable wife, your daughter
Tullia, and of the equal regard in which you yourself are held by
us all, to whom, upon my word and honour, your name and posi-
tion are seemingly dearer than they are to yourself. Nevertheless,
I did not think myself at liberty as a friend to be indifferent to the
remarks even of unscrupulous people; and I have been the more
anxious to act because' I hold that the part I have to play has been
made more difficult by a coolness between us, originating, indeed,
more in suspicion on my part than in any injury on yours. For I beg
you will thoroughly assure yourself of this, that there is no one
for whom my feeling of friendliness is greater than for yourself,
with the exception of my dear friend Csesar, and that among Caesar's
most honoured friends a place is reserved for you. Therefore, my
dear Cicero, I entreat you to keep your future action entirely open.
Reject the false honour of this man, Pompey, who did you a great
wrong in allowing you to be exiled that he might afterwards lay
you under an obligation. Do not, on the other hand, fly from one
who, even if he shall lose his love for you and that need never
be the case-^will none the less make it his study that you shall
be secure and rich in honours."
By the second week in June, however, the reports of Caesar's
difficulties at Marseilles had led a few more senators to slink away
t6 Greece, and when a false rumour was spread that Pompey was
marching north and would take Csesar in the rear, Cicero at last
pade up his mind to bolt. He wrote to his wife saying that he was
orfdent of Pompey's coming victory, and that he was therefore
to him in the 'full expeatation of ^returning with kindred
ts on some future day to the defence of the Republic/ 7 1( * That
fciie sailed for Greece.
His departure must have been a great blow to Antony, for it
&i Familiares, xiv, 7.
MARC ANTONY 161
caused the uneasiness of the Csesarians to be increased, and Caesar,
no doubt, had told him to do his best to prevent the orator's flight.
Plutarch tells us, also, that at this time Antony was none too popu-
lar, and that although he was greatly beloved by the troops, in
whose exercises and labours he personally joined, he was accused
of being too lazy and impatient to listen to the complaints of civil-
ians who petitioned him, and had got himself a bad name all round
by making love to other men's wives. Yet it is admitted by the same
writer that Csesar had no fault to find with him, and that his
bravery, energy, and military skill were never in question, which
suggests that the attacks made upon him were malicious rather than
true. Nevertheless, there seems to have been a certain amount of
actual disaffection in Rome during these trying days of anxiety,
and when, in July, news arrived that Caesar had left the siege of
Marseilles to his subordinates, had marched against Pompey's le-
gions in Spain, and had been defeated by them, there was some-
thing like a panic in the city.
In August, however, the whole situation changed. Dispatches
were received announcing that Csesar, after his first reverses, had
outmaneuvered and trapped the enemy in Spain, and that the
entire Pompeian army there had surrendered, while at Marseilles
a victory had been won which made the speedy fall of that city
certain. Thereupon, in September, the acting-Consul, Lepidus,
with the help of Antony, passed a law through the Senate and the
Comitia investing Csesar with the powers of Dictator; and this
move was all the more popular because of the reports of Caesar's
continued leniency, for he had allowed all the conquered troops
an absolutely free choice of action they could enter his service,
retire into civilian life, or even make their way to Pompey, as they
wished. It all seemed too wonderful to be true: the victory was
miraculous; Csesar was god-like. Everybody was cock-a-hoop, and
Antony no doubt celebrated the glad tidings by getting drunk.
News of two reverses elsewhere, however, somewhat cooled the
popular enthusiasm, and to Antony brought much personal sorrow.
After turning Cato out of Sicily, the dashing Curio that "slip of
a girl" as Cicero, it will be remembered, had once called him
had collected enough ships to transport two legions to North Africa
where Atticus Varus was in command of a considerable Pompeian
l62 MARC ANTONY
army; and having disembarked at Utica, near the ruins of Car-
thai he quickly gained a victory over that general, and then pro-
ce3ed to attack King Juba of Numidia, 16 who was supporting
Pompey. Misled by false reports, Curio found himself with a small
force outnumbered and surrounded by the enemy in desert country
in the heat of summer ; and there, as Appian records it, "he perished,
fighting bravely, together with all his men," his head being after-
wards cut off and carried to Juba. On hearing the news the offi-
cers in command of the ships at Utica weighed anchor and sailed
away, whereat the remaining soldiers of Curio's army, who were in
reserve there, seized upon all the shipping in the harbour in order
to make their escape, and in the confusion many of them were
drowned, while the others, unable to get away, surrendered and
were slaughtered by Juba in cold blood.
Curio, it will be remembered, had been Antony's earliest friend,
and more than friend, and in the ensuing years they had stood side
by side in many a dangerous situation. His death, therefore, was a
sad blow to him, from which he had hardly recovered when news
arrived that Dolabella had been defeated by Pompey's general in
Illyria, and that Antony's younger brother, Caius, had been taken
prisoner. The return of the victorious Caesar to Rome from Spain,
however, consoled him; and in the excitement of the rash of events
which ensued he had no time to mourn his friend or to worry about
his brother.
In November Csesar arrived back like a whirlwind, recklessly
determined to waste no time in getting to grips with Pompey him-
self. He gave orders to his army to march straight down to Brindisi,
where, it was understood, a great mobilisation would take place
during the winter in preparation for the invasion of Greece in the
spring. Actually, however, his secret intention was to undertake
that invasion immediately; but had he told his soldiers, weary
after their campaign in Spain and their march back to Italy, that
they were now going to be shipped across the perilous seas and
fiung against Pompey's fortified headquarters, they would probably
ka^e mutinied. Csesar's decision, however, was no more than was to
be expected of him, for his rapidity of action was usually phenome-
19 Son of the cousin of King Jugurtha, the Numidian monarch whose fate has
been recorded in Chapter ii.
MARC ANTONY 163
nal ; and, indeed, there was a certain impetuosity about him which
sometimes landed him in extremely awkward situations. Time
after time, good luck rather than good generalship extricated him
from positions into which audacity and not forethought had led
him; and in observing the wild risks he took the historian cannot
fail to ask himself on occasion if he were really a great general
at all.
Pompey, however, erred as much on the side of anxious inde-
cision t as Caesar did on that of rash confidence; and, strange to say,
neither of them looked far ahead, the difference between them
being that Caesar could make up his mind in a flash and could con-
centrate with astonishing intensity upon his immediate object, while
Pompey, as he grew older, found an increasing difficulty in form-
ing a decision of any kind. Caesar was a man of immense brain-
power, indefatigable energy, and the highest courage; but just as,
in his private amours, "the marvel is that he did not end in some
dark corner with a dagger between his ribs," 1T so in his military
career it is startling to see how often he thrust that wonderful
cranium of his into the lion's mouth and escaped, unscathed, by
sheer good fortune.
It has already been remarked that he liked to gather about
him men of audacious courage, such as Clodius and Curio had been;
and it was just that quality in Antony, combined with his undy-
ing loyalty, which he loved. Antony, though transparent and some-
what of an actor to boot, was in many ways a man after his own
heart cultured, up-to-date in his tendencies, democratic in prin-
ciple, aristocratic in taste, heedless of conventions, a hater of
hypocrisy; but it was his dash and gallantry which endeared him
to his chief, and now in this desperate adventure which had been
decided upon it was to Antony that Csesar turned, confiding in him
his audacious plan to transport the army piecemeal to Greece in
the ships he had built and the merchantmen he had commandeered,
in the teeth of Pompey's watching fleet.
Only eleven days did Csesar remain in Rome; but during that
brief space he had himself elected Consul for the coming year, 48
B.C., with one of his officers as a nominal colleague; he abdicated
his Dictatorship in place of this more regular office; he set the
17 Sir Charles Oman; Seven Roman Statesmen.
164
MARC ANTONY
government in order; and he reorganised its finances. Incidentally
he recalled from banishment Gabinius, Antony's former com-
mander-in-chief in Syria and Egypt, and various other exiles, with
the notable exceptions of Milo and Antony's uncle, Caius Antonius,
both of whom were too closely allied to the aristocratic party to
be pardoned with popular approval. Then, with Antony at his
side, he set out for Brindisi, and, having arrived, broke the news
to those troops which were already there that he was going to take
them across to Greece at once. The ships he had collected could
carry no more than about fifteen thousand men, that is to say five
out of the twelve legions which were at his disposal, and a small
body of cavalry; but he declared that this would be quite a big
enough army to start with, and that the ships could then be sent
back to fetch the rest, many of whom had not yet reached Brindisi.
In the first week in January 48 B.C. he set sail, and Antony,
who was left behind to bring the second lot over, watched his de-
parture, one may suppose, with feelings of the greatest anxiety,
knowing that if the enemy's fleet were encountered Csesar and his
men would be lost, and that though it were eluded he would find
himself isolated on the shores of Greece, and outnumbered by
Pompey by at least five to one. In three or four days, however, the
ships returned bringing the news that Caesar had landed safely
near Oricum (Ericho), and was pushing north to Dyrrhachium
(Durazzo), Pompey's base of supplies, which there was great hope
of taking by surprise, for Pompey and his main army were an
equal distance from the place. It was a fifty-mile race between
the two armies.
Antony's business, of course, was to embark another fifteen
thousand men, and take them across to Caesar's aid; but before he
could do so, Bibulus, Caesar's old enemy and joint-Consul ten years
earlier, who was now Pompey's admiral, dispatched a powerful
fleet across the sea and blockaded Antony's ships in Brindisi har-
bour. Then developed a situation which was trying in the extreme
to tlie nerves of all concerned. Antony, and with him now Gabinius,
were unable to put to sea, knowing that Bibulus would send them
to .the" bottom; and they therefore kicked their heels in Brindisi,
waiting fpr the opportunity which never seemed to come. Gesar,
cm his part, just failed to reach Durazzo before Pompey, and, in
MARC ANTONY 165
bitter disappointment, was obliged to dig himself in, a few miles
to the south, taking possession of a certain amount of country be-
hind him from which he could obtain supplies, but having no ships,
and being open to a combined attack by land and sea.
As the weeks went by and Antony did not come, Csesar became
more and more desperate. Food was running short, and his men
were complaining: there was sickness, too, in his camp. He could
not understand what was delaying Antony, and began to wonder
whether he were playing him false. At last in desperation he
ventured upon one of those wildly daring exploits with which his
life abounds. Disguising himself in mean clothes, he boarded a
small cargo-boat which, apparently, had a permit to make the
crossing to Italy; for, though he risked shipwreck and capture, he
felt that his only hope was to find out what was wrong at Brindisi
and to bring the rest of his army over to Greece himself. But the
attempt was a failure : a storm drove the vessel back to the shore
in a sinking condition, Csesar was recognized, and when, wet and
cold, he at last struggled back to his headquarters, everybody was
indignant with him for taking such an absurd risk. 18 His anxiety to
know what had happened to Antony, however, was his excuse : for
the first time he mistrusted him.
Meanwhile, in Pompey's camp all was at sixes and sevens a
fact which alone saved the little Csesarian army from annihilation.
Though he placed his reliance chiefly on his Roman legions, of
which he had eleven as against Oesar's five, together with a strong
force of cavalry, he had under his command formidable bodies
of the famous Cretan archers, Thracian slingers, and Pontic javelin-
throwers, while auxiliaries had been sent to him from Arabia, Ar-
menia, Athens, Bithynia, Bceotia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Ionia, Mace-
donia, Palestine, Pamphylia, Sparta, Syria, and many other coun-
tries. His sea-power consisted of six hundred men-o'-war in perfect
fighting trim, and swarms of armed transports and merchantmen;
while a fleet of sixty warships then awaiting orders at Corfu-
had been sent to him by Cleopatra and ( her brother Ptolemy, who
had succeeded the bibulous Auletes as joint sovereigns of Egypt.
"There are two or three versions of the story: Plutarch (Casar) says he dis-
guised himself as a slave; but Appian (CM Wars, ii, 57) says ^impersonated an
official messenger In a ship chartered for this service. See also Dion Cassms, xh,
46.
!66 MARC ANTONY
Quarrelsome foreign potentates and generals were tumbling
over one another in the camp, and the place was swarming with
Roman senators, government officials, military commanders, naval
officers, and the like. Cato was there, urging Pompey to stake all
on a big battle with Caesar. Cicero was there, very dejected and
miserable, having been snubbed by Pompey and told he was not
wanted by Cato, who said he ought to have remained neutral : in-
deed Plutarch writes that Cicero "was sorry he had ever come, and
showed it by depreciating Pompey's resources, finding fault in an
underhand way with all he did, and continually indulging in jests
and sarcastic remarks at the expense of his colleagues, but going
about the camp with a gloomy and melancholy face himself/ 2 19
Amongst the many other men of note who worried Pompey with
their contradictory advice mention must be made of Marcus Brutus
who now for the first time plays a part in the events which are be-
ing related in these pages. Everybody had expected that he would
join the opposite side, for Caesar was supposed to be his father and
had certainly been his mother's lover for years ; and when, instead,
he arrived at the headquarters in Greece, Pompey had been so sur-
prised and pleased that he had thrown his arms around him and had
kissed him. Now, however, Brutus was suffering from the pre-
vailing but unaccountable depression, and, being a very studious
young man, spent all his days sitting in his tent, writing an epi-
tome of Polybius, the great Greek historian, apparently to deaden
the pricks of his conscience which told him that he ought to have
been with Csesar.
It is impossible to understand why Pompey did not attack the
harassed Caesar, and the only explanation is that he doubted the
fidelity of his Roman legions and placed no reliance on the fighting
qualities of his foreign troops. Caesar, of course, expected a battle
^t any moment, and could no more comprehend than we can why
his rival held his hand. It seems, however, that Pompey was no
longer a great man: his genius had bloomed too soon, and from
a light-hearted, brilliant, and charming heyday he had passed to a
depressed and hesitant decline by gradual stages which had hardly
been observed by his supporters until too late. He Ayas a haughty,
silent, melancholy man at this time: it may perhaps be said that
"Pfetarch: Cicero.
MARC ANTONY 167
he had never been the same since the death of his adored wife,
Julia, Caesar's daughter; and his present wife, Cornelia, who was
awaiting events in Lesbos, was nothing to him except, as she seemed
to suppose, a bringer of ill-luck.
But if Pompey was depressed, Caesar was frantic. He knew now
that Antony was blockaded in Brindisi, and somehow he managed
to get a message across to him advising him to march by land
around the north end of the Adriatic and down into Greece. An-
tony, however, was still hoping to break the blockade, yet dared not
risk the total loss of his army which would mean the end of Caesar.
At last it was decided that the forces should be divided, and that
Gabinius should attempt the long march by land and Antony the
dash by sea, so that, in the likely event of disaster to the latter half
of the army there would still be a chance of success for the former.
Thereat, one morning in the spring, Gabinius marched forth, and
Antony was left to choose the best moment for the perilous ad-
venture upon which he had decided.
Just then, as luck would have it, news came through that Bibu-
lus, the enemy admiral, had died; and a few days later, while there
was a chance that the Pompeian fleet was without orders, a strong
south-west wind sprang up. Seizing the opportunity, Antony em-
barked some ten or fifteen thousand men, and set sail at dead of
night, thus staking his life and his all upon this one throw of Fate's
dice. In the darkness most of his vessels passed the blockading fleet
unobserved, but when at length the alarm was given a few of his
small battleships attacked the enemy, thus distracting them until
the transports had escaped; and when day dawned he was far out
to sea. The following morning found him close to the Greek shore,
thirty miles south of Caesar's camp at Durazzo; but now the wind
dropped, and the pursuing ships of war, propelled by their five
and six banks of oars, bore down upon them. Antony's men could
do no more than prepare to sell their lives dearly, and the first
enemy vessel which approached was received with a shower of
arrows.
Just then, as by a miracle, the wind revived in increased force,
and soon the transports were scudding northwards under full sail,
while the oared battleships plunged after them in a heavy sea which
in the end drove them onto the shore, where many of them were
MARC ANTONY
wrecked. Antony, thus, got clean away, sailed past Caesar's camp,
and safely landed at Lissus (Alessio), some thirty miles to the
north of Durazzo. Pompey at once marched upon this place to
annihilate the newly landed troops, leaving, however, a sufficient
garrison at his base; but Caesar marched after him, giving Durazzo
a wide berth, and by a rapid maneuver joined forces with Antony,
whereupon Pompey had to retrace his steps, this time pursued by his
reunited enemies.
Thus Antony's breathless adventure ended in complete suc-
cess, and he could congratulate himself upon having literally saved
his chiefs life. It was a perilous feat after Caesar's own heart, and
it strengthened the bond between them so that nothing, it seemed,
could sever it.
Caesar now felt himself strong enough to undertake a spectacu-
lar movement designed to impress all Greece and the neighbouring
provinces with his power. With a sudden rush he occupied the
semicircle of hills around Pompey's camp, and so rapidly dug
trenches and threw up earth-works that in a few days the Pom-
peians found themselves in a state of siege. They replied by making
their own lines a short distance back from Caesar's, a narrow No-
man's-land being left between the two opposing armies; and in this
condition of stalemate matters remained for several weeks while
spring passed into summer, the deadlock being at last broken by a
sharp battle in which Pompey's men were the victors, and Csesar,
who was, as usual, in the thick of the fight, very nearly lost his
life. At about the same time news arrived that Gabinius had been
defeated in Illyria, and was dead and his army dispersed; but these
disasters only had the effect of making Caesar all the more anxious
to force a full-dress battle, and at last, in June, he abandoned his
entrenchments and marched south-eastwards into Thessaly where
one of Pompey's generals was still at large.
His object was to enhance his reputation by overpowering this
force, and also to entice Pompey away from his base and the
sea, and then to outflank him. Neither Caesar nor Antony were
happy men at this time, for their enemies still had the advantage,
and the war seemed likely to be protracted; but their depression
was as nothing compared with that of Pompey, who could not
MARC ANTONY 169
make up his mind whether to follow Caesar, or to stay where he
was, or to invade Italy.
At last, however, he decided to march into Thessaly also, and
to give battle, leaving a small force at Durazzo under the com-
mand of Cato; but when the army was about to march, Cicero
excused himself on the time-honoured plea of ill-health, and re-
mained with Cato. Once again his nervous doubts as to which side
would win had led him to keep out of the whole business; but
when it was reported to Caesar and Antony that he was not with
the oncoming Pompeian army they must have laughed together
and have been not a little heartened, for Cicero was the best of
weather-cocks. As a matter of fact the orator was not in -good
health. "Mental anxiety is wearing me out," he wrote, 20 "and is
causing me also extreme bodily weakness" a condition which
may well have been aggravated by a proposal made by Domitius
Ahenobarbus (who had escaped from Marseilles back to Pompey)
that all senators who had not immediately come to Greece at the
outbreak of hostilities should now be put to death. The suggestion,
of course, was not taken up; but the very thought of it must have
brought the cold perspiration out on Cicero's intellectual forehead.
Early in August Pompey's army came up with Caesar's in the
plain of Pharsalia, near the city of Pharsalus (Farsa), in the heart
of Thessaly ; and having some fifty thousand fighting men as against
Csesar's twenty-five thousand, he decided, after much hesitation, to
fight it out. On the morning of the battle he addressed his troops,
telling them to make an end of this madman who had thrown the
whole empire into confusion. "Fight in the consciousness of a just
cause," he said, "for we are contending for liberty and country,
and on our side are law and honourable tradition." 21 Caesar, on his
part, encouraged his men by reminding them that it was Pompey
who had demanded that they should be disbanded without rewards
after all their triumphs in Gaul. "Yet this Pompey has now be-
come slow and hesitating in all he does," he declared, "and his
star has obviously passed its zenith. As for his foreign allies, pay
no attention to them whatsoever, but fight only with the Roman
90 Cicero: Ad Atticum, xi, 4.
: Civil Wars, ii, 72.
MARC ANTONY
legions. Yet after your victory, spare your countrymen, for they
are your own flesh and blood. Kill only these wretched foreigners."
Pompey then placed himself in command of his right wing,
and assigned the left to Domitius Ahenobarbus; while Csesar, on
his side, took the right wing opposite Domitius, and gave the left
to Antony who thus faced Pompey himself. 22 The long-expected
battle, which was to be the crisis of this war between the conserva-
tives and democrats, was neither very sanguinary, as battles go,
nor long protracted. Pompey's cavalry were officered for the most
part by young aristocrats "in the flower of their youth and the
height of their beauty," as Plutarch tells us; and with his whimsical
smile, Csesar instructed his veterans to aim all their blows at the
faces of these elegant young men, for experience had taught him
that this type of soldier "would not be willing to risk both a present
danger and a future blemish." And so it proved; for at the first
encounter these young officers ducked their heads, put up their
left arms before their faces, lost control of their horses, and threw
the whole brigade into confusion and finally into flight.
The foreign auxiliaries, meanwhile, proved to be quite worth-
less, and got in the way of the legionaries, whose hearts, anyhow,
were not in the fight; and soon an indescribable muddle developed
amongst the Pompeians, which ended in a general panic and rout.
Antony, like Csesar, was never able to remember in battle that a
general's business is to keep out of the actual fighting; and in this
case he seems to have hurled himself into the thick of the fray, and
to have fought his way through to Domitius Ahenobarbus, and to
have killed him with his own hand. 23 Csesar lost about two hun-
dred men all told; 2 * the enemy about six thousand, 25 together with
nearly two hundred standards and the eagles of eight legions.
Pompey could not stem the flight, became bewildered, and at
last rode in a sort of stupor back to his camp, where he sat down in
his tent, speechless. "He was no longer himself," says Plutarch,
"nor remembered that he was Pompey the Great, but was like one
28 Plutarch (Antony) disregards the other commands, and makes it clear that
Czsar's entire reliance, apart from himself, was placed upon Antony, whom he
describes as Caesar's most trusted officer.
K Cicero (Philippic ii, xxix) is' to be taken literally.
M Caesar: Civil War, iii, 99.
"Asinius Pollio, quoted by Plutarch (Cesar) and Appian, CM Wars, ii, 82.
MARC ANTONY 171
whom some god had deprived of his wits." When the shouts and
cries warned him, however, that the Csesarians were coming, he
sprang to his feet, and moaning "What! even into my very
camp?" mounted his horse and fled northwards along the road to
Larissa and the sea. And when Caesar, bareheaded and breathless,
dashed in amongst the tents, with Antony, sweating in the summer
heat at his side, he found his rival gone. "He would have it," he
groaned, as he saw the havoc around him; "he brought it upon
himself!"
Curiously enough, the victor's first thought was for Brutus.
Before the battle Caesar had given strict orders that on no account
was this son of Servilia and perhaps of himself to be harmed; and
now, hearing that he had fled, he scribbled a note to him telling
him that all was forgiven, and sent a detachment of mounted men to
find him and give him the message. The young man was soon traced,
and wrote a reply apparently explaining his conduct in joining
Pompey as being due to his conscience; whereupon Csesar sent for
him and presently received him with every mark of affection. He
then asked him whither Pompey was directing his flight; and when
Brutus told him that he supposed it would be towards Syria or
Egypt, Csesar made up his mind personally to hunt him down be-
fore he could get out of Greece.
Most of Pompey's forces surrendered during the following day,
and Caesar and Antony were soon free to gallop off with a squadron
of cavalry in pursuit of their fallen enemy; but when some days
later, they reached the Hellespont, they heard, to their bitter vexa-
tion, that Pompey had sailed for the east, and thereupon Csesar made
perhaps the most reckless decision of his career. In spite of the fact
that the home government had to be re-established, the empire paci-
fied, Pompey' s troops in various provinces rounded up, the uncon-
quered fleet captured, Cato and the other "die-hards" arrested, and a
hundred outstanding tasks performed, he announced that under the
escort of such ships-of-war as he could now command he was going to
take a legion or two to Syria or Egypt or whatever the country might
be wherein Pompey would seek asylum. He had no idea what perils
on sea and land would be encountered, or when he would be back :
possibly he would be away for months, but he would not return until
he had given the coup de grace to Pompey. As to the cleaning up of
1?2 MARC ANTONY
the situation here at home, he would leave the whole business to An-
tony ; and therewith he gave him his instructions and, with an affec-
tionate slap on the back, sent him off on his long journey to Rome
to play, at the age of thirty-five, the part of vice-autocrat of the
Roman world.
When Antony arrived once more on the shores of the Adriatic
he heard that, after Pharsalia, Cato, Cicero, and others had fled to
Corfu, where the broken-hearted Cicero had narrowly escaped be-
ing put to death as a traitor by the distracted Pompeians, and had
sought refuge at last at Patrse (Patras) at the mouth of the Gulf
of Corinth; while Cato had gone at length to North Africa. Antony
then crossed the sea, was met at Brindisi by his mistress, Cytheris,
and so returned in triumph to Rome.
Meanwhile Pompey had played out in all its horror the role
of a vanquished and fugitive leader. A day or two after the battle,
the skipper of a Roman merchantship which was about to sail from
the port of Tempe in north-eastern Thessaly, was just telling his
men, as he leant idly over the stern, how he had dreamed that
Pompey had appeared before him, travel-stained and dejected,
when, suddenly clapping his hand to his forehead, he recognized
Pompey coming in actuality towards him in a small boat. The
skipper's political sympathies were republican, and he therefore
took the wretched fugitive on board and agreed, at a price, to carry
him whithersoever he wished to go, at which Pompey asked to be
taken first to Lesbos where he might pick up his wife, Cornelia, and
their young son, Sextus. On arriving there, a sailor was sent ashore
to fetch Cornelia; but when the man was ushered into her presence
and she was housed, of course, like a queen, her husband's
defeat being still unknown he burst into tears, and conveyed his
news rather by his sobs than by his words. Thereupon, Cornelia
dropped at his feet in a dead faint.
As soon as she had revived she ran headlong down the street
to the docks, and, boarding the ship, flung herself into Pompey's
arms. "It is my fault!" she cried. "It is I who have brought you
bad luck. O, why have you come back to me? You ought to have
left to her evil genius one who has involved you only in her own ill-
fortune. I ought to have killed myself when I brought disaster to
my first husband, Publius Crassus, instead of letting myself be
MARC ANTONY 173
reserved for a worse mischief, the ruin of Pompey the Great !" To
this Pompey replied that at any rate she had had a few years of
happiness with him, a little longer, in fact, than was usual in the
case of the great. "We are all mortals/ 5 he said, "and we have to
endure these ups and downs, hoping for better luck next time.
After all, it is no less possible to retrieve my position than it was to
lose it." 20
The townspeople, headed by the philosopher Cratippus, then
came down to the ship, offering to take care of him, but he told
them to submit to Caesar without fear, saying that he was a man
of great goodness and clemency; and he began to argue with Cratip-
pus upon the nature of Providence, having much to say just then
in dispraise of the gods, to which, however, the philosopher refused
to reply, being convinced in his heart that all was for the best. He
decided, however, to remain with Pompey and Cornelia to look
after their spiritual welfare, and soon, taking their son Sextus with
them, they set sail for Attalia (Adala) in Asia Minor, where, on
their arrival, they found some sixty fugitive senators and a certain
number of troops and ships, and heard that Cato had gone to Africa,
and that a great part of the fleet had not yet surrendered to Caesar.
Thereupon Pompey made some show of renewing the war, and,
transferring himself to a battleship, set out for Egypt with a con-
siderable escort, his object being to recoup his forces in that country,
over which the young Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, who
were friendly to him, were supposed to be ruling jointly. Actually,
Cleopatra had just been driven out of her kingdom by this brother
of hers; and when Pompey arrived off the Egyptian shore in the
last days of September, it was the latter to whom the news was
conveyed. Tales of the battle of Pharsalia and its consequences,
however, had already been brought to Egypt; and Ptolemy's
councillors decided that the best thing to do would be to put the
fugitive to death.
A boat was therefore sent out to the battleship with an invitation
to Pompey to land, and, in spite of Cornelia's frantic protests that he
was going to his doom, he stepped into it and was rowed towards
the shore, passing the time by reading over the speech which he
proposed to make to the Egyptian monarch. Only a short distance
M Plutarch: Pompey.
4 MARC ANTONY
had been covered, however, when one of the men in the boat
Cabbed him in the back, at which the others also set upO n him.
?ompey in the old aristocratic manner, pulled his gown over his
facT and sank to the bottom of the boat; and a moment later his
head was severed from his body. Cornelia witnessed the murder,
and her shriek of horror was heard by those on shore. The Roman
ships at once weighed anchor, and escaped to sea.
Three days later, Cssar arrived in hot pursuit; and thereupon
an Egyptian deputation brought him Pompey's head as a token
of good will. Cssar, however, turned in abhorrence from them,
and, moving aside, bent down his face and wept.
CHAPTER IX
Antony as Vice-Dictator in Rome, and his Temporary Estrangement from
Caesar.
48-45 B.C.
WHEN the news of the death of Pompey had run its breathless
course through the crowded streets of Rome one day in November,
48 B.C., it was generally understood by the Csesarians that the war
was over, and that a Utopian age of democratic liberty had dawned;
for, though Cato might hold out for some time in Africa, and other
conservative leaders might try their luck again elsewhere, their
ultimate suppression did not seem to be in doubt. The Roman
world had passed into the hands of the People; the aristocratic or
republican party was practically wiped out; and as a token of
the changed outlook, the statues not only of Pompey but of Sulla,
the last great aristocrat, were removed from the Forum. The absent
Caesar was given the Dictatorship until the end of the coming year,
47 B.C.; he was authorized to hold the Consulship for five con-
secutive years; and his person was made sacrosanct by his being
elected a perpetual Tribune of the People, in spite of his patrician
rank.
Meanwhile, however, the astonishing man had disappeared into
the unknown. The tidings were that he and his troops had gone
ashore at Alexandria, the Egyptian capital, and that he had ap-
parently involved himself in the war then being waged there be-
tween King Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra. Nobody knew when
he would come back; but Antony was his deputy, his Master of the
Horse as it was called, 1 and to him the western world now looked.
The first thing Antony did was to issue a proclamation forbidding
'Dion Cassius (xlii, 21) says that Czesar personally appointed him to this office;
but Cicero (Philippic , xxv) implies that Caesar's friends rather than Caesar himself
nominated him. There cannot be much doubt, however, that the appointment came
direct from the fountain-head.
175
1? 6 MARC ANTONY
any partisan of the late Pompey to return to, or to reside in, Italy
pending further orders from the Dictator, with the exception of
two or three persons, amongst whom was Cicero, his case receiv-
ing particular consideration through the good offices of Dolabella,
his son-in-law, a young man much liked by Caesar.
Cicero had already crossed over from Greece to Italy, and
had taken up his residence at Brindisi, where, it may be said in
anticipation, he spent the next nine or ten months until Caesar's
return. He was a miserable man, broken-hearted at the loss of all
the money the bulk of his fortune which he had lent to Pompey,
and bitterly vexed at the collapse of his worldly hopes. His brother
Quintus, in attempting to make his peace with Csesar, had put all
the blame for his deflection to the Pompeians upon Cicero, with
whom he was now on terms of open hostility; his son, Marcus, now
nearly eighteen years of age, was turning out to be a dissolute
young rascal; his daughter, Tullia,. was leading a very unhappy
life with her youthful husband Dolabella ; and his wife, Terentia,
was showing him neither love nor respect.
He hated living at Brindisi, and yet his vanity refused to
permit him to proceed further into Italy until the new govern-
ment should authorize him to travel in state with lictors marching
before him and with the correct equipage of an ex-Consul. "How
is it possible for me to come nearer to Rome/' he petulantly asked, 2
"without the official retinue, given me by the nation, which can-
not be taken away from me without a robbery of my rights?" At
the same time he was very glad to have severed his connection with
the remnant of the Pompeian party. "There was such ferocity in
those men," he complained, "such intimate alliance with barbarous
foreigners; and a proscription had already been sketched out by
them, not of isolated individuals but of whole classes." Wars, pro-
scriptions, bloodshed, always frightened him; and his only connec-
tion with armed force had been on those occasions when he had
believed that any other course of action might have endangered his
own skin. He was a man of peace, and his fears often made of
him a turncoat 8 and a toady; but his frank admission of the fact
' Cicero: Ad Atticum, xi, 6.
'In the Declamation against Cicero, aaciently attributed to Sallust, Cicero is called
The most fickle of renegades, trusted by none."
MARC ANTONY 177
adds just that touch of the ludicrous to his behaviour which wins
him our sympathy.
Antony's character was precisely the reverse. He was so indif-
ferent to personal danger that he stuck to his friends in all the
vicissitudes of their fortune with a heart so light that he did
not always receive the praise for his fidelity which should have been
his. He, too, is often ludicrous, but it is not because of any flounder-
ing attempts, such as Cicero's, to keep out of danger, but because
of a blind indifference to public opinion. He goes his own rollicking
way, following his heart's fidelities, loyal to his friendships, and
sometimes butting his head against the stone wall of tradition with
such force that one laughs to see him stagger back.
In these days when the maintenance of Csesar's interests de-
pended entirely upon him, he faced the difficult situation in the
spirit, and, indeed, in the guise, of a soldier. Having once com-
manded the Gallic cavalry, he now dressed himself a little the-
atrically, perhaps in the very becoming uniform of that force,
wearing the Gallic cloak fastened at the shoulder by a jewelled
brooch, and having Gallic shoes upon his feet. 4 His sword hung
by his side wherever he went, nor did he unbuckle it even at parties
or public entertainments. 5 A body of soldiers accompanied him
everywhere; and although the lictors and other civil officials who
were in his train gave some hint of the vitality of the institutions
he was supposed to be supporting, he deemed it better for Rome
to understand that he was holding the empire for his master by
means of the mailed fist. He was quite aware that he cut a very
fine figure thus armed and arrayed ; and if some of the fashionable
young cavaliers of his own social circle smiled at his heroic pose,
and impotently marvelled at his ability to drink and carouse with
his burly veterans when the day's work was done, there was
none who doubted his courage or regarded his sword as a mere
ornament.
He needed all his courage just now; for Rome was in a very
abnormal condition, and the dread of what might occur filled the
air with rumours and portents. The doors of the Temple of For-
tune were said to have burst open of their own accord; blood had
issued from a baker's shop and had streamed towards another
4 Cicero: Philippic ii, xxx. "Dion Cassius, xlii, 27.
17 8 MARC ANTONY
temple; babies were born holding their left, or unlucky, hands to
their heads; bees swarmed on the statue of Hercules on the Capitol ;
and owls were seen in the city. There was an earthquake, too; and
in a series of severe thunderstorms the Capitol was struck by light-
ning, and a valuable horse was killed in Csesar's own stables. It was
all very trying to the* nerves, and the tonic of Csesar's presence was
sorely needed.
The situation required the most careful handling, and yet
Antony did not allow his strenuous work to interfere with his
pleasures. At this time he was living in a house which had once
belonged to Marcus Piso, who had been Consul in 61 B.C.; and
here he entertained lavishly, although he was always pressed for
money and must have been deeply in debt. His domestic life, how-
ever, was not a very happy one just now, for, as has been said, he
was sufficiently fond of his wife, Antonia, who, as already men-
tioned, had presented him with a daughter, to be jealous of her;
and he was very suspicious in particular of her friendship with
Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, who was constantly at the house.
Dolabella was a heavily-built, handsome young man of about
twenty-two years of age, an aristocrat of the bluest blood by birth,
who, having strong democratic views, had followed the precedent
set by Clodius and had allowed himself to be adopted into a ple-
beian family in order to become a Tribune of the People for the
new year, 47 s.c. 6 His private life was thoroughly disreputable.
As a boy of sixteen or seventeen he had been married to a girl
named Fabia, but a year later she had left him because of his in-
fidelity, and he had divorced her.
In 51 B.C., when he was eighteen, he had married Cicero's
daughter, Tullia, a union which had at first pleased the orator be-
cause it had linked him with the aristocracy he so dearly loved ; but
Dolabella had proved an entirely unfaithful husband and had made
Tullia thoroughly miserable. Csesar had taken him up because he
displayed that audacious courage which he always liked. He had
fought under Antony at Pharsalia; and now, at the beginning of
47 B.C., he was behaving himself, in his political work, as a budding
Clodius, exciting the rabble with fiery, socialistic speeches which
Antony thought were extremely indiscreet, and, at the same time,
* Dion Cassius, xlii, 29.
MARC ANTONY 179
in his private capacity, he was paying these tactless attentions to
Antonia and thereby incurring Antony's furious ill-will.
Now, Dolabella, like so many others, was on the verge of
bankruptcy; and as Tribune he proposed in the Comitia a revolu-
tionary law by the terms of which all financial contracts might be
annulled, all debts repudiated, and all payment of rent abolished.
I think it is to be supposed that he had in view no more that a
moratorium which would be followed in most cases by a settlement
not wholly ruinous to the creditor; for Csesar, during his last brief
visit to Rome, had dealt with the matter of debt by promulgating a
very moderate measure for the partial relief of debtors, and had
thus shown himself opposed to drastic steps. But the mob whom
Dolabella addressed, it seems to me, interpreted the proposal in no
such manner : to them it was to be a grand assault upon the hated
capitalists, a sweeping emancipation of the down-trodden from
all the obligations which in these troubled times had become more
and more difficult to meet.
It was to be the first step along the blissful highway of pro-
letarian rule, the first step towards the seizing of the property and
the money of the rich. The old order had been destroyed at Phar-
salia; the People were the victors; and now they were going to
receive the fruits of their victory. "Down with capital !" was the
cry; and the moderate democrats who heard it shook in their shoes,
for they knew that the price of mob-support was being demanded
of them. They feared that the always dreaded contingency in-
herent in a democratic triumph the releasing, that is to say, of the
left wing of the party from the restraint of the right, was about to
eventuate, and that that catastrophe was going to take place which
is so often a consequence of a proletarian victory, namely revenge-
ful poverty's blind destruction of the misused sources of plenty.
In all ages the constitutional democrats' most exacting task is
the prevention of a retaliatory anarchy after the overthrow of con-
servative rule, so difficult is it to leash the forces which have been
given their head during the process of the revolution. Gesar, it
appears to me, had not fully realized that his personal struggle
with Pompey had become in effect a struggle between the People
and their traditional rulers; and he had casually disappeared into
Egypt at a time when every dictate of common sense should have
i8o MARC ANTONY
required him to hold the reins tightly in his own hands in Rome
itself.
He had left to Antony the hardest task of all, namely the main-
taining of law and order in these days when the mob was mad
with excitement at the rout of the class which had held it down.
Caesar, in fact, had viewed his victory as a personal triumph ; but
the People, on the contrary, regarded him as a Tiberius or a Caius
Gracchus, a Catiline, the hope of the poor, the scourge of the rich,
and, thinking that they understood his projects, they were not pre-
pared to wait for him to come home to tell them how to profit by
their success; they knew what to do. As far as they were concerned
he had served his purpose; he had overthrown their rulers; and
now they would take matters into their own hands under the
leadership of this fiery young protege of his, Dolabella.
Antony had given orders that no civilian was to carry a weapon
in the city; but this rule was constantly being disobeyed, and Dola-
bella's followers were continuously fighting with the partisans of
the more sober citizens. A socialistic revolution seemed imminent.
The property-owners besieged Antony's house; urging him to save
them; senators and politicians of the right wing of the democratic
party demanded that he should take immediate measures for the
protection of the constitution, telling him as, indeed, he well
knew that Caesar was a moderate, not a revolutionary. Antony sent
for Dolabella to reason with him, but the hot-headed young man
would not listen to common sense. Antony lost his temper, and
a personal element of hostility was introduced by "the terrible sus-
picion," as Plutarch terms it, "that Dolabella had committed adul-
tery with his wife/* As a consequence of the quarrel Antony
summarily divorced Antonia, furiously telling her to go to her
lover; and at the same time he warned Dolabella that he would
oppose the passage of the proposed law by force, if need be.
The Senate then formally charged Antony with the duty of pro-
tecting the State, and authorized him to use the military for that
purpose. Thus when the time approached for the first reading of
tie bill by Dolabella, as Tribune, in the Comitia, Antony con-
centrated a force of troops in the Capitol, ready to march them into
the Foran to keep order while the other Tribunes, who were on
his sade, should oppose the measure. But during the night before
MARC ANTONY 181
the eventful day, Dolabella collected the mob in the Forum, and
barricaded the streets leading into it, so that the passing of the bill
should be effected without opposition; and sunrise found him upon
the rostra, the voters in readiness in front of him, and every en-
trance to the meeting held by an armed rabble.
Thereupon Antony led his men to the barricades, demanded
admission, and, on this being refused, gave the order to his troops to
take the place by storm. A furious fight ensued, and before Dola-
bella and the remnant of his mob took to their heels, eight hundred
of them lay dead upon the ground together with not a few of the
soldiers. It was an appalling catastrophe; but there can be no doubt
that it saved Rome from anarchy, though whether or not this object
could have been attained by other and less sanguinary means is
a matter for speculation. Too little attention has been paid to the
incident by historians; but a careful study of the situation will
show, I think, that on that day the empire's fate hung in the balance.
Antony, however, soon had other troubles to deal with. The
troops stationed in Campania mutinied because of their long-de-
ferred discharge, and he had the greatest difficulty in persuading
them to await Caesar's return. Dispatches were presently received
that a son of Mithradates had revolted in Asia Minor; and from
Africa came news that Cato and the two sons of Pompey were in al-
liance with King Juba, and were gathering a formidable army. Yet
month after month went by without any news of Caesar, and, in-
deed, the belief began to spread that he would never return : he was
a prisoner, they whispered, or was dead. 7 It was not until the late
spring of 47 B.C. that at long last the silence was broken, and the
tale of his adventures began to filter into Rome.
It will be recalled that Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, the
children of Auletes, had succeeded jointly to the Egyptian throne,
and had sent a fleet of sixty ships to the aid of Pompey; but they
had then quarrelled, Cleopatra had been driven out of Egypt, and
her brother, while at Pelusium on the north-eastern frontier of his
kingdom, had been a party to Pompey's murder. Caesar, therefore,
had landed at Alexandria early in October, 48 B.C. to extract at
least an apology from the Egyptian king for having at first aided
Pompey, and an explanation of his conduct in afterwards having
7 Dion Cassius, xlii, 30.
182 MARC ANTONY
authorized his murder. With about four thousand men he had
marched through a hostile crowd into the palace, which was
situated on a promontory forming one side of the Alexandrian har-
bour; and thereupon, so the story went. King Ptolemy had hurried
back to his capital to find out what on earth Csesar meant by thus
pushing himself into the royal residence. No sooner had the young
monarch arrived, however, than he had found himself a prisoner in
his own house, Caesar, his unwanted guest, being his gaoler and the
Roman troops being posted at all the gates.
A few days later the exiled Queen Cleopatra, whom rumour
described as a clever and audacious little daredevil of some twenty
years of age, had come to Alexandria by boat from across the eastern
frontier, and had caused herself to be smuggled into the palace, so
that she might lay her case against her brother before this great
Roman, who was now evidently the autocrat of the western world.
Seven years ago, when Antony had met her in Egypt, she had been a
girl of no great attraction so far as he could remember; but now, it
was said, she had grown into a charming and vivacious young wo-
man, not outstandingly beautiful, but piquant and sparkling in a
superlative degree, and having an extremely seductive manner and
what Dion Cassius calls "a most delicious voice/* 8
Caesar at this time was fifty-four; but his years, as Antony
knew, had not greatly diminished his capacity to play the lover,
and, after months of campaigning and travelling, it was evident
that he had seized upon this royal young lady as his natural prey,
and had seduced her within a few hours of her arrival, for the news
stated that it would not be long now before she presented him
with a child. Thereafter he had" lived with her in the palace; her
brother had escaped, and had besieged them both, which accounted
for the absence of news of him in Rome; but after giving Csesar a
pretty bad time, and, on one occasion, having been within an ace of
capturing him, the unfortunate young man had been killed in battle ;
and in March, 47 B.C., all Egypt had submitted, Cleopatra being
declared Queen with her second brother, also named Ptolemy, who
was only eleven years of age, as joint sovereign.
Such was the news. Communications between Alexandria and
Rome were now re-established, and Antony fervently hoped that
"Dion Cassius, adii, 34.
MARC ANTONY 183
Caesar would soon return to relieve him of his difficult task of keep-
ing order ; but the anxious weeks went by, and he showed no signs
of hurrying himself. The delay was incomprehensible to Antony, for
not only was Asia Minor in revolt, but Cato's forces in Numidia were
ever increasing in numbers, and it was very apparent that the civil
war was not yet over. Moreover, Caesar must now have received the
reports of the state of affairs at Rome, and must have heard of An-
tony's trouble with Dolabella.
At last, however, it began to dawn on him that Csesar had made
up his mind to wait in Alexandria until Cleopatra's baby should
be born ; 9 but history does not enlighten us as to whether it fell to
Antony to report this explanation of the delay to Calpurnia, Csesar's
wife in Rome, or to hide it from her. It seemed that Csesar, this time,
was really in love ; and Antony must have scratched his head in per-
plexity as he considered what the consequences might be. Would he
divorce Calpurnia, and marry this charming queen? It was just the
mad sort of thing he might do. Cleopatra was a pure Macedonian
Greek, having not a drop of Egyptian blood in her veins to disqual-
ify her from being received as a westerner by Roman society ; she was
the richest woman in the world; and there was a persistent rumour
that in her own kingdom she had caused Csesar to be recognized as
her legal consort. But would such a union inspire him with the am-
bition to become a monarch himself? Would he overthrow the Re-
public on his return, found a sort of Egypto-Roman throne, and
set up a dynasty with himself and this royal Cleopatra at its head?
Or would he remain a democrat, a leader of the People, and forget
this dazzling little enchantress who now had him in thrall? Antony
was puzzled and extremely troubled.
In August, however, exciting news arrived in Rome. Early
in July, just nine months after her meeting with Csesar, she had
presented him with a son whom she had named Ptolemy Csesar, or,
more familiarly Csesarion; and immediately after the event the
happy father had sailed for Asia Minor to deal with the rebellion
there of the son of Mithradates. Shortly after that, dispatches ar-
rived stating that he had utterly routed the rebels at Zela (Zilleh)
*My contention that Csesar remained in Egypt until the child was born is fully
discussed in Chapter vii of my Life and Times of Cleopatra. Appian (Civil Wars,
ii, 90) says that he stayed in Egypt nine months, a fact which tallies with my con-
clusion.
l84 MARC ANTONY
in the north-east of Asia Minor early in August; and so rapid had
been his journey thither and his offensive that he wrote to a friend
in Rome delightedly describing his victory in the three famous
words, Veni, uidi, ttf* "I came, I saw, I conquered! Thence he
passed through Greece, crossed the Adriatic, and m the last week of
September landed at Tarentum (Taranto), m the heel of Italy,
where he learnt that the faithful Antony had caused him to be re-
appointed Dictator for the coming year 46 B.C.
Hearing of his arrival the unhappy Cicero hastened from Brm-
disi, some thirty-five miles away, to meet him; and to his great joy
Csesar received him with the utmost kindness, embraced him, and
went for a walk with him, telling him, no doubt, how glad he was
that Antony had allowed him his life and freedom. Moreover, he
authorized him to use the consular lictors; but, judging by subse-
quent events, the Dictator advised him to meddle no more in politics,
and for some time after this the great orator devoted himself to those
literary pursuits which, in spite of his weak character and the ab-
surdities of his behaviour, have handed down his name to posterity
in deathless renown. After all, artists in words should be neither
required nor permitted to vie with men of action, lest the balance
of their thought be tipped.
When Cfflsar arrived back in Rome Antony received one of
the greatest blows of bis life : his hero reprimanded him for having
employed unnecessary force in suppressing Dolabella. It was useless
for him to explain to that cold critic how unavoidable the use of
the troops had been, or to blame him for leaving a lieutenant so
many months unsupported. It was useless to remind Caesar of his de-
votion under the most trying circumstances. The Dictator looked
icily at him, accusing him of having estranged the lower classes
the masses upon whom Caesar relied in the last extreme. Antony had
killed eight hundred democratic voters, eight hundred friends or re-
lations of the rank and file of the Roman army: it mattered no<
how great had been the provocation a terrible blunder had been
committed.
. Nor was a curtain-lecture all that he had to endure. Csesai
at once set about the rectification of the mistake, and in doing sc
humiliated Antony without mercy > He called Dolabella to him, and
knowing him to be the idol of the mob, publicly patted him on th<
MARC ANTONY 185
back. The young man's proposed law in regard to debts and arrears
of rent, he admitted, was somewhat too drastic, but it had been upon
the right lines ; and now he himself drafted a measure by which the
payment of rent by the men of small means should be cancelled for
one year. He distributed presents of corn, oil, and actual money to
every man who was in any need; he gave free meals to the poor;
and he instituted a levy upon capital. He courted, in fact, the left
wing of his party, the extremists; and the moderates were left in be-
wilderment.
Antony bore his shame as best he could, but he was not going
to allow himself thus to be trampled upon by the man he had
loved and served with such devotion; and an incident which now
occurred showed that he was ready for a fight. Caesar regarded
the property of Pompey as having been confiscated to himself,
and he at once put up the fallen leader's town house and furni-
ture for auction. No wealthy man in Rome, however, would bid
for them, partly out of respect for Pompey' s memory, partly for
superstitious reasons, and partly, it would seem, because the re-
serve-price was too high. Antony, thereupon boldly declared that
he would take charge of the whole property, and very soon he
had placed his servants in possession of the house and grounds.
Csesar, finding him thus established, demanded a cash payment,
but Antony replied with the argument that the property was as
much his by right as Caesar's, since he had helped to defeat Pompey.
"Why does Gesar demand this money of me?" he asked. 10 "Was
he victorious without my help ? No ! and he never could have been.
Why should not those whose common work the achievement is have
the booty in common?"
Caesar was astounded, but he did not press the matter for the
moment; and soon Antony had converted Pompey's magnificent
mansion into a sort of pleasure-resort for all and sundry and was
giving away the furniture, plate, and linen to his guests with a
hand made lavish by his anger. In the cellars he found immense
quantities of wine, and the drinking-parties which he gave attracted
hundreds of bibulous friends to his doors. Every living-room became
a saloon, says Cicero, u and every bedroom a brothel. No man or
woman left his house without being loaded with gifts, and even
M Cicero: Philippic ii, xxix, tt /HA, xxyiii.
l8 6 MARC ANTONY
the slaves covered their beds with Pompey's richly embroidered
counterpanes. "Nothing was locked up," Cicero adds, "nothing
sealed, no list of anything was made; whole storehouses were
handed over to the most worthless of men; actors seized on this,
actresses on that; and soon there was hardly anything left."
Csesar guessed, presently, that Antony was thus dissipating the
unlisted contents of the house from motives of retaliation, so
that there should be little left for him to demand back in lieu
of payment; and when Antony at last offered to renew the auction,
and placed on view a few of Pompey's old clothes and some bat-
tered metal plates and cups as a sample of what there now was to
sell, Csesar let the matter drop, apparently admitting that Antony
had the laugh of him.
But, for Antony the quarrel was no laughing-matter. He loved
Csesar, and his always sensitive feelings were deeply hurt at the
Dictator's treatment of him. In his bitterness he decided to retire
altogether from public life ; and when Csesar set out in December to
destroy Cato and the Pompeians in North Africa, Antony neither
asked for nor received any command in the army or official position
at home. He was a wounded and disillusioned man. Csesar's atti-
tude had permitted the rabble to abuse him with impunity, and
with the upper classes he was not uniformly popular; 12 for some
there were who dared not befriend one at variance with Caesar, and
some who honestly disliked his hectic kind of life, and in particular
his having brought the actress Cytheris to live with him in Pompey's
house now that he was once more a bachelor. ls Yet the right wing of
the democratic party knew that he had been badly treated and made
a scapegoat by his chief; and there were plenty of others who liked
the honesty and simplicity of his character, admired him for being
perfectly open about Cytheris, laughed indulgently at their theatri-
cal parties, appreciated his otherwise excellent taste and elegant
mode of life, and, in general, deemed him a good fellow and a man
of mark.
Caesar's African campaign resembled most of his others in the
^ Plutarch (Antony) quotes Cicero as saying that Antony was loathed by all
respectable people at this time; but this is some of Cicero's venom from the Second
Philippic, and is refuted by the speech of Calenus quoted by Dion Cassius at the
beginning of Book xlvi.
** Cicero: Philippic , xxviii.
MARC ANTONY 187
sense that it opened with his placing himself in a position of the
utmost danger, from which he was saved by sheer good fortune, and
that it ended in complete victory. He landed on the African coast,
to meet an army reckoned at not less than fifty thousand men, with
a force of only about three thousand, the others having been delayed
in transit; and for some time his chances of escaping annihilation
were slight indeed. At length, however, his missing battalions turned
up, and he was able to march on Thapsus (Demass), a little African
sea-port, where he encountered the enemy under the command of
Metellus Scipio, the late Pompey's father-in-law. The Pompeians,
in spite of a huge advantage in numbers, were routed after a stub-
born fight, and the slaughter which followed was terrible. This time
Caesar showed little mercy : besides the many important officers killed
in the battle, he put to death Faustus Sulla, Pompey's son-in-law,
the son of the great Sulla; Lucius Julius Caesar, Antony's first cou-
sin, son of his uncle of the same name ; and Af ranius, the Pompeian
general whom he had previously defeated in Spain; while Metellus
Scipio, King Juba, and others committed suicide.
That strange and inflexible traditionist, Cato, whose narrow and
militant career had been one long agitation against democracy, was
at Utica, near the site of Carthage, when the news of the defeat was
brought to him. He at once offered all the ships in the harbour to
those who desired to make their escape, but stated that he himself
would 'remain where he was. 14 That night at supper he drank heav-
ily, as, indeed, he had been doing for some months, and then began
to talk vehemently in praise of the Stoic philosophy which advocated
suicide in the last resort as a means of preserving a man's mastery
over adverse circumstances. He was very excited, and Plutarch tells
us that in a fit of anger he hit one of the servants so resounding a
blow with his fist that his hand was severely damaged. It was
obvious that he intended to make away with himself during the
night, and his friends therefore took his sword from his bedside;
but when he discovered the loss he turned upon them irritably, say-
ing "Why don't you bind my hands behind my back? I want no
sword to put an end to myself : I need only hold my breath, or knock
my brains out against the wall." He insisted upon the sword being
14 Detailed accounts of Cato's last hours are given in Plutarch's Cato, and Appian,
Civil Wars, ii, 98.
l88 MARC ANTONY
returned to him, saying, when he had it again, "Now I am master
of myself !" and presently, finding himself anxiously watched, he
asked whether they really thought they could keep a man alive
against his will "Can you give me any reason," he demanded, "to
prove that it will not be unworthy of Cato, when he can find his
safety in no other way, to ask it from his enemy?"
He then seated himself in his bedroom, and began to read the
Ph&dO) Plato's treatise on the soul, until, at dawn, he lay down
on his bed and slept. Then, being awakened by the singing of the
birds outside and the light of the sun, and finding himself alone, he
seized the sword and drove it into his stomach, ripping himself open
so violently that his intestines fell out. At the sound of his first con-
vulsive struggles his friends rushed into the room, and stared at him
in horror as he lay now silently before them in a pool of blood, his
eyes fixed inscrutibly upon their faces. A doctor was sent for, who
attempted to close the wound; but while the man was turning to
reach for the bandages, Cato suddenly tore the gash wider open
with his two hands, pulled out the intestines again, and a few mo-
ments later expired.
Csesar marched into Utica during the morning, and when he
heard of his enemy's death he is said to have expressed sincere
regret. "Cato, I grudge you your death," he exclaimed, "as much as
you grudged me the privilege of giving you your life !" It may be
added that during the next few weeks Csesar spent some time in regu-
lating the affairs of the neighbouring kingdoms of Numidia and
Mauretania, and that this work having brought him into contact
with Queen Eunoe, wife of the Mauretanian monarch, he took the
opportunity to seduce her before he left for Italy. She was a dusky-
complexioned Moorish lady, and he found her attractions so novel
that he loaded her with presents, and for the time being forgot all
about Cleopatra.
By July, 46 B.C., he was back in Rome again, where he cele-
brated a fourfold Triumph. The first day's proceedings were de-
voted to the corpmemoration of the already half -forgotten wars
in Gaul; and at the head of the wretched captives walked the noble
V^fdngetorix who had surrendered to him, it will be remembered,
at Alesia in 52 B.C. For six years he had been kept an obscure pris-
oner in Home; and now, after being paraded through the streets,
MARC ANTONY 189
loaded with chains, he was taken at the end of the day to the Tullian
dungeon beneath the Capitol and there put to death. The act was one
of gross cruelty and barbarism, but while blaming Caesar, one must
not forget that at a Triumph the killing of a foreign prince taken
in the wars was an ancient custom having its origin in propitiatory
human sacrifice, and that deviation from this traditional course
would have been far more remarkable than adherence to it. Rome
was then quite uncivilized according to modern standards of hu-'
manity ; and though Csesar could be merciful to his fellow-country-
men, and even to foreigners on occasion, his leniency was dictated
by policy rather than by any inborn regard for human life.
On the second day he celebrated his Triumph over Egypt, and
in this procession Princess Arsinoe was led in chains through
the streets. She was the younger sister of Cleopatra, but since she had
taken sides against the latter in the late troubles at Alexandria, there
was no objection to her being humiliated; and Csesar did all that
was necessary out of regard for Cleopatra by releasing her after
this public ordeal. On the third day the victory in Asia Minor was
commemorated; and on the fourth the Triumph for the recent
African campaign was celebrated, the little son of the dead King
Juba of Numidia being exhibited. This boy, because of his youth,
was also spared, and lived to become a great scholar, being ultimate-
ly restored to his throne. 15 In this procession Csesar had the bad taste
to show a picture of Cato tearing open the wound in his stomach;
and later, when Cicero published a little book in praise ^of Cato,
Csesar wrote a counterblast which he called Anti-Cato: it is now
lost, but Plutarch says that it was a compilation of whatever could
be said against that odd and violent personage.
Antony, so far as we know, took no part in these Triumphs,
although his participation in that over the Gauls might have been
expected, since he was one of Cesar's chief officers in those cam-
paigns. He seems to have been bitterly nursing his grievance at this,
time, and to have been so angry with Csesar that the latter was ready
to believe a rumour that he wanted to kill him. 16 What his future
18 He subsequently married Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra,
and by her had a daughter Drusilla, who married Felix, the brother of Pallas,
the great minister in the time of Claudius and Nero. (See my Nero, Chapter V.)
"Cicero: Philippic n,
190 MARC ANTONY
would have been it is hard to say except that he would have as-
suredly drunk himself into an early grave had he not, in about
the autumn of 46 B.C., become intimate with Fulvia, the extremely
strong-minded widow of Curio, who set herself the congenial task
of reconstructing his life.
Fulvia, it will be recalled, had been married first to Clodius,
Caesar's turbulent protege who was killed by Milo early in 52 B.C.;
and then to Curio, another of Cesar's men, who was killed in Africa
in 49 B.C., as has already been related. Plutarch describes her as "a
woman not born for spinning and household duties, nor one who
could even be content privately to rule her husband, but was quite
prepared to govern a governor or give commands to a commander-
in-chief ." She was now a woman of perhaps about thirty years of
age, and was, by her first husband, the mother of two children, a
boy, Clodius, and a girl, Clodia; and she seems to have felt that An-
tony, who had divorced his wife Antonia over eighteen months ago
and was, aparently, no longer in love with Cytheris, nor had any
legitimate children of his own, except one little girl Antonia, the
daughter of the divorced Antonia, would be just the right husband
for her and stepfather for her son and daughter. He was only thirty-
seven years of age, and yet he had practically ruled the empire dur-
ing Caesar's absence. He had a great career before him, she thought;
and this quarrel with his chief could easily be patched up. She knew
how to handle Caesar : she had done so with success at least, I think
we may suppose so in the days when Clodius was trying his pati-
ence and when Curio was getting into scrapes. Caesar was always
ready to grant a favour asked by a good-looking woman; and it
must have seemed to her that all Antony needed for his re-establish-
ment in his chiefs good graces was just such an intervention on his
behalf by herself. He was really devoted to Caesar at heart, and
Caesar had often shown how greatly he trusted him : surely she could
bring them together again.
Antony, of course, was fated to fall into the hands of a rest-
less, scheming, domineering woman of this kind. I have tried to
show that he was a man of brains, yet in many ways was what
history deems him a simple, good-hearted giant; and in spite
of his by no means negligible attainments in the world of culture
and dilettantism, in spite of his fine leadership in war and capable
MARC ANTONY 191
rule in peace, he had just those weaknesses, those gentle qualities,
that attraction towards the line of least resistance, which placed
him inevitably at the mercy of feminine determination. When Ful-
via decided to marry him, lift him out of the doldrums, stop him
drinking, take Cytheris away from him, reconcile him with Csesar,
and make him once more the second man in Rome, and perhaps ul-
timately the first, it was beyond his power to prevent her doing so.
Before the year was out she had made him bring his affair with Cy-
theris to an end, 17 and had married him; while before the following
spring she had effected his reconciliation with Csesar but the story
of the reunion must be held back for a moment while other matters
of more immediate importance are recorded.
In the autumn of this year 46 B.C. Queen Cleopatra, and with
her, of course, her baby, Caesar's son, arrived in Rome as the Dic-
tator's guest, and was given a suite of rooms in his house on the
far side of the Tiber. Roman society was both intrigued and scan-
dalised, and nobody could pretend to fathom Csesar's intentions, for
his movement towards the founding of a royal dynasty was not ap-
parent to more than a few of his contemporaries until at least a year
later. All that could be said was that the Queen of Egypt was his
mistress, and the mother of his child; that he was evidently think-
ing of her as a possible wife; and that the situation created by such
a union would be anomalous in the extreme.
It was to be supposed, of course, that such a marriage would
mean that Cleopatra would abdicate her throne and would become
the first lady of the Roman Republic, with Egypt, perhaps, as her
private estate, administered by Roman officials which is, in fact,
what it did become under Augustus ; but there was always the pos-
sibility, on the contrary, that Cleopatra would retain her crown,
and that she and Caesar would be regarded as sovereigns in Egypt at
the same time that they were private persons in Rome. 18 It was
even conceivable that Csesar would attempt to establish a monarchy
in Rome; but this possibility, as has been said, had hardly yet
entered the minds of more than a few persons : it was too outrageous.
True, Tiberius Gracchus had once been thought to be aiming at a
17 Cicero : Philippic it, xxviii. Cytheris afterwards became the mistress of the
young poet Gallus.
J * Suetonius : Casar, Ixxix.
I92 MARC ANTONY
throne; so had Catiline; so had Pompey: kingship, indeed, was a
familiar bogey to the Romans ; but surely Csesar, with his reiterated
democratic ideals and his recent inclination towards the left wing of
his party, the socialistic wing, had no such intentions.
A subject which Cleopatra's arrival also opened up, was that
of the heirship of Cesar's now vast estate. Would he recognize the
little Gesarion, Cleopatra's baby, as his son and heir? He had no
legitimate son, and at present it was understood that he intended to
adopt his grand-nephew, Octavian, the son of Atia, the daughter of
his sister, Julia, who was now a youth of seventeen years of age.
There was also a widespread rumour that he was going to acknowl-
edge Brutus as his own son, for he had shown the greatest considera-
tion for him after Pharsalia, and had now made him governor of
Cisalpine Gaul. People had lately been saying that he thought the
world of Brutus and that he had declared that nobody was so fit as
he to be his heir 19 ; but at this juncture the young man spoilt his
chances by divorcing his first wife and marrying Portia, daughter of
Cato and widow of Bibulus, Csesar's old enemy, thereby linking his
fortunes with the republicans a step which his mother, Servilia,
did her best to prevent, and which must have been a great blow to
the Dictator. Thus, the question as to whether he intended to marry
Cleopatra had this further interest, that it involved the matter of
the heirship; and Antony for one, though it seems that he did not
call to pay his respects upon the Queen, must have listened with at-
tention to the gossip which told how Csesar was showing a fatherly
affection for the baby.
At about this time another matrimonial complication, which
must here be mentioned, engaged the notice of Roman society.
Cicero, it will be recalled, had for long been on bad terms with his
wife Terentia, who was a cold, critical woman, incapacitated, it
would seem, by sheer honesty from responding as he would wish to
his heroics and his emotional outbursts. One feels that the years had
opened her eyes to his shortcomings, and that she had no bouquets
now to lay upon the altar of his vanity. But to Cicero flattery was
as the breath of life, and there had lately come into his house a
pretty little girl of fourteen, Publilia by name, who was his ward,
and who thought him the most wonderful of men* Now Publilia was
* Plutarch: Brutus, 7.
MARC ANTONY 193
not only adoring: she was also extremely rich; and it occurred to the
orator, who was at this time sixty years of age, that if he were to
divorce Terentia and marry this child, he would be able to re-
plenish his much depleted fortunes, pay his many debts, recover
something of his forgotten youth, and re-establish his position as a
hero in his own home.
He therefore dismissed the elderly Terentia, and married his
ward; but he soon found that the girl was violently jealous of his
daughter, Tullia, and made a scene every time he paid the latter
any attention. Tullia, who was going to have a baby, had recently
been divorced by the scapegrace Dolabella, and was living at home ;
but shortly after her confinement she died, plunging Cicero into the
deepest grief, whereupon the naughty little Publilia could not re-
strain her delight, and went about the house singing and smiling so
happily that Cicero, observing her unseemly behaviour, promptly
divorced her. It was a disastrous end to his domestic life; and there-
after he devoted himself to his literary work, pointing out to his
friends how courageously he was behaving under his affliction.
"After being stripped of all those public honours which I had won
for myself by my unparalleled achievements/ 3 he wrote, 20 "the one
solace which remained my daughter has been taken from me.
But I am resolved to be strong amidst absolute despair."
In the winter of 46-45 B.C., Caesar, having sent Cleopatra
back to Egypt, loaded with gifts, 21 went off to Spain to attack the
last of the Pompeians, who were concentrated there under Sextus
and Cnseus Pompeius, Pompey's sons. Once more the campaign be-
gan badly, and Csesar' s army was very nearly starved into an igno-
minious defeat; but in March, 45 B.C., a desperate battle at Munda,
in southern Spain, in which Csesar escaped death or capture by the
merest chance, at last ended in a victory, Cnseus being killed, with
his chief general, Labienus, and Sextus sent flying. As soon as the
news was made known in Rome a number of Caesar's admirers de-
cided to undertake the journey to Marseilles where the victor was
expected soon to arrive and to stay while attending to post-war busi-
ness to congratulate him and to escort him back to the capital;
and, hearing of this, Fulvia persuaded Antony to hurry ahead as far
as Narbo (Narbonne) on the Spanish frontier, where Csesar was then
"Cicero: Ad Familiares, iv, 6; v, 13. a Suetonius: Casar, lii.
194 MARC ANTONY
staying, and to present himself at headquarters as a practical mark
of his willingness to go more than half way to meet him in the mat-
ter of their personal quarrel. Brutus and Octavian were of the party
which went to Marseilles; but it was Antony at Narbo "who was
the best received of any/' and later, when they all set out on the
road back to Rome, "Antony was made to ride almost the whole
journey with Csesar in his carriage, while in the carriage behind came
Brutus and Octavian." 22 The reconciliation, in fact, was public and
complete.
This settlement of the quarrel is as understandable as was its
cause. When Csesar had returned to Rome from Egypt, he must
have found that people were somewhat doubtful of his democratic
ideals, since he had been living so many months in a luxurious palace
with a queen as his mistress ; and when he had been told of Antony's
severity towards the socialistic extremists of the party, he had
thought it advisable to give a practical demonstration of his benevo-
lent interest in the left wing by sitting heavily upon his unfortunate
lieutenant who represented the right. But since then he had come to
realize that Antony's attitude had probably been wise, and that, at
any rate, it was supported by the bulk of moderate opinion. He had
found, in fact, that the right wing of his party was much stronger
than he had realized; and since that wing was politically closest
to the conservatives, or Pompeians, with the shattered remainder
of whom he wished to live at peace, he was anxious now to face
about, reverting to his old dream of a coalition. Antony, he saw, was
regarded as a level-headed man who, while being a sound democrat,
would stand no nonsense from the rabble; and a renewal of his
friendship with him would thus help the political situation.
Moreover, Antony seemed now to have turned over a new leaf
in his private life. He had dismissed Cytheris and her theatri-
cal crowd, and was married to the capable Fulvia, who, as the
wife of Clodius and then of Curio, had won Caesar's esteem;
and hence there were high hopes that he would no longer be
deemed a black sheep by the respectable element in Roman society,
but would serve Csesar's purpose as a factor in the union of the
two political camps that union which alone could mend the wreck-
age of the now ended civil war. Csesar's desired rapprochement with
"Plutarch; Antony.
MARC ANTONY 195
the conservatives was so evident that Brutus wrote a letter- to Cicero
saying that the Dictator seemed actually to intend to set up a gov-
ernment on the old aristocratic lines 23 ; and, this being so; I think
it is clear that the quarrel with Antony required to be ended. And,
after all, Caesar must have felt that a man who could defy him as
boldly as Antony had done in regard to the payment for Pompey's
house would be safer as a friend than as an enemy.
Antony, of course, was very happy at the reconciliation, and
as he jogged homewards in Caesar's carriage his thoughts may well
have turned gratefully to Fulvia who had persuaded him to take
this fortunate step. He told himself that she was evidently a woman
in a thosuand, and he made up his mind to pay back his debt to her
by trying his best to be faithful to her. While the party was still two
or three days' journey from Rome, Caesar was obliged to stop off
for a few nights at a certain city to attend to some business ; and
Antony therefore obtained permission to go on ahead, for he knew
that Fulvia would be deeply anxious about him, and would be
worrying herself as to whether the quarrel had been patched up or
had been intensified by the step she had advocated. But when he ar-
rived on the outskirts of Rome he dismissed his escort, and went into
a little tavern where he wrote his wife a letter telling her that he
loved her and that she need never fear that he would return to the
arms of Cytheris.
He waited in hiding in this inn until it was dark, and then, muf-
fling himself up in his cloak, he drove in a hired carriage to his
house, and when the porter at the gates asked him who he was and
what he wanted, he replied in a dramatic whisper that he was an
express courier from Marc Antony. He was then led into the presence
of Fulvia, to whom he silently and ominously handed the letter;
but when she had read it and knew from it that he was not only safe
but was full of love for her, she burst into tears, whereupon Antony
threw off his disguise and flung his arms around her. 24
This little joke of his, however, caused a good deal of trouble,
for soon the story got about that he had come back secretly and
in flight to Rome, and thpt Csesar had been defeated. At length he
was obliged to show himself at the Comitia, and to explain that
^Cicero: Ad Atticum, xiii, 40, I.
84 Cicero: Philippic ii, xxxi; Plutarch: Antony.
196 MARC ANTONY
he had merely come on ahead in connection with some private busi-
ness, and that Gesar would presently arrive; but at a later date
Cicero threw the incident up at him in a public speech, exclaiming,
"O worthless man ! was it in order that a woman might see you be-
fore she hoped to do so, that you disturbed the city by nocturnal
alarms and with terrors of several days' duration? My friends, mark
the trifling character of the fellow!"
Cicero, of course, could never appreciate Antony's jokes, which
generally had a touch of horseplay about them; but in this particu-
lar instance he failed to see what we can plainly see now, that An-
tony was wildly elated at the termination of his quarrel with the
man he had idolised and at his coming return to public life. The
estrangement had been a nightmare to him, and now that all was
well again he wanted to dance a jig on the rostra in the Forum or
turn cartwheels all down the Sacred Way.
CHAPTER X
Antony's Consulship, and the Death of Csesar.
45-44 B.C.
IN Caesar's mind there was never rest: no sooner had he com-
pleted one task than his ambition set him another. He came back
from Spain full of the idea of conquering Parthia, the mighty Orien-
tal empire which was the only dangerous rival of Rome. Doubtless
many of his officers had begged him to make the attempt to wipe out
the stain of the defeat of Crassus, and to recover the legionary
standards then captured by the Parthians; but he was impelled not
so much by motives of this kind as by a romantic desire to open the
fabulous East to Roman dominion and exploitation.
No one can understand the character of Csesar who does not
realize that with him accomplishment always stumbled impatient-
ly along in the footsteps of vast and airy vision. Grand as were his
achievements, his plans were grander, and were ever crowding out
all satisfaction from his mind and urging him on to further efforts.
He was always striving to touch with his practical hand the thing
which his inner eye beheld; and time and again he imperilled not
only his own life in so doing but also the lives of tens of thousands of
his soldiers. Once, when he was a younger man, he had burst into
tears because he had not equalled the record of Alexander the
Great! and now at the age of fifty-seven he still desired with burn-
ing intensity to outdo all other men who had ever lived.
Parthia presented the most promising field for these ambitions.
If only he could annex that great empire to Rome as he had an-
nexed Gaul, the road would be open to India and the remainder of
the known world. Alexander had marched throughPersia into India;
197
19 g MARC ANTONY
but he, C#sar, would do more than that: he would bring these
teeming and wealthy lands under the perpetual sway of Rome, and
he himself, the Dictator of Rome, would thus become Lord of the
Earth, the autocrat of the entire human race. In all his campaigns
he had plunged into the fray without thought of disaster, relying
confidently upon his good fortune which never seemed to desert
him; and in regard to Parthia he was certain that he would succeed
where Crassus had failed. His luck was astounding; and he could
not resist the feeling that the miraculous was ever at work in his
behalf
He began at once to make his preparations; and his first con-
cern was the selection of a man who could safely be left in charge of
the western world while he himself was swallowed up in the
East. His choice fell upon Antony, in whose whole history there is
no clearer indication of greatness, no more sweeping vindication of
his character. It is obvious that Caesar had by this time realized how
loyally his lieutenant had served him during his absence in Egypt,
and how successfully he had governed the country, in spite of the
unfortunate affray with Dolabella in the Forum. He saw now that
Antony was the strongest man in Rome as well as the most reliable;
and, more than this, it must have become apparent that he was
not merely a devoted follower but a colleague who would act
upon his own initiative in a crisis.
Caesar was to be Consul again for the coming year 44 B.C., and
he proposed Antony to the electors as the candidate for the other
Consulship, the plan being that Antony in Rome should govern the
empire while he himself was away at the wars; and during the next
few weeks the two men must have been closeted together for many
an hour, discussing ways and means. Antony was nearly twenty
years younger than Caesar, and in these conversations must have
treated him with the respect due to an elder and greater man * : but
at the same time he stood up to him boldly, and was no more afraid
now of taking an opposite view in a discussion than he had been of
defying him during the time of their estrangement. Indeed, one may
well suppose that it was just this independence of opinion in Antony
which his senior liked, more especially since the word of Caesar was
1 Cicero (Philippic ii, xxxii) says he was very humble in Caesar's presence; but
the evidence from other sources contradicts this.
MARC ANTONY 199
at this time absolute law and he was surrounded by people who
made it their business to agree with everything he said and to ap-
prove of everything he did.
The complete overthrow of the last of the Pompeians in Spain
had raised Caesar's position to an unprecedented level, and during
the last weeks of the year 45 B.C. he came to be regarded with more
actual awe and reverence than had ever been bestowed by the Ro-
mans upon any one of their rulers at any time in their history. The
growth of this public attitude towards him had been rapid and be-
wildering; and it is perhaps best exemplified by a reference to the
letters of Cicero in regard to him.
A year go the orator had boasted of Csesar as a friend, and
had even shown some patronage towards him ; but now his awe of
him clearly reveals itself. In the middle of December, 45 B.C., Csesar
came to dinner with him while staying in the neighbourhood of his
country home ; and after he had gone, Cicero wrote to Atticus 2
saying that the dread experience of entertaining so formidable a
guest was one which, though it passed without mishap, he would
shrink from enduring twice. "Caesar," he said, "is not the sort of
person to whom you would say T shall be most delighted if you
will come again.' Once is enough!" An army of af least two thou-
sand men accompanied him and bivouacked in the grounds, while his
suite filled three dining rooms, and the servants* quarters were
crammed with his slaves and retainers. It was not a visit, Cicero
complains : it was a billeting.
Antony's election as Consul for the new year, and partner
in Caesar's autocracy, was greatly resented by Dolabella who had
hoped that he himself, as the recognized leader of the extreme demo-
crats, would be given some position of trust -even the Consulship,
in spite of his youth 3 untrammelled by the control of a man such
as Antony who was not only a moderate but also his personal enemy.
He was bitterly disappointed. He had believed that Caesar, who had
so severely punished Antony for his attack upon the mob, would this
time leave a real representative of the People in charge: he had
never dreamt that he would ^take Antony back into his confidence
and place him in absolute power, which was tantamount to muzzling
the left wing and putting all authority into the hands of the right. So
a Cicero: Ad Atticum, xiil, 52. 'Cicero: Philippic ii f xxxii.
200 MARC ANTONY
great was his annoyance, that Csesar was quite afraid of the young
man, and once, when he had to pass the gates of Dolabclla s house
in the country, he ordered his guards to draw their swords and to
close in around him as he went by. *
The mob, too, began to show some hostility to Csesar, an-
grily complaining, I suppose, that he was going to leave them at the
mercy of a Consul who had been responsible for the massacre of
eight hundred of them; and so serious did their protests become that
at last, to appease the socialists, Csesar hit upon the novel compro-
mise of proposing to make the hostile Dolabella vice-Consul for
him in Rome during his absence, that is to say a sort of junior part-
ner with Antony in the government, though without much real
authority. But here Antony showed once more his fearless defiance of
Gesar. In a public meeting of the Senate he opposed the appoint-
ment of Dolabella with all his might, abusing him roundly and be-
ing abused by him in return; and, later, when the matter was being
put to the vote in the Comitia, he forbade the proceedings on techni-
cal grounds, and Csesar was obliged to abandon the idea, 5 thereby
incurring Dolabella 5 s passionate hatred.
It had not yet been decided at what date the Parthian campaign
should be opened, and meanwhile Csesar spent his time in putting
in motion some of those schemes with which his head was filled.
He sent for the astronomers whose work had interested him in
Egypt, and set them to the difficult task of adjusting the calendar,
the nominal seasons having fallen some eighty days behind the actu-
al, owing to the ignoring for centuries of the fact that the length
of the true year is a fraction of a day over the three hundred and
sixty-five days which constitute the calendar year. 6 Next, he began
to collect and codify all the existing laws of the Romans ; he started
to establish public libraries in all parts of Rome; he proposed to di-
vert the course of the Tiber in order to drain the Pontine marshes,
to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, to lay out a road
4 Cicero : Ad Atticum, xiii, 52.
'Cicero, however, (Philippic i\, iaotfi) suggests that Caesar had already agreed
with Antony that Dolabella should fee dropped. I have followed Plutarch's Antony.
*The adjustment having been made, an extra day was added every fourth
year, as we do now, it being supposed that the length of the year was 365 days, 6
hmirs. Actually, however, the year is $65 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and the error
caused the calendar to be some days in advance of the seasons in 1582 when it was
again adjusted by Pope Gregory XIII.
MARC ANTONY 201
across the Apennines, to construct a great port at Ostia, to divide up
the Campus Martius into building sites and to lay out a new campus
at the foot of the Vatican hill. His building-projects were vast. He
proposed, for instance, to erect a temple to Mars which should be the
biggest and grandest thing of its kind in the world ; and he began the
construction of the huge theatre afterwards completed by Augustus
and now called the theatre of Marcellus.
In all these undertakings Antony rushed about, busily helping
him. 7 He was a happy man at this period, for not only was he en-
joying his work, but his domestic life was also providing him with
pleasurable excitement. At just about the time of his reconciliation
with Caesar his wife Fulvia had presented him with a baby son:
they had named him Marcus Antonius, but familiarly they called
him Antyllus, a shortened form of Antonillus, or "Little Antony."
They were both very proud of him, Antony himself being always a
family man at heart, and having often jovially declared that the
more children he had, legitimate or otherwise, the better he would
be pleased. Fortune, indeed, seemed to be smiling upon him; and
both in his relations with Fulvia in his home, and in those with the
Dictator at his office, he showed himself to be a contented and light-
hearted companion. In one respect, however, his loyalty to Caesar
was beginning to be somewhat tried : the great man was now defi-
nitely considering the possibility of making himself actual mon-
arch of the Roman world, and of this project Antony did not ap-
prove. It frightened him, because he felt that it might result in
another catastrophic civil war the republicans against the mon-
archists this time. He watched the growth of the idea in Caesar's
mind and was greatly troubled by it, even though its magnificence
made its appeal to his dramatic sense. The two extremes of so-
ciety the proletariat and the conservative aristocracy were
opposed to any tampering with the republican constitution, and
only the middle classes, it seemed to him, would be likely to
accept the innovation. But Caesar was in no mood to be corrected;
the consciousness of his unlimited power had fevered his brain, and
his cool, critical faculties had been overpowered by the imaginative
and romantic qualities of his nature. He was, as it were, intoxicated
by his fortune, and nothing could hold his moth-like thoughts back
7 Dion Cassius, xlvi, 15.
202 MARC ANTONY
from the bright candle of his dream of sovereignty. He wanted to
be King of the Earth; he wanted to found a dynasty, and to hand
on his glory to his descendants.
At this time Queen Cleopatra was once more his guest in Rome,
having returned from Egypt towards the close of 45 B.C., and
there can be little doubt that she played an active part in the de-
velopment of these schemes, 8 and that her baby, Csesarion, was
the heir whom Csesar had in mind when he pictured himself as an
old man seated upon the throne of the world in the years to come,
after the boy had grown to manhood. Antony could see clearly
enough now that he wanted to make Cleopatra his royal consort,
and for that reason had called her back to Rome; and not only
he, but a great many other people, had already formed the same
opinion.
The Queen of Egypt was so obviously the right partner for
the would-be monarch. She was, as has been said already, a pure-
blooded Macedonian Greek of ancient and royal lineage, possess-
ing all the elegance and culture of that race which fashionable
Rome was then trying to emulate, and having as her background
the artistic and intellectual splendour of her city of Alexandria,
at this time the undisputed centre of Greek art and thought. She
was clever, witty and exceedingly fascinating, if not actually beau-
tiful, and, being just four-and-twenty years of age, she still en-
joyed the charming exuberance of youth. She was fabulously
wealthy, and she would bring as her dowry the vast riches of Egypt
with its growing trade with India and the Orient those far-off
lands whose fabled splendours had so gripped Gesar's imagination.
Antony, as Consul now and Csesar's partner, must often have
met her, and must have been called upon to express polite admira-
tion for her baby, whose parentage Caesar did not deny, the child
having, indeed, a close resemblance to him. 9 Fulvia, too, must
have been a frequent visitor at the Queen's quarters, and one may
picture the two women comparing the merits of their babies, though
Fulvia, to be sure, was a more interested politician than mother,
and was more concerned with Cleopatra's doings in the field of in-
' Cleopatra's return to Rome is shown by Cicero's letters, for he speaks of her
presence there, and departure after Caesar's death.
Suetonius: Casar, Hi.
MARC ANTONY 203
trigue than in the nursery. But the situation was awkward both
for Antony, and his wife, for they had also constantly to meet
Calpurnia, Csesar's legal spouse, who, no doubt, would have been
very willing to tear Cleopatra's eyes out, more especially since
she had no son of her own. Csesar himself, however, was not con-
scious of embarrassment, and, feeling that he was above the law,
blandly instructed a lawyer to draft a bill authorizing him, if
necessary, to marry the Queen or anybody else without having to
divorce Calpurnia, 10 of whom he seems to have been rather fond
in his own way, though he did not pretend to be faithful to her
or even to the two of them.
Antony and Fulvia had also to meet and consider Servilia. She
had been Csesar's mistress for years, and though she was nearly as
old as Csesar himself, she was still his good friend and had recently
received from him the present of some great estates as compensa-
tion, people said, for his having transferred his affections to her
daughter, Tertia, 11 the child of her marriage with Junius Silanus
and wife of that Cassius who was afterwards the chief of Csesar's
assassins. Servilia was the mother of Brutus, presumably the son of
her adultery with Csesar; and since it was quite likely that Csesar
might forgive Brutus his recent marriage and nominate him as his
heir, in the event of his plans in regard to Cleopatra and Csesarion
miscarrying, the future of this now elderly lady was full of pos-
sibilities.
As the weeks went by Csesar became more and more anxious
to settle the question of an heir an heir, that is to say, to his name
and authority as well as to his fortune for he felt that he must
make a decision before he set out for Parthia; and Antony was
doubtless brought into the discussion very fully, since, in the event
of Csesar's death while abroad, it would be he who, as Consul,
would have to carry out the great man's last wishes. In Spain Csesar
had had with him his grand-nephew, the young Octavian, now
eighteen years of age, who, as has already been explained, was the
son of his sister's daughter, Atia; and on his return to Rome he had
made a will in which he bequeathed his property jointly to this
young man and two other grand-nephews, the sons of another of
his sister's daughters. Lately, however, he had been staying with
10 Suetonius : Casar, III
204 MARC ANTONY
Phillipus, 12 Atia's second husband, where he had had the oppor-
tunity of taking another look at Octavian; yet still he was un-
decided as to whether to make him his successor.
Octavian was a rather pimpled and unhealthy youth with a
chronic cold in his head 13 ; and Caesar, while admiring in him a
certain courage and resourcefulness, does not seem to have thought
him physically strong enough for the strain of public life. He de-
cided, however, to give him a military training with a view to tak-
ing him on the Parthian expedition if his health should improve;
and for this purpose he now sent him over to Apollonia, on the
other side of the Adriatic, where the expeditionary army was being
concentrated, and where he could complete his education under
Greek professors.
Csesar does not seem to have considered him a desirable heir
to the sovereignty which he wished to establish, but in the event
of his, Csesar's, death in Parthia while Csesarion was an infant,
Octavian would perhaps be more suitable than anybody else as the
heir to his name and estate, and at last after much hesitation, he
made up his mind to add a codicil to his earlier will to the effect
that Octavian should be adopted into his family and should assume
the name of Csesar. 14 He did not tell him of his intention, however, 16
for he obviously hoped to live long enough to see Caesarion grown to
manhood, in which case a new will would have to be made in favour
of the latter; but Antony was undoubtedly in the secret, and per-
haps approved of the nomination, for Brutus, the only likely alter-
native, was a rather critical and unfriendly personage. It was no
good considering Cleopatra and her infant son at this juncture,
Csesar seems to have said : in due course the child would anyhow
become King of wealthy Egypt, and that was fortune enough unless
and until his father could win a throne for himself, marry Cleo-
patra, and make him heir-apparent to the sovereignty of the whole
earth, with Rome and Alexandria as joint capitals of the world-
wide kingdom, 18
Antony was perplexed and troubled by all this talk of mon-
archy, Since their estrangement Csesar had not been quite the hero
; Ad Atticum, xiii, 52. "Suetonius: Augustus, Ixxx,
Saetoifcus: Casar, Ixxxiii. "Suetonius: Augustus, viiL
Suetonius: Casar, Ixxix.
MARC ANTONY 205
to him that he used to be, and he was now fully alive to the defects
in his character his rashness, his overweening ambition, and his
growing arrogance. One day Caesar told him that the learned men
in charge of the Sibylline Books had found a prophecy therein
which declared that Parthia would never be conquered except by
a king, and that therefore this title ought to be conferred upon him,
if only outside Italy. On another occasion, when some overzealous
admirer had placed a royal crown on one of his statues and two
Tribunes of the People had removed it and had sent the man to
prison, Caesar summarily dismissed them from their office. It is
true that the commotion caused by this incident obliged him to
deny in public that he was aspiring to the monarchy; yet the fact
remained that almost daily he was permitting new honours to be
conferred upon him which were the most palpable preludes to king-
ship.
Perhaps the most significant of these was the permission granted
to him, at his own request, to be buried within the precincts of the
city instead of outside the walls as the law enjoined; for in Alexan-
dria Caesar had seen the sepulchres of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt
grouped around the mausoleum of Alexander the Great in the heart
of the city, and his imagination had leapt forward over the centuries
to the hoped-for day when the visitor to Rome should be shown the
tombs of the Caesars, the sovereigns of the earth, similarly grouped
around his burial place in the middle of the metropolis.
Other honours included the right to wear a triumphal robe
on all state occasions, to be escorted everywhere by a bodyguard of
senators and gentlemen, to sit upon a golden throne in the Senate,
to ride in a sort of state coach, to have his portrait impressed upon
the coinage, and so forth. It was decreed that a statue of him should
be placed in every temple, and two on the rostra in the Forum;
and finally his image was set up in the Capitol beside those of the
seven kings who had ruled Rome before the days of the Republic.
But if these precursors of monarchy worried Antony he must
have been even more perplexed by another and more extraordinary
phase of Caesar's increasing megalomania which now began to
unfold itself. In Egypt the sovereign was regarded as a divinity,
Cleopatra being an incarnation on earth of Isis- Venus; and Caesar
while in Alexandria had not only become accustomed to the idea
20 6 MARC ANTONY
of having a goddess for his mistress but had found it not too pre-
posterous to think of himself also as superhuman, for so the Egypt-
ians regarded him, and so his invariable good fortune seemed to
indicate. His family traced its descent back to Venus; and Cleo-
patra, who was Venus on earth in the opinion of her subjects, may
well have hailed him as a fellow divinity and have imbued him
with the sense of his superiority to mortal clay. At any rate he
now began to assert his divinity, no doubt telling Antony with
a smile that he did so for reasons of state, but making it apparent
enough that he thought of himself at least as the instrument of a
higher power even though he had no very clear conception of the
nature of that power and was decidedly agnostic in his religious
beliefs.
By his commands, or with his consent, a decree was now pro-
mulgated raising him to the official status of a god, and a temple,
dedicated to him under the name of Jupiter-Julius, was ordered
to be built; while in the temple of Quirinus his statue was set up,
inscribed with the words "To the Immortal God/' A college of
priests was established whose business it was to minister to his
divine nature, to celebrate annual festivals in his honour and es-
pecially to make sacrifices to him on his birthday, the name of
the month in which he was born being changed from Quinctilis or
Quintilis to Julius in his honour whence comes our word "July."
It is difficult to say whether or not Caesar took his deification
very seriously in his own heart, but the evidence seems to indicate
that, after his first bewilderment, Antony, at any rate, regarded
the matter as lightly as its political dangers would permit; and
when Caesar asked him, 17 as fellow Consul, to undertake the duties
of Priest of this new religious order, one may imagine that he
slapped his thigh and gave his jovial consent. The nature of the
duties he would have to perform intrigued and amused him. The
priestly college belonged to the Lufercal order, that is to say it
was under the patronage of the god Lupercus, an ancient Italian
deity who was both the protector of the flocks against his servants,
the wolves, and also the lord of fecundity, in which aspect he was
identified with the Arcadian Pan. There were already two colleges of
this order, the Quintilian and the Fabian; and the new establish-
s, xliv, 6.
MARC ANTONY 207
merit was called the Julian, its members being termed luperd Julii.
At the annual festival of Lupercus, held on the 15th of February,
a crowd of naked boys from each of the colleges was wont to parade
the streets, and the Priest in charge of them made his startling
appearance stark naked, or wearing nothing but a loincloth of
goat-skin. The ceremonies always began with the sacrifice of a
goat and a dog, the former representing the goats of Pan and the
latter the wolves of Lupercus. The Priest was then daubed with the
blood, at which he was required to utter yells of laughter, and to
go bounding away down the street brandishing a whip made from
strips of the skin of these animals. With this he hit at every woman
he encountered, this being supposed to endow her with fecundity :
I may add that the whip was called the februa, a word still pre-
served in the name of the festal month, "February/ 5
Antony, always proud of his magnificent figure, was highly
diverted at the thought of appearing in this state of nature in the
very Forum, for a Consul of Rome leaping about, naked and un-
ashamed, would be a spectacle never before witnessed in the city.
He was not sure, of course, that he would dare to enact these duties
at the approaching festival; yet it could not be denied that in
doing so while holding a Consulship he would have the sanction of
religious law if not of custom. After all, the whole affair had some-
thing of the nature of a carnival, and at such a time, surely, even a
Consul could unbend.
Meanwhile, during January and the early days of February,
44 B.C., new honours were conferred upon Caesar. He was nomi-
nated perpetual Dictator and Censor of Rome, that is to say
absolute ruler for the duration of his life; and he was given the
official title of Imperator. This word, which signified a victorious
military generalissimo, had always been a title of honour con-
ferred by the army upon a leader who had been eminently success-
ful in a major battle, but it had not yet assumed the monarchical
meaning implied in our rendering of it Emperor; and it is incorrect
to say that Caesar was the first "Emperor" of Rome in the modern
sense of the word, for the term did not in his lifetime convey the
idea of sovereignty. Still, it is not to be supposed that the title
of Rex, or "King," was aimed at by him, for the word had an ill
sound in Roman ears, and once when somebody in the crowd hailed
20 8 MARC ANTONY
him by that name there was such general consternation that he
quickly called out "I am Csesar, and no King!" Thus, it may be
that he intended to raise the title of "Imperator" to the kingly
significance it afterwards attained.
His growing regality and arrogance, as has been said, increas-
ingly worried Antony, who racked his brains for a means of turn-
ing Caesar's mind from the thought of monarchy 1S without incurring
his violent displeasure. Instances of this arrogance were daily
accumulating. On one occasion Csesar received the whole body of
the Senate without rising in the customary manner from his seat,
and it was only when he was informed of the offence he had thereby
given that he apologised by saying that he was suffering from an
upset stomach and was afraid to stand up lest by so doing he should
bring on an embarrassing spasm of the gripes. On another occasion
he was heard to remark that whatever he said ought to be regarded as
law, that the republican form of government was merely a name,
and that he would never follow the precedent of Sulla in resign-
ing the arbitrary powers of Dictator.
Cleopatra, too, was becoming rather presumptuous now that
she believed her hopes of marriage to Caesar and their joint eleva-
tion to the throne to be so near realization. Cicero, who paid an
occasional call upon her, told his friends that he detested her and
that her "insolence," as he described it, was hard to bear. Csesar
had recently caused a temple to Venus, his divine ancestress, to
be erected in Rome; and now he ordered a statue of Cleopatra
to be. placed therein, as though she were an incarnation of that
goddess, while, for circulation in Egypt, he allowed her figure to
be impressed upon the coins in the guise of Venus, holding the little
Caesarion, as Eros, in her arms. Her haughtiness, therefore, is under-
standable; but none the less it gave great offence, and increased
the sheer horror with which C^sar was regarded by the old-
fashioned republicans. He had by now pardoned all his former
enemies of the Pqmpeian party, and had welcomed back to Italy
those who had been in exile, even restoring much of the confiscated
property; but he could never reconcile them to his autocracy, and
his movement towards monarchy filled them with dismay, Antony
was aware of their secret murmurs, and his fears f or Csesar's safety
"Dion Cassius, xlvi, 17, 19.
MARC ANTONY 209
were intensified as he observed how many of his closest friends
were showing their disapproval and were hinting that the Dictator
was going too far and that his colleague in the Consulship ought
to tell him so.
At length came the day of the Lupercalia, and Antony, having
fortified himself with liberal potations of wine, presented himself
at the place of sacrifice stark naked except for the slip of goat-
skin around his loins, and rather drunk. 19 The people laughed and
clipped their hands to see their Consul thus enacting the time-
honoured role, and when, having been "blooded" and handed the
februa, he pranced away into the crowd, the women ran merrily
forward to receive from him one of those jovial blows he was de-
livering to right and left and incidentally to admire his splendid
physique. Here and there, however, a man or matron of the old
school turned away in pained disapproval; and amongst these was
Cicero, who asked what could be more shameful than this foolery
and this nakedness, and declared that Antony, even if he were
Priest of Lupercus, ought not to have forgotten that he was Consul
too. 20 How different this was, he sighed, to his own conception of
the Consular dignity ! How the standards had been lowered since
this loose spirit of democracy had taken hold of men's minds!
What a dreadfully vulgar personage Antony was, he murmured,
turning his eyes from the roistering figure: what offence he must
be giving to the good old nobility !
Caesar, clad in triumphal purple, was seated on his golden chair
upon the rostra, waiting to take the salute from the procession of
nude boys, when his colleague came bounding into the crowded
Forum, followed by the laughing mob, and pushed his way towards
the Dictator for the purpose of hailing him as patron lord of the
Lupercalia; but suddenly, so it seems, Antony observed in the
throng one of Csesar's ardent admirers holding in his hand an im-
provised royal diadem ornamented with bay-leaves with which he
intended, perhaps, to crown one of the Dictator's statues, profiting
by the license of the merry occasion to do so with impunity. 21
Instantly a daring idea presented itself to Antony "who was
* Cicero: Philippic Hi, v. *> Ibid., it, xxxiv.
a Cicero (Philippic ii, xxxiv) suggests that Antony had brought the diadem with
him, but it seems more likely that he chanced upon it.
210 MARC ANTONY
always ready for any audacious deed," as Velleius says, in recording
the incident: 22 he would offer this diadem to Ctesar himself, here
and now, and thus force his hand, obliging him to show the public
whether or not he really desired to be king, and at the same time
giving the masses the opportunity to reveal their own sentiments
in the matter. If Csesar were to accept it, the significance of his
action could, if necessary, be explained away afterwards by referring
to the jesting nature of the occasion or by saying that Gesar had
merely been allowing himself to be crowned as king of the fes-
tivities. If, on the other hand, he were to reject the diadem, the
quietus would be given to the rumours that he was about to over-
throw the Republic.
Antony therefore waved the diadem about and called out to
those around him, laughingly declaring that he was going to put
it on Csesar's head to see what would happen. Some of the Caesarian
enthusiasts thereupon lifted him up onto the rostra, and, amidst
a mixed din of laughter, cheers and groans, he harangued the
people, 23 making a witty and non-committal speech which, so far as
anybody could understand his meaning at all, conveyed a friendly
rebuke to the Dictator for his dalliance with the thought of king-
ship. 24 He spoke of the great Consuls of the past who had built up
the Republic; and, declaring that Csesar had so greatly increased
Rome's power that he was now regarded as autocrat by Gauls, Afri-
cans, Egyptians, and so forth, asked with a smile if he were also
desirous of being autocrat over the Romans as well. The actual
words of the speech are lost, but we are told that "they caused
Caesar to change his mind; they humbled him, and made him stop
short, feeling a touch of alarm."
At the close of his harangue Antony held the diadem out to
Caesar, repeatedly thrusting it towards him and withdrawing it
again, looking down at the crowd and then at the Dictator, as though
asking whether or not they or he had a clear determination in regard
to it. Some people cheered and clapped their hands, others shouted
their disapproval, many were silent or merely laughed; and Caesar,
93 Velleius, ii, Ivi.
88 Cicero: Philippic ii, xxxiv; Dion Cassius, xlvi, 19.
"Dion 'Cassius (xliv, 19) quotes a contemporary speech to show that it was
Antony's purpose to rebuke Caesar.
JDLIUS CAESAR
British Museum
MARC ANTONY 211
annoyed by the levity of the crowd, and recognizing, too ? its lack
of unanimity, at last angrily pushed the diadem away from him,
whereupon Antony shouted to the people, telling them to take notice
that the crown of king had been offered to Csesar and that he had
refused it. "Thus," we are told, "by Antony's cleverness and con-
sumate skill an end was put to Csesar's ideas of monarchy, the proof
of which was that from that time forward he no longer behaved
in any way as a king." 25
But though Csesar, after this incident, certainly did take care
to avoid the accusation of arrogance, and was perhaps making up
his mind to wait until he returned from Parthia before pressing
forward his plans in regard to the monarchy, a great many people
continued to eye him with suspicion and to complain of his despot-
ism. They told themselves that the late Pompey had been quite
right to attempt to defend the Republic against this individualist,
and they felt now that the civil war had not been a fight between
the conservatives and the democrats, but one between the upholders
of the constitution on the one hand, and, on the other, this single
individual who, under the pretence of democracy, was scheming
for a throne. There followed, in fact, a revival of the Pompeian
party, a recrudescence of the old bitterness against Csesar, a secret
regathering of those who had fought him in the field and had since
been pardoned, to whom were added those democrats who did not
desire to see the constitution upset.
Antony knew that this opposition was crystallising, and that
some sort of plot was being formed against Csesar. He had even
been sounded cautiously about his own attitude, and had .felt
himself obliged to tell those who spoke to him that under all
circumstances, he would remain loyal to Csesar, even though he
did not approve of his actions. 26
There were two men in particular whom he suspected of hid-
den hostility to the Dictator. One of them was the lean and hungry-
looking Cassius, the husband of Servilia's daughter, Tertia; the
other was this personage's brother-in-law, Brutus, Cesar's supposed
son. Cassius had been serving under Crassus at the time of the Par-
thian disaster, but had escaped from the shambles, and later had
commanded a part of Pompey's fleet in the war against Csesar, and
38 Dion Cassius, xliv, 17, 19. "Plutarch: Antony.
212 MARC ANTONY
in the end had surrendered to him and been pardoned. Gesar had
magnanimously made him Pnetor for the present year, 44 B.C.,
and had promised him the governorship of Syria in the coming
year; but the man's hatred of his benefactor had recently been
revived owing, I suppose, to Caesar's notorious adultery with his
wife, Tertia: 27 "I don't like Cassius," the Dictator once remarked.
"He looks so pale : I wonder what he can be aiming at." 2S
Brutus was a man whose character puzzled Antony; but Gesar,
believing him to be his son, would hear no word against him. There
are not many incidents in Caesar's life, nor temperamental passages,
which inspire in us any sense of sympathetic sorrow on his ac-
count: he was so self-sufficient, so fortunate, so absorbed in the
pursuit of his ambitions, that he makes little demand upon our
compassion. Yet the story of his relationship to Brutus is pitiful,
and does supply just that touch of sentiment which is otherwise
largely absent from the tale of his brilliant, adventurous, and
steely career. He loved Brutus, but Brutus disapproved of him;
and therein lay the Dictator's tragedy.
It will be recalled that in the civil war Brutus had taken sides
with Pompey against Caesar, and had been generously pardoned for
doing so. Later he had married Porcia, the late Cato's daughter,
and by thus renewing his alliance with the old conservative party
had deeply offended Caesar, who, nevertheless, forgave him once
more. Recently rumours had reached the Dictator's ears, perhaps
through Antony, that Brutus was plotting against him; but he
would not believe them. "What!" he exclaimed, putting his hand
upon his heart. "Do you suggest that Brutus will not wait out the
duration of this little body of mine?" 2g and it seemed to those
who heard his words that even yet Caesar was thinking of Brutus
as a possible heir to his power and his name.
Actually, however, Brutus was anxious to disavow, in public
at any rate, his relationship to the Dictator, for he could not tolerate
the thought that he was illegitimate and had no right to his name,
and he wished also to clear his mother's reputation of the aspersions
^faieh Jb&d so long been cast upon it. The founder of the family
wbost^ame he bore was the celebrated Brutus who overthrew the
early; &$pgs of Rome and established the Republic; and he pre-
27 Suetonius: Casar, 1. ** Plutarch: Antony. * Plutarch;
MARC ANTONY 213
'erred this honourable lineage which, though of plebeian caste,
glittered with illustrious figures to the patrician but less his-
orically famous ancestry of Caesar. It seems that he made a point
>f speaking of his descent from the great liberator, Brutus, and to
Caesar's affectionate and paternal advances he responded with a
:oolness which deeply hurt the elder man.
He was now forty years of age, a sallow-faced, thin, grave and
ilent man, rather conceited and self-centred, a considerable
cholar, an eager student of philosophy, and a strict adherent to
he old school of upright, temperate behaviour. His manner of
peaking was curt and abrupt; but there was no such brevity in
us thoughts, for he was in the habit of turning matters slowly over
n his mind, submitting his every action to the tribunal of his
:onscience, and so carefully considering the moral principles in-
rolved that he must have often been an intolerable bore. Good-
less, integrity, and righteousness are qualities so essentially spon-
aneous that a man who would behave in a high-principled man-
ier, but whose conscience does not give him an instant lead, must
>f necessity be wanting in that social ease which is true virtue's
)assport and authority in a wicked world. But Brutus had no such
:ase : he was always torturing himself as to whether he should act
n this way or in that, and, consequently, he was often a most tedious
:ompanion.
Lately he and Cicero had become fast friends, though there
vas this difference in the character of the two men, that the orator
vas a bland, professional exponent of outward righteousness whose
nner thoughts were often mean and contemptible, whereas Brutus
vas a struggling disciple of traditional virtue, whose heart was
imdamentally honourable. At this time Cicero had returned to
lis accustomed position upon the fence, unable to make up his
nind which side of the political field most sweetly called to him.
3e wanted to be friends with Gesar, that is to say with the para-
nount power, and would perhaps have stepped down upon that
iide of the fence had he been encouraged to do so; but neither
2sesar nor Antony bothered very much about him indeed, Cicero
vas once kept waiting so long in an anteroom for an interview
vith the Dictator that his vanity must have been greatly hurt. 30 On
80 Cicero: Ad Atticvm, xiv, I.
214 MARC ANTONY
the other hand, the conservative party paid him great respect,
but lacked the influence to help him to renew his past triumphs
as a public character.
His friendship with Brutus, however, suited his two-faced
policy; for Brutus was at once the favourite of Caesar and a repre-
sentative figure in that group which was most opposed to him.
Together the two men bemoaned the Dictator's growing despot-
ism; and in many letters exchanged between them the impotence
of the republican government, which lay fawning at Csesar's feet,
was sorrowfully discussed. Cicero paid his friend the compliment,
too, of dedicating some of his literary compositions to him, and
amongst these was the Tusculan Disputation^ a work in which
the author advocates suicide as an honourable means of escape
from conditions, political or otherwise, which are intolerable. 82
Brutus, on his part, dedicated to Cicero a work of his on Virtue^
which is now lost.
Antony watched this friendship ripen and knew that it boded
no good for Caesar. He felt, as has been said, that some secret
organization, hostile to the Dictator, was in existence, yet could
not lay his hand upon the culprits. At length in came to his ears that
Brutus was being anonymously urged to give his support to some
kind of movement which had as its object the ending of the au-
tocracy. Unsigned messages had been found on Brutus's desk, in
which such words as "You are asleep," or "You are not a true
Brutus' 3 were written; and at the foot of the statue of the first
Brutus, who had overthrown the Roman kings, a note was dis-
covered, reading "O that we had a Brutus now!"
It seemed unthinkable, of course, that this quiet and pedan-
tic man would allow himself to be involved in any kind of murder-
ous conspiracy against one who was his reputed father, and who
was certainly his loving benefactor; yet the fact could not be over-
looked that the character of Brutus was such as would be easily
influenced by any suggestion that it was his duty to strike a blow
for the Republic which had been the creation of the first Brutus.
He took things so very seriously. Antony, I may add, did not know
then that Brutus was capable of writing to Cicero, "To have more
authority than the laws and the Senate is a right I would not
"Cicero: Tusculanarum Disputationum. Cicero: Ad Atticum, xv, 2,
MARC ANTONY 215
grant to my father himself," and, again, "Our ancestors thought
that we ought not to endure a despotism even if it were that of our
own father" 83 words which meant that, although he might per-
haps really be Caesar's son, he was prepared to resist any tampering
by him with the constitution.
Meanwhile, Csesar was absorbed in the preparations for the
Parthian war. He had abandoned .the idea of a monarchy, or rather,
had postponed his plans until after the coming expedition; and
it would seem that he had advised the disappointed Cleopatra to
go back presently to Egypt and to await there his victorious re-
turn. He had planned to leave Rome for the East a day or two
after the Ides of March, that is to say March 15th, and, during
the first days of that month, he and Antony had a hundred mat-
ters to discuss together, since the latter, as Consul, was to carry on
the government of the empire single-handed during the Dictator's
absence.
It had been arranged that Csesar should address the Senate,
for the last time before his departure, on the morning of March
15th; and at sunrise on that day, therefore, Antony went over to
the Dictator's house 34 so as to accompany him to the assembly,
which was to meet in the early morning in the great hall adjoin-
ing the theatre built by Pompey in what is now known as the
Campo di Fiore. To his surprise, however, he found Csesar very
reluctant to leave his room, declaring that he had a premonition
that some sort of disaster would befall him. A few days ago a
fortune-teller had implored him to beware of this particular date,
the Ides of March; and though he had taken little notice of the
warning at the time, the thought seems since to have occurred to
him that the man might have had knowledge of some sort of plot
against him and might have used his professional art of prophecy
to convey this piece of actual information. Moreover, Calpurnia,
Csesar's wife, had had a very bad dream during the night, and had
fancied that her husband was dying in her arms an experience
which may, perhaps, be accounted for by the fact that at supper
on the previous evening the conversation had turned to the subject
** Cicero: Ad Brutvm, i, 16, i, 17.
**For the following details see Plutarch (Casar; Antony; Brutus); Suetonius;
Dion Cassius; Velleius; Appian; Nicholas of Damascus; etc.
216 MARC ANTONY
of death and the Dictator had declared that a man's best end was
a sudden one. Caesar, in any case, was not feeling well, and long
after the sun had risen and the hour of the opening of the meeting
was past, he was still debating whether or not he should attend the
Senate that day at all.
He had just asked Antony to go alone to the meeting and to
postpone its business until the following day, when Decimus Brutus
Albums, one of Csesar's most trusted officers, was ushered in, having
come across from the waiting Senate to find out the cause of the
delay. The Dictator told him that he had decided to remain at
home that day, whereupon Albinus begged him not to give the
senators any such cause for regarding themselves as slighted, par-
ticularly since on this occasion they were going to pass a measure
which was of utmost importance. They had decided, he said, to
authorize the Dictator to assume the status of King in all parts of
the empire outside Italy itself.
At this piece of news Csesar's heart must have leapt within
him. At last his dream, which he had temporarily abandoned, was
to be realized : he was to be King! He did not doubt for a moment
that the next months would find him marching, like Alexander the
Great, through conquered Parthia into India; and when these
distant lands had been annexed to Rome he would be in very
truth Autocrat of the Earth.
Antony, of course, must have been amazed at the news, for no
such senatorial decision had been made known to him. It did not
occur to him, however, that Albinus, Caesar's old friend, was lying;
and the fear of treachery, the thought that for a terrible, hidden
reason the Dictator was being urged not to disappoint those who
were so anxiously waiting for him, did not enter his simple mind.
He must have seen only the satisfaction in Gesar's face, the gal-
vanizing of his tired body as he rose to his feet and, in the character-
istic manner described by Cicero, ran his fingers through his now
grey 85 and scanty hair, and adjusted his robes.
Albinus grasped his hand and led him towards the door, An-
*&y following; and presently the three of them were being car-
ried in their litters through the crowded streets. They had not gone
far when Oesax observed the fortune-teller who had given him the
**Dion Cassius, xliv, 49.
MARC ANTONY 217
warning, standing at the roadside as he passed; and beckoning the
man to him, he said with a smile, "Well, my friend, the Ides of
March are come." "Yes," the soothsayer replied, "but they are not
yet gone" ; and, so saying, disappeared amongst the throng. A little
later another man, holding a letter, pushed his way forward, and,
on being allowed by the Dictator to approach for it was his custom
thus to receive the petitions of the poor whispered to him, "Read
this, Caesar, alone and quickly," and pressed the document into
his hand, where it still remained, unread, at the end of the journey.
Upon arriving at the steps which led up to the portico of the
hall wherein the Senate was assembled, they alighted, and a certain
personage who was a friend of the Dictator's kept him in conversa-
tion for a while, much to the evident perturbation of Albinus, who
was talking to Antony but whose eyes were fixed anxiously upon
Csesar. Antony supposed that the renewed delay in the Dictator's
entry into the Senate was the cause of this anxiety, and he was not
surprised when, presently, Albinus left him and hurried up the
steps into the building as though to remind Csesar that he was al-
ready late enough. Csesar took the hint and made his way into
the building; but just as Antony was about to follow him he-was
hailed by a certain Trebonius, an ex-Consul and one of Caesar's
trusted generals, who now took him by the arm and began to tell
him a long story.
Antony was impatient to enter the building, and was about
to interrupt the surprising garrulousness of this old soldier, who
may well have seemed to be a little intoxicated, when, suddenly,
an outburst of shouts and cries within the hall fell upon his ears,
and, a moment later, a number of frightened senators came running
out through the doorway. Two or three of them, seeing Antony,
called frantically to him to fly for his life : Csesar had been assas-
sinated, they gasped, and he, too, would be murdered unless he
could make his escape.
Antony hesitated, but as he stood there, bewildered and unable
to collect his thoughts, some of the assassins appeared at the door-
way brandishing their daggers which were wet with blood; and at
this, knowing that Csesar was beyond his aid, he took to his heels,
joining the crowd of flying senators and at last dashing with two or
three fugitives up a side street and into the house of one of them.
21 8 MARC ANTONY
Here, panting and horrified, he tore off his consular robes, and put
on the clothes dragged from a startled servant, so as to be ready to
escape in this disguise through the back premises if those who
sought his life should burst into the house from the front.
While he waited in an agony of suspense he was given by his
companions a breathless account of what had happened. While he,
Antony, had been detained in conversation by Trebonius, who was
evidently one of the conspirators, specially appointed to that task,
Caesar had entered the hall and had taken his seat upon his golden
chair, whereupon a certain Tullius Cimber, a man whom the Dic-
tator regarded as a loyal friend and to whom he had given the
governorship of Bithynia, had approached him under the pretence
of presenting a petition. Thereupon a crowd of other senators and
high officials had gathered around him, pressing so close that Caesar
had ordered them sharply to stand back; and, at this, Tullius had
snatched at his gown and had pulled it from him, while a certain
Casca, whom Caesar had recently made a Tribune of the People,
had struck at his benefactor with his dagger, wounding him in the
shoulder.
Then the whole pack had fallen upon him, and Caesar, fiercely
defending himself with his stilus^ had fought his way to the foot
of the statue of his old enemy Pompey, where, suddenly seeing his
dear Brutus coming at him knife in hand, he had cried out in
anguish, "You, too, Brutus, my son!" and had offered no further
resistance, but had pulled his clothes across his face, as the old
patrician custom required the dying to do, and had fallen to the
ground pierced by countless wounds. Most of the conspirators were
Caesar's closest friends, and Antony must have been dumbfounded
as the names of some of them were mentioned.
Presently news came that the conspirators, who numbered be-
tween sixty and eighty, had marched up to the Capitol and had
barricaded themselves in; and during the afternoon the further re-
port was received that it did not seem to be their intention to kill
anybody else, on hearing which Antony resumed his consular dress
and boldly sent for his lictors and soldiers to conduct him to the
Forum. It was a dangerous proceeding, and he realized that he
was taking his life in his hands, for he did not know the temper of
the mob; but now that Caesar was dead he 'was sole Consul, and
MARC ANTONY 219
actual ruler of the empire, and he felt that he must assert himself
quickly if anarchy was to be prevented.
He was, in fact, ashamed of having gone into hiding at all;
but, although he did not yet know it, the question as to whether
or not he should be killed at the same time as Caesar had indeed
been vigorously argued by the conspirators, and he owed his life
in the end only to the advice of Brutus. The others, led by Cassius,
had all said that as Caesar's friend, and as a man who had the army
as his command, he ought to be put out of the way, especially
since "his great physical strength made him formidable" 36 the
fact being that Antony could have thrown most of the assassins
over his head. But Brutus, after turning the matter over and over
in his mind, had argued on the contrary that "so gifted and honour-
able a man as Antony, and such a lover of great deeds/ 587 might
perhaps be persuaded to come over to the side of "republican lib-
erty," as they termed the object of their plot, and, anyway, by
leaving him to function as Consul, they would show that they were
out to defend the constitution, not to overthrow it.
It was probably in the dusk of early evening that Antony made
his reappearance, and he must have found the streets silent and
deserted. The conspirators were up in the Capitol, at a loss to know
what to do, and the nervous citizens were for the most part locked
in their own homes, shaking in their shoes and wondering what
was going to happen, expecting at least some sort of street-fighting
before the morning. He went straight to the Forum where a small
crowd had collected, and there he was informed that the body of
the murdered Dictator was lying in one of the public buildings. The
assassins had at first intended to throw it into the river, but they
had been too anxious about their own safety to carry out this part
of their programme, and, in the end, three loyal slaves had borne
the corpse to its present sanctuary. It may be supposed that Antony
entered the building and looked down with sorrow and dismay
upon the body of his murdered friend and colleague, afterwards
making arrangements for a guard to be placed upon it; but what
actually happened is not recorded. Thence he went to Caesar's home,
where he had a painful interview with the distracted Calpurnia, the
widow, as a result of which she agreed to hand over to him, as Con-
w Plutarch : Antony. * Plutarch : Brutus.
220 MARC ANTONY
sul, all the Dictator's papers and letters, and all the money and
valuables in the house; for there was considerable likelihood that
the conspirators would raid the place.
Most of the night must have been spent in collecting these
things and transferring them to Antony's house, and there could
have been little sleep for him. Next morning, the i6th, he went
again to the Forum, attempting to resume the business of state
in his Consular capacity; and here he heard a full account of all
that had happened. One very ugly fact then became known to
him. When the assassins had swarmed out of the hall in which
the murder had been committed, they had all shouted "Cicero!
Cicero!" S8 at the top of their voices; and it certainly appeared
though to this day it has never been proved that the orator
knew all about the plot and, thinking the return of the conservative
party to power to be a certain consequence, had given it his bless-
ing. A few hours after the assassination, moreover, Cicero had sent
a letter to Basilus, one of the conspirators, then in the Capitol, con-
gratulating him and saying how delighted he was 89 ; and later in
the day he had gone up there himself to see Brutus and his other
friends, and to tell them how heartily he was with them. One may
suppose that, in his colossal vanity, he had expected to be called
upon to fill the consular vacancy left by Caesar's death, and to act as
Antony's senior colleague; and, indeed, it may well have been the
intention of the conspirators, should they obtain the public ear,
to obtain this post for him, for he was regarded by them as the
sound and elderly exponent of the highest traditions of republican
government, a man whose writings on the subject were masterpieces
of literary eloquence his De Republic^ for instance, and his De
Legibus.
But Antony now heard that the incorrigible Dolabella had also
visited the Capitol, and hard on this news came the report that he,
Dolabella, had induced the mob to vote him Consul in Csesar's
place, declaring that the dead Dictator had always intended him
to be his deputy. Presently the young man appeared in the Forum
and made a speech in favour of the murderers, and this was so well
fre&uved by the crowd that Brutus and Cassius were induced to
down from their stronghold and give a public explanation of
Cassius, xliv, 20; xlvi, 22. "Cicero: Ad Familiares, vi, 15.
MARC ANTONY 221
their conduct. An escort of conservatives or impartial senators was
provided for them, the general feeling being that the number of the
conspirators, their high standing, and the earnestness of their views,
entitled their two leaders to a safe-conduct and a hearing, while the
urgent need to avoid civil war required a conciliatory attitude.
Brutus then made a short and very solemn speech, but it was
received in such ominous silence by the main part of the crowd
that he and Cassius were glad enough to retire thereafter to the
Capitol again. Its reception was the first indication which Antony
had had that public opinion was not in favour of the conspirators;
and it emboldened him to adopt a stronger attitude. He theref ore
called a meeting of the Senate for the following morning, and went
back to his house, where the leaders of the Caesarian party appear
to have discussed the situation with him until tired eyes and aching
heads could no longer resist the demands of sleep.
On the morning of the lyth 40 the Senate met in the court of
the Temple of Tellius, or the Earth; and here Antony's statesman-
ship was tried to the uttermost, for while the majority of the sena-
tors were in favour of commending the assassins for their patriotism
in removing a man who had desired to overthrow the Republic, the
crowd outside the gates had suddenly swung away from Dolabella's
two-faced leadership, and was demanding the punishment of Bru-
tus, Cassius, and their whole gang. Antony felt strongly that blood-
shed was to be avoided at all costs, and he made a short speech
advising a temporary amnesty, urging that no action should be
taken either one way or the other until the will of the People was
known. But he proposed that the office of Dictator, at any rate,
should be abolished in view of the calamity it had brought about 41 ;
and this measure received general approval.
At this, Cicero rose to second the motion, advising that an "act
of oblivion" should be passed, and that not only should the con-
spirators be pardoned but also those who had supported Csesar in
his undoubted tyranny. This, of course, was a thrust at Antony; but
the latter swallowed the insult with as good a grace as possible,
biding his time until he could find out just how much public sup-
port he could command. He was obliged, however, to go across to
the Forum and to address the crowd, telling them to await the issue
40 The date is fixed by Cicero: Philippic ii, xxxv, fl Cicero: Philippic i, 1.
222 MARC ANTONY
patiently, and not to throw the nation into civil war. Thereafter,
he returned to the senatorial meeting, where an amnesty of some
sort was finally decreed, notice of it being sent up to the weary and
disheartened men in the Capitol.
The hostility of a growing section of the crowd towards them,
however, restrained them from leaving their place of refuge, and
again that night they slept in the Capitol, while Antony worked
until the small hours in an attempt to discover how far he could
rely on the troops and on the officials and citizens to support him
were he to turn at once upon the conspirators. It is obvious that he
was eager to avenge the dead Dictator, yet the paramount necessity
of the moment was to maintain peace.
Next morning, the i8th, it was agreed by the Senate that An-
tony should invite the conspirators once more to come down into the
city; but having sent a message up to them, he received the blunt
reply that they would only descend if both Antony and Lepidus, one
of Caesar's loyal friends who was in command of some of the troops
in the city, should each send his son up to the Capitol as a hostage.
At this, Antony seems to have consulted his strong-minded wife
Fulvia, and, perhaps somewhat to his surprise, that capable woman
at once agreed to send her baby Antyllus, now some eight or nine
months old, up to the Capitol in the care of its nurse, but only on the
condition that Cassius should spend the night in her house. A brief
consultation with Lepidus induced that personage to act in a similar
manner : he would send his infant son to the Capitol if Brutus, the
other leader of the conspiracy, would sleep at his house. In other
words, Brutus and Cassius were to be hostages for the good be-
haviour of the conspirators, and the infant sons of Antony and
Lepidus were to be hostages for that of the Caesarian party.
That night, therefore, Antony sat down to-supper with Cas-
sius as his guest Cassius who was the murderer of his hero, Csesar;
and no more painful situation could well be imagined. The conver-
sation of the two men during the meal appears to have displayed
their concealed hostility, and it is recorded that Antony suddenly
turned upon Cassius, saying, "Have you by any chance got a dag-
ger up your sleeve even now?" "Yes, I have," Cassius replied, "and
a big one; if you, too, should try to play the tyrant !" 42
Cassius, xliv, 34.
MARC ANTONY 223
Early the following morning, the igth, the Senate met again,
and Antony, addressing the assembly, proposed that Cassius and
Brutus should each be assigned the governorship of a distant pro-
vince, and should thus be sent away from Rome; and to this the
senators agreed. The meeting then passed a vote of thanks to An-
tony for having staved off civil war, and "he left the Senate," says
Plutarch, "with the highest possible reputation and esteem, for
it was apparent that he had prevented a revolution, and had com-
posed, in the wisest and most statesmanlike manner, questions of
the greatest difficulty and embarrassment."
By this time, however, he had made up his mind to turn popu-
lar opinion definitely against the conspirators, for he had obtained
possession of Csesar's will, and knew that the contents would be suf-
ficient to excite the People to an outburst of love for the dead man;
and he therefore gave notice that he would read the will that after-
noon, and, at the same time, in the teeth of the opposition of the
conspirators and their friends, he boldly instructed his officers to
prepare for the public funeral on the following day. He himself
would speak the oration over the corpse ; and if the gods should grant
power to his words he would raise such a storm of hatred against the
assassins that not one of them should escape. Rome was calmer now,
and at last he could act as his heart dictated.
CHAPTER XI
Antony's Struggle to Prevent Civil War, and his Difficulties with Caesar's
Heir, Octavian.
44B.C.
BRUTUS was the only one of the assassins who could be said
to deserve sympathetic consideration, for Antony had now heard
of the great mental struggle through which this slow-brained and
studious personage had passed, and he could see that the unfor-
tunate man had been actuated by motives as altruistic as they were
misguided. When Cassius was first organising the conspiracy, so
Antony was told, it was agreed that Brutus ought to be persuaded to
join in the plot for the reason that his acquiescence would give al-
most a religious sanction to the plan, 1 and therefore the greatest
pressure had been brought to bear upon him. In revealing the plot
to him, for instance, Cassius had said : "Rome demands from you,
Brutus, as an hereditary debt, the extirpation of tyranny'* ; and thus
by approaching him as the genuine descendant of the great Brutus,
the liberator of the nation from the rule of its early kings, the con-
spirators aroused in his heart that bright flame of family pride,
which had but flickered within him so long as the stigma of being
Caesar's bastard was upon him.
But after he had entered into the plot, his conscience had given
him no peace; and his mind had been so tortured by its silent argu-
ments that sleep had left him, and at last his wife Porcia, Cato's
daughter, had become aware that he was living in the anguish of a
terrible secret, and in the end had persuaded him to admit her into
it. Thereupon she, too, had been rendered sleepless and distracted,
and on the fatal day she had nearly revealed the conspiracy by her
hysteria. At the moment of the assassination, in fact, she was in a
dead faint.
1 Plutarch: Brutus.
224
MARC ANTONY 225
Antony's determination to punish the murderers, however, was
not influenced by these personal considerations, and he proceeded
to bring about their ruin. Caesar's will was read in his, Antony's,
house in the presence of those of the Dictator's friends and relatives
who were available; and, as has already been stated, it was found
that he had left a great part of his fortune to Octavian, and smaller
shares to his two other grand-nephews, and that Octavian had been
asked to adopt the name of Csesar. In the event of the two above-
mentioned grand-nephews dying before him, their portions were to
go to that same Decimus Brutus Albinus who had betrayed him,
and to Antony a mark of esteem which the latter must have deep-
ly appreciated and which is yet another indication of his worth.
But the clause in the will which Antony's mind seized upon,
and which was obviously his trump-card in the line of action he had
decided upon, was that which bequeathed his beautiful gardens be-
yond the Tiber to the people of Rome as a public park, and a per-
sonal gift of three hundred sesterces 2 to every individual in the city
a sum which must have represented several weeks' wages to the
working man. The size of the gift, however, was not its outstanding
feature: the fact which was so valuable to Antony was that Csesar
had thereby shown his unfailing love for the People, and that the
bequest would establish him in their memory as a loving father, a
friend of the poor and the humble.
On the following day, March 2oth, 3 the funeral took place
in spite of the passionate protests of Brutus and Cassius, who saw
clearly enough that the public cremation of the Dictator would give
occasion for a show of sympathy very detrimental to their cause.
Antony, however, had been stubbornly determined to do Csesar
this honour. He had arranged that the body should be carried in state
to the Campus Martius, where a pyre was constructed, close to the
tomb of the Dictator's daughter, Julia, Pompey's wife; but the
earlier ceremonies were to be performed in the Forum, and hither,
seething with excitement, the crowds flocked. All day long the
musicians played their dirges and solemnly beat their drums, while
a Suetonius: Casar, Ixxxiii; Plutarch: Brutus; Dion Cassius, xliv, 35. See
Bme: Rdmische Geschichte, vii, 263.
'The date is not certain, but as Caesar had then been dead for five days it is
unlikely that the funeral was further postponed.
226 MARC ANTONY
from time to time actors performed short scenes from classical plays
chosen by Antony because of their bitter appropriateness to the
occasion, one such being an excerpt from a tragedy by Pacuvius, in
which the words "I saved those who have killed me" were repeated
with telling effect.
At nightfall Antony, magnificent in his Consular robes, made
his way to the Forum, determined to arouse the people to a whole-
hearted support of the Caesarian party, yet equally determined to
prevent any riotous attacks upon the assassins, who had confined
themselves to their houses in anticipation of trouble. His purpose
and in it he proved his statesmanship was to maintain peace in
this hour of turmoil, yet to excite indignation against the crime, so
that in due course the conspirators might be brought to justice with-
out a fight when Rome was once more tranquil.
On his arrival upon the turbulent scene, in the gathering dark-
ness, the body of the Dictator was taken from its temporary mortu-
ary, and, to the dissonant accompaniment of cries and mournful
chanting, was laid upon an ivory bed covered with purple and cloth
of gold, this being placed under a gilded catafalque which repre-
sented in small size the temple of Venus, Gesar's divine ancestress.
After the religious ceremonies had been performed, during which
Antony himself intoned the funeral chant, a herald, instructed by
him, recited to the crowd a list of the honours, both human and di-
vine, which the Senate had conferred upon the Dictator, and cen-
soriously repeated the oath so vainly taken by the senators to de-
fend his person with their lives. Antony then mounted the rostra
and addressed the now silent multitude in a speech which, though
short, 4 was "in every way beautiful and brilliant/* 5 and which was
afterwards described by Cicero 6 who, however, was not present
when it was delivered as a panegyric capable of arousing the
most intense emotion. The text of the speech quoted by Appian and
Dion Cassius is probably a later elaboration of what he said ; but it
seems that he referred tenderly to Caesar's brilliance and goodness of
heart, and spoke of the great benefits he had conferred on the people
of Rome both in his lifetime and now by the terms of his will.
Then, carried away by his own eloquence and by his very gen-
* Suetonius: Casar, Ixxxiv. 5 Dion Cassius, xliv, 35.
Cicero: Philippic ii t xxxvi.
MARC ANTONY 227
uine sorrow, he impulsively told his officers to bring him the blood-
stained garments of the murdered man which had been exhibited at
the head of the bier; and with these in his hands he turned again
to his audience, dramatically showing them the rents made by the
daggers, and the stains of the blood, the tears running down his
face as he struggled to find words by which to vent the torrent of
the emotions pent up within him these five days.
It had been arranged that at the end of his oration the funeral
procession should set out for the Campus Martius to cremate the
body, as the law decreed, outside the city's walls; but the crowd was
so stirred by Antony's words that, as though the matter had been
carried by vote, they determined with one consent to take the pro-
ceedings out of the hands of the officials and to cremate the corpse
here in the heart of the metropolis. Some shouted out that it should
be carried up to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and there burnt
in the holy-of -holies, the most sacred spot in Rome, even though in
so doing the whole building would probably go up in flames ; others
declared that it ought to be burnt upon the spot whereon the murder
had been committed.
But at length somebody proposed that the cremation should
be carried out here in the Forum; and, instantly taking to the
suggestion, the crowd seized upon chairs, benches, and any available
pieces of woodwork, heaping them up into an enormous pyre, onto
which the bier was presently lifted. Lighted torches were applied,
and soon the body of the Dictator subsided into the flames, while
the sparks shot up into the night, and the smoke rolled like a cloud
across the face of the rising moon.'
Many persons, moved by the general hysteria, tore off their
outer garments and flung them into the blaze; military officers un-
buckled their valuable breastplates and cast them upon the pyre;
and here and there a weeping woman was seen to throw her jewels
into the flames. On all sides people were sobbing passionately, beat-
ing their breasts, and wailing the funeral chants; and at length
the fierce cry was raised that the houses of the assassins should be
attacked and burnt, whereupon, in spite of Antony's alarmed pro-
tests, a rash was made for the pyre, and flaming pieces of wood were
carried off by shouting and gesticulating men, who hastened away in
the direction of the houses of Brutus, Cassius, and others. "It was
228 MARC ANTONY
you, Antony you, I say/ 3 cried Cicero 7 a few months later, "who
let loose those attacks ! Abandoned men, slaves for the most part,
hurled firebrands into our houses, and we were obliged to repel their
onrush by our own unaided exertions; but it was you who set them
on!"
Antony was in reality aghast at the emotional outburst his
words had caused, which endangered the peace of the city, and
he checked the rioting with the utmost severity, giving orders that
those caught setting fire to any house should be summarily executed.
Brutus, Cassius, and the others no doubt owed their lives to his
prompt action; but there was one man at least who was not so fortu-
nate. He was a Tribune of the People, named Cinna; and the mob,
confusing him with Caesar's brother-in-law, Cinna, the Praetor, who
had lately made some disparaging remarks about Caesar's moral
life, pounced upon him and literally tore him to pieces, finally
dancing off with his head stuck upon a spear.
On the following day there was further rioting, and the con-
spirators were again besieged in their homes, while the miserable
Cicero, appalled to find that his ambitions and rash inclinations had
led him to identify himself with the losing faction, sat behind the
barred doors of his house, listening to the tumult outside and curs-
ing Antony and all his works. Brutus, of course, was in despair. He
had expected the majority of the senators and officials to commend
the murder ; and though a great many of them had certainly done so,
and had made possible the technical amnesty which now existed, he
had not reckoned with the People. Antony's speech at the funeral
had been fatal to the murderers' cause; and it seemed likely that the
popular party would now oblige them to leave Rome, even, indeed,
if it did not exact from them the extreme penalty. Only Antony
stood between them and public vengeance; and the question which
fevered their minds was whether he, Antony, was strong enough to
maintain peace, or whether he would not be more likely to be
carried along on the tide of the mob's excitement; more especially
dnce it was obvious that his own emotions would tend to lead him
in that direction.
Dolabella had already fled from the city, 8 having lost his
T Ciefc?p: Philippic ii f spcxvi.
* At lesst he is i^t beard of again for several weeks.
MARC ANTONY 229
influence with the rabble by his having shown friendliness towards
the conspirators; the Senate was divided in its views, and was
much too frightened to be of any service to the cause of peace;
and Cicero had proved himself to be far from the bold leader of
republican thought his writings and his private conversation had led
Brutus to expect him to be. The murderers, in fact, had supposed
that they would have a solid backing of better-class opinion; they
had pictured themselves grouped around the revered figure of Cicero,
from whose inspired lips the doctrines for which they stood would
pour in acceptable language ; and they had supposed that Dolabella
would swing the mob over to their side.
But Antony had wrecked their hopes. He had secured a public
funeral for Caesar against the opposition of all those who ap-
proved of the assassination; he had used the occasion to play upon
the emotions of the People; and he had turned to overwhelming ac-
count the contents of the Dictator's will. True, he had managed
to maintain order and to effect a sort of compromise during these
perilous days Brutus admitted that they had to thank him for
that; but the stupefaction of the whole city had aided him, and
now he seemed to be undoing the good work, and allowing the popu-
lar hysteria to carry him off his feet.
During the next few days one conspirator after another slipped
out of Rome and went into hiding in the country. Albinus, by one
of Csesar's last appointments, had been given the governorship of
Cisalpine Gaul; and, since one of Antony's measures in the emer-
gency had been the ratification of all the Dictator's decrees, Albinus
hastened to his province to take possession of it before his authority
was repealed. Tullius Cimber, likewise, hurried off to Bithynia,
of which Caesar had made him governor. By the first week in April
Cicero, too, had given up all hope of leadership, and had fled in
despair to his villa on the Bay of Naples.
Shortly after this, a certain Herophilus, who had been ban-
ished from Rome by the Dictator, came back to the capital, and,
wishing to gain the favour of the rabble, set up a sacred column on
the spot where the body had been cremated, and, by arousing the
religious frenzy of those who here made their devotions to Oesar's
divinity, attempted to incite the crowd to further acts of violence
against the conspirators, as a result of which Cassius, Brutus, and
230 MARC ANTONY
others were again besieged in their houses, these becoming so many
forts each defended by its household against the angry mob. A
critical state of affairs developed; but Antony acted with prompt
and justifiable severity. He caused Herophilus to be arrested and
executed, and thereby saved the city once more from anarchy.
He then authorized Brutus and Cassius to leave Rome, and
before the middle of April these two had fled to Lanuvium, a day's
journey to the south. Trebonius followed shortly afterwards, go-
ing as governor to the province of Asia Minor, that post having
been given him by the man he had helped to assassinate. At the same
time the leading members of the Caesarian party also left the metro-
polis; and some time in April Queen Cleopatra packed up and set sail
for Egypt, taking with her the Dictator's little son, Csesarion. She
must have been a broken-hearted woman; for, whether her expecta-
tions were based on fact or not, she had believed that her marriage to
Csesar had been imminent and she had never for a moment doubted
that she would presently be seated at his side on the throne of an
Egypto-Roman kingdom whose bounds would be the ends of the
earth. Now, by the daggers of men she had often entertained at hr
house, her position had been changed in an instant from that of pros-
pective omnipotence to the mere sovereignty of a restless little
country across the seas a sovereignty which a new and unfriendly
Roman government might soon send its legions to take from her.
To Antony she must have poured out her troubles, but he could
do nothing to help her : she would have to return to Alexandria and
bide her time until the Roman situation had clarified; but there can
be little doubt that her thoughts, fired by Caesar's vision of world-
wide dominion, must have burnt with the desire to ally herself to
whatever new master of Rome the Fates might throw up out of
the existing chaos. In her own way she had loved Csesar, but she
had loved his dreams still more; and the overthrow of all those
splendid hopes which had completely possessed her mind for these
last months must have left her more desolate than any words have
the power to describe.
Though history is silent upon the subject, it is not credible
that she could have gone back to her own country without first hav-
ing attempted to enlist the good offices of Antony; and it may be
supposed that he had promised to do his best to help her to maintain
MARC ANTONY 231
her position at least as sovereign of an independent kingdom. In him
she may have already seen the future autocrat of the world; but his
authority was by no means unshakably established, nor was he
following, even with unsteady tread, in Csesar's clear footsteps. He
had been opposed to the Dictator's ideas of monarchy, and he had
not yet so much as dreamt of aiming, himself, at that royal crown
which Caesar's hands had so nearly grasped. All his energies were
directed at present to the sole purpose of maintaining peace under
democratic rule in his distracted country, and the highest flights of
his imagination carried him no further than the vision of himself
as virtual Dictator for the next few years, governing the empire as
the successor and representative of the murdered Csesar. Some day,
Cleopatra may have told herself, she would whisper into the ear
of a new ruler of Rome the suggestion of a world-throne to be
shared with her and perhaps to be handed on to Csesarion; but
whether or not that man would be Antony she could not yet deter-
mine.
It is possible that before she left she gave him money with
which to maintain his cause, for he was undoubtedly collecting
funds at this time by every means, straight or crooked, and Cicero, a
few months later, demanded to know how it came about that An-
tony, who was heavily in debt on the Ides of March, should have
been free of his burdens in April. 9 "There was nothing in the whole
world," said Cicero, "which anyone wanted to buy that Antony was
not ready to sell"; and though this, of course, was an exaggeration,
there can be little doubt that the urgent need of money required as
urgent a search for it.
King Deiotarus of Galatia and Armenia, a man who had sided
with Pompey against Csesar, and had been deprived by the latter
of part of his dominions, offered a large sum of money for the
restoration of these realms; and Antony very conveniently found
amongst Csesar's papers a memorandum which justified him in ac-
ceding to this monarch's wishes. Many people declared, of course,
that it was a forgery; but the fact that Cicero had recently pleaded
for Deiotarus in the presence of Csesar, in an eloquent speech Pro
Rege Deiotaro which is still extant, suggests that the Dictator
may well have made a note to this effect.
Cicero: Philippic ii, xxxvii.
23 2 MARC ANTONY
Antony then produced another document, purporting to be a
memorandum of the Dictator's, which was his authority for giv-
ing the rights of citizenship to the Sicilians of course at a price;
but here again one may suppose that such an action had been con-
templated by Csesar, very possibly at the instance of Cicero, who
always had the interests of the Sicilians at heart, and it is well-
known that the Dictator had aroused the anger of the conservatives
in the past by his wide gifts of Roman citizenship outside Italy.
Yet one cannot but suspect that Antony did juggle somewhat with
the Dictator's papers; and the Senate certainly made the proposal
that the documents should be placed in the charge of a special
commission. 10 Antony, however, was not deterred by the common
belief that he was resorting to forgery ; and a little later he obtained
a sum of money from the Cretans in return for granting them, again
on the authority of Cgesar, future exemption from taxation. His
justification is that he needed funds for the upholding of his author-
ity, and for winning the support, for instance, of Caesar's veterans;
and it is certain that, while helping himself liberally enough in the
usual Roman way, he spent the bulk of the money in what he con-
ceived to be the public interest.
Towards the end of April the sessions of the Senate closed for
the May vacation, and Antony decided to make a tour of the
country south of Rome in order to feel for himself the pulse of the
nation, and also to do a little recruiting in a quiet way. Brutus and
Cassius had been attempting to undermine the Caesarian cause in
that part of Italy, and had been trying to gain the support of those
old soldiers settled upon the land, whom Antony now wished to en-
list; and Cicero, too, down in the neighbourhood of Naples, had
lately been venting his disappointment by vilifying both the dead
Dictator and Antony. The orator, at this time a sour, grey-haired
man of sixty-three, was so embittered by his misfortunes that, while
m public he maintained for his own safety a neutrality which in-
cluded a treacherous show of friendship to Antony, in private he
allowed himself to become extremely violent in his attacks upon the
Csesarians.
He now spoke of the murder of the Dictator as "the magnificent
"Cicero: Philippic ll t xaodx. Plutarch (Antony), however, seems to exonerate him
from me charge of forgery.
MARC ANTONY 233
banquet of the Ides of March," and regretted that he had not been
invited to take part in it; he spoke of Brutus and Cassius as "heroes,"
and of Antony as a "drunkard" and a "reckless gambler" ; lx and,
to quote a well-known editor of his private correspondence, 12 "he
expressed a satisfaction at the assassination, which, after
Caesar's great generosity to him and his profuse, if not servile, ac-
knowledgment of it, is nothing less than ferocious, so that no por
tion of the whole collection of his letters exhibits his character in
so unpleasant a light." He fretted at the inability of the conspirators
to take any action, and to Atticus he wrote, in April, "I fear me the
Ides of March have given us nothing beyond the pleasure and the
satisfaction of our hatred." 13 That hatred was intense, and gradual-
ly it f ocussed itself wholly upon Antony, the one man who stood
like a hulking gladiator in the path of the assassins' advance.
Antony was able to leave Rome with some easiness of mind be-
cause his wife, Fulvia, and his two younger brothers, Lucius and
Caius, were there to carry on his work and to keep him in close touch
with events. Caius was now Praetor and Lucius a Tribune of the
People, both having been given these appointments by Caesar: they
were men of no great distinction, but they were useful agents of
their brother. Fulvia, too, was in these days an important factor in
political life, and many of Antony's measures -for instance, the re-
habilitation of King Deiotarus 14 were thought to have been initi-
ated by her.
Antony's mother, Julia, was still alive, and, being a member
of the family of the Qesars, was probably a strong supporter of a
policy of revenge against the assassins, although her brother, Lucius
Qesar, was in favour of the Act of Oblivion. Antony's uncle, Caius
Antonius, was also back in Rome now, after nearly fifteen years of
exile on the island of Cephallenia, having been pardoned, it would
seem, by Cesar ; but he could have had little liking for Antony, who
had disgraced and divorced his daughter Antonia, it will be re-
called, because of her misbehaviour with Dolabella. Indeed, Antony
must have deeply offended the returned exile; for, a few weeks
earlier, in a full meeting of the Senate, at which Caius Antonius was
11 Cicero: Ad Familiar es, x, 28; Ad Atticum, xiv, 4; xiv, 6; xiv, 3; xiv, 5.
11 Jeans: Life and Letters of Cicero.
"Cicero: Ad Atticum, xiv, 12, "Ibid.
234 MARC ANTONY
present, Antony had lost his temper with Dolabella, and had pub-
licly branded the fat young man and the unhappy Antonia as adul-
terer and adulteress. 15 Antony was very liable, always, to lose his
temper and to say more than he intended ; and, anyhow, he was very
sore about this intrigue, for it was a reflection upon his own success
as a lover, a matter upon which he prided himself.
His tour of the south was very successful in its purpose, namely
that of arousing, and recruiting, Csesar's ex-soldiers, and counter-
acting the propaganda of the conspirators; but, during the trip, he
seems to have combined business with pleasure in a rather unneces-
sarily reckless way. In spite of the gravity of the situation he gave
very gay parties in the cities he visited, and often drank too much.
At a charming villa near Casinum (S. Germano) on the inland
road to Naples, which had been confiscated from the author, Marcus
Varro, on the dubious authority of Caesar's papers, he entertained a
party of guests, who all misbehaved themselves so thoroughly
that scandal said the floors were awash with wine, and the place full
of the laughter of actresses and prostitutes. At the break-up of this
riotous house-party he was carried to the neighbouring town of
Aquinum dead-drunk; and the inhabitants who had come out to give
him an official welcome heard only his snores issuing from be-
hind the closed curtains of his litter. Reaction from the strain of
the terrible days through which he had passed, and freedom from
the controlling hand of Fulvia, had evidently been too much for
him.
While he was on his way back to Rome, bringing with him a
whole army of Caesar's veterans, news was suddenly brought to
him that Dolabella had come out of hiding, and, declaring that he
was joint-Consul with Antony, had ordered the destruction of the
sacred column set up by the late Herophilus on the spot where the
Dictator had been murdered, was inciting the crowd against the
Caesarians, and was being hailed with acclamation by the senators
who favoured the conspirators. Antony's brother Lucius had come
to verbal blows with the young man; and the city, it was said, was
once more in an uproar, the conservative element rallying round
Dolabella, as though he were the hoped-for saviour of their cause.
Upon hearing these tidings Antony was so stunned that he was after-
'}'*
"Cicero: Philippic ii, xxxviii.
MARC ANTONY 235
wards said by eye-witnesses to have fainted dead away, 16 though
it is more probable that he merely rested his befuddled head against
the nearest support, and shut his eyes in an effort to gather his wits.
Thereafter, he hastened to Rome, arriving towards the end of
May, and thoroughly scaring his opponents by marching the ex-
soldiers through the streets with drawn swords, their shields and
baggage bumping along behind them upon carts. But the whole
face of the situation was changed by the news which awaited him:
Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew and heir, had come to Rome, had
claimed his heritage, arid had taken the name of "Caesar."
Octavian had been at Apollonia when he received the news of
the Dictator's death, and a few days later he had crossed the Adria-
tic back to Italy, where, on disembarking, he heard for the first time
of the contents of the Dictator's will. 17 He then made his way quiet-
ly to Naples, which he reached on April i8th, and thence went
straight to his home, the house of his stepfather, Philippus, not far
away. Philippus was a cautious man, and strongly advised Octavian
not to claim so dangerous an inheritance, 18 especially since he was
only eighteen years of age. At present, he said, it was doubtful
which side would finally gain the upper hand ; and in the event of
the conspirators obtaining control, Octavian's life would not be
worth very much if he were known to be putting himself forward as
Caesar's successor.
Philippus suggested a visit to Cicero, who lived quite close,
and who, superficially, was neutral; and Octavian therefore went
over to see the two-faced old orator, and made himself as agreeable
as he could, 10 not knowing that Cicero was at this very time private-
ly expressing his savage approval of the Dictator's murder. Octavian
wanted to adopt the name "Caesar" at once, in accordance with his
great-uncle's wishes; but Cicero advised him not to do this, and so
did Philippus. The boy then startled them by announcing that he
was presently going on to the capital to see his mother, Atia, who
was still at her town-house in Rome; and not long afterwards he
made the journey there with so little ostentation that Antony, who,
of course, was informed of his movements, did not think the youth
was worth worrying about. It was only when he got back to Rome
"Cicero: Philippic ll t xlii. "Velleius, ii, lix; Dion Cassius, xlv, 3.
* Suetonius: Augustus, viii. "Cicero: Ad Atticum> xiv, 2,
236
MARC ANTONY
that he was told how the daring youngster had proclaimed himself
Csesar's successor. . .
Octavian certainly did not lack courage, and m spite of his being
a poor specimen of manhood, unhealthy, spotty, and somewhat
effeminate in manner, he was unusually active both in mind and
body, being a keen football-player, 20 so long as he did not have
to play in the sun, which hurt his eyes and made him sneeze
and keeping himself fit by long evening walks and runs. He be-
longed very decidedly to Rome's fashionable young intellectuals,
spoke Greek fluently, tried his hand at writing plays and poems,
and, like the members of the modernist movement today, cultivated
an easy, vernacular style free from the sort of grandiloquence
that Antony loved. He dressed untidily, allowed his fair, yellowish
hair to fall into its natural waves without care, and was erratic
about his meals, having a poor appetite and little sense of time.
He had superb confidence in himself, was callous and inclined to
be cruel, and, at this period of his life, was devoid of sex morality,
being unpleasantly familiar both with men and women, 21
Antony had only met him occasionally, and had never regarded
him as a serious factor in the situation; but now the stories
he heard about him were not a little alarming. Caius Antonius,
the Prsetor, reported that the young man had come to him at a
public meeting, and, having asked to address the people, had prom-
ised the crowd that he himself would be responsible for the pay-
ment of the three-hundred sesterces to every townsman. Lucius An-
tonius, the Tribune, reported, likewise, that Octavian had ad-
dressed the Comitia^ making the same promise, and uttering a bold
and sincere panegyric upon the dead Dictator which had been much
resented by Dolabella. Just before Antony's return, moreover, Oc-
tavian had almost caused a riot at a public function by asking to
have Caesar's golden throne brought out, 22 this being refused by
some of the republican Tribunes amidst the loud applause of the
senators.
The situation was almost ludicrously triangular. Antony, up-
holding the democratic cause in the name of the murdered Dictator,
was aiming at the future discomfiture of the assassins and their con-
Suetonius: Augustus, Ixxxiii. */:<, IxviiL
9 Cicero: Ad Attuvm, xv, 3.
MARC ANTONY 237
servative sympathisers so soon as the immediate danger to the na-
tion's peace was averted; and he was bent on retaining the supreme
power in his own hands as the late Caesar's friend, Consular col-
league, and trustee. He was in possession of the dead man's papers,
personal valuables, and so much of his fortune, outside the sharfc
bequeathed to Octavian and his counsins, as could be realized; and
Calpurnia, the widow, and most of Cesar's relatives, regarded him
as the guardian of their rights.
Dolabella, Antony's personal enemy, represented the other fac-
tion, and had now been confirmed by them in his office as joint-Con-
sul, and was doing his best to have the conspirators restored to pub-
lic favour. And now into these troubled waters this boy, Octavian,
had come fishing, and would soon be asking Antony to hand over
Caesar's remaining money so that the bequests might be paid. Octa-
vian, it was true, was rich enough to pay the legacies out of his own
fortune, for his grandfather had been a millionaire money-lender;
but it was not to be expected that he would thus impoverish him-
self.
Antony's policy was clear: much as it went against the grain,
he would have to patch up his quarrel with Dolabella, and attempt
to regain that position of impartiality which he had held in the first
days after the assassination. The audacious Octavian would have to
be squeezed out : there was no room for him in Rome.
A few days later Antony received from the young "Caesar" a
request for an interview, and, in a very bad temper, told him to come
to his house that same house which had once belonged to Pom-
pey. 2S There he purposely kept him waiting in the ante-room for
a long time, and at last, ordering him to be ushered in, asked him
how he was and what brought him to Rome; but before Octavian
had fully stated his purpose, which was to see to the carrying out of
the terms of Caesar's will, Antony cut him short with an uncom-
fortable laugh, and asked him somewhat blusteringly how at his age
he dared to take up the responsibilities of this heritage, when, as he
could see for himself, grown men who were tried in battle and were
used to politics needed all their courage and their experience to cope
with the dangerous situation. He advised the young man to settle
*For this interview see Plutarch: Antony; Appian, Civil Wars, iii, 14; Floras,
iv, 4; Vellelua, n, lac; and Nicholas of Damascus, xxviii.
238 MARC ANTONY
his business and get out of Rome as quickly as possible before
Dolabella, or somebody, murdered him, I dare say he said; and,
giving him a patronizing pat on the shoulder, he hurriedly dismissed
him before anything could be discussed.
The interview brought into Antony's puzzled mind the con-
sciousness that Caesar had known what he was about when he had
made Octavian his heir. This was no ordinary youth: he had rather
a sinister character and an opinion of himself which was disconcert-
ing. The impression he lerft on the elder man was unpleasant, and
Antony seems to have had the feeling that his own game of bluff,
his attempt to scare his youthful visitor, had been a mistake. He
ought to have overlooked his age, and to have bargained with him
as with a man of affairs.
The next few days showed him clearly his error. It was reported
to him that Octavian was openly accusing him of having betrayed
the memory of Caesar by taking no steps against his murderers and
by allowing the amnesty Cicero's famous Act of Oblivion to re-
main in force. The young man had gathered a group of supporters
around him, and was making violent speeches to the mob, urging
them to take vengeance on the conspirators and to brush Antony
aside as one who was too lukewarm to be their leader. He was de-
claring that he alone had the right to act in Caesar's name, and he
was telling the delighted crowds that he was prepared to sell every-
thing he had to pay them the Dictator's bequest, which was being
withheld from them only by Antony's mishandling of Caesar's for-
tune. Csesar had been the People's friend, but Antony was their
enemy: he was a traitor, willing to hobnob with the assassins so
that by a compromise he might keep the power in his own hands.
Antony was startled, and he at once counter-attacked by taking
steps to prevent the ratification of Octavian's adoption into the
family of the Caesars when the measure should come before the
Senate. At the same time he sent for Dolabella, and suggested that
in the face of the common enemy they should compose their dif-
ferences and work together. After all, I suppose he argued, Dolabella
had once been Caesar's devoted friend, and it was only because the
Dictator, in the last months of his life, ha4 slighted him that this
quarrel had arisen which had led Dolabella now to throw in his lot
with the conspirators. But had not Gesar also quarrelled with An-
MARC ANTONY 239
tony himself? They both knew what sort of man Csesar had been,
and how he had dropped his friends mercilessly when they stood in
the way of his schemes; yet who could fail to admire him, and, now
that he was dead, what use was there in taking vengeance upon his
memory? Dolabella and Antony, as the two Consuls, ought to work
together for peace, and for the maintenance of that amnesty which
alone at present could secure it ; and they should both do their utmost
to suppress this youth who was trying to throw the whole nation into
confusion.
Dolabella was a man without scruples, and he seized the op-
portunity of striking a bargain with Antony. His terms were quite
concrete : he said that at the end of his Consulship he wanted to be
made governor of Syria the province promised to Cassius for a
period of five years, so that, if circumstances should permit, he
might lead an expedition against Parthia and thereby gain wealth
and renown; and meanwhile he wanted a sum of money down.
Antony agreed to the terms, and thereupon Dolabella returned to his
Caesarian allegiance, never again giving Antony any cause for anx-
iety about him.
The next thing to do was to reorganize the democratic party,
and to draft as many loyal partisans as possible into the Senate. At
the same time the sympathies of the left wing were enlisted again
by the framing of a new land law through the agency of Lucius
Antonius : its details are not known, but in general it was a socialis-
tic measure, something in the nature of the law put forward by the
Gracchi, and it involved the setting up of a commission with power
to buy land and to distribute it, together with some of the public
domains, amongst the needy. 24
Octavian retaliated by making overtures to the conservatives
or republicans; and the conspirators, seeing their opportunity, there-
upon approached the young man and urged him to join forces with
them against their common enemy, Antony. They tried to persuade
him that although they had assassinated the Dictator, and although
he, as Caesar's heir, had cause to regard them as. family enemies,
nevertheless he and they had more in common than had he and the
democrats. They asked him to try to forget the murder and to unite
with them against Antony's party; and Octavian, in view of the
**Dion Cassius, xlv, 9.
240 MARC ANTONY
dangers of his position, readily agreed to make this unholy alliance.
It was a bewildering and ludicrous volte-face, and obliged him to
show open friendship to those very men upon whom he had so re-
cently demanded vengeance. But he was not embarrassed, at this
period of his life, by any high principles, and his quarrel with An-
tony guided his actions with a far more compelling hand than that
of his duty to the Dictator's memory.
Cicero and the conspirators Brutus, Cassius, and all the others
who had not left Italy were now convinced that Antony ^intended
to repeal the Act of Oblivion and set the law in motion against them
as soon as circumstances should permit; and they were eager, there-
fore, to discredit him. Indeed, they heartily wished that they had
killed him when they had killed Caesar. It was owing to him that
their cause was in such bad shape, and they were constantly blaming
one another for having spared his life on the Ides of March. 25 One
hopeful sign, however, had revealed itself, namely that Albinus, who
had hurried from Rome to take up the governorship of Cisalpine
Gaul, had reported that the legions there had accepted him in spite
of his being one of the murderers of Caesar. Another point in their
favour was that Caesar's Parthian expeditionary force which had
seen a good deal of Octavian when he was with them at Apollonia,
where they still were stationed, had tentatively offered its loyalty
to him in his trouble with Antony, and might now follow his lead in
making friends with the republican party.
But in spite of these reassuring signs they were depressed and
anxious, and Cicero himself, who was always either in the heights
or the depths, was at present in the abyss of despair. He did not
realize, however, that Dolabella had wholly deserted them, and
when it became known that the province of Syria had fallen to him,
Cicero offered to go there with him as his chief -of -staff. The sug-
gestion fell through, however, and the orator then began to con-
sider the expediency of a private journey into Greece, his object
being to retire from Italy until the troubles had blown oven His
nerves had gone to pieces, and he longed for the quiet of some Greek
retreat, where, amongst the philosophers, he might finish the charm-
ing book he was writing on the subject of Old Age, Moreover, he
was at this time weighed down with debt, for he always kept up
30 Cicero: Ad Attlcum, xv, 11 and 12.
MARC ANTONY 241
a style of living far beyond his means; and he longed to escape the
increasing attentions of his creditors. 26 After much hesitation he
sailed for Greece early in August, telling his friends that he was
going to see the Olympic Games.
Meanwhile in Rome Octavian's mother, Atia, spread a cu-
rious story 27 in support of her son's position as Csesar's sole repre-
sentative. She said that before he was born, she fell asleep one day
in the temple of Apollo, and dreamt that that deity in the form of a
fascinating serpent had caused her to be unfaithful to her nuptial
vow and had afterwards carried her procreative organs up to heaven
to be blessed. That same day, moreover, her husband had the start-
ling dream that the sun had risen from out of her midst, as though
she were a range of mountains lying along the eastern horizon. This
tale was passed around the city to the accompaniment of apprecia-
tive nods and exclamations, and it greatly increased the young man's
prestige. He was given an ovation by the crowd at the public games
in July; and when it so chanced that a comet was seen in the even-
ing sky, and the quick-thinking Octavian had declared that it was
assuredly the soul of Caesaur flying to heaven, the enthusiasm was
intense. Octavian then caused a statue of Caesar to be placed in the
Temple of Venus, with a golden star above its head much to the
annoyance of Antony, who felt that by such actions the objection-
able youngster was stealing his thunder.
To add to his troubles Antony was now having difficulty in
dealing with Brutus and Cassius whose continued presence in Italy
was a very disturbing influence upon the public mind. He pro-
posed therefore that they should be sent abroad to supervise the
purchase of foreign corn, a mission which it was the custom to place
in the hands of men of standing. Brutus and Cassius, however, did
not care to be thus disposed of: they had many friends in the
Senate, and they were ever hoping that the republican party would
become strong enough to effect their entire rehabilitation.
At length Antony sent them peremptory orders to undertake this
mission, and in a letter to him dated August 4th 28 they replied in a
tone which revealed their sullen and unbending attitude. "We have
read your letter," they wrote, "which is insulting, intimidating, and
38 Cicero: Ad Atticum, xvi, 2. ^Dion Cassius, xlv, 1.
** Cicero: Ad Familiar es, xi, 3.
242 MARC ANTONY
in every way an improper one for you to have written to us. . . .
Our personal sentiments are these. We are anxious to see you held in
dignity and honour if it be in a free Republic. We do not invite your
antagonism, but, nevertheless, we value our liberty of action more
than your friendship. You should therefore consider again and again
what you are doing, and what your power is able to accomplish ; and
be sure you bear in mind not how long Gesar lived, but how short a
time he was able to behave like a king/'
This last remark was intended as a warning to Antony not to
attempt to play the autocrat; and the letter in general had the
effect of making him reconsider the matter of the corn-buying mis-
sion, for he was not yet ready to come to blows with the conspirators :
the danger from Octavian was too much of a menace to his own
position to permit him to think of himself as all-powerful. Octavian
was his most serious enemy; and his quarrel with this youth seemed
likely to wreck all his plans. His friends were constantly telling him
to beware of his young rival; but the more they did so the angrier
he became.
At length Caesar's old soldiers made up their minds to oblige him
and Octavian to compose their differences and work together for
the good of the State; and they therefore marched in a body to
Octavian's house. The young man thought that his last hour was
come when he saw this army approaching, and, having shouted
orders for the gates and doors to be bolted, he fled to the roof. But
when, to his great relief, he heard the soldiers cheering him, he
crept downstairs again and presently received the leaders of the
demonstration, who told him in no ambiguous terms that he and
Antony had got to shake hands.
The soldiers, it seems, then marched to Antony's house, who
doubtless fled, likewise, to the roof or the cellar, so uncertain was
the temper of the populace, and so prepared had he to be at all
times to save his skin. It was a nerve-racking life. When he under-
stood their purpose, however, he sullenly consented to meet Oc-
tavian; and amidst the cheers of the veterans he and his embarrass-
ingly young rival exchanged visits and agreed to work in harmony.
At about the same time Antony came to an agreement with
Dolabella in their capacity as fellow-Consuls in regard to the
distribution of provincial governorships at the end of the present
MARC ANTONY 243
year, 44 B.C., or earlier, if necessary. Dolabella, as has already been
said, was to have Syria for five years, and was to be permitted to set
out for that province in the early autumn. Antony chose for himself
Caesar's old province of Cisalpine Gaul northern Italy, that is to
say it being so close to Rome; and it was arranged that Albinus,
who was already there, should be transferred to Macedonia, while
the troops then in the latter country should be transferred to Cisal-
pine Gaul to serve under Antony who proposed to hold that govern-
orship, likewise, for a period of five years. Brutus was to be got rid
of by being given the governorship of the island of Crete; and Cas-
sius was to be sent off as governor, it would seem, of Cyrene.
Now it so happened that Cicero's voyage to Greece had been,
delayed by storms, and at length, after a bad tossing at sea, his
ship had been driven back to the Italian coast, where several days
were passed in port waiting for better conditions and a favourable
wind. Here, however, he received news from his friends that the
Senate had been convened for September 1st, and that there was
hope then of gathering so strong a body of senators of republican
views that Antony's plans might be brought to nothing. A copy of
the letter of Brutus and Cassius to Antony was also shown to him,
and he was told that Antony had seemed to take it so to heart that
he was likely to abandon his pugnacious attitude and to aim at some
sort of compromise. Moreover, Cicero was informed that his depar-
ture for Greece had been regarded as a sign of cowardice, and that
he was thought to have but repeated his unfortunate flight of four-
teen years earlier when his behaviour in regard to the Catilinarian
conspirators had made him dangerously unpopular. Even his friend
Atticus wrote to him in bitter sarcasm, saying, "Very well, then, go,
and desert your country : it is quite right in the man who said he was
not afraid to die for the fatherland !" 29
After renewed hesitation and indecision, therefore, he made up
his mind to abandon his journey, and to return to Rome for the
purpose of encouraging his party at this moment when Antony
seemed to be amenable, and also in order to attempt to detach Oc-
tavian from his new alliance. It was a bold step; but he had been
stung by the imputation of cowardice, and for once in his vacillating
career and this, indeed, was one of the great moments of his life
* Cicero: 1 ^ Attuum> xvi, 7,
244 MARC ANTONY
he rose to the occasion with a courage which goes far to outweigh
his former weakness in history's estimation of his character.
"I see/' he had already written to Atticus, "that I shall run
some risks, but I cannot help thinking that it may lie in my power
to do some good for the State/' so When he was warned that An-
tony might force him into subserviency, he replied, "I know a bet-
ter way than that" 81 meaning suicide; and when it was pointed
out that he might be driven into exile he answered, significantly,
"I look to another haven which lies handier to my time of life: all
I wish is that I may reach it leaving Brutus in prosperity and the
Republic re-established." 82 It is hardly to be supposed, of course,
that he seriously contemplated suicide that sequel of political de-
feat which Roman thought had made customary, for there was con-
siderable reason for hope that his party would come successfully
through this period of its difficulties; yet the risk of disaster in some
form was present, and his fine words had a closer relation to actual-
ity than was usual with him.
He arrived back in Rome on the last day of August and An-
tony was irritated to find that he received a great welcome from
the conservative party, and that Octavian, too, paid his respects to
him. The Senate, however, was to meet next morning, September
1st, and Antony determined to snub the interfering old orator on
that occasion by putting forward various measures adverse to the
conspirators 3 interests which the senators, he believed, would be
obliged to pass. One of these a measure likely to delight the crowd
was the proposal that public prayers and supplications should be
made to the spirit of Caesar as to the immortal gods, 83 for the
Senate had already, before the assassination, acknowledged his di-
vinity, and the senators could hardly go back now on their former
admission, much as many of them might wish to do so. It gave An-
tony the greatest pleasure to contemplate the discomfiture of Cicero,
who would of course be present in the Senate on the morrow, and
would have either to acquiesce in this measure or to oppose it public-
ly, in which latter case the mob would be at his throat. It was a
ckver trap laid for him, and Antony looked forward with enjoyment
to the hour when it would be sprung.
"(Hceio: Ad Atticvm, xiv, 13. * nid. y xv 3.
"Ibid., xiv, 19. "Cicero: Philippic i, y, vi
MARC ANTONY 245
But Cicero was not so easily caught. On his arrival at his house
his friends warned him of Antony's plans, and a hasty conference
of the conservative party led to the decision that Cicero and the
majority of his colleagues should refrain from attending the sitting
of the Senate. Next day, therefore, most of the senatorial chairs
were unoccupied, and a note was received from Cicero saying that
owing to the fatigues of his journey he was confined to his bed.
Antony was furious, and his anger was increased when the ru-
mour reached him that Cicero had refused to come because he feared
that violence would be done to him by the Consul's soldiers. 34 In
a passion of rage and disappointment he addressed the nearly empty
House, saying that this rumour was a dastardly slander and belief
in it an insult. The conservative senators, he declared, had placed an
unbearable slight upon him and the Senate by absenting themselves
at this opening meeting of the new session; and he would not toler-
ate it. He would use all his Consular powers to oblige Cicero to
come; and therewith he gave orders that locksmiths and masons
should be sent at once to the orator's home to break open its doors,
while soldiers should bring him by force, or, failing to find him,
should burn his house to the ground.
The senators were shocked and frightened, and begged him to
calm himself; and at length Antony cooled down sufficiently to
countermand these wild orders, and to accept sureties for the orator's
good behaviour. But he declared that he would never forgive him;
and, indeed, all men realized that day that the quarrel between the
Csesarian democrats and the anti-Csesarian republicans had entered
upon its crisis.
The issue was clear: on the one side was Antony, the repre-
sentative and would-be preserver of the dead Dictator's absolutism,
the defender of that paradox a democratic autocracy, and with
him the unwilling Octavian, forced now to play second-fiddle; on
the other side were the conservatives and the conspirators, led by
Cicero, representing the old republican ideals and bent upon the
recognition of Caesar as a tyrant justly slain. Antony stood for the
rescinding of the Act of Oblivion so soon as public calm could be
established; Cicero stood for the maintenance of that amnesty. An-
tony had the People solidly behind him so long as their sympathies
"Plutarch: Cicero.
246 MARC ANTONY
were not divided by any disagreement between him and Octavian
in the matter of leadership; Cicero was sure of the support of the
conservative upper classes.
It was to be a fight now to a finish between the republicans
and the democrats. Antony's blood was up, and he guessed that
Cicero, usually so cautious, was in a similar state of ebullience ; but
in Octavian lay the danger. How long would that pale-faced and
sinister young man consent to occupy a back seat?
CHAPTER XII
Antony's Departure from Rome where Cicero was Delivering the Philippic
Orations Against Him and his Failure to Wrest Cisalpine Gaul from
Albinus.
44"43 B.C.
ON the following day Cicero, elegantly dressed, and with his
grey hair carefully combed and scented, 1 attended the Senate, hav-
ing announced beforehand that he would deliver a speech in de-
fence of his attitude and would make certain suggestions in regard
to the future conduct of affairs at which announcement Antony
at once decided to absent himself, on a like plea of ill-health, in
order to show as much contempt for Cicero's proposals as the orator
had yesterday displayed for his. The speech was afterwards pub-
lished, as also were the thirteen others against Antony which Cicero
delivered during the following weeks ; and they are now known as
the Philippics, a name given to them a few years later because of
their similarity in form to the orations of Demosthenes against
Philip.
In this the First Philippic Cicero, with his habitual vanity, be-
gan by telling the senators and there must have been a pretty full
House to hear him that it was he himself who had laid the founda-
tions of peace after the assassination by proposing the Act of Ob-
livion, though he admitted that Antony had played quite a dis-
tinguished part at first in promoting good will, as also had Dola-
bella. Then, had come the sad change, and the orator had gone away
in disgust, only to return at once, however, when he heard that Bru-
tus and Cassius, whom he said that he dearly loved, had obliged
Antony by their firmness to be less truculent. But having returned,
he had found by the events of yesterday that Antony was hostile to
*Dion Cassius, xlvi, 18,
247
248 MARC ANTONY
him, and had made his, Cicero's, quite excusable absence from the
Senate a casus belli. Antony, he declared, had a right to be angry
if he had said anything against his private morals, but not on ac-
count of his having expressed his political views. As a matter of
fact, he said, he was quite prepared to allow all Caesar's laws to
stand, and even to wink at Antony's use of the dead Dictator's
memoranda, since the dividing line between what was Caesar's and
what was Antony's could not be drawn. "Men have been recalled
from exile," he smiled, "by a dead man; the freedom of the city
has been conferred not only on individuals but on entire nations and
provinces by a dead man; our revenues have been diminished by
the granting of countless exemptions by a dead man. Nevertheless
I will uphold these measures which have been brought from Caesar's
house on the authority of a single individual a very excellent in-
dividual, I admit/' Cicero saw, in fact, that the rejection of any
part of Caesar's arrangements would mean also the repudiation of
his assignment of provinces to some of the conspirators Cisalpine
Gaul to Decimus Brutus Albinus, for example and he had no
wish to upset these or any other of the measures which were of ad-
vantage to his party.
He then went on to admonish both Antony and Dolabella for
what he considered their high-handedness, and to warn them that
people were saying they were only anxious for their own enrich-
ment. "Of course," he added with the unctuousness of a politician,
"I myself cannot be induced to suspect that Antony has been caught
by the desire to acquire money. Every one may say what he pleases,
but we are not bound to believe such a thing; for I never saw any-
thing sordid or anything mean in him. I know his uprightness, and
I only wish that he had been able to escape all such suspicion,"
Next, growing more bold, he warned Antony against the use
of armed force, but remarked that it was hardly necessary to
emphasise the point. "If the fate of Gesar," he said, "does not in-
fluence him to prefer to be loved than to be feared, no speech of mine
will have any effect on him. No one can be happy who behaves in
such a way that he may be assassinated not only with impunity but
evsa to the great glory of his slayer."
Having uttered this thinly veiled threat that if Antony did
not compromise with the conspirators he would be murdered, Cicero
MARC ANTONY 249
wound up by saying that he himself was not afraid to die. "I have
lived long enough for the course of human life/' he declared, "and
for my own glory. Yet, if any further years are granted to me, they
shall be given to the service of the Senate and of the Republic."
This speech, with its rather brutal hint of murder, was reported
to Antony, whose opposition was thereby stiffened towards the con-
spirators and towards their pernicious doctrine of assassination as
a cure for supposed political ills. He could not abide Cicero, regard-
ing him as treacherous in the extreme; and the orator's eloquence,
with its plausible expression of high-principle, nauseated him. Dur-
ing the next week or two he refused to speak to Cicero when they
met; and when he heard that Octavian, on the contrary, was showing
friendliness towards the orator, flattering him and calling him
Father of his country, he broke off all relations with that young man
also. He was not surprised, therefore, when he \pas told that Oc-
tavian was plotting against his life; and though he could obtain no
absolute proof of the truth of the report, he was sufficiently assured
of its correctness to denounce him, and Cicero also, in a speech, now
lost, which he delivered before the Senate on September iQth.
The sensation it caused was immense; and Atia, Octavian's
mother, implored the boy to leave Rome, but without success.
Death was in the air : its dark shadow was menacing the lives alike
of Octavian, Antony and Cicero; but all three were keyed up to
deeds of daring at this time, and not one of them had any intention
now of running away. Dolabella, however, took the opportunity to
set out for his new province of Syria while Antony still had the
power to support his claim upon it: the problems in Rome were
too difficult for him, and he was eager to seek his fortune in Parthia.
At this time some of the legions in Macedonia were about to
sail back to Italy, having been ordered by Antony to come over so
as to be ready to accompany him to Cisalpine Gaul at the close of
his Consulship ; but he was not aware that Octavian, who had made
friends with many of their officers while he was in Apollonia, had
just sent them a secret message, telling them of his troubles in Rome,
and begging them to give their support to him as Caesar's rightful
heir and not to his rival. Antony, whose thoughts were usually those
of a soldier, felt that he would be much more comfortable with
these legions at his back; and he therefore decided to go down to
250 MARC ANTONY
Brundusium (Brindisi) to meet them on their arrival, and to march
them to the capital before the conspirators who were scattered
about southern Italy could tamper with them.
In the second week in October, at the close of the senatorial ses-
sions, he and his wife, Fulvia, set out for the south; and shortly
afterwards both Octavian and Cicero left Rome Octavian for the
purpose of gathering some more of Csesar's ex-soldiers as a sort of
bodyguard in "case of trouble with Antony, and Cicero only for the
purpose of obtaining an interval of quiet after the excitements of
the previous weeks, so that he might get on with his literary work.
But when Antony had reached Brundusium and had presented him-
self to the troops on their disembarkation he was surprised to find
that the officers of at least one legion the Martian greeted him
with little warmth. He could not understand it, and, ordering them
to be paraded, made a speech to them promising them the usual re-
wards, and reminding them that he was their dead general's former
colleague and present representative.
They laughed in his face. They called him "traitor," shouting
that he had usurped Octavian's heritage, and that Octavian would
give them far greater rewards than those just offered. For a moment
it must have looked as though they would kill him there and then.
Antony's rage was unbounded. He stormed off to the house
where he was staying, calling to him all those officers of the other
legions and auxiliary cavalry whom he could trust, amongst these
being several of his old friends of the Gallic cavalry with whom he
had served in Syria, Egypt, and Gaul. They told him that Octavian's
agents had been trying for weeks past to detach them from Antony's
authority, and they gave him a list of the officers who were disloyal.
Fulvia, it seems, was present during this conference, and her anger
was more terrible than her husband's. Furiously she urged him to
have no mercy on the rebels ; and we have to picture her with flashing
eyes and gesticulating arms, calling down curses on these men who
were so near to ruining the cause.
Orders were given for the arrest of the disaffected officers.
They were dragged before Antony, summarily tried, and condemned
to instant execution. Loyal swords flashed, and the heads of the cul-
prits rolled one after the other across the floor. Fulvia was in an hys-
terical condition, and, screaming her imprecations at the men who
MARC ANTONY 251
were being butchered, she approached so close to them as they died
that she was drenched with their spurting blood. To Antony her
behaviour must have been an appalling revelation; and it is to be
supposed that his ultimate estrangement from her began to take
shape from this day. In spite of the violence of his temper, and the
severity which he sometimes displayed in dealing with a situation
of this kind, in spite, too, of his bouts of drunkenness, he was a cul-
tured, sensitive man, far removed from the savage easy-going and
humane, in fact, on most occasions; and there must ever have re-
mained in his mind the disgusting picture of his wife's face 2 and
clothes dripping with blood, and her feet paddling in that scarlet
river.
Antony's violent action cowed the disloyal troops, and they ac-
cepted the orders which were now given them to march northwards
along the east coast of Italy to Ariminum (Rimini), on the borders
of Cisalpine Gaul, where they were to await Antony's arrival as
governor of that province at the close of his Consulship two months
hence. With a small force of the more trustworthy troops, the nu-
cleus of which was the Fifth Legion, known as the Alauda or "the
Larks," he then marched towards Rome, his troubles with the con-
servatives and the conspirators being now relegated to the back-
ground in the more immediate crisis of his quarrel with Octavian.
That young man, who had recently attained his nineteenth birth-
day, 8 was in the meantime touring the south-west, recruiting Csesar's
ex-soldiers, and tempting them, by heavy bribes, from the lands
whereon they were settled. A letter from Cicero to Atticus 4 reveals
Octavian's plans.
"A letter for me from Octavian reached me on November 1st,"
he wrote. "He has great schemes. The ex-soldiers of Casilinum
(Capua) and Calatia, near by, he has entirely brought over to his
side, and no wonder, since he offers them five hundred denarii apiece !
He proposes to go the round of the other military settlements : ob-
viously what he has in view is to put himself at the head of an army
to fight Antony; and so I see that in a few days we shall be under
arms. Who, however, is to be our leader? Think of Octavian's
name js t hink of his age ! And he writes to ask that in the first place
a Cicero: Philippic III, ii. 8 On September 23rd. 4 Cicero: Ad Attlcum, xvi, 8.
'He means, think of the conspirators being led by a Caesar I
252 MARC ANTONY
I will grant him a strictly private interview. Surely it is childish if he
supposes that this could possibly be private; and I have written to
tell him that what he asks is neither necessary nor practicable. He
sent a friend of his to me who brought the news that Antony was
moving towards Rome with the Fifth Legion, borrowing money
from the towns, and marching under flying colours. He wanted to
ask my advice as to whether he should go to Rome with three thou-
sand ex-soldiers, or occupy Casilinum and intercept the advance of
Antony, or go to meet the legions from Macedonia now making their
way northwards by the coast-road along the Adriatic, whose sym-
pathies are, he hopes, all for him. In short he offers himself as our
leader, and thinks it will not be right for us to fail him. I myself
have recommended him to go to Rome, because it seems to me that
he will there have not only the poor rabble of the city on his side,
provided that he has proved his sincerity, but also the good men."
Octavian took his advice and marched the newly recruited veter-
ans towards Rome; and a few days later Cicero wrote as follows to
Atticus. 6 "Every day I have had a letter from Octavian asking
me to take up his cause, and be a second time the saviour of the Re-
public* and to come at once to Rome which I am afraid to ac-
cept and ashamed to refuse. He certainly has acted and is acting
with vigour. He is bringing a large force to Rome, but then he is the
merest boy. He thinks that the Senate can be convoked in a moment.
But who will attend? Or, where everything is so precarious, who will
make an enemy of Antony? Yet, boy though he is, the country-
towns seem to be marvellously in favour of him. At Teanum
(Teano), for instance, the good- wishes were astonishing. Could you
have believed this?"
Octavian reached Rome on November loth, and camped his
men in the open ground near the Temple of Mars, on the Appian
Way outside the city walls ; and day by day he made public speeches
against Antony, calling him a traitor to the dead Csesar. But clearly
the only traitor was the young man himself, for he was now in
open alliance with Csesar's murderers, and was not only flattering
Cicero to the skies, but was already making friendly overtures to
Defciinus Brutus Albums, the man who had lured the Dictator to
his doom, and who was now governor of the province of Cisalpine
6 Cicero: Ad Atticum* xvi, 11.
MARC ANTONY 253
Gaul from which Antony wished to remove him. This was too
much for Octavian's army of veterans to swallow: they had been
enlisted to oppose Antony, but they had not bargained for an al-
liance with the assassins of their old leader. They began to desert
to the other side; and at the same time the republicans in Rome
were by no means in favour of this union with the obviously treach-
erous heir of the dead tyrant, and showed no enthusiasm for him.
Meanwhile, the melancholy and wrong-headed Brutus, the arch-
assassin, had left Italy and had gone to live in Athens, where, while
giving most of his time to a serious study of philosophy in the
schools of Theomnestes and Cratippus, he made his secret prepara-
tions for the war with Antony which he felt to be inevitable. He
had no intention of taking up the governorship of Crete which
had been assigned .to him, and was hesitating whether or not to
seize the province of Macedonia which had been promised him by
Csesar and to which he had therefore as much right as Albimis,
for example, had to Cisalpine Gaul. He did not at all approve
of Cicero's relations with Octavian, and wrote to him with great
bitterness pointing out that it would be just as bad to have Octavian
in power the heir of the man they had murdered as it was to
have Antony, and saying indignantly that it seemed as though
Cicero had no objection to living under the tyranny of an autocrat
so long as that autocrat were not his personal enemy, Antony. All
Cicero cared about, he declared, was his own comfort, but he, Bru-
tus, refused to be a slave to any man, friend or foe. 7
But while Octavian's position was thus uncertain, the angry
Antony was approaching Rome with the faithful Larks and with
his loyal Gallic cavalry. The Larks, it should be mentioned, were
recruited in Gaul, the legion having been first raised by Csesar
in that country in 55 B.C. The upstanding feathers which they wore
on their helmets suggested the tuft of a lark, and perhaps their
singing abilities also provided a reason for their nickname. They
were a rough lot of fair-haired giants ; and having known Antony
in the Gallic wars and having witnessed his wild bravery in battle,
they loved him, and were prepared to die for him.
From time to time on his march Antony issued proclamations
or made speeches denouncing Octavian, belittling his ancestry, and
7 Plutarch: Brutus.
254
MARC ANTONY
attacking his moral character. He said he knew for a fact that
the Dictator had had improper relations with him, as also had one
of Caesar's generals in Spain, the well-known Hirtius 8 who was one
of the Consuls-elect for the coming year and now belonged to
Cicero's party; and he made constant jokes in regard to Octavian's
effeminate ways, calling attention to the fact that the youth was
regularly in the hands of the ustricul^ or lady-barbers, whose busi-
ness it was to remove the hair from his legs and to make them soft.
This, of course, was a case of the pot calling the kettle black,
for Antony's own effeminate youth was notorious, even though he
had now passed to the opposite extreme, and was a very man
amongst men. Moreover, Antony had spoken with disdain of
Octavian's mother, Atia, as a provincial woman from a small town,
her home being in Aricia (Riccia), a few miles south of Rome,
although his own mother, Julia, had spent her childhood in the
same place; and, anyhow, as Cicero remarked 9 in answer to this
insinuation of provincialism, what right had Antony to talk in
this fashion when his own wife, Fulvia, came from the small town
of Tusculum (Frascati), and was the daughter of a man named
Bambalio, so called because he had an impediment in his speech
and was more or less half-witted? Antony's purpose, however, had
been to show that Octavian was neither by birth nor character de-
serving of especial reverence; and he was much too angry just now
to avoid that kind of imputation which had the nature of a boomer-
ang. The hurling of abuse intended to sting was a recognized part
of ancient hostilities, just as it is today in the East; and nobody
troubled to ascertain the truth of the accusations.
Antony arrived in Rome on or about November 2oth, and sent
the troops who were with him to Tibur (Tivoli), some sixteen
miles north-east of the city, retaining on the spot only the ex-
soldiers whom he had previously recruited a force apparently
much larger than that still loyal to Octavian. He- then convened
the Senate for the 24th, issuing a warning that those senators who
failed to attend would be regarded as his enemies; but, suddenly,
on the 23rd, he seems to have heard that his rival's agents were
busy at Tivoli, and therefore, postponing the senatorial meeting
until the 28th, he hastened off to the camp of the Larks and their
"Suetonius: Augustus, Ixviii. * Cicero: Philippic Hi, vi.
MARC ANTONY 255
auxiliaries, to address them and if necessary to outbid any offers
of money which Octavian might have made them. But while he
and his merry men were banqueting 10 and drinking damnation to
his rival, he received a staggering blow: dispatches arrived from
Rimini informing him that the Martian Legion, whom he had so
severely punished at Brindisi, had declared for Octavian. They
had detached themselves from the remainder of the troops from
Macedonia who were still loyal, or, at any rate, undecided these
consisting in the main of the Second, Fourth, and Thirty-fifth
Legions and were marching back towards Rome.
During the next four days he remained at Tivoli, not knowing
what to do for the best, since the reports from Rome were most
alarming, and his friends seemed to think that there would be an
immediate landslide in favour of Octavian. He hardly dared to
enter the city for fear that he would be murdered; and yet at all
costs he must be present at the meeting of the Senate on the 28th,
lest his absence should give his rivals the opportunity to say that
he had deserted his Consular post arid was no longer fit to hold it.
The meeting was to take place in the Capitol, and while he was
turning over in his mind some means of reaching that building
without running the gauntlet of a mob now in all likelihood sud-
denly headed against him, a friend reminded him of a secret pas-
sage, an old tunnel burrowed by the Gauls in their attack upon
the citadel in 390 B.C., which led up into the cellars beneath the
senatorial hall. 11 Instantly he made up his mind to enter the city,
with spme of his Gauls, under the cover of darkness during the
night of the 2yth, to make use of this tunnel, and quietly to take
his place in the Consular chair on the morning of the 28th. It was
quite likely that he would be assassinated; but his courage always
rose as his fortunes fell, and he preferred the risk of death to the
certainty of the disaster which would result from his absence.
On the morning of the 28th the senators, including Cicero, who
had arrived on the previous day, trooped into the Capitol, eagerly
asking one another what news there was of Antony, and discussing
what would happen if he should not put in an appearance. The at-
mosphere was electric with the menace of a political earthquake; and
"Cicero: Philippic iii f viii.
11 Ibid.
256 MARC ANTONY
Cicero was elated at the prospect of being able to propose the de-
position of his enemy. Then, suddenly, as though by a miracle,
Antony appeared before them, bland and unafraid, and took his
seat, presiding thereafter over the business of the day, and saying
no word about his or Octavian's position. It may be, as Cicero after-
wards thought, that he had intended to test the opinion of the House
by denouncing his youthful rival; but towards the close of the
meeting a terrible message was brought to him which must have
driven any such thought from his head. It informed him that
the Fourth Legion had followed the example of the Martian and
had gone over to Octavian; and with sinking heart, but with out-
ward calm, he wound up the day's affairs, dismissed the assembly,
and rejoined his waiting bodyguard of Gauls. 12
He believed that the news of this second mutiny was not yet
known in Rome, but he realized that as soon as it was circulated
the still hesitating mob would probably declare for Octavian, and
Csesar's veterans might unite under the young man's standard.
Only the Gallic Larks and the Gallic cavalry could be relied on;
and he saw at once that his one hope lay in seizing with their
help the province of Cisalpine Gaul, of which he had assigned
himself the governorship at the coming close of his term as Con*
sul. The Senate, however, had not yet officially confirmed that ap-
pointment, and the question which now agitated his mind was
whether he had the time or the power to have it ratified and to get
out of the city before the landslide.
The action which he took was perilous in the extreme. He
knew that most of the senators would be leaving dangerous Rome
for the security of their suburban or country homes during the
day, and he therefore sent private messages to those of them whom
he could trust, calling them to an emergency meeting of the Sen-
ate that evening, while those whom he could not trust he allowed
to depart uncalled.
As a result of this maneuver he found a thinly-attended but
friendly assembly awaiting him at the close of the day; and, quietly
addressing them, he said so I suppose that in view of the danger
6f a -clash between the troops loyal to him and those siding with
u Cicero (Philippic ill, iv) speaks of Antony bringing "armed barbarians" into the
Senate.
MARC ANTONY 257
Octavian, he proposed to set out for Cisalpine Gaul at once, so
that he should be there, ready to take over the governorship from
Albinus, at the close of the year. He asked them therefore to be
so good as to ratify the allotment of that province to him, and at
the same time to give the province of Macedonia to his brother
Caius Antonius, after which he proposed that the other governor-
ships for the new year should be assigned by drawing lots in the
usual way. All this was nervously agreed to; and at the end of
the meeting he found himself in possession of the papers authoriz-
ing him to go to Cisalpine Gaul.
Meanwhile, he had sent an invitation to those of the ex-soldiers
who did not wish to desert him, to come with him to Tivoli that
night, and he had told them to muster quietly and under cover
of the darkness at a certain place. Then, putting on the armour and
the scarlet cloak of a general, he set out for the rendez-vous, not
knowing how many of the veterans would be there; but, to his great
relief, he found that the bulk of them had remained loyal, and
soon he and a satisfactorily large force were marching under the
stars along the highroad to the north. His wife, Fulvia, did not
accompany him, for at this period the great ladies of Rome were
seldom in any danger of violence; but for greater safety she and
her children went to stay in the house of one of Antony's chief
supporters in the city. 18
During the next two or three days deputations of senators and
persons of importance came to him at Tivoli, urging him to try
even at this eleventh hour to come to terms with Octavian, but
his brother, Lucius, who had joined him, was violently opposed
to 1 any reconciliation; and Octavian, on his side, had been so
elated by the mutiny of the two legions that he felt able, with
the support of Cicero's party, to force the quarrel to an issue.
Nothing came, therefore, of these negotiations; and Antony set
out for Cisalpine Gaul early in December, at the head of the Larks,
the Gallic cavalry, most of Caesar's ex-soldiers, and certain units
of the garrison of Rome. His purpose was to effect a junction with
the Second and Thirty-fifth Legions now at Rimini, and, with this
army at his back, and his papers of authority in his hand, to take
peaceable possession of his new province, to assume command of
18 Cicero : Philippic xii, 1.
258 MARC ANTONY
the seven legions stationed therein, and to send Albinus home. Later
on, it might be necessary to do what Caesar did cross the Rubicon,
and march on Rome. 14
But Octavian and Cicero, working together, sent messengers
to Albinus, promising him that if he could induce the army under
his command in Cisalpine Gaul to declare for Octavian and to
resist Antony, they would give him all the help in their power and
would send the two legions who had deserted Antony's cause, and
who were now nearing Rome, to attack their former general in
the rear. Cicero's letters to him were couched in the most flattering
terms; and in one of them, 15 after referring to the murder of
Caesar as "that great deed of yours, the greatest ever done in the
history of mankind/' he said : "I pray that you will for ever set
the Republic free from the tyranny of a king, and make the last
act of your drama suitable to the first." In another letter 16 he
wrote : <r We hope and trust that as you have set free the Republic
from a monarch, so now you will from a monarchy." Albinus re-
plied that he would most certainly do his part, and hold his prov-
ince against Antony.
The majority of the members of the Caesarian party in Rome,
meanwhile, mistrusting Octavian and greatly resenting his alliance
with Caesar's assassins, showed so strongly and so unexpectedly
their sympathy with Antony that Octavian suddenly decided to
leave the city, put himself under the wing of these two legions
who had come over to his side, and remain with them outside
Rome. At the same time several of the most important Caesarians
set out to follow Antony, being unaware that Albinus would re-
sist his advance, and thinking that Cisalpine Gaul, which was so
near to and yet so far from Rome, would be a more comfortable
place than die disturbed metropolis. These movements left the
Capital more or less in the hands of Cicero and his republicans, and
the elderly orator thus found himself in that position of authority
for which he had longed unceasingly ever since the days of his
Consulship.
To him it was clear now that Antony was doomed, and that
Octavian "would in the end embrace the cause of the republicans
Cicero: Philippic Hi, i. "Cicero: Ad Familiar es, xi, 5.
id., xi, 8.
MARC ANTONY 259
and would make his permanent peace with Csesar's murderers. He
was overwhelmingly elated. The democrats would almost cease to
exist as a party jythe conspirators would at last be recognized as
having saved the State, and would once more take their place
in Roman political life; while Cicero himself would stand for a
second Consulship and would be for many glorious years the
revered leader of the nation. He felt that he must strain every
nerve to destroy Antony, whom he had disliked for many years
and for the last two months had hated with burning intensity.
He had recently composed a long tirade against him; and this he
now decided to publish. The abuse of Antony contained in it was,
of course, wildly exaggerated; but he felt that he was justified
in placing every possible weapon at the service of his eloquence in
his battle with the man whose destruction meant his own aggrandise-
ment and the victory of his own political party.
The composition is now known as the Second Philippic and is
one of the fiercest and most violent pieces of writing which an-
tiquity has handed down to us. Cicero begins by indulging in
that self-praise for which he was notorious, and which Plutarch
describes as a nauseating disease whereof he could not be cured.
His opening paragraph contains the exaggerated boast that dur- '
ing the last twenty years no man has done ill by the Republic
without having to cross swords with him, and none has survived
that encounter; and now he asks how Antony could have dared to
court that invariable fate. "Am I to think that I have been de-
spised?" he asks, and adds in astonishment: "I see nothing in my
life, or in my influence in the city, or in my exploits, or in the
abilities with which I am endowed, which Antony could despise!
Did he think that it was easy to disparage me in the Senate? a
body which has testified in favour of many illustrious citizens
that they have governed the Republic well, but in favour of me
alone, that I have saved it!"
He then goes on to praise his own Consulship, about which
Antony had made some disparaging remarks, and he says that
there was not a senator in those days who did not regard him as
the very salvation of his life. Only Clodius and Curio had ever
dared to criticise it, and he warns Antony that their misfortunes
and violent ends await him likewise, especially "since there is
2 6o MARC ANTONY
now that in his house which was fatal to each of them," mean-
ing the ill-omened Fulvia, the widow of both these men-
Antony, he proceeds, had often accused having insti-
gated the murder of Gesar, and in reply he declares his regret that
he was not one of "the gallant band" who undertook "that glorious
deed, the greatest exploit ever performed in all the earth." The
reason why Brutus and the assassins shouted the name of Cicero
after the murder was committed, he explains, was simply that,
having done something which they deemed to be noble, they
naturally wished to call all men to witness that they were imitators
of the great Cicero's noble exploits. But he adds that if he had
been one of the conspirators he would most certainly have seen
that Antony had perished too.
Presently he passes on to a devastating review of Antony's
career from his youth up how he had behaved like a female
prostitute when he w;as a boy, "until Curio stepped in, and settled
him in a steady and durable wedlock" ; how he was the friend of
the riotous Clodius; how his actions in regard to Caesar caused the
war with Pompey; and so on. He admits that he has to thank An-
tony for sparing his life after Pharsalia, but of course, he adds,
"I was sacred in the eyes of the legions, because they remembered
that the country had been saved by me." He describes Antony's
public career thereafter as being that of a drunkard and a libertine,
which reached its shocking climax when he appeared naked and
drunk in the Forum during the Lupercalia, and offered Csesar the
crown. What can be more disgraceful, he asks, than that Antony,
who tried to place the crown on the head of the man deservedly
slain on that account, should himself be allowed to live?
Next, he points out what damage was done by Antony's speech
at Caesar's funeral; and, afterwards, how he seized Csesar's money,
forged his papers, and behaved himself like a tyrant. Throughout
the whole composition he speaks of him as a sort of madman, a
drunken fool, and a reckless gambler; and he calls him in one place
a **brute-beast," and in another says that he is "devoid of all
seh&e and all feeling." Finally, he asks whether Antony can pos-
sibly think that he will not meet the fate of the Dictator. "If
men could not tolerate Gesar," he says, "does he think that they
will tolerate him?"
MARC ANTONY 261
"As for myself/' he writes in conclusion, "I defended the Re-
public as a young man, and I will not abandon it now that I am
old. I scorned the : ^word of Catiline, and I will not quail before
Antony's. No! f will cheerfully expose my own person, if the
liberty of the Republic can be restored by my death. To me, in-
deed, death is now even desirable, after all the honours I have
gained, and all the great deeds I have done."
A string of lies of this sort demanded an answer; and presently
an ex-Consul named Quintus Fufius Calenus, who had been one of
Csesar's generals, and had fought side by side with Antony, got up
in the Senate and made a vigorous reply which has been preserved. 17
"I would not have Cicero's innate impudence go without a re-
sponse," he said, "nor would I have his private enmity against
Antony accepted in place of what is to the common advantage.
Ever since Cicero entered politics he has been continually causing
disturbances one way or the other ; and now he insults and abuses
Antony, whom he was wont to say he loved, and makes friends
with Octavian, the heir of the man he was instrumental in murder-
ing. And, if he gets the chance, ere long he will murder Octavian
also. For the man is naturally untrustworthy and turbulent, and
has no ballast in his soul, and is always stirring things up and
twisting this way and that. He is a juggler and impostor, and
grows rich and strong from the misfortunes of others, blackmail-
ing them, dragging and tearing at the innocent as do the dogs."
He then gave^a picture of Cicero's youth on his father's farm,
and asked how one who was accustomed to live with the pigs can
dare "to slander the youth of Antony who had the advantage of
tutors and teachers such as his high rank required." Cicero, he said, is
one of those lawyers "who are always waiting, like the harlots, for
a man who will give them money, and who pry into people's af-
fairs to find out who hates whom, and who is plotting against
whom. How much better it would have been if he had been born
a stammering Bambalio (like Fulvia's father) than that he should
have taken up such a career." "He is always jealous of his betters,"
he went on, "always toadying to important people, telling them
that he is their only true friend, pandering to their fears or their
conceit, and "fawning upon them.' "
17 Dion Cassius, xlvi,
262 MARC ANTONY
Antony's life, meanwhile, he declared, had been noble, and of
the greatest value to the State. At the Lupercalia he cleverly de-
stfoyed Cesar's chance of obtaining the crown ,by forcing him to
reject it in public. "That is the great service which was done by
this man whom Cicero calls uneducated; and no such service has
been done by this clever, this wise Cicero, this user of much more
soft-soap than honest wine, this man who lets his robes drag about
his ankles to hide the ugliness of his legs. We all know those long,
soft clothes of his, and have smelt his carefully combed grey locks !"
He then referred to the disgraceful manner in which Cicero had
divorced his wife, and married a little girl for her money; and he
accused the orator of having lived a whole life of secret impurity,
and even of having committed incest with his own daughter, Tullia
an accusation which is probably quite as untrue, one may suppose,
as are his own slanders upon Antony. Besides this he declared
that Cicero in former years had lived on the proceeds of his wife's
amours, and that he had recently been paying court, presumably
for the sake of money, to an old woman of incalculable years.
"This sort of talk is not to my taste," he explained, "but I want
Cicero to get as good as he gave."
Next, he spoke of Cicero's actions in the matter of the Catilin-
arian conspiracy, of which he is "interminably prating," as hav-
ing been worthy only of the strongest censure. He then defended
Antony's behaviour after Caesar's death, and said that he had made
use of the Dictator's money and papers in a perfectly proper man-
ner. "What man is there," he asked, "surpassing Antony in esteem
or excelling him in experience? Which of the two seems to be in
the wrong Antony, who is now at the head of troops legally
allowed him by the Senate, or Octavian, who is surrounded by a
force privately raised? Antony, who has left Rome to take up
the governorship given to him by the Senate, or Albinus, who will
prevent him from setting foot in that province? Antony, who
keeps our soldiers together, or those soldiers who have deserted
their commander?"
"I warn you, Cicero," he said in conclusion, "not to show a
spitefulness like a woman's, nor because of your private hatred of
Antony to plunge the whole city again into danger."
On December 2oth Cicero, thirsting for revenge, delivered be-
MARC ANTONY 263
fore the Senate his Third Philippic, in which he proposed that
Octavian and Albinus should be commended for the steps they
were taking against Antony. "Octavian," he said, "though a mere
boy, has held fast with an incredible and godlike degree of wis-
dom and bravery during this time when Antony's dangerous folly
has been at its height; and he has collected a trustworthy force of
ex-soldiers, and has spent his own fortune in doing so, or rather, I
should say, has invested it in the Republic. We ought to feel the
greatest gratitude to him, for who does not see that if Antony had
come unopposed to Rome from Brindisi he would have committed
all manner of horrors? The man who at Brindisi ordered so many
gallant and virtuous men to be executed, and whose wife's face
was notoriously bespattered with the blood of men dying at his
and her feet, would have spared none of us, especially as he was
coming here much more angry with us than he had been with
those whom he butchered there. But from this calamity Octavian
delivered the Republic by his prudence in gathering a force of his
own/'
He went on to praise the Martian and the Fourth Legions
for having declared for Octavian, and he congratulated Albinus
for having refused to hand over Cisalpine Gaul to Antony who
seemed, he said, to be behaving as though he were a king. "All
slavery is miserable," he declared, "but to be a slave to a man
who is profligate, immoral, effeminate, and never sober, would
surely be intolerable. Indeed, on that day when Antony, in the
sight of the Roman people, harangued the mob, naked, perfumed,
and drunk, and tried to put a crown on his colleague's head, he lost
his right to the Consulship and to his own freedom." He must
never be allowed to assume the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul,
"that province which is the flower of Italy, the bulwark of the
Roman empire, the chief ornament of her dignity."
Cicero's son, Marcus, it should be mentioned, was now in
Athens with Brutus, and, although only twenty-one years of age,
was already a hard drinker and a disreputable character a fact
which Antony had not failed to tell the world. Cicero's nephew,
too the son of his brother Quintus was a bad character, and
had come under Antony's verbal lash; and now the orator attacked
Antony for making such accusations, and asked how "this gladiator
2 6 4 MARC ANTONY
dared to put such things in writing." "He ought to be put to death,"
he exclaimed; "and what good man will not demand his execu-
tion, since on his death depends the safety and the life of every
good man?"
He went on to describe how Antony had come into the Senate
through the tunnel beneath the Capitol, and how he had then
fled to Tivoli, after seeing to the distribution of the provincial
governorships. "But now we plant our feet firmly on the ground," he
cried, "and take possession of that liberty of which I have been not
only the defender but even the saviour. For long I have borne our
misfortunes without cowardice and not without dignity; but who
can any more endure this most foul monster? What is there in An-
tony except lust and cruelty and licentiousness and audacity? Of
these materials he is wholly made up ; and are we to bear the shame-
ful tyranny of this profligate robber? What crimes he has committed
since the death of Csesar! He has emptied his (Csesar's) well-filled
house, has pillaged his gardens, and has transferred to his own
mansion all their ornaments. While carrying out two or three
measures beneficial, I admit, to the Republic, he has made every-
thing else subservient to his own gain: he has put up exemptions
and annuities for sale, has released cities from their taxes, has freed
provinces from subjection to the Roman empire, has restored exiles,
has passed forged laws in the name of Caesar," and so forth.
"And now," he continued, "when his fortunes are desperate,
he has not diminished his audacity, nor, mad that he is, has ceased
to proceed in his headlong career of fury. He is leading his muti-
lated army into Cisalpine Gaul, with one legion, and that, too,
wavering. He is more like a matador than a commander, a gladia-
tor rather than a general." His brother, Lucius, he said, is just
as bad as himself ; but the Romans, surely, will never admit them
again into the city. Antony, he pointed out, would soon be hemmed
in, attacked in the rear by Octavian, and in the front by Albinus.
Now was the time to act.
"I entreat you," he cried to the senators, "seize this opportunity.
You know the insolence of Antony, you know his friends, you know
fai& whole household; and to be slaves to such lustful, wanton, de-
bauched, profligate, drunken gamblers, would be infamous." There-
fo?e, ^proposed that the two Consuls-elect, Hirtius and Caius
MARC ANTONY 265
Pansa, who would come into office on January 1st, should be em-
powered to make an end of Antony.
Having concluded this impassioned speech, every word of
which betrayed his fear of Antony and his trembling eagerness to
bring about his death, he left the Senate, and went to the Com-
itia, assembled in the Forum, where he delivered another furious
oration, now known as the Fourth Philippic, in which he urged the
crowd to declare Antony a public enemy, and to give their al-
legiance to himself, to Albinus, and to Octavian that boy "whose
actions belong to immortality, the word 'youth* applying only to
his age." "Antony," he declared, "is not an enemy with whom it is
possible to make peace : he is a savage beast; and since he has fallen
into a pit, let him be buried in it ! Crush him, as, by my diligence,
Catiline was crushed!" The corollary, though unspoken, was clear:
if Antony were not crushed Cicero's life would now be in danger,
for his libels had been unpardonable.
On January 1st, 43 B.C., the new Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa,
both Csesarians who had joined Octavian's party, came into of-
fice; and on that day Cicero addressed his Fifth Philippic to the
Senate, directing his aim mainly at Calenus who had defended
Antony, and had later suggested that negotiations should be opened
with him. That course, Cicero declared, would be madness, for An-
tony was a scoundrel, who would sell the whole Republic for money,
in which nefarious business he was aided by his wife, Fulvia, who,
herself, had held a very auction of provinces and realms, and she and
he had collected so much money that, if it were available for dis-
tribution, there would not be a poor man in Rome.
He advised his hearers to put their trust fully in Octavian:
"I venture to pledge my word for him to you and to the Roman
People," he said. But upon Antony he called down the wrath of
heaven, repeating once more a list of his supposed crimes. He
declared, moreover, that Antony had sold the office of judge in
the Roman courts to all sorts of men who supported him: "dancers,
musicians, and, in fact, the whole troop of his boon-companions,
have been pitchforked onto the bench, so that infamous men whom
no one would care to have in his house have been made judges."
He told the Senate that on that famous day, September 1st,
he had declined to attend the meeting because he knew that An-
266 MARC ANTONY
tony was going to kill him. And now it was proposed to open nego-
tiations with this inhuman monster! No, indeed! he must not
be asked to retire from the borders of Cisalpine Gaul : he must be
compelled to do so. "We must reject the slow process of negotia-
tions/' he insisted. "With this man we must wage war war, I
say, and that instantly."
To Cicero's great disappointment, nevertheless, a deputation
was sent to Antony, and two days later, on January 3rd, the
orator delivered his Sixth Philippic, this time to the Comitia in
the Forum, in which he repeated his abuse of Antony, and the
demand for war against him, calling him now not a human being
at all, but a sinister and fatal beast. Daily he became more intent
on overcoming the better judgment and consequent hesitancy of
the senators, who knew that Antony was not what Cicero declared
him to be, and who felt that the old orator, now in fear of his life,
was pursuing his personal quarrel to exorbitant lengths.
In the Seventh Philippic, addressed to the Senate, he attempted
to contradict a rumour that Antony was prepared to come to terms;
and he declared that, in any case, a scoundrel such as he would
never abide by such terms. "Beware lest you let this foul and
deadly beast escape," he cried. "I have at all times been an ad-
viser of peace," he added, "and, indeed, the whole of my career
has been passed in warding off the danger of war. Thus I have
arrived at the highest honours ; yet I, a nursling of peace, do not
wish to have peace with Antony."
His passionate eloquence at last prevailed, and the Senate half-
heartedly authorized the new Consul Hirtius and Octavian to
march forth with the Martian and Fourth Legions and such other
troops as they could collect, so that by their display of force in
Antony's rear they might induce him to surrender. Pansa, the other
Consul, meanwhile remained in Rome with orders to try to re-
cruit an army, either voluntarily or by conscription. 18 A week
later Hirtius and Octavian arrived outside Rimini, on the east
coast of Italy near the frontier of Cisalpine Gaul, where they
found that Antony was encamped at Bononia (Bologna), two days'
march to the north, while Albinus was at Mutina (Modena), a
day's march further back into Cisalpine Gaul.
* Cicero: Ad Familiar es, xi, 8.
MARC ANTONY 267
To their surprise it was seen that neither Albums nor Antony
seemed to have any desire to begin real hostilities. Antony was
making some pretence of besieging Modena, and his outposts were
close under its walls, behind which Albinus was casually prepar-
ing for the expected siege; but meanwhile negotiations were in
progress between them, and Antony was offering terms to his op-
ponent. Hirtius and Octavian thereupon pushed on as far as Forum
Cornelii (Imola), a few miles south of Bologna, and there en-
camped, leaving Antony's force unmolested between them and Al-
binus. At the same time the delegates sent from Rome to treat with
Antony had found him ready to avoid hostilities if possible, and
were on their way back to the capital with his terms, which were
that he would be willing to accept the governorship of Gaul Proper
for five years in exchange for Cisalpine Gaul a proposal indicat-
ing clearly enough that he did not feel sufficiently strong to fight
Albinus on his front and Hirtius and Octavian in his rear, and
preferred a temporary respite in quiet and interesting Gaul.
This news threw Cicero into a frenzy. Antony, now his deadly
enemy, might escape, and come back to Rome at some future date
to settle accounts with him, which meant the violent death of one
or other of them. The Senate was inclining towards moderation
Calenus, in fact, was insisting on an amicable arrangement; and
now that Octavian had left the city the few remaining friends
of Antony were winning a daily increasing party to the side of
peace. In a passion of anger and anxiety, therefore, he delivered his
Eighth Philippic to the Senate, urging war, which, indeed, he de-
clared had already begun.
Resorting now to the most outrageous falsehoods he said that
Antony intended to massacre the people of Rome. "He promises our
very houses to his band of robbers," he cried, "for he says he will
divide the city amongst them; and he will give them any lands
they desire. His officers are marking out for themselves the most
beautiful houses, gardens, and estates at Frascati and elsewhere;
and those most clownish of men if, indeed, they are men and not
animals are borne along on their vain hopes as far as the Bay of
Naples" where Cicero's own favourite estate was situated.
How could Calenus suggest a peaceful agreement at such a
time, he thundered? "Does he call slavery a desirable peace? Or
268 MARC ANTONY
is it because he expects to be a partner in Antony's dominion?
When I was a boy I was acquainted with the father of Calenus,
who was a man of strict virtue and wisdom; and I remember that
he used to give the highest praise to the man who killed Tiberius
Gracchus. But Calenus himself would not have approved of his
father's opinion. Yet surely whatever is rotten in the body of the
Republic ought to be cut off so that the whole may be saved."
In conclusion Cicero proposed that all the soldiers serving under
Antony should be given until the end of February to leave him and
to come home, failing which they should be regarded as outlaws;
and he implied that Antony himself should be either put to death
or sent into exile.
The Ninth Philippic followed shortly afterwards, in which
he urged again "that the audacity of Antony be branded with in-
famy." But a few days later news was received more or less simul-
taneously in Rome and in the military camps in the north that
Brutus had quietly collected a force in Greece and had suddenly
marched into Macedonia, of which province Caius Antonius, An-
tony's brother, had taken up the governorship. Caius had been
forced to retire to Apollonia on the Adriatic coast, and one of his
legions had surrendered to Cicero's son, Marcus, who was serving
under Brutus. A force of cavalry, too, which was marching through
Greece on its way to join Dolabella in his new Syrian province
had surrendered to Brutus.
This startling news put a new, or, rather, a stronger com-
plexion on matters, for now the assassins of Csesar, as represented
by Brutus in Greece and Albinus in Cisalpine Gaul, had joined
fully in the fight; and more than ever Octavian's party was linked
with the murderers of the man whose heir he was. To Antony the
tidings were almost like a death-knell, for his right flank would
now be attacked as well as his front and rear; to Cicero they were
like the trump of victory; but to Octavian they must have been a
source of anxiety, for he could see his own cause soon swamped in
tbai: of the conspirators.
5 Pansa at once summoned the Senate, to move a vote of thanks
to Brutus; but Calenus urged that Brutus had acted without proper
auttierity. Thereupon Cicero made a speech, which is known
MARC ANTONY 269
as the Tenth Philippic, wherein he spoke of his "excessive delight"
at the news, and his disgust with the sturdy Calenus. "Why does
Calenus alone oppose the actions of Brutus and his troops men
whom we ought almost to worship?" he demanded. "The glory of
Brutus is divine and immortal such patience; O God, such moder-
ation; such tranquillity under injury ! I saw him myself when he was
leaving Italy for Greece; and O 5 what a sight was that! heart-
rending not only to men but to the very waves and shores. The
saviour of his country departing, while its destroyers were remain-
ing there ! But Brutus bided his time, and when he saw that Mace-
donia would be a refuge for Antony in defeat, he invaded that
country, and thus hemmed him in."
"Macedonia is now ours," he went on. "The legions there are
all devoted to us, and, above all, Brutus is ours a man born for
the Republic by some special destiny. But I see what Calenus
means : he is afraid that those of Csesar's ex-soldiers who are on our
side will not endure the thought of Brutus having an army. Yet what
is the difference between Brutus and Albinus? what reason is
there that the former should be an object of suspicion to these men
who are already pledged to help the latter? The ex-soldiers were
the first to put themselves under the authority of Octavian; after-
wards the Martian legion checked Antony's mad progress; then
the Fourth Legion crushed it. Being thus condemned by his own
troops he burst his way into Cisalpine Gaul, pursued by the armies
of Octavian and Hirtius; and afterwards Pansa recruited more
reinforcements against him here. Why then should there be any
objection because the army of Brutus has thrown its weight into
the scale, to assist us in overwhelming these pests?"
In February, further news was received from the east, dis-
quieting this time to Cicero, and cheering to Antony, Dolabella
had passed safely through Greece, and had reached Smyrna, where
Trebonius, the man who had detained Antony in conversation
while Csesar was murdered, was governor. Dolabella had requested
permission to pass through his province on his way to Syria; but
Trebonius had refused, whereupon Dolabella had surprised the
city by night, and had captured and killed him.
Calenus agreed that Dolabella had been wrong to do this, es-
2?0 MARC ANTONY
pecially as the report stated that Trebonius had been murdered un-
der revolting circumstances; and he was the first to censure him.
Cicero then delivered his Eleventh Philippic, in which he proposed
that Cassius, the original leader of the plot against Caesar, who
had been given the province of Cyrene, but was claiming Syria,
should be ordered to bring Dolabella to justice. Cassius was at that
time in Palestine at the head of no less than eleven legions, collected
from all the provinces round about, and even from Egypt where
Antony had allowed troops to remain to protect Cleopatra's throne ;
and it was felt that he would have no difficulty in avenging Tre-
bonius.
Dolabella was Cicero's son-in-law, of whom the orator had
often spoken in terms of superlative esteem; but now he began his
speech by saying that "Dolabella and Antony are the very blackest
and foulest monsters that have ever lived since the birth of man
unprecedented, unheard of, savage, barbarous." Describing the
murder of Trebonius, he stated that Dolabella "had examined
him with scourges and tortures for two days as to where the public
money was concealed, and then had cut off his head, which was
carried about, fixed on a spear, while his body was dragged through
the streets and thrown into the sea." The report was probably quite
true, we may suppose, for Dolabella was a young villain with
whom Antony had made a friendly compact only out of dire neces-
sity; but Trebonius, it has to be remembered, was also a mur-
derer, and deserves little pity beyond that evoked by his suffer-
ings. Indeed, a letter which he had just received from Cicero, 19
wherein a gloating reference was again made to "the magnificent
banquet of the Ides of March," introduces a dark hue of ferocity
into our picture of him which goes far to obscure any appeal in it
to our compassion.
Cicero then made his proposal in regard to Cassius, but opinion
was much divided in regard to the man who had originated the
conspiracy against Csesar; and Cicero could not well insist, "for,"
he said, "the mention of his glorious achievements is not yet ac-
ceptable to every one," and particularly not to Caesar's ex-soldiers.
"But I think," he added, "that we ought not to consider these
veterans so much : rather we should look to the new recruits." Most
w Cicero: Ad Familiar es, x, 28.
MARC ANTONY 271
of the veterans, indeed, were heart and soul for Antony because
of this very alliance of Octavian with the assassins.
In March, when spring had come, Antony began seriously to
lay siege to Modena, and when news reached Rome that Albinus
was hard pressed, the Senate again suggested that negotiations
should be opened. Cicero's Twelfth Philippic was delivered in op-
position to this move. "What terms can be possibly offered to this
polluted and impious traitor?" he asked. "Are we to give him
Gaul and an army? That would not be making peace but deferring
war."
In the end the suggestion was dropped, and the Consul Pansa
set out with the four legions he had recruited, to join Hirtius and
Octavian. Antony now realized his great danger, for Modena held
out against him stoutly ; and when Hirtius and Octavian sent him a
message to report the coming of that deputation which had since
been abandoned, he wrote to them expressing his willingness for
an accommodation, and telling them that they were acting against
the true interests of the State in allying themselves with Csesar's
murderers. The letter, a very sincere and straightforward docu-
ment, written in the bitterness of his heart, was forwarded to Rome,
and Cicero thereupon delivered his Thirteenth Philippic, imploring
the senators not to come to terms with Antony and his companions
men "whose breath reeks of wine," nor with Fulvia, "who is not
only most avaricious but also most cruel."
He then read certain paragraphs from Antony's letter, which
were as follows :
"When I heard of the death of Trebonius," Antony wrote, "I
was not more rejoiced than grieved. It was a matter of proper re-
joicing that a wicked man had paid the penalty due to the ashes of
the most illustrious Csesar, and that the divine power of the gods
had been manifest before a year was out by the chastisement of
the assassins already inflicted in some cases and impending in others.
That Dolabella should have been pronounced an enemy because
he has put an assassin to death, and that Trebonius, the son of a
fool, should appear dearer to the Roman people than Csesar, are
circumstances to be lamented." Here Cicero put in the comment
that the father of Trebonius was no fool, but a most worthy man;
and, anyhow, he asked, how could Antony reproach any one with
272 MARC ANTONY
mean birth when he himself had had children by a f reedwoman,
Fadia, his first love?
"But it is the bitterest thing of. all," the letter went on, "that
you, Hirtius, who used to be marked out for Caesar's kindness,
should have deplored the death of one of his murderers. 20 And
you, too, Octavian, my boy, you who owe everything to his name,
are taking pains to have Dolabella condemned, and to effect the
release of this murderer, Albinus, from my blockade, in order that
Cassius and Brutus may become as powerful as possible once more
in Rome."
Then came a number of disconnected quotations, amongst which
appeared the contemptuous remark: "You have the defeated Cicero
for a general" ; and on this the orator's amusingly conceited com-
ment was : "I do not mind his calling me "defeated," for it is my fate
that I can be neither victorious nor defeated without the Republic
being so at the same time." These quotations are summed up in
Antony's indignant words: "You have enlisted my soldiers and
many veterans under the pretence of intending the destruction of
those men who murdered Caesar; and then, contrary to what they ex-
pected, you have led them on to attack their general and their for-
mer comrades."
"But consider, both of you," the letter proceeded, "whether it
is more becoming for you to seek to avenge the death of Trebonius
or that of Caesar, and whether it is more reasonable for you to meet
me in battle in order that the old cause of the Pompeians and
conservatives, which has so frequently had its throat cut, may be
revived once more by you or for us to agree together so as not to
be a laughing-stock to our enemies, men who will count the destruc-
tion of either you or me gain to them. Are we to provide them with
a spectacle which, so far, Fortune herself has taken care to avoid?
the spectacle of two armies, which belong to one body, fighting
each other with Cicero as the master of the show, a man who has
won both of you with the same flattery as that with which 'he used
to boast that he had deceived Caesar."
*. "However," he added, "I am quite resolved to brook no more
insults either to myself or to my friends, nor to desert that demo-
cratic party which Pompey hated. If the immortal gods assist me,
" The last words of this sentence have been added to fill a lacuna.
MARC ANTONY 273
as I have faith that they will, I shall continue on my way in hap-
piness ; but if another fate awaits me, I have already a foretaste of
satisfaction in the certainty of your punishment. In conclusion, this
is the sum of my feelings : I will forget your past insults if you
will forget that you offered them, and if you are prepared to unite
with me in avenging Caesar's death."
Early in April news was received that Caius Antonius, Antony's
brother, had surrendered to Brutus in Macedonia; but Brutus him-
self was in some difficulties, for he had very little money at his
disposal, and was already exhausted by his exertions in the field, and
longed to be back amongst his books in Athens if not in Rome. More-
over, he had had a long talk with his prisoner, Caius, and had been
greatly disturbed by what he had said. 21 Caius had told him that
Cicero was not to be trusted to bring peace to distracted Rome, but
only everlasting war between the democrats and republicans; and
he had pointed out how honest and simple a man Antony was, and
how willing to make that peace which Cicero and Octavian were
jeopardising. As a result of these talks, Brutus not only gave Caius
his liberty, but joined with him in writing to Cicero proposing a
general armistice. Cicero, of course, was furious and wrote very
sharply to Brutus, telling him that energetic prosecution of the war,
and not sentimental talk of peace, was the thing to be desired.
Meanwhile, Antony's letter to his opponents had been ignored,
and in desperation he decided to hurry 'south and attack Pansa be-
fore he could effect a juncture with Hirtius and Octavian. He there-
fore left his brother, Lucius, to keep the latter engaged, while he
himself secretly marched off with the Second and Thirty-Fifth
Legions and a body of cavalry to waylay Pansa. But his move was
discovered, and the Martian legion was dispatched to meet and
reinforce Pansa, with the result that when Antony made his attack
he found himself fighting not only the newly recruited legions but
also this legion of war-tried soldiers who were thirsting for revenge
upon him for the executions at BrindisL
A fierce battle ensued 22 in which Pansa was mortally wounded,
and the Martian legion was routed, the whole enemy force there-
after making its way in disorder towards Modena. Hirtius there-
* Cicero: Ad Brutum, ii, r.
The battle is described in Cicero: Ad Familiar es, x, 30.
274 MARC ANTONY
upon marched to the relief of the fugitives, leaving Octavian to de-
fend the camp against Lucius, in which undertaking he was entirely
successful since the attack was no more than a feint to cover Antony's
movements.
Antony, then, beating off a flank attack by Hirtius, marched
back to his main army before the walls of Modena, more depressed
by his losses than pleased by his success, but thinking that Hirtius
and Octavian would take some time to collect the scattered remnant
of Pansa's legions and to reorganize themselves. Hirtius, however,
decided to attack again at once, in an attempt to break through An-
tony's army and to join forces with Albinus in Modena.
On April 2 1st, 43 B.C., Hirtius at the head of the Fourth Legion
advanced on Antony's camp which was defended by the Larks (the
Fifth Legion), and at the same time Albinus made a sortie from
Modena. It was a day of alternating hope and despair for Antony,
who rushed from one danger-point to another, cheering on his men,
and exposing himself with his usual recklessness in battle; but at
last the Larks were victorious on both fronts, and Hirtius was
killed a fact of which Antony, however, was unaware, as also he
was of the seriousness of Pansa's wounds. Octavian then hastened to
the rescue, but though he fought with .personal gallantry, and was
involved in the thick of the battle, he was driven off by the Larks;
and at the end of the day both he and Albinus retired, leaving the
sweating and exhausted Antony with his camp itself intact but with
a sadly depleted force, the slaughter on either side having been ter-
rible. There was no singing of the Larks at that sunset.
During the night Antony counted his dead and reviewed the
situation. He did not know how greatly the enemy had also suf-
fered, and, as has been said, he was unaware that Octavian was
now their only surviving general, Hirtius being dead and Pansa dy-
ing. He was hopeless of victory and believed that next day Hirtius,
Octavian and Albinus, acting together, would overwhelm him; and
therefore in the darkness he gave the order for a retreat towards the
west. Lepidus, the man who had helped him to keep order in Rome
after Csesar's murder, and who was now governor of Gallia Nar-
bonensis (Southern France) was apparently a staunch adherent to
his party, in spite of Cicero's attempt to terrorize him; 28 and An-
38 Cicero: Ad Familiar es, x, 27.
MARC ANTONY 275
tony felt that his only hope lay in joining forces with him, now that
Macedonia, on the east, was in the hands of Brutus.
Thus, on the following day Octavian found his enemy's camp
deserted, and at once joined hands with Albinus. Antony and his
shattered army had silently marched away.
CHAPTER XIII
Antony's Alliance with Lepidus and then with Octavian ; and the Turning
of the Tables upon Cicero.
43 B.C.
THE news of the battle and of Antony's precipitate retreat
caused the most profound sensation in Rome. Cicero, of course, was
overjoyed. He did not suppose for a moment that there was any
chance of his enemy escaping: Octavian and Albinus would hunt
him down, surely, without any great difficulty. The republican party
was enthusiastic, and a crowd of its supporters congregated around
Cicero's house to give him an ovation. When he appeared before
them, smiling, bowing, and waving his hand, they insisted upon
carrying him through the Forum and up to the Capitol and back,
cheering him and hailing him as their rightful leader. It was the
greatest hour of his life, the crown pf his career; and as he stood in
the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, returning thanks to the gods,
the tears of pride flooding his eyes, and his vain old heart thrilling
to the chant of triumph, he must have been completely unaware of
the inherent dangers of his position. Had any soothsayer told him
then that this high tide of his destiny was to be followed immediate-
ly by the ebb which was to carry him headlong to his pitiful doqm,
he would have laughed at him.
He was so transported by his own success and by the triumph
of his party that he began on the instant to turn from his alliance
with Octavian. The heir of Caesar had served his purpose, and it
only remained now to take the young man by the shoulders and
to propel him with benevolent but determined hands into that ob-
scurity from which he had come. The triumph, in Cicero's opinion,
was the triumph of himself and of the cause of those republican con-
spirators who had destroyed Csesar. Antony, Caesar's representative
276
MARC ANTONY 277
and political successor, was in flight; and Octavian, Caesar's adopted
son, must be sent about his business with no more than polite thanks
for his aid. Rome, he felt, belonged now to himself, the wonderful
Cicero, to Decimus Brutus Albinus, to Cassius, to Brutus, to the
whole "gallant band" of Caesar's assassins, and to the faithful repub-
lican party. The democrats were done for: there was no place for
them nor for Csesarians of any kind, whether they were adherents of
Antony or of Octavian.
At Cicero's instigation, unprecedented thanksgiving-festivals
were decreed, and the highest honours were voted to Albinus whose
promotion to the position of Commander-in-Chief of all the Roman
armies was at once proposed. But for Octavian no such rewards were
forthcoming. "Practically every advantage," says Dion Cassius,
"which had been given to Octavian at Antony's expense was now
voted to others at Octavian's expense; and they even undertook to
overthrow him, setting his supporters at variance with one another
and with him." x
But if Octavian's democratic friends were thus slighted by the
triumphant republicans, Antony's were openly insulted, and went
in danger of their lives. Julia, his now elderly mother, and Fulvia,
his violent wife, were doubtless hooted and jeered at; and the five
children of his household must have been in danger of rough hand-
ling. Four of these children, it will be recalled, were Clodius and
Clodia, Fulvia's little son and daughter by the late Clodius; An-
tonia, Antony's daughter by the divorced Antonia; and Antyllus,
Antony's son by Fulvia. The fifth was a baby in arms, the little
Julus Antonius, a second son presented by Fulvia to Antony. His
prominent supporters, too, such as Calenus, were threatened with
a terrible doom. Yet it is evident that a great part of the mob was
still loyal to him; 2 and, indeed, the Senate itself was not wholly
with Cicero, nor in these first days of excitement could they make
up their minds to pronounce the death-penalty upon Antony.
This hestitation induced the orator to deliver his Fourteenth
Philippic, the last of the furious series. "You vote a Thanksgiving,"
1 Dion Cassius, xlvi, 40. Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome) does not
agree that Octavian was already cold-shouldered ; but I do not think that there can be
the least doubt about it.
a Cicero: Philippic stw t vi.
278 MARC ANTONY
he protested to the senators, "and yet you do not name Antony an
enemy. O, very pleasing indeed to the immortal gods will our
Thanksgivings be with this omission, very pleasing to the spirits of
our fallen soldiers ! Antony, the foulest of all bandits, is still in arms
against us, and, although hastening to his destruction, still threatens
all of us. Remember, I entreat you, what we have been fearing dur-
ing these few days : which of you have been able to look at your
children or your wives without weeping? which of you have been
able to bear the sight of your homes? when all of us were dread-
ing a miserable death at Antony's hands, or meditating an igno-
minious flight. And shall we hesitate to condemn him now that he is
in our power?"
He implored them to listen to his advice, reminding them of his
right to speak as the hero of the hour. "Yesterday," he said, "the
Roman People carried me in triumph to the Capitol; and in my
opinion it was a just, a genuine triumph, for if at a time of such
general rejoicing they address their congratulations to one indi-
vidual, surely that is a proof of his worth. It is indeed against my
will that I remind you of this, but my indignation makes me boast-
ful, which is very contrary to my usual habit."
He then went on to say that lying rumors had been spread that
He intended to make himself Dictator. "The idea of anyone being
so wicked as to invent such a tale !" he cried. "Am I, who defeated
and overthrew and crushed Catiline, a likely man myself to become a
tyrant?" All he wanted, he declared, was to see the war continued
to its end the death of Antony. "Remember that, last December,
I was the main cause of our recovering our freedom; that from
January until this very hour I have never ceased to watch over the
Republic; that it has been by my letters and my exhortations that
all men in every part of the empire have been aroused to the pro-
tection of our country; and that I have always called Antony a pub-
lic enemy, and have been opposed to any pretence of a peace which
would be fatal to us."
He next turned to the praising of the victors, speaking first
of Albinus, to whose succour the others had gone, then of the dead
Hirtius, next of the wounded Pansa, and finally of Octavian, but
using no superlatives in reference to the last-named such as he had
lavished upon him in his precious speeches. And in conclusion he
MARC ANTONY 279
asked that a magnificent monument should be erected to the Martian
Legion which had deserted Antony, and that the services of the
Fourth Legion should also be recognized although its casualties had
been slight.
Not long after the delivery of this speech, however, came the dis-
concerting news that Pansa was dead, that Albinus, unaccountably
delayed, had marched away in pursuit of Antony only after the
latter had had at least two days' start, and that Octavian had re-
mained at Bologna, having been unwilling, or having failed to per-
suade his men, to take to the highroad. It looked as though Antony
had made good his escape, and Cicero was deeply mortified to find
that his paeans of triumph had been sung too soon.
Antony, indeed, had got clean away. Marching with his brother
Lucius at the head of what remained of the Larks or Fifth Legion,
the Second and Thirty-Fifth Legions, the Gallic and other cavalry,
and the veterans of Caesar, he had taken the road north-westwards to
Parma, which he reached on April 23rd. The town shut its gates to
him, and as a punishment he pillaged it, some of the inhabitants
being killed in the confusion. He then moved on to Placentia (Pia-
cenza), and thence through Comeliomagus (Cicognola) to Dertona
(Tortona) which he reached on the 28th. The road he had taken
was the main inland route to Gaul, and had led him in a wide arc
into the mountainous and desolate country behind Genoa. Now he
had to march southwards and westwards and to cross the Maritime
Alps, so that he might reach the coast and proceed along what is
today the Italian Riviera; and it was here that the most perilous part
of the journey began.
No army would have followed him into those rocky passes
amidst the barren hills had the troops not loved and trusted him.
He explained his plans to them: after crossing the mountains they
would make their way beside the sea, through Nicaea (Nice), Anti-
polis (Antibes), and the other towns of the modern French Riviera,
to Forum Julii (Frejus, near St. Raphael), near which city Lepidus
was "stationed with seven of Caesar's old legions. Lepidus had been
Antony's friend in the past, and even if he were now to wish to
declare for the other side, it was probable that his legions would
join up with Antony whom they had learnt to love in the wars in
Gaul, and who had such a large force of Gesar's ex-soldiers with
2 8o MARC ANTONY
him. Possibly the troops under Plancus, another of Caesar's old gen-
erals, and brother of one of Antony's officers, who were now in the
neighbourhood of Lugdunum (Lyons), would also join with them;
and thus with an invincible army they would march back to Italy
and carry all before them. Everything depended on the attitude of
Lepidus and his men; but this risk Antony's battered and weary
troops were willing to take, and with dogged courage they began, on
April 3oth, their ascent into the mountains.
"Antony in this march was overtaken by distresses of every
kind," writes Plutarch, 3 "and the worst of all was hunger. But
it was his character in calamities to be better then than at anytime;
and in misfortune he was most nearly a virtuous man. It 'is common
enough for people when they fall into great disasters to discern what
is right and what they ought to do; but there are few who in such
extremities have the strength to obey their judgment, and a good
many are so weak as to give way to their habits all the more, and
are incapable of using their brains. Antony, on this occasion, was
a most wonderful example to his soldiers. He, who had just quitted
so much luxury and sumptuous living, made no difficulty now of
drinking foul water and feeding on wild fruits and roots. Nay, it is
related that they ate the very bark of trees, and, in passing over
the Alps, lived upon creatures which no one before had ever been
willing to touch."
He refused to shave or to have his hair trimmed so long as his
men were in danger; and thus dirty and unkempt he trudged along
all day, keeping step to the marching-songs of his dust-covered
Larks, and eating with them as they sat under the stars around their
camp-fires at night. It was urgently necessary that they should
force their pace, in order to keep well ahead of the pursuing army;
and there must have been many lamed stragglers, or men wounded
in the recent fighting, who were left by the roadside, being unable
to keep up with the hurrying host. On the other hand, however,
some new recruits, or useful camp-followers were collected on the
way by the commandeering of gangs of slaves who chanced to be
working in the territory through which they passed; and, indeed, as
Albiqtus reported to Rome, 4 "Antony snapped up every kind of hu-
man being he came across."
*PlataiA: Antony. * Cicero: Ad Famttiares* xi> 1A.
MARC ANTONY 281
At last the weary and hungry troops came streaming down the
mountain slopes to Vada Sabbatia (Vado Sabazia) on the sea-coast;
and here, to Antony's joy, he was met by a large force of Caesar's
ex-soldiers of the old Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Legions, who had
been re-enlisted by one of his officers, Ventidius Bassus, too late,
however, to help him at Modena. Upon hearing of his retreat these
men had bravely marched by the lower route to join him, thus dis-
playing a devotion to him and to his cause, even in defeat, which
speaks highly for his personal character.
JBeing thus reinforced, Antony sent his brother Lucius ahead
with the cavalry to Frejus, which he reached on May 8th; and he
himself meanwhile marched along the rocky coast with the infantry,
arriving at Frejus on May 15th, a little over three weeks after the
departure from Modena. Here, to his dismay, he was told that
Lepidus, on whose friendship he was relying, and who was encamped
about a day's march inland, was showing every sign of regarding
him as an enemy. As a matter of fact, Albinus had written to Cicero
immediately on discovering that Antony had marched away, say-
ing: "I beg you to send a despatch to Lepidus in order to prevent
such a weathercock as he is from having a chance to ally himself with
Antony and renew the war." 5 Cicero had done so, and had demanded
this general's loyalty in such stern terms that Lepidus had decided
to support the republican party, more particularly since Antony ap-
peared to be on the run. Plancus, also, was said to be definitely hos-
tile, and, though Antony did not know it, had just written to Cicero, 6
saying that he and Lepidus had agreed to work together to crush
the fugitive.
At the same time Antony began to hear something of the move-
ments of Albinus. Octavian had undoubtedly caused this general the
greatest concern by refusing to join with him in the pursuit, and, ac-
tually, Albinus had written bitterly to Cicero, 7 saying : "If Octavian
had been willing to listen to me and to cross the mountains with me
I would have been able to corner Antony, and make an end of him;
but Octavian is no more willing to take orders from others than his
army is willing to take orders from him" Albinus had finally aban-
doned the attempt to catch up with the retreating enemy, and had
"Cicero: Ad Familiares, xi, 9, * Ibid., x, 11,
xi, 10.
282 MARC ANTONY
headed inland for the Alpes Graise (the Little St. Bernard) or the
Cottise (Mont Cenis), with the idea of joining hands with Plancus
who was moving along the valley of the Isere towards him.
Matters looked very bad, and Antony decided that tlie best
thing to do would be to march his men close up to the army of
Lepidus and to encourage them to renew old friendships with the
soldiers of Caesar now serving therein, particularly with those of
the Tenth Legion who had known Antony well in the Gallic wars
and remembered him as their beloved Caesar's closest and most
trusted friend. After a rest of a day or two at Frejus, therefore, he
made the journey inland, and pitched his camp on the near side of
a little brook called the Argenteus, on the far side of which the army
of Lepidus was entrenched; but whereas Lepidus took the precau-
tion of keeping his troops behind their earthworks as though expect-
ing a siege,- Antony boldly displayed his desire for friendly over-
tures by telling his men not to dig themselves in, but to try to
fraternise with the soldiers on the other bank of the stream.
The orders of Lepidus, however, were strict; and for more than
a week Antony's efforts were frustrated. At length in despair he
went down to the edge of the little river, and began to harangue
the soldiers on the other side, who crowded together to listen to him.
He had not yet shaved or cut his hair; and these men stared in
amazement at the well-remembered, mighty figure of their old com-
mander, who looked like a tragic Hercules as he stood before them,
with his unkempt beard, his untidy locks, his travel-stained clothes,
and his battered armour over which he had flung a dark cloak as a
kind of symbol of mourning. Antony, as has already been said, was
something of an actor ; but the role he was now playing was so true
a representation of his terrible plight that his sincerity was not in
question. No sooner, however, had the matter been reported to
Lepidus than he gave orders for the bugles to be blown so that
Antony's voice might not be heard; and presently, with a gesture of
despair, the unfortunate speaker was obliged to abandon his efforts
and return to his tent.
That night, however, two soldiers, presumably of the Tenth
Legion, disguised themselves as women, and, coming across the
stream, managed to obtain an interview with Antony, who told them
an indignant story of how he had attempted to carry on Caesar's
MARC ANTONY 283
work, how he had wanted to bring the assassins to justice, how
Octavian had allied himself with the murderers of the great Dicta-
tor, and how, after the defeat at Modena, Antony had felt that
his only refuge was with the troops of Lepidus, Csesar's and his
own old comrades. The two men then revealed to him the fact that
the Tenth Legion at any rate, and probably the rest of the army,
were ready to kill Lepidus and put themselves under Antony's com-
mand, but that their desires were held in check by those of their of-
ficers whose sympathies were on the other side. They advised him
to attack the camp next day, and promised that they would do all
they could to stir up a mutiny.
To Antony, their message was like the voice of the immortal
gods: it was like a repeal of his death-sentence; and with joy in
his heart he sent them back to their fellows, telling them to do
no injury to Lepidus, and promising that on the morrow he would
ford the stream, and, even though it should cost him his life, de-
mand an interview with their general.
He was as good as his word. Next morning, at the head of
his men, he waded across the water, not knowing in the least whether
an arrow or a javelin would end there and then his troubles;
but before he had splashed his way half across the brook he saw
the soldiers on the other side gathering to welcome him, holding
out their hands to him, and breaking down the palisades which
had been set up to defend the bank against attack. A few moments
later he was in their midst, and he and his men were being hailed
as long-lost friends.
Lepidus was in bed at the time, but without waiting to put
on his general's apparel, he hastened to the spot and threw his
arms around the huge and bearded Antony. It would seem that he
had been wavering for several days, but now the unanimity of his
troops, and the realization that he would probably be murdered
if he did not recognize the claims of Antony, had decided him.
Antony saw at once that the camp and the whole army was his, yet
he treated Lepidus with the utmost civility, calling him "Father"
wheii he addressed him for he was an elderly man and insisting
that he should retain the chief command of the united forces.
The jollification which followed was marred by one tragic in-
cident. A certain officer, named Laterensis, had done his best dur-
284 MARC ANTONY
ing these last few days to keep Lepidus and his army faithful to the
republican cause; and now when he saw Antony acclaimed he drew
his sword and killed himself in their presence.
Subsequent events moved along an almost inevitable course.
Lepidus at once wrote an apologetic letter to the Senate saying
naively that pity for Antony had been too much for himself and
his soldiers; and when this horrifying message was received in
Rome in the early days of June, Cicero voiced the consternation
of his party by demanding that he should be declared a public en-
emy. Lepidus, however, had many friends in high places : his wife
was the daughter of Servilia, and was thus sister of Brutus and of
Tertia, the wife of Cassius; and he had a brother, moreover, in the
Senate who was a faithful supporter of the republicans. Thus it was
not until the end of June that Lepidus was condemned his brother
being one of those who voted for this measure, and not until the
middle of July that he and his army received the notification of the
fact.
Meanwhile Decimus Brutus Albinus had joined hands with
Plancus at Grenoble, and they were thus in command of an army
as big as that of Antony and Lepidus. From Rome the worried
Cicero sent express messengers to Brutus in Macedonia and to Cas-
sius in Syria, ordering them to march home to Italy as quickly as
possible; and Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, was
given command of the Roman fleets. Sextus was then a man of
thirty-two years of age, who had maintained an independent fight-
ing-force in Spain during the long period of exile which had followed
the death of his father, but had been pardoned by Antony after
Caesar's murder, and had more recently been invited back to Rome by
Cicero.
Octavian was still remaining inactive in Cisalpine Gaul, hav-
ing made no move since the battle of Modena; but Cicero now
cunningly proposed that he should be given the nominal command
of the republican armies, so that the various legions which had
sentimental associations with the late Caesar should feel that they
still had Caesar's heir at their head in spite of the fact that they
were no longer serving the cause of the democratic party. The
pdwer of Octavian's name as the Dictator's heir was immensely
valuable to the republicans in their struggle with Antony; and
MARC ANTONY 285
Cicero, in the altered circumstances, was not prepared yet to relin-
quish the use of it, much as he wished now to be rid of the tiresome
young man himself.
Cicero, though painfully anxious, had no reason to despair.
Apart from Octavian,' Albinus had ten legions; Plancus, now linked
with Albinus, had five legions; Asinius Pollio, governor of Spain,
who seemed to be loyal to the republicans, had three legions ; Brutus
in Macedonia had raised some seven legions ; Cassius in Syria had
at least ten legions; and there were other legions in North Africa
and elsewhere who were apparently on their side. Nearly forty
legions, in fact, were at the disposal of the republicans, against the
fourteen under the command of Antony and Lepidus, and the two
which were with Dolabella in Syria.
But Brutus did not obey the orders to come to Rome. He
was not a man of war, and, anyhow, he had no wish to have any
dealings with Octavian: he was willing to join forces with Albinus,
his fellow conspirator, but not with Csesar's heir. He preferred to
await the coming of Cassius. Cassius, however, had his own troubles
to delay his return. Dolabella had been trying to wrest the province
of Syria from him, and, with his two legions and many local
levies, was at Laodicea (Ladikiyeh) on the Syrian coast, not far
south of Antioch. However, at about this time, Cassius overwhelmed
him, and Dolabella brought his stormy life to a close by killing him-
self, after which Cassius began his slow march towards Italy.
Octavian's attitude towards the republicans, however, gradu-
ally changed during this period of his idleness in Cisalpine Gaul.
He realized that he was tolerated by his soldiers solely because he
was the Dictator's heir, and he saw that the republicans were only
using him to retain the loyalty of Csesar's old legions. More and
more he disliked the thought of being allied with the Dictator's as-
sassins; more and more he mistrusted Cicero. A story was current
in Rome that he, Octavian, had treacherously killed Hirtius at
Modena, stabbing him from behind in the thick of the fight, and that
he had poisoned Pansa. Tales of this kind 8 must have seemed to him
to have been invented by Cicero's party to discredit him.
He began to wonder whether he were not on the wrong side,
whether, in fact, he would not be in a more dignified position if he
8 Suetonius: Augustus, xi, xii.
2 86 MARC ANTONY
were to make his peace with Antony, who was, in any case, still
so formidable. Some of the troops who had fought under him at
Modena came from the town of Nursia (Norcia), between Rome
and Cisalpine Gaul ; and the townspeople had there erected a monu-
ment to their fallen comrades, bearing an inscription which said that
they had died in the cause of liberty. Octavian now asked himself
whether the cause of liberty had indeed been promoted by this
battle; and, deciding, in his new temper, that it had not, he sent
orders to these Nursians to obliterate the inscription. 9 Then, when
Lepidus privately wrote to him suggesting an alliance, he made up
his mind to drop Cicero and the republicans at the first opportunity.
The decision was rank treachery, but to us it is understandable and
can be excused to some extent on the grounds that he was still a boy,
and that an eleventh-hour recantation was better than the pursuing
of a course forced upon him at a time of great danger to himself.
The two Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, being dead Octavian now
conceived the idea of having himself made Consul for the remainder
of the current year, there being more than one precedent for the
attaining of that position before the prescribed age; and a
deputation of his officers thereupon went to Rome to demand the
Consulship for him. Cicero had expected to be asked to accept
a second Consulship, but this was not to the taste of Octavian,
who proposed therefore that the other Consul should be his cousin,
Quintus Pedius, one of Caesar's grandnephews who had been remem-
bered in his will, but who, being a timid man and desirous of keep-
ing out of trouble's way, had handed over his share to Octavian, say-
ing that he had enough money of his own. Pedius was popular with
the mob, because in 48 B.C., he had brought about the death of
Milo, the man who had killed Clodius, the People's idol. Milo had
gone into exile after the murder of Clodius, but had afterwards re-
turned to Italy at the head of a band of outlaws; and Pedius had
been instrumental in destroying him, thereby winning the approval
of the rabble.
The republicans, however, could not tolerate the idea of Csesar's
two grandnephews being Consuls, and Octavian therefore marched
his troops to Rome to make his demands in person. Cicero, of course,
was distracted ; and when the young man entered the city, and, after
* Suetonius: Augustus, xii.
Photograph by Anderson
CICERO
Capitol Museum, Rome
MARC ANTONY 287
a dramatic and public reunion with his mother, Atia, and his half-
sister, Octavia, held a reception of his supporters, the orator refused
at first to pay his respects to him. At last, however, he called upon
him, whereat Octavian made the cold remark that Cicero was the
very last of his supposed friends to do so. On August ipth the boy
was elected Consul with his cousin Quintus Pedius as his colleague;
and thereupon 10 the heart-broken Cicero retired to his country house
at Frascati. The bright-hued bubble of his dream of personal power
and glory had burst.
At about the same time the legions which Cicero had summoned
home from North Africa arrived at the capital, having disembarked
at Ostia, the port of Rome; and these men, being old soldiers of
Caesar, joined with Octavian' s own forces in demanding that he
should take a strong attitude against the republicans and the con-
spirators, and in begging him to ally himself with Antony. There-
upon he felt the time had come for him to declare himself as a demo-
crat and as the Dictator's avenger; and he immediately forced
through the Senate a bill repealing the Act of Oblivion, and impos-
ing the punishment of exile and confiscation of their property upon
the assassins Brutus, Cassius, Albinus, and all the others. It was
a complete democratic and Caesarian coup, and the party of the re-
publicans collapsed.
Pollio, on hearing of the edict, at once placed his three legions
from Spain at the disposal of Antony and Lepidus. Plancus followed
suit, and handed over three of his five legions. The ten legions of Al-
binus deserted him, four of them going to Antony and six to
Octavian. Thus Antony and Lepidus suddenly found themselves in
command of twenty-four legions and at least ten thousand auxiliary
cavalry.
Albinus, exiled, and deserted by all but ten men, fled into the
mountains disguised as a Gaul, cursing Octavian who had so sud-
denly betrayed him; but it was not long before a brigand chieftain
captured him and his party, and sent a message to Antony to know
what he should do with his important prisoner. Antony had for long
determined to hound every one of the assassins to death, and
for Albinus in particular he had no mercy in his heart the man who
had so infamously coaxed Csesar to come to the Senate to be killed,
10 The exact date is not known, but I think it must have been at about this time.
2 88 MARC ANTONY
and who afterwards had caused Antony such miseries by resisting his
claims to the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul. He therefore sent
back word that the prisoner should be killed; but when Albinus was
informed of his fate and was told to prepare to die the wretched man
lost his nerve and burst into loud lamentations, whereat one of his
faithful officers, Helvius Blasio by name, set him an example in
fortitude by quietly committing suicide before his eyes. An hour or
so later a messenger was on his way to Antony carrying Albinus's
head wrapped up in a parcel.
At the end of September Antony and Lepidus began their march
back towards Italy with seventeen legions, the others having been
left to garrison Spain and Gaul ; and they sent messengers on ahead
to Octavian to tell him that they were prepared to make an alliance
with him, apparently on condition that he showed his good faith
by causing the Senate to annul the decrees by which they had been
made public enemies. This was done, Octavian's soldiers, in fact,
demanding it n out of their love for Antony; and a meeting was ar-
ranged which was to take place on a tiny island at the confluence of
the rivers Rhenus (Reno) and .Lavinius (Lavino), not far from
Bologna.
Octavian, who arrived first at the rendez-vous, took every pre-
caution against treachery. He built two bridges, the one linking the
island with the eastern bank of the river where his troops were en-
camped, and the other joining it to the western bank, where Antony's
men were to be quartered; while on the island itself he erected a tent
in which the terms of the alliance could be discussed. Messengers
passing to and fro between him and Antony effected an arrangement
as to procedure : Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus would leave their
troops at a little distance and would each advance to the water's
edge with a bodyguard of three liundred cavalry, after which
Octavian from the one side would cross the bridge onto the island
unattended, and from the opposite side Antony and Lepidus, separ-
ately and alone, would cross to the meeting-place by the other
bridge. All three were to be unarmed.
On the appointed day, which was at the end of October, 43 B.C.,
the three generals made their appearance as arranged, and, leaving
their escorts of cavalry, walked towards the bridges; but here they
14 Dion Cassius, xlvi, 52. .
MARC ANTONY 289
hesitated, Antony fearing an ambush, and Octavian fearing Antony.
Lepidus, however, overcame the difficulty by boldly crossing the
bridge and making a rapid inspection of the island and of the large
tent which occupied most of its small area. Having satisfied himself
that nobody was there in hiding he beckoned to Antony and Oc-
tavian to join him, and this they did, walking warily towards one
another, and at last embracing in the manner which etiquette re-
quired. This embrace gave each of them an opportunity to feel for a
hidden weapon upon the person of the other, and the action was at
once so apparent that they abandoned all concealment of it and
openly felt each other all over with their hands. Then the three of
them entered the tent.
They were a remarkable trio. The mighty Antony, now clean-
shaven once more, was a man of forty, as muscular and as bull-
necked as any gladiator, yet having that easy grace of carriage and
that lordly air of assurance which made him always so conspicuous.
Octavian, who had recently attained his twentieth birthday, and had
grown a little beard, was still a pale, unhealthy, untidy youth, wor-
ried-looking and older than his years, yet decidedly handsome and
having the appearance of an aristocrat. Lepidus must have been
over sixty years of age, but still had a thick crop of grey hair: he
was a quiet, polite, gentlemanly personage of ancient patrician
family, rather lazy, and having little strength of character visible in
his kindly face, but a good deal of tact observable in his manner.
For two, or perhaps three, days this interesting trinity sat for
hours in the tent, approached only at command by their servants,
reviewing the whole situation, and adjusting their viewpoints one to
the other. Antony's position was unquestionably the strongest: he
had ruled Rome single-handed both during Cesar's absence and
after his death, and he was accustomed to command. He was great-
ly beloved by the army; and although his drinking-bouts and his
lapses into periods of idle and dissolute living had caused him to be
regarded with apprehension by the more solid elements of Roman
society, his ability to play the man in times of difficulty had raised
his reputation to great heights, In general he was the most popular
figure of the age, and the fall of Cicero and the republican party
had removed all his enemies from his immediate path.
This being so, he dominated the conference, and was in a
2 9 o MARC ANTONY
position to oblige Octavian to accept only that share of the power
now in their hands which he himself did not want. It was agreed
that the three of them should form a Triumvirate which was to
last five years, each having the title of Triumvir, and that the gov-
ernment of Rome and Italy should be conducted by them in concert,
but that the rest of the empire should be parcelled out between them
into three spheres of influence. Brutus, Cassius, and the other con-
spirators were in control of Greece and the eastern dominions; but
the rest of the world outside Italy was theirs to divide. Antony de-
manded and received as his share Cisalpine Gaul and all that part of
Gaul Proper which Caesar had conquered. Lepidus was given control
of Gallia Narbonensis (Southern France) and Spain. Octavian took
Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and North Africa, the least important
of the three divisions.
It was agreed that while Lepidus should remain as their acting
partner in Rome with three legions to support him, Antony and
Octavian should each command an army of twenty legions f orty in
all and should set themselves to the immediate task of overthrow-
ing the conspirators and reconquering Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and
the other parts of the eastern empire. Octavian undertook to resign
the Consulship which he had held for the last two months or so, and
that office was to be given to the heroic Ventidius Bassus in reward
for the service he had rendered to Antony in bringing three legions
to his aid. The Consulships for the following year, 42 B.C., were to
be held by Lepidus and Plancus. It was finally agreed that Octavian
should cement his alliance with Antony and the democratic party
by marrying Clodia, Antony's step-daughter, the daughter of his
wife Fulvia by her earlier marriage with Clodius, that violent dem-
agogue who had met his death in 52 B.C.
The girl was probably no more than about twelve years of age
or so, and it may be said in anticipation that the marriage was never
consummated; but its political significance lay in the fact that
Clodia's father was remembered as the hero of the popular party,
the beloved leader of the People. She was the darling of the mob;
and, in marrying her Octavian linked himself not only with Antony's
household, but with the masses. In fact, I think the union must have
been suggested by Octavian rather than by Antony, for the former
profited by it, politically, more than the latter.
MARC ANTONY
291
Then came the question of the punishment of the chief men
in the republican party, the leaders in the movement which had
caused the death sentence to be passed first upon Antony and then
upon Lepidus. Antony, of course, was not going to show any
mercy to Cicero, the man who had f renziedly demanded his death
in those terrible Philippics which had poured such filthy and such
lying abuse upon him ; and now he insisted that the old orator should
be put to death. The quarrel between the two men had passed beyond
the limits of any possible accommodation: Cicero had done his pas-
sionate best to kill Antony, and now Antony would kill Cicero. It
was a case of tit for tat.
Lepidus, on his part, was determined to revenge himself upon
his brother who, as a senator, had voted for the death sentence
against him proposed by Cicero; and he now demanded that this
brother of his should die. Octavian, meanwhile, wished to be re-
venged upon Lucius Csesar, Antony's mother's brother, who in some
way now forgotten had worked against the interests of the young
man, and had thrown in his lot with Cicero.
It was arranged, therefore, that these three men, and about a
dozen others, should be immediately executed 12 without trial. A
terrible list of some three hundred 18 republicans was then drawn
up, at least a hundred of whom were senators ; and it was agreed
that these unfortunates should be put to death as soon as the ab-
solute authority of the Triumvirate had been established. The mob
in Rome which had always hated the capitalists and the aristocrats,
and had lately begun to idolise the memory of Caesar as the friend of
the People, was thirsting for vengeance; and this wholesale
slaughter of the republicans was expected to delight them. The
precedent set by Sulla was closely followed, and just as he had pro-
scribed all the important men in the democratic camp, and had
practically wiped that party out, so now, with equal savagery, it was
to be the turn of the democrats to make a clean sweep of the repub-
licans.
An ugly feature of this shocking proscription was the fact that
since the property of the condemned was to be confiscated, and
u The authorities disagree as to the number in this first batch of victims, some
saying twelve and others seventeen.
"These numbers also vary, and I here follow Plutarch's Antony.
29 2 MARC ANTONY
since the Triumvirate was in urgent need of funds with which to
pay the promised rewards to the legions, many of the victims were
selected because of their wealth. The Triumvirs not only desired
vengeance for Csesar's death and for their own past misfortunes, they
not only wished to establish the democrats and the Caesarians as the
sole rulers of the empire: they also wanted money; and the urgent
need for it, rather than the particular guilt of the persons chosen
for the extreme penalty, compelled them to write name after name
into that awful list.
The conference seems to have ended about November 1st or
2nd, but for a few days longer messengers passed between the
three Triumvirs, and visits were exchanged, while final plans were
made. At last, orders were sent to Pedius, the Consul in Rome, to
carry out the immediate execution of the first small batch of the
condemned; and these instructions were received by him shortly be-
fore the middle of the month, giving him a shock which threw him
into a state of extreme nervous agitation. With dismay in his heart
he issued the necessary commands, and within a few hours the heads
of four of the victims were brought to him. That night, while search
was being made for the others, the wildest panic broke out in the
city, and Pedius, breathless with anxiety, was obliged to go about
the streets, attempting to calm the people, to check the bloodthirsty
ferment of the mob, and to prevent a wholesale flight of republican
senators and officials. Next morning, on his own authority he issued
a statement saying that these few men were alone to be proscribed,
and that nobody else need have any fear. Throughout the day he was
besieged by persons asking for further information or for protec-
tion, and so great was the general excitement that he himself was
keyed up to a pitch which his constitution could not endure. He had
not closed his eyes all night, and the horror of the duty imposed
upon him of searching for and carrying out the execution of Cicero
and other men so recently great, drove him almost frantic. Before
the day was out his overtaxed heart stopped, and he fell dead.
Cicero and his brother Quintus were at Frascati when runners
brought the news that both of them were condemned; and there-
with in bewildered anguish they fled towards the sea, hoping to find
a boat to carry them to Brutus in Greece, and when the soldiers ar-
rived at the house their prey had disappeared. Meanwhile another
MARC ANTONY 293
band of soldiers was chasing the proscribed Lucius Csesar through
the streets of Rome. He took refuge at last in the house of his sister
Julia, Antony's mother; and when the search-party demanded ad-
mittance, she barred their way, crying out: "You shall not kill him
until you have first killed me* the mother of your general !" Lucius,
it will be recalled, had been proscribed by Octavian; and it may be
that Antony had sent secret word that he was to be allowed to
escape : at any rate the soldiers retired, and Julia kept her brother
safe in the house, and ultimately he was pardoned by Antony, much
to Octavian's annoyance. 14
On November 24th Octavian entered Rome, bringing with him
one legion; on the 25th Antony marched into the city with a sim-
ilar force; and on the 26th Lepidus arrived, also with one legion.
On the 27th a law was passed confirming the establishment of the
Triumvirate for a period of five years, namely until the close of the
year 38 B.C.; and therewith the proscriptions were published, a
reward being offered for the head of each man named in the list,
and the penalty of death being decreed against those who should
aid in the escape of any of them.
Then followed scenes the like of which Rome had not beheld
since the time of Sulla scenes as terrible as those enacted in the
French Revolution. Some of the victims fled in disguise, and not a
few of them made their escape. Some hid themselves in the hypo-
causts under the rooms of their houses, the low tunnels, that is to
say, through which the hot air from the furnaces was radiated in
winter beneath the floors ; and some crept into the drains and public
sewers. Some defended themselves in their homes, and died fighting;
others were killed by their slaves, though there are one or two cases
on record in which a slave dressed himself in his master's clothes and
perished in his stead; while yet others, frantic to be done with the
horror of their suspense, killed themselves or hastened to meet their
executioners.
A certain elderly man of wealth flung all his valuables into the
street, so that the townspeople rather than the Triumvirs might
possess themselves of his treasure; and then set his house on fire,
and threw himself into the flames. In a few cases wives betrayed
the husbands whom they disliked; but in general it is said, the
"Suetonius: Augustus, xrvii; Dion Cassius, xlvii, 8,
294
MARC ANTONY
women were more faithful to their men than the sons were to their
fathers, there being a remarkable number of instances in which the
younger generation turned upon the elder, 15 a fact which perhaps in-
dicates that the youth of Rome was violently Caesarian.
Daily the soldiers passed through the streets to the Forum
carrying sacks of heads which were to be exhibited upon the rostra;
but whereas in the days of Sulla it was the upper classes who
gloated over the spectacle of the slaughter of the leaders of the
People, now it was the mob and the popular party who cheered the
arrival of every new consignment of these severed heads of the
aristocrats and the republicans, regarding them with almost re-
ligious frenzy as a bloody sacrifice to the spirit of the divine Csesar,
the People's lost leader. Democracy had triumphed, and Antony,
Lepidus, and Octavian were hailed as their deliverers from the
rule of the conservatives who had murdered their hero and had
trampled upon their liberties. The money confiscated from the
wealthy victims was to be distributed amongst the common soldiers
this the rabble knew, and they hoped that some of it would also
come their way. A democratic redistribution of the riches of the
capitalists was taking place; and the crowds hooted and groaned
their delight as each new head of /l*. rich man was added to the
ghastly array.
Antony and Lepidus, it is said, 16 were easily persuaded to par-
don some of the proscribed, or to wink at their escape; and the
youngest of the Triumvirs was occasionally induced by his half-
sister Octavia to spare those who had aroused her pity. But, in
general, Octavian was far more ruthless than his two colleagues;
and his pitilessness is sometimes described as having been very close
to madness, an attitude, however, which may perhaps be accounted
for by the fact that he was painfully aware of being suspected by
the masses because of his former alliance with Cicero's party. He
wished to prove himself the most ruthless avenger of the dead Dic-
tator, the true inheritor of Csesar's leadership of the People; and,
being so young, he was more fully carried away by the popular
clamour than were either of his more experienced colleagues.
Meanwhile, Cicero and his brother Quintus, as has been said,
"Velleius, ii, Ixvii.
"Suetonius: Augustus f xxvii.
MARC ANTONY 295
had fled from Frascati. Their plan was to make their way south-
wards to the island of Astura (Torre d' Astura) at the mouth of
the river of the same name, where Cicero had a villa. The dis-
tance was no more than thirty miles, and the slaves were sufficiently
attached to the family to be trusted to carry the two fugitives
thither in their litters; but as they approached their destination
the brothers began to realize a fact which had been overlooked in
the hurry of their departure, namely that a great deal of money
would be required to bribe those persons whose help they might
need. -It was therefore suggested that Quintus should go back to
get the money, it being the custom of the time for every man of
means to keep a chest or jar of gold coins concealed in some part
of his house in case of emergencies; and this task Quintus bravely
undertook, the two brothers bidding goodbye to one another with
many tears, for they must have known that there was very little
hope. Quintus, in fact, sealed his fate by his courageous action;
for his slaves betrayed him, and he and his son were both killed.
Cicero reached Astura without mishap, and, too frightened to
wait for Quintus, immediately boarded one of his own ships and
sailed with a favourable wind as far as Circseum (Circello), about
half way between Rome and Naples. He was, however, completely
unnerved by his terrible situation, and could make up his mind
neither to proceed nor to wait for his brother, nor yet to put an
end to himself. All his life he had found it hard to come to a de-
cision in a crises, and now his hesitation and perplexity were more
pronounced than they had ever been before. According to the code
he had always preached, his means of escape was suicide; and at
last in a burst of courage he ordered his men to put him ashore
and to carry him back to Rome. He would make his way secretly,
he said, into Octavian's house, and there kill himself before the
altar of the household gods of the Caesars, thereby, as the popular
belief declared, bringing a curse upon the persons of the family of
the young scoundrel who had delivered him over to Antony's ven-
geance.
But after he had gone a short distance along the road to the
capital, fear seized him and he went back to the ship, whereon
he was taken to Caieta (Gseta), near Formise (Mola), where he
had another house, "an agreeable retreat," says Plutarch, "where,
296 MARC ANTONY
in the heat of summer, the Etesian winds are so pleasant." Here,
once more, he insisted upon landing, crying in the last sorry exercise
of his imperishable vanity, "Let me die in the country I have so
often saved." There was a little temple of Apollo in the grounds
of this villa, overlooking the sea; and as his ship approached the
shore a number of black crows arose from the trees around it and
with a great cawing and flapping of wings alighted on the rigging.
This was taken to be a sign that a further voyage by this particular
vessel was likely to end in disaster, Cicero, being thus confirmed
in his determination to land; and, going ashore, he entered the
house, and flung himself down upon a bed, soon falling asleep
from sheer exhaustion.
As he slept, the crows cawed dismally around the open win-
dows, and one of them even entered the room, upon seeing which the
faithful slaves determined to take him from so ill-omened a place.
Arousing him, therefore, they persuaded the bewildered and fright-
ened man to get into his litter so that they might carry him to an-
other vessel moored some distance along the coast ; but while they
were making their way under the trees by a path which led through
the grounds, the local soldiery, informed of his arrival, hastened to
the house, and, receiving no answer to their summons, broke the
door open and entered.
There was a young manumitted slave, a studious youth, named
Philologus, who lived on the estate and in whose education Cicero
had taken a personal interest. The officer in command of the sol-
diers asked him where his master was, and the terrified Philologus
gave the required information, whereupon the soldiers ran off in
pursuit of their victim. Cicero heard their shouts in the distance;
and suddenly, in the realization that the end was nigh, his fear
left him, and his composure came back. He told the slaves to put
down the litter and when they had done so he sat quietly in it, his
elbows on his drawn-up knees, his left hand stroking his unshaven
chin, and his tired eyes fixed thoughtfully upon his approaching
executioners. It is evident that he was utterly weary, and yearned
with all his heart to be dead.
The officer, sword in hand, ran at him; and Cicero with per-
fect dignity bent his head and extended his neck to receive the
blow, "Of all his misfortunes," wrote Livy, "death was the only
MARC ANTONY 297
one that he bore like a man." 17 His slaves turned away covering
their faces, as the sword fell.
Orders had been given that the orator's right hand, with which
he had written the Philippics, should be struck from the body
as well as the head; and when these were brought to the Triumvirs
in Rome Antony uttered an uncomfortable laugh, and, to put the
best face upon a shameful business, cried "Now there can be an
end of our proscriptions !" at the same time telling his men to
place the head and the hand upon the rostra with the rest of the col-
lection, that all men might know the penalty of double-dealing and
lies. But when they brought Philologus forward to receive his re-
ward, Antony angrily ordered him to be handed over to Pomponia,
Cicero's sister-in-law, the wife of Quintus, and this frenzied woman
is reported to have put him to death with fiendish tortures. Fulvia,
however, was more savage than her husband, and it is said that she
took hold of Cicero's severed head, spat at it, and thrust one of
her hairpins through the tongue which had maligned Antony. 18
Some years later, when Octavian had become the Emperor Au-
gustus, he happened to come upon a youthful member of his family
who was reading one of Cicero's works, and who immediately hid
the book, thinking that 'the Emperor would be displeased. But
Augustus demanded it of him, and having turned the pages over
thoughtfully, reading a paragraph here and there, handed it back,
saying "My child, this was a great orator; a great orator, and one
who loved his country well/'
"Livy, quoted by Seneca: Suasoriarum, 6.
18 Dion Cassius, xlvii, 8.
CHAPTER XIV
The War against Brutus and Cassius, and the Destruction of the Republican
Party.
42 B.C.
"THERE was," writes Plutarch, "much simplicity in Antony's
character. He was slow to see his faults, but when he did see them
he was extremely repentant and ready to ask pardon of those he
had injured. He was severe in his punishments, but prodigal in
his acts of reparation; and his generosity was much more extrava-
gant than his severity. His banter or abuse, for example, was
sharp and insulting, but the edge of it was dulled by his readiness
to accept any kind of repartee, and he was as willing to be sworn
at as he was to swear at others."
Dion Cassius, writing more than two and a half centuries after
these events, describes Antony as being the most ruthless of the
three Triumvirs at the time of the proscriptions 1 ; but Suetonius
who was separated from the period by over a hundred year less
than this, and is the better authority, is emphatic, as has already
been said, that Octavian was the only one of the three who showed
no wish to bring the massacre to an end. Antony, in fact, appears
to have been the first to feel shame for his atrocious behaviour; and
at any rate there can be no doubt that he alone retained his popu-
larity with Rome's democracy, whereas Octavian was detested.
People made insulting jests at the expense of the young man 2 ;
they accused him of being so fond of fine furniture and Greek an-
tiques that he would condemn a man in order to get hold of his
*So does Velleius, but it was this historian's policy to show Augustus, in whose
circle he moved, in the best light, and to malign Antony; and therefore his evidence
is not to be accepted. He accused Antony, in any case, chiefly of having shut for ever
Cicero's "divine lips"; but the Philippics were not divine they were devilish.
"Suetonius: Augustus, hex.
298
MARC ANTONY 299
coveted collections; and they declared that he used to get drunk
and then cruelly add names to the lists of the proscribed. 3 Antony,
on the contrary, when he was intoxicated, seems to have beamed
upon the world in ineffable goodwill; and Plutarch, in his com-
parison between him and Demetrius, describes him under the in-
fluence of wine as being like Hercules deprived of his club and
his lion's skin, and as wanting only to have a game with somebody.
A personage who played an important part at this time was
Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great. As has already
been recorded, he had been placed by Cicero in control of the Ro-
man fleet; and now he managed to retain possession of a good
many of the ships of war, adding to the numbers under his com-
mand by seizing merchant-vessels and enrolling vagabonds and
criminals to act as their crews. He is described as being quite il-
literate, and his language is said to have been shocking 4 ; but he
was a brave man, and his exploits as a pro-republican outlaw, an
old-fashioned Pompeian turned pirate, won him much renown.
He took complete possession of Sicily, putting the governor to
death; and he issued a proclamation far and wide, offering sanc-
tuary to all proscribed persons or republicans who could make their
escape to him from the mainland. He seized the corn-ships which
were coming to Rome from Egypt and the east, and caused some-
thing like a famine in the city; he attacked the forces of the Tri-
umvirate wherever he encountered them; and at length he sent
his ships close in to the Italian shore to pick up the fugitives, and,
for any help given to them, offered rewards double the size of those
offered by the new government for their heads. His activities caused
great apprehension in Rome, but for the moment the Triumvirs
could take no serious steps against him.
Meanwhile, a wave of adoration of Caesar's memory was sweep-
ing the country; and though Octavian was much disliked, and was
regarded as an unpleasant and intrusive representative of the great
dictator, Antony was hailed by the old soldiers, by the mob, and,
indeed, by the bulk of the democrats and Gesarians, as his true suc-
cessor in the leadership of the People, and as his avenger. Every-
body was begging him to prosecute the war against Brutus and
Cassius with all speed, and to hunt down every one of the assassins.
Seneca: De dementia, i, ix. 4 Velleius, ii, Ixxiii.
3 oo MARC ANTONY
A temple was erected to Caesar's divinity upon the spot in the Forum
where his body had been cremated, and the hall in which he had
been murdered was closed to the public as a mark of detestation
of the crime.
Ventidius Bassus was now Consul, and enjoyed great popu-
larity not only as the man who had come to Antony's aid after
Modena, but as one of Caesar's old soldiers. He had once been a
simple mule-owner, but had been raised to high office by the Dic-
tator; and the townspeople looked upon him as a fine instance of
Caesar's democratic indifference to a man's origin, and of Antony's
loyalty to the same ideals in promoting him to the highest hon-
ours. The People, in fact, felt that they were truly in power; and
in their idolisation of the memory of their dead leader they rallied
round Antony, the chief of the Triumvirs, and urged him on to
destroy the remaining republican forces in the east.
Antony, however, had been away from the metropolis for a
year; and now that the cessation of the executions was offering
him the opportunity to forget his months of hardship by enjoying
in peace for a while the comforts of his beautiful house in Rome,
and all the amenities of city-life, he was in no hurry to be off to
the wars again. His affection for his wife Fulvia, it is true, had
not been revived by his long absence from her; and he can hardly
have been happy in sharing his home with so forceful and so violent a
woman, "in whom there was nothing feminine but her figure," as
Velleius says, 5 and whose ambitions for his ultimate autocracy
gave him little rest. Yet he was able to elude or exclude her fairly
frequently, and to make merry with his friends; and his parties
became once more the talk of the town. Often the doors of his
house, people complained, were shut in the face of magistrates and
officials, and yet were opened to actors and actresses, dancers,
jugglers, and drunken guests; and he was accused of spending in
this manner some of the money confiscated from the slaughtered
republicans. Octavian, in fact, called at last for an account and a
proper division of these spoils, for "it was clear that nothing would
ever be enough for Antony," 6 whose wild generosity and "lavish
gifts to his friends and fellow-soldiers" quickly scattered the for-
tunes which fell into his prodigal hands.
ii, Ixxiv. 'Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 301
It is necessary now to turn to the affairs of Brutus, who, after
deep thought, had recently sealed his quarrel with the Qesarians
by putting Antony's brother, Caius, to death in cold blood, as a
matter of principle and in retaliation for the execution of Cicero.
Brutus was no sentimentalist, and one may say of him, perhaps,
that, like many puritans, he was capable of striking at his worldly-
minded opponents with all the venom of years of self-denial. He
had little respect for individual human life, his own not excepted :
he stood for a certain system of constitutional government, and his
narrow intolerance drove him sometimes to extremes of heartless-
ness wholly foreign to the essential sanity of true rectitude.
On hearing that Antony contemplated an invasion of Mace-
donia in the spring, he decided to retreat with his army eastwards
into Asia Minor and there join hands with Cassius; and having
learnt that the latter intended to make an attack upon Egypt,
where Cleopatra had declared her adherence to Antony's cause, he
sent him a letter begging him to give his sole attention to the
coming fight with the Triumvirs, as a result of which a meeting
at Smyrna, in Lydia, north of Ephesus, was arranged.
Brutus, now some forty-three years of age, was a man whose
lofty motives, though wrong-headed, were never in doubt; and
even Antony admitted that he was the only one of Csesar's assas-
sins who acted as he did out of an earnest belief in the righteous-
ness of the republican cause. 7 Brutus was, indeed, weighed down
by his sense of responsibility, and by his strained consciousness of
the principles for which he stood. He suffered from melancholia,
and his nights were often sleepless, and his pillow wet with his
tears, as his slow and pedantic mind reviewed the duties which he
believed a stern Providence had imposed upon him. His nerves
were in a very bad state : more than once he experienced a definite
hallucination; he was, at this time, always very close to tears; and
the news of the deaths of Cicero and so many of his friends was al-
most unable to be borne.
His meeting with Cassius, however, heartened him somfewhat,
for between them they now had a pretty big army, and there was
affair chance of victory. Cassius was a clever general and one of
forceful, aggressive character: he was not an idealist; he was a
7 Plutarch: Brutus.
302 MARC ANTONY
practical man, impelled by a hatred of his enemies which Brutus
could never feel, and inspired by a desire for personal power and
wealth which he must have had difficulty in concealing from his
self-denying colleague. Cassius, in fact, supplied the driving force
in their united activities; but it was faith in the patriotic and dis-
interested motives of Brutus that sustained the spirit of the legions.
The men were fascinated by his complete sincerity : he was like a
holy-man leading a crusade for the rescue of the fatherland from
the rule of the democrats. Yet he did not preach hatred : of Antony
he said only that his punishment was already sufficient in having
such a treacherous colleague as Octavian, 8 who would one day turn
upon him "in which/' Plutarch remarks, "he proved to be no
bad prophet."
The plans of the two generals were simple. There were two
areas of doubtful loyalty in these eastern dominions which they
controlled, namely, the island of Rhodes off the south-west corner
of Asia Minor, and Lycia, the state on the mainland east of it.
These would have to be subdued before they could comfortably
march back to Macedonia to give battle to the Triumvirs; and it
was agreed that Cassius should undertake the former campaign,
Brutus the latter. Both enterprises were successful; but Brutus
was much shaken by the effects of his attack upon Xanthus,
(Gunik), the Lycian capital, for nearly the entire population of
the city committed suicide before his eyes, being suddenly pos-
sessed by an almost incredible frenzy which Plutarch aptly de-
scribes as a sort of "ravenous appetite to die." Not only men and
women, but even children, plunged into the flames of the burning
houses which they themselves had fired, or hanged themselves, or
leapt from high walls to the ground, or stabbed themselves and
each other to the heart. One woman was seen to set fire to her
house, and then with the torch still in her hand, and her strangled
baby suspended around her neck, to hang herself from one of the
blazing beams.
Brutus was appalled. Mounting his horse, he galloped around
the walls of the burning city, crying out to the inhabitants that
he would not harm them, and holding out his hands to them, im-
ploring them not to die, the tears running down his cheeks as he
8 Plutarch: Brutus.
MARC ANTONY 303
did so. But none would listen, and in the end, out of the entire
population, less than two hundred were able to be restrained
from self-destruction by the Roman soldiers to whom Brutus had
offered a reward for every Xanthian saved.
The two generals rejoined one another at Sardis (Sart), near
Smyrna, and, crossing the Hellespont, marched into Thrace. At
about this time the overwrought Brutus experienced another hal-
lucination. Late one night he was seated alone in his tent, deep
in thought, a dim light burning in a lamp beside him, when sud-
denly he saw a figure standing silently in front of him. "Who are
you?" he called out. "What do you want?" The apparition re-
plied, "I am your evil genius, Brutus: you shall see me again at
Philippi." "Very well then," Brutus calmly replied, "I shall see
you there."
Next morning he told Cassius of his experience, but that un-
imaginative man laughed the matter off, saying that he did not
believe in ghosts, and that he only wished he did, for then he might
believe also that the spirits would aid them in their coming fight.
"Your mind," he said, "is in an excited and abnormal condition,
because you are tired out. Not all we feel or see is real; for the
senses are most slippery and deceitful, and the brain is quick to put
them in motion and to stimulate them without any real occasion
of fact. Just as an impression is made upon wax, the consciousness
can easily of itself produce and assume every kind of shape and
figure, as is evident from our dreams: it is ever in activity, and
this activity produces these fantasies and creations."
But Brutus was not comforted. His brain was dark with the
menace of impending doom; and this strange experience indicates
that, deep in his subconscious mind, he was not always so sure of
the righteousness of those principles which had caused him to
murder the Dictator. The clear, guiding light of his conscience
sometimes grew dim, leaving him in the darkness of doubt; and
it was then that he wondered whether, after all, he was not being
consigned to disaster by some flaw in his reasoning, some awful
fallacy in the whole argument of his life, some delusion, which
in his tent he had visualised as his evil genius.
Meanwhile, the light-hearted Antony had sent eight legions
9 Plutarch: Brutus.
304 MARC ANTONY
across the Adriatic from Italy to Macedonia, and had suddenly
extricated himself from the pleasures of Rome to put himself at
the head of twelve more legions which were waiting at Brindisi
for him to lead them over the sea. Octavian, acting in concert with
him, now attempted to recapture Sicily from Sextus Pompeius,
so as to prevent an attack upon the transports by that piratical
commander's nondescript fleet; but in this he was wholly unsuc-
cessful, and Sextus remained a menace to the expedition. Then,
while Antony was waiting for the opportunity to slip across, an
enemy fleet under Murcus, a renegade Caesarian, made its appear-
ance before Brindisi, and thereafter blockaded the transports in
the harbour throughout the spring and early summer of 42 B.C.
Antony made several daring attempts to break the blockade,
but failed to do so. Octavian, however, at last brought his ships
from Sicilian waters, and drove Murcus off; and the two Trium-
virs were thus enabled to sail over to Dyrrhachium (Durazzo),
on the other side, with their army.
But here Octavian fell sick and had to take to his bed, though
the nature of his complaint is unknown. He was an unhealthy
young man, and though the lower part of his face, as has been said,
was at this time covered by a youthful beard, his visible features
revealed the weakness of his constitution. Suetonius 10 says that his
left hip and leg used often to give him trouble, that he suffered
from gall-stones, that his liver was liable to be out of order, and
that he had the itch : in the autumn he was usually feverish, in the
spring he complained of pains in the neighbourhood of the dia-
phragm, when the wind was from the south he always caught a
cold in his head, in the heat of summer he was prostrated, and in
winter he could endure neither the sun nor the chill of the shade,
and while not daring to go out into the glare except with a broad-
brimmed straw hat to protect his head, had to guard himself from
the cold by wearing a thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a flannel
chest-protector, and swathings around his thighs and legs. It is
understandable, therefore, that he was incapacitated by his exer-
tions in the great heat of summer.
Brutus and Cassias were now marching westwards along the
coast of Thrace towards that narrow doorway into Macedonia
10 Suetonius : Augustus, Ixxx-lxxxiL .
MARC ANTONY 305
which is situated between the mountains and the sea, where lay
the plains of Philippi overlooked by the city of that name. A few
miles to the west was the fortress of Amphipolis (lenikeui), and
to this important point the first eight of Antony's legions had been
despatched to hold the enemy in check; but in September at the
approach of the republican forces, the commander sent urgently
for Antony to come to his support, whereupon the latter, leaving
Octavian at Dyrrhachium, marched the other twelve legions as fast
as he could to Amphipolis, which he reached in time to bring Brutus
and_Cassius to an unexpected halt. The speed of this march is said
to have been almost unbelievable; but Antony had learnt from
Csesar the value of speed.
Brutus then camped his army at the foot of the mountains,
a little south-east of the city of Philippi, while Cassius placed
his forces a short walk to the south, at the edge of a marsh which
passed down to the sea; and the two camps were joined by a
palisade and entrenchments. A little stream, the Gangas, running
down from the hills, supplied them with water; and the whole
of Thrace behind them, and their ships which could unload in the
neighbouring harbours, provided them with food.
Antony then divided his forces, taking up his own position with
half his army in front of the camp of Cassius, near the sea, and
leaving to Octavian, when he should arrive, the command of the
other half which faced the camp of Brutus. The sickly young man
turned up some ten days later, but he was too ill to be of any
service. The republican army was slightly smaller than that of the
Triumvirs, but was better equipped; and in fact, the officers serv-
ing under Brutus, being of far more elegant taste than those under
the democratic Antony, wore armour and used weapons richly
ornamented with gold and silver, while even the soldiers each carried
quite a little fortune on their persons in this manner.
Far into October these armies confronted one another. Brutus
was anxious to hasten a pitched battle, but Cassius believed that
delay was to their advantage. Antony was also ready to fight it
out at once, before the cold weather set in; and he did his best
to tempt Cassius into the open, particularly by beginning to con-
struct a road across the marsh between him and the sea for the
purpose of turning his position, and, so it seems, by letting him
306 MARC ANTONY
know that reinforcements for the Csesarians would soon be on their
way from Italy.
At last, one day towards the end of October, Brutus persuaded
his colleague to give battle on the morrow; and that night, having
made all his arrangements, he showed himself more cheerful than
he had been for many weeks, though Cassius, on the contrary, was
depressed and silent, declaring that he did not like this hazarding
the future of his country on one big battle. Brutus, however, ex-
pressed his determination either to conquer or to kill himself. "In-
deed," he said, "I already gave up my life to my country on the
Ides of March, and I have lived since then a second life solely for
her sake. If Providence does not give us the victory, I shall die
quite content with my lot." In this he was not, like Cicero, utter-
ing fine-sounding words: he was entirely in earnest, and the be-
lief that the crisis had come seemed to lift a dead weight from
his melancholy heart.
Next morning, Brutus was the first to begin the attack, 11 which
was directed against Octavian's entrenchments in front of him;
and his troops were so eager to take the offensive that they went
forward in a disorderly but overwhelming swarm, cut to pieces
Octavian's advance-guard of two-thousand newly recruited Spar-
tans, nearly annihilated his Fourth Legion one of those which
had deserted to Octavian from Antony the year before, drove back
the rest of his forces onto the open ground, and, getting quite
out of hand, gave themselves up to the plunder of Octavian's camp.
What happened to Octavian himself is a mystery. In his own
memoirs, according to Plutarch, he said that a friend of his had
had such a bad dream about him that, to please him, he had con-
sented to leave the camp that day, before he knew that an attack
upon it was contemplated; but the fact that his litter was found a
little distance away pierced by arrows and spears, indicates that
he had fled after the battle had begun, and had escaped on foot
when he was pursued. Brutus, at any rate, thought that he was
dead, and some of the victorious soldiers declared, in fact, that
they had seen him surrounded and killed which suggests that he
had had the narrowest of escapes.
u For the account of the fighting see Plutarch's Brutus, which seems to be better
than the somewhat different version given by Appian, Civil Wars, iv, 110.
MARC ANTONY 307
Meanwhile, Cassius had attacked the Csesarian forces in front
of him, at a time when Antony himself was supervising the road-
making across the marshes, and was more or less off his guard. An-
tony managed to get back to his camp, however, beat off the
assault, and soon counter-attacked, leading his men in a wild
onslaught upon the republican position. This was completely suc-
cessful, and soon the camp of Cassius was being as thoroughly
plundered by Antony as Octavian's had been by Brutus.
Brutus, returning from his victory, saw with dismay what had
happened to his colleague, and sent his cavalry across to his aid.
Cassius, who in his flight had halted on the high ground behind
his lost camp, observed these men bearing down upon him in the
distance, and dispatched one of his officers, Titinius, a dear friend
of his, to find out whether they were comrades or foes. This officer
quickly recognized them, and at once rode forward to greet them,
being soon surrounded by them and hearing from them the news of
their victory over Octavian. But when Cassius saw Titinius thus
swallowed up by the oncoming cavalry he jumped to the fatally
mistaken conclusion that these troops were Csesarians, and that they
had killed or captured his lieutenant.
He was too shattered by Antony's capture of his camp to be
able to form a proper judgment, and thinking that the supposedly
hostile force would soon overwhelm him, he cried out "O, that I
should have lived to see my friend taken by the enemy before my
very face!" and immediately ordered his servant, Pindarus, to
kill him. Pindarus, who was also quite frantic, at once raised his
sword and with one blow cut his general's head off; but when, a
few minutes later, the relieving cavalry arrived, and the mistake
was discovered, the man took to his heels in horror, and was never
seen again. Titinius, however, regarding himself as in part to
blame, stabbed himself and fell dead across his general's headless
body.
Then came Brutus, flushed with his own victory, and intent on
reassuring Cassius; but when he found his colleague's corpse lying
decapitated in the midst of the astounded cavalry, he burst into
tears, and presently gave orders that it should be secretly carried
away, so that the army should not be unnerved by a public funeral.
Antony, meanwhile, had just heard of Octavian's defeat and flight,
3 o8 MARC ANTONY
and had called his men back to defend their camp. Thus, the fight-
ing ceased, Cassius being dead with some eight thousand of his
men, and the loss of his camp, on the one side; and Octavian hav-
ing disappeared, on the other, his camp plundered, and nearly
twice that number of his soldiers slain.
For some hours Antony assumed that the republicans were
victorious, and, with heavy heart, he must have made all arrange-
ments to retreat; but after nightfall, to his vast surprise, Octavian
turned up safe and sound, and the news of the death of Cassius
was brought in, whereupon he boldly announced that the battle
would be continued on the following day, and he spent the hours
of darkness in steadying his own forces and reorganizing those
of Octavian.
Brutus, meanwhile, behaved with a savagery which can only
be accounted for by the overwhelming excitement of the time, and
by the shock of the death of Cassius. He had captured a host of
slaves in Octavian's camp, and, having apparently no higher senti-
ments than any other Romans in regard to the rights of slaves,
gave orders that these wretched prisoners should all be slaughtered.
The few soldiers and other free-men who had been taken, however,
he released, 12 with the exception of Volumnius, a comic actor, and
Sacculio, a clown, whose business it had been to entertain Oc-
tavian's camp. Brutus was too puritanical to show any mercy to
persons connected with the stage, and when he was told that these
two were facing their perilous situation with jests and wry smiles,
he indignantly gave orders that they should be flogged and sent
back, naked and bleeding, to the Gesarians; but later, changing
his mind at the instance of Casca, the man who had struck the first
blow in the murder of Caesar, he had them put to death. He then
gave a promise to his soldiers that in the event of victory he would
lead them to the wealthy cities of Thessalonica (Salonika) and
Sparta, both of which had sided with Antony, and would allow
them to kill, rape, and plunder to their hearts' content. The appar-
ent collapse of his moral character in this hour of excitement is a
matter of astonishment.
Next day, however, rain fell in torrents, and Brutus would not
M So Plutarch says; but Dion Cassius, xlvii, 48, says that both the republicans
and the Caesariana killed most of their prisoners.
MARC ANTONY 309
come out to fight, although Antony sent some of his men close up
to the republican camp to shout rude remarks at him in an attempt
to goad him into action. Several days then elapsed, during which
there was an exceptionally early spell of wintry weather; and the,
fact that Antony's men were entrenched on low-lying ground which
first became a quagmire and then froze, caused much hardship and
many complaints. Every day, however, they were expecting the
arrival of large reinforcements from Italy, and a great convoy of
much-needed winter supplies; and Antony can hardly have been
altogether sorry that the battle was delayed.
Now, however, came a terrible shock. Messengers arrived in
the Caesarian camp, bringing the news that disaster had over-
whelmed this convoy. The ships had been attacked at sea by Murcus
and Cnseus Domitius Ahenobarbus, and two entire legions and all
the supplies had been lost. One of these lost legions was the Mar-
tian, that same which had deserted from Antony to Octavian after
its punishment at Brindisi; and the only satisfaction which Antony
could derive from the appalling tidings was that these men had,
from his point of view, got their deserts. This Ahenobarbus/ 3 it
may be mentioned, was the son of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus,
Pompey's general at Pharsalia whom Antony had slain in that
battle. Cnseus had been present at Pharsalia, and had afterwards
been pardoned by Csesar; but he had now returned to the republican
cause, for, his mother having been the sister of Cato, he was the
uncle of Porcia, the wife of Brutus.
Antony now felt that he had only two alternatives either to
retreat or to bring on an immediate battle before the news of this
disaster should reach Brutus. That same day, 14 however, by a co-
incidence, Brutus made up his mind to fight on the morrow; and,
having made the necessary preparations, he retired to his tent,
where, it is said, that same apparition which had visited him once
before again made its appearance and stared at him, this time with-
out speaking. Brutus, indeed, was in so overwrought a condition
that it is by no means improbable that he, believed himself to have
received this second and promised visit from the spectre: his state
18 He was the great-grandfather of the Emperor Nero. '
"The date is not known, except that it was twenty days after the first battle of
Philippi.
3 io MARC ANTONY
of mind must have been conducive to such an hallucination. He
had recently received news that his wife Porcia, whom he had left
in Italy, was dead 1B ; and this, too, had unnerved him.
But what was more ominous was that a swarm of bees had that
day settled upon one of the legionary standards, and a report had
also gone about that one of his officers had found to his astonish-
ment that his arm was sweating attar-of -roses, nor did this sweet-
smelling oil cease to ooze out of the pores of his skin, so it was said,
even after the arm had been wiped many times. One cannot avoid
the thought that Antony's agents were in the camp, spreading such
rumours, though why a supposed phenomenon of this peculiar kind
should have been thought to indicate disaster is not now known.
There certainly were, however, traitors at work among the soldiers of
Brutus, for next day, when he drew up his army for battle, a trusted
cavalry officer named Camulatus suddenly whipped up his horse
and galloped away to Antony across the open ground.
It was at about three o'clock in the afternoon that Brutus gave
the signal for the onslaught, and soon his men had driven in the
Caesarian left wing commanded by Octavian; but the right wing,
under Antony, responded by a charge which broke through the
opposing forces and took Brutus's victorious legionaries in their
rear. A great but not very sanguinary route of the republicans then
followed, and by nightfall Brutus's army was in full flight.
Several of the younger officers, following the aristocratic tradi-
tion, fought to the last, and died gallantly. Cicero's son, Marcus,
brought his brief and rather disreputable career to a close in a
whirl of desperate bravery; Cato's only son, Marcus, who was
the brother-in-law of Brutus, pulled off his helmet and shouted his
name, thus successfully attracting the enemy's weapons against
him; Lucullus, the son of the general whom Pompey succeeded in
the war against Mithradates, and of Serviiia, sister of Brutus's
mother of the same name, fell fighting courageously; and Lucius,
the nephew of Cassius, was also killed.
As Brutus rode from the field in a dazed condition one of his
staff officers, a certain Lucilius, who was riding a little behind,
noticed a body of Antony's Gallic cavalry approaching through the
gathering darkness; and, in a brave attempt to save his general,
"See the last paragraph of Plutarch's Brutus.
MARC ANTONY 311
he slowed his horse and allowed himself to be taken prisoner, tell-
ing his captors that he was Brutus. "They believed him/' Plutarch
writes, "mainly because he begged so earnestly to be taken to
Antony and not to Octavian, as though he feared the latter but
could trust the former" and I quote the remark for the reason that
it reveals Antony's high reputation for what we should now call
good sportsmanship and compares it with Octavian's unpopularity.
The Gallic troopers brought their prisoner to Antony, who, on
hearing of his approach, stood scratching his head and wondering
what sort of attitude he ought to adopt towards him, being evi-
dently greatly embarrassed now by his earlier declaration that he
would hound all Caesar's assassins to their deaths. He was sorry
for Brutus, and in this hour of triumph he wanted to deal gener-
ously with all men; and thus when he saw that the prisoner was
not Brutus he seems to have been decidedly relieved.
"You may be quite sure," said Lucilius, saluting Antony, "that
Brutus will never be taken alive. I cheated your men so as to save
him, and I am ready to take the consequences."
At this there were angry exclamations on the part of the sol-
diers, but Antony held up his hand for silence. "I see that you are
annoyed at being deceived," he said to them, "but in my opinion
you have made a capture better than you expected; for you were
looking for an enemy, and you have brought me a friend. The truth
is, I was not at all sure how to deal with Brutus if you had brought
him in alive ; but I am quite sure what to do with this man." And,
so saying, he went over to him and embraced him. "It is better to
have such men as Lucilius our friends than our enemies," he
smiled. 16
Meanwhile Brutus had escaped with a few of his officers, serv-
ants, and friends, including the philosopher Volumnius, who after-
wards wrote the story of these events which is now lost but is the
basis of Plutarch's account. In the darkness they crossed a stream,
and came to a halt amongst the trees and rocks on the other side,
where Brutus, looking up at the stars, solemnly quoted some lines
of poetry, calling down a curse upon the author of his misfortunes,
and, having drunk some water brought to him in a helmet, seated
himself under the projection of rock, which screened him from the
M Plutarch: Brutus.
312 MARC ANTONY
cold night-wind* to consider his position. There was little hope for
him: the Csesarian troops were round about, and could be heard
on the far side of the stream. One of his servants, in fact, was
wounded while fetching water; and an officer who was sent to try
to find out in what direction the main army had fled fell into the
enemy's hands and was killed.
At last, some time after midnight, Brutus decided to put an
end to himself, and whispered to his personal servant, asking him
to strike the blow; but the man burst into tears and refused to do
as he was bid. He then made the same request to Volumnius and
others, begging them to help him to drive his sword into his heart;
but at this they all suggested that they should, rather continue
their flight. "Yes, indeed/ 5 said Brutus, "we must make our escape,
but not with our feet: with our hands" meaning that death by
suicide was a more honourable course. Presently, in the darkness,
he was heard to quote the following lines, 17 which did, in fact,
provide a close parallel to his tragic life:
"Unhappy Virtue! you were but a name, while I
Who have been Fate's plaything,
Thinking your godhead real, have vainly followed you/*
He then stood up, and shook each man by the hand, his ex-
pression being described by Volumnius as one of great happiness.
He told them what satisfaction it gave him to think that none of
them had deserted him, and he declared that his situation was far
more to be desired than that of his enemies, because he would
leave behind him a reputation for high principle which his con-
querors would never be able to acquire, and because posterity
would certainly regard his cause as just and good, and theirs as
wicked. Only a few days previously he had written to a friend
saying how happy he was that the end of his troubles was near,
for he would either be victorious in the battle or would kill him-
self, thus by the one means or the other obtaining the rest he so
much needed; and it seems that he was now indeed eager to close his
ill-balanced account with Fate, and have done with life's bad
17 Dion Cassius, xlvii, 49, puts into his mouth these words, which, in Nauck's
Fraffmenta Tragicorum Gracorum, are given as Fragment No, 374,
MARC ANTONY 313
business. In sudden haste, therefore, taking only two or three of his
best friends with him, he withdrew himself a short distance from
the others, and, with the aid of one of them, plunged his sword
into his heart.
Next morning Antony was conducted to the spot where the
dead general had been found, and, taking off the rich, scarlet cloak
which he was wearing, he laid it gallantly over the corpse. Octavian,
however, presently arriving upon the scene, insisted that the head
should be severed from the body in the customary manner, and
sent to Rome to be placed at the foot of Caesar's statue, 18 and to
this his colleague seems to have been obliged to agree, although
insisting on his part that the decapitated body should be cremated
with all honour, and handing out a sum of money for the purpose.
A funeral pyre was erected, and a few hours later, with great pomp,
the body was consigned to the flames; after which Antony gave
orders that the ashes should be sent to Brutus's mother, Servilia,
for burial. 19 It was generally supposed that Brutus was Caesar's
own son, and it was remembered that the Dictator had been very
fond of him; and thus Antony's reverent treatment of his remains
was more in accord with Caesarian sentiment than was Octavian's
severity.
A few of the important prisoners were put to death; Favonius,
a stern puritan who was generally nicknamed "Cato's Ape" be-
cause he emulated the austerity of that unbalanced personage, was
executed by Octavian's orders; and by Antony's the only son of the
orator Hortensius was beheaded for his complicity in the death
of Caius Antonius, Antony's brother. A number of other com-
manders committed suicide, Livius Drusus, father of Livia who
afterwards married Octavian and became the mother of the Em-
peror Tiberius, killed himself in his tent; Quintilius Varus, who
had been captured and pardoned by Caesar in his war with Pompey,
put on his full dress as a general and all his decorations, and
obliged his servant to run him through with his sword; and An-
tistius Labeo, a famous lawyer who had been one of Caesar's assas-
sins, dug his own grave and, stabbing himself, fell into it.
18 Suetonius : Augustus, xiii. .
"See Plutarch's Antony, and Brutus. In the last paragraph of his Comparison
between Brutus and Dion, he says that the last rites were splendid.
MARC ANTONY
Brutus's stepson, Lucius Bibulus, son of Pompey's old admiral
by Portia, the daughter of Cato who had afterwards married Brutus,
surrendered to Antony and was pardoned by him, as were Quintus
Horatius Flaccus, the afterwards famous poet, and several others
who gave themselves up or were captured. But many, of course,
fled, and were not again heard of for many a day ; and it may be
mentioned that Murcus and Ahenobarbus, commanding the enemy
fleet, put to sea as soon as the news of the battle reached them, and
took to a roving, piratical life, the former in conjunction with Sex-
tus Pompeius, and the latter independently. Most of the defeated
troops, meanwhile, went over to the Csesarians, and thus completed
the extinction of the republican cause.
It is an interesting commentary on the relative positions of
Antony and Octavian in popular esteem that when the prisoners
who were brought in after the battle were paraded before the two
Triumvirs they saluted Antony with respect, but cursed and spat
at Octavian. 20 The young man, indeed, seems to have been gen-
erally detested, and, realizing the fact, he behaved with great
cruelty to some of those prisoners who had been unlucky enough to
pass under his jurisdiction and not Antony's. One condemned man,
for example, begged that his body should not be left unburied, and
to this Octavian replied, with a sneer, "That matter may be left
to the birds to decide"; while in another case where a father and
son both pleaded for their lives, Octavian coldly told them to
draw lots, and the father having drawn the fatal lot and having
been instantly beheaded, the son promptly killed himself also.
Octavian was only twenty-one years of age, and to us his youth
may excuse him, since we know that he developed into a praise-
worthy man; but to his contemporaries, who knew not how he
would shape, the spectacle of his pale and spotty face, his cold,
cruel eyes, and his sour unhealthiness, must have rendered his sever-
ity absolutely odious.
In the ensuing weeks the incoming news of what was taking
place in the^meantime in Rome caused Antony to thank the gods
that he was in far-off Macedonia, and not in the capital. Not only
the third Triumvir, the easy-going Lepidus, but also Lucius, An-
tony's brother, who was Consul-elect for the coming year, had
^Suetonius: Augustus, xiii.
MARC ANTONY 315
passed entirely under the domination of the strong-willed and
terrible Fulvia. Acting in the name of Antony, she had established
herself as the real ruler of Rome, and, in the words of Dion
Cassius, 21 "neither the Senate nor the People dared transact any
business contrary to her pleasure/' The indecisive Lepidus, indeed,
was entirely discredited, and both Antony and Octavian were at
one in their wish to eliminate him as soon as possible. It was agreed
between them that they would divide the rule of the empire with-
out including him at all in their arrangements : they would, in fact,
oblige him to retire into private life.
Of the troops under their command, several legions would have
to be demobilised, and of the remainder Antony proposed that
he should have the command of seventeen, while Octavian should
take fifteen including the three to be filched from Lepidus. Antony
would take over the province of Gallia Narbonensis from Lepidus
and add it to his portion of the empire; and Octavian would take
Spain from him. For the present the question of the government
of the east Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, etc. was left undecided;
but Antony now made up his mind to travel through this part of
the empire not only to eradicate the influence of the republicans
from these regions, but also to raise money. He was glad of the
excuse to remain away from Rome and Fulvia; and he was very
ready to agree that Octavian should go alone to the capital.
He felt quite confident that the young man would there pass
like everybody else under the dominance of Fulvia; for not only
had he played a very secondary part in the war and had by no
means derived any credit from it, not only was he extremely un-
popular, but his health was so bad that his early death seemed quite
probable, and was anticipated with unconcealed pleasure by most
people. 22 Octavian, indeed, was hardly to be reckoned with as any-
thing more than a nominal factor in the situation; and when
Antony parted from him at about the end of the year, sending him
back to the intrigues of Rome while he himself set out to tour
the more tractable Greece and the east, he did not really expect
to see him again: either he would die a natural death at no distant
date, or Fulvia would strangle him, metaphorically or actually.
Antony knew himself now to be really the only ruler of the
* Dion Cassius, xlviii, 4. M Ibid., 3.
316 MARC ANTONY
Roman world; and he turned to his new task with relish. The
cities of Greece and the east were Delightful places to visit; and
he was sorely in need of relaxation* He was at this time forty-one
years of age, and, after months of active life in camp, he was
physically in excellent shape ; while the consciousness that he was
not only supreme but was immensely popular, particularly with
the troops, was in these days an unfailing stimulant to his mind.
The Philippics of Cicero had been uttered wholly in vain: his
reputation had gloriously survived them, while the two battles of
Philippi had crowned his military career, and had greatly in-
creased his prestige as a brave and gallant soldier. The world, in
fact, was at his feet; and with a light heart he dismissed from his
mind all thought of the masterful Fulvia and the sinister Octavian.
CHAPTER XV
The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra at Tarsus, and His Winter with
Her in Alexandria.
41-40 B.C.
It was very urgent that Antony should collect money during
his tour, for immense sums were needed with which to pay off the
disbanded soldiers and to meet the requirements of those still under
arms; and it was therefore expected that crushing fines would be
imposed on those provinces or semi-independent kingdoms which
had given their support to Brutus and Cassius, and that taxes
would be collected all round with great severity. But the business
of satisfying the demobilised troops was a task which Antony had
shifted, with some cunning, onto the shoulders of Octavian; and
in his present mood of happy benevolence he was not prepared to
exert himself unduly, nor, by intolerable exactions, to jeopardise his
chance of making popular the democratic Csesarian cause in Greece.
During the early weeks of 41 B.C. he marched a part of his
army southwards through Thessaly and down to Athens, in which
charming city he so greatly enjoyed himself that instead of im-
posing taxes he made lavish presents to it. Like all educated
Romans he could speak Greek fluently, and he amused himself and
delighted the Athenians by often attending the public debates be-
tween philosophers and men of learning, and showing an intelligent
interest in their arguments. Brutus, who, it will be recalled, had
resided for a long time in Athens before making his fatal incursion
into Macedonia, was remembered there as a studious and scholarly
man; and the city's intellectuals were surprised to find that the
new master of the Roman world, in spite of Cicero's Philippics,
which, of course, they had read, was also a person of education,
who had not lost on the battlefield that approximation to learning
and taste which had enabled him to hold his own amongst the shin-
317
3 i8 MARC ANTONY
ing lights of Csesar's famous galaxy. He was always asking to be
shown their ancient buildings and works of art; he patronised their
artists and scholars; and he gave proof of a genuine appreciation
of their traditions which warmed their hearts in these days of
their city's decline. Sports and games were taken very seriously
in Athens, and Antony also gave much pleasure by his interest in
the athletic contests and the races to which the people flocked. His
own enormous physical strength aroused their admiration, while
his easy manners and his friendliness made him immensely popular.
People spoke, too, of his fairness and impartiality in matters in
which he had to give judgment; and they were much flattered to
observe his pleasure when in gratitude they hailed him as a true
Philhellene, a lover of Greece, and, in particular, a lover of Athens.
Greece still stood for artistic elegance, and it is the fact that when
Antony was not fighting or playing the fool he displayed strong
leanings towards the cultured life, a tendency which he was pleased
to see recognised.
In spite of this, however, there must have been an occasionally
observable touch of the honest Philistine in him, a slight indication
of that pleasant and shameless practicality which reveals itself
sometimes in the modern tourist who is a little tired of the rever-
ence for ruins. We all know the story of the returned traveller who
recalled Rome to mind as the place where the buildings were so
out of repair; and a somewhat similar story is told of Antony by
Plutarch. The people of Megara, a city some twenty-six miles
west of Athens, famous for its antiquities, invited him to come over
to see their celebrated Senate-house; but when, after conducting
him over the venerable edifice, they asked him what he thought of
it, he replied, "Well, it isn't very large, and it is extremely ruin-
ous. . . ." People were a little shocked, too, when he proposed to
have extensive repairs carried out in the hoary temple of the Pythian
Apollo * ; but, after all, there is not much to be said in defence of an
undue admiration of the mere action of time and its pulverising
effect upon builders' materials.
In the spring, when the smiling landscape was bright with
wild-flowers, and all the world seemed gay, he went north into
*At least, I think the point of Plutarch's reference to the repairs is that people
were shocked.
MARC ANTONY 3 ! 9
Thrace> and, having left one of his generals as governor of Greece
and Macedonia, marched with a small and happy army to the
Hellespont and thence into Bithynia, which had become a Roman
province on the death of its monarch, Nicomedes the Third, the
friend of Csesar. Here he remembered the purpose of his mission,
and collected whatever money he could lay his hands on, "while,"
as Plutarch says, "kings waited at his door, and queens vied with
one another in sending him presents and in endeavouring to appear
most charming in his eyes/' His tour now became a kind of royal
progress, splendid, sumptuous, and magnificent; and as he passed on
he left behind him the mingled encomiums of those he had
entertained or by whom he had been feted, and the groans of those
into whose treasure-chests his tax-collectors had dipped their greedy
hands.
Great artistic geniuses actors, singers, musicians, and dancers
joined themselves to his company. Anaxenor and Xuthus, famous
throughout the music-loving Asia Minor, travelled with him;
Metrodorus, the celebrated dancer, attached himself to his ever in-
creasing suite; until what Plutarch describes as "a whole Bacchic
rout" seemed to move along in his train, "far outdoing in their
licence and their folly the pests who had followed him out of Italy."
It is needless to say that Antony was soon drinking heavily again;
and the unfortunate fact that when he was drunk he was prodigal
in his generosity, caused a great deal of suffering of which, it is said,
he was wholly unaware. His friends, for instance, would ask him for
estates which they untruthfully declared had no surviving owners;
and on one occasion he gave his cook the house of a wretched citizen
of Magnesia whom he incorrectly believed to be dead, this being a
tipsy reward for a particularly good supper.
Thence he came to Ephesus, where, in view of the reputation
which had preceded him, the women met him dressed as nymphs and 4
Bacchantes and the men and boys as satyrs and fauns, wreathed
with ivy, and singing his praises to the accompaniment of drums,
harps, flutes, and other instruments. In their songs they hailed
him as Bacchus or Dionysus, a deity who was not only the god of
the vine, but was the Joy-bringer, the gentle Spirit of Peace and
Love "and so Antony was to some," says Plutarch, "though to
far more he was the Devourer and the Rioter." In this city he
320 MARC ANTONY
passed his time in the former capacity, enjoying a Bacchic round
of festivities; but before he left he assumed the latter role for
just sufficient length of time to issue an ill-considered command
that the annual tax should at once be collected throughout Asia
Minor, in giving which orders he overlooked the fact that the
tax of the previous year had only just been paid. Thereupon a
certain citizen came to him and told him in plain language that
this was sheer robbery. "If you are going to collect two years'
tribute at once/' he said, bitterly, "you can doubtless give us a
couple of summers and harvests. If the last tax has not been
paid to you, ask your collectors for it; if it has, and is all
gone, we are ruined men." It is said that Antony was touched to
the quick by these words, and cancelled his orders with generous
apologies; for, as Plutarch points out in this connection, "he
was quite ignorant of most things that were done in his name
not that he was careless, but that he was so prone to trust frankly in
all about him."
It was probably while at Ephesus that he made the then ap-
parently casual decision which changed the whole course of his
life. For some reason not made clear by classical writers, he
sent a messenger across the sea to Egypt to tell Queen Cleopatra
that he desired to see her. Plutarch thinks that he wished her
to answer an accusation that she had given assistance to Cassius
in the late troubles; but this seems to be contradicted by the
fact that Cassius, when in Syria, had wanted to bring Egypt by
force over to his side before he ventured to join Brutus in the west,
and by the statement of Appian 2 that Cleopatra had sent ships
to help the Triumvirs. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that
Cleopatra would have sided with the murderers of Csesar, the
father of her boy Caesarion, who was now nearly six years of age,
having been born in July, 47 B.C.; for it must have been obvious
to her that if the party of Brutus and Cassius came into power they
would show little consideration for the woman who had shared
Caesar's dreams of a Roman monarchy.
It appears most probable that Antony wished to ask the Queen
for money, and also to speak to her regarding the possibility of
bringing the young Csesarion onto the scene as the Dictators right-
* Appian: Civil Wars, iv, 74.
MARC ANTONY 321
ful heir. The murdered hero's own little son, his only known son
now that Brutus was dead, might be made a very important fac-
tor in the situation. He was said to resemble his father closely; and
if, in two or three years 5 time, he were brought to Rome and shown
to Csesar's old soldiers, they might rally round him to the complete
extinction of the unpopular Octavian, wlio was, after all, but the
Dictator's grand-nephew. Antony perhaps saw himself as the future
guardian of the boy, ruling the empire as a sort of regent; for, as
will presently become apparent, that was undoubtedly the position
at which he afterwards aimed.
The adoration of the memory of Csesar, and the actual wor-
ship of his divinity, were now at their height in Rome. Antony
owed much of his popularity to the fact that he had unswervingly
pursued the chief assassins to their deaths; and the dislike of Octav-
ian was largely due to his having, on the contrary, allied himself for
some time with them. Csesar's spirit, in fact, dominated the Roman
world; and Antony could not overlook the tremendous potential-
ities inherent in the existence of this child, this sole and genuine off-
spring of the celestial hero of the People.
At any rate, whatever the motive might be and it was cer-
tainly political Antony was anxious to see Cleopatra again after
this lapse of three and a half years since the day when she
had fled from Rome. Her age was now twenty-seven, and he had
heard that she had matured into a most attractive and clever wo-
man: indeed, he remembered that when she was Csesar's mistress
she had impressed him as a witty and talented young lady, and he
was evidently not a little intrigued by the thought of renewing his
acquaintance with her. She had not married, and he must have won-
dered whether she had remained romantically true to Gfisar s mem-
ory, or whether there was any foundation for the vague stones he
had heard that she had indulged in various secret love-affairs with
the gentlemen of her court. 8 .
His messenger was a diplomatic young man named Quintus
Dellius, who had been the companion of Dolabella m Syria, had
fallen into the hands of Cassius whom he had unwillingly served,
ganda.
32 2 MARC ANTONY
and now was on Antony's staff. He was instructed, it seems, to
bring back the Queen's reply, after which a rendez-vous could be
arranged at some seaport city further to the east which Antony
intended in any event to visit; and it may be said in anticipation
that Dellius was able to convince her that his master was, as Plu-
tarch records, "the gentlest and kindest of soldiers," and that she
need have no fears. It is said, however, that she showed no in-
clination to hurry herself, and that the mission of Dellius was fol-
lowed by a considerable number of letters from Antony and those of
his officers who had known her in Rome; and these no doubt gave
her news of his movements, so that she might know where to
find him when at last she should decide to cross the sea.
Meanwhile Antony proceeded on his gay and leisurely way
eastwards, passing through Phrygia, Galatia, and Cappadocia, and
so coming down into Cilicia, to the city of Tarsus, which he appears
to have reached in August or September. Tarsus, the Tarshish of
the Bible, stood on the river Cydnus, twelve miles back from the
open sea. It was a city famous for its schools of oratory and philoso-
phy, and it had produced and was producing so many celebrated
men of learning 4 that its general atmosphere was academic and
scholarly in the highest degree. Antony had made a point of visit-
ing it because it had been a place much honoured by Caesar, and in
consequence of its loyalty to the Caesarian party had been savagely
punished by Cassius. Antony now offered what reparations he could,
and instead of gathering money from the city, made generous pres-
ents to it, just as he had done in the case of Athens.
It may well be supposed that here, as in Athens, he played
the part of the dilettante, patronising the above-mentioned schools,
visiting the places of antiquarian interest, and curtailing the exu-
berant activities of his theatrical entourage. Queen Cleopatra, how-
ever, who had decided to make her visit to him during his sojourn
here at Tarsus, had heard from Dellius and others a great deal about
the Bacchic reception given to him at Ephesus, and about the spec-
tacular nature of his whole progress through Asia Minor. She was
deeply interested in him, and in his almost miraculous ascent through
difficulty and disaster to supreme power. To her he must have seemed
to be more than a play-actor, and his tour a sacred carnival rather
4 St. Paul also was born there a generation later. v
MARC ANTONY 323
than a mere show: she recalled, no doubt, his behaviour at that
never-to-be-forgotten Lupercalia, when he had pranced almost
naked and in a sort of inspired and momentous frenzy, through the
Forum she had been in Rome at the time, and must have had an
account of it from Caesar, if, indeed, she had not witnessed his
strange and eventful antics herself from some window ; she remem-
bered that he used often to comport himself as a Hercules, thus im-
personating his legendary ancestor; and she had heard more than
once of late that people were speaking of him with affectionate awe
as an incarnation of some deity.
Now, in her own country she was herself an actual divinity,
and Csesar had presented her to Rome as an incarnation of his
own mythical ancestress, Venus, placing her statue, it will be re-
called, in his new temple dedicated to that goddess, and allowing her
likeness to be impressed upon her coinage in the guise of Isis-Venus.
She therefore made up her mind to play the role of Venus to An-
tony's Dionysus not altogether in fun, not altogether in considera-
tion of its spectacular value, but in a large measure because the cus-
tom and mental outlook of the age enabled her, in spite of her
reason's ridicule, to think of herself in some sense as a goddess and
of Antony as a God. After all, Csesar was now Jupiter- Julius, and in
the fiery guise of a comet he had been seen in the starry night-sky
rushing to heaven: why, then, should not this new superman, this
new master of the Roman world, who had so miraculously arisen,
be also a deity, as Ephesus had evidently deemed him?
But in this seat of learning as has been said, Antony had dis-
carded his celestial role; and when the news was suddenly brought
to him one afternoon by runners from the coast that Cleopatra's
fleet had been sighted, and that she was sailing up the river to the
city, he assumed his most dignified posture, and gave instructions
that the city's Forum should be prepared for a formal reception.
He dressed himself in his official robes, and, when the time came,
went in state to this place, seating himself upon the magistrate's
throne, his glittering company of officers and officials about him, the
learned professors and venerable elders of the city on his either hand,
and a great array of soldiers holding in check the excited crowds. 5
8 The account of the meeting between Antony and Cleopatra is given in Plutarch's
Antony,
324 MARC ANTONY
As he sat waiting, however, he noticed that one by one his
immediate company excused themselves and left him, and that
gradually the crowd was melting away. Making puzzled enquiries,
he found that Cleopatra's ships had arrived at the quay near by,
and that the vessel upon which she was travelling was so marvel-
lously decorated that the sight was drawing the whole city to
the waterside. Hastily he sent her a message, little short of a com-
mand, that she should come ashore to be received formally by him,
and that afterwards, since it was already dusk, she should ac-
company him to his official residence to attend the state banquet
which he had ordered to be made ready.
By the time that her answer was received he was almost
alone in the darkening Forum, save for his staff and the wonder-
ing soldiers. She sent word that she would prefer to receive him
and his friends on her ship, and to give him dinner there instead ;
and at this, Antony appears to have been completely nonplussed,
not knowing what was the dignified thing to do. The enthusiasm of
the crowds, however, relieved him of his embarrassment, for they
trooped back into the Forum, shouting out that Venus herself had
come to feast with Bacchus, and that he must certainly betake him-
self to the quay to greet her and to see the marvellous sight.
He therefore complied with their wishes, cancelled his ban-
quet, and walked with great dignity down to the mooring-place.
Darkness had now fallen, and the sight which met his eyes was
indeed astonishing. The hot September night being still and wind-
less, the illuminations which Cleopatra had provided for the oc-
casion were seen at their best ; the whole deck of the royal vessel was
ablaze with candles, arranged in squares, circles, and other patterns;
and in their steady light the Queen could be seen reclining under a
golden canopy backed by a still spread sail of purple linen. Around
and about were half -naked boys, impersonating Cupids, and maid-
ens stentily attired as nymphs of the sea: the sailors had all been
sent below, and these youths and girls were so posed at the rudder,
at the helm, and about the rigging, as to suggest that they were
the fairy crew of. a fairy ship. There was an orchestra, too, playing
the haunting music for which Egypt was famous ; and here and there
stood a priestly figure burning sweet-smelling incense.
When Antony went aboard, and greeted the Queen in these
MARC ANTONY 325
fantastic surroundings, he found that she herself was dressed in
the guise of Venus, that is to say she was wearing the soft and
shimmering robes of that goddess and her elaborate headdress.
She was a small, dainty little creature, radiant, rather than beauti-
ful, but having a charmingly moulded face, an abundance of soft,
dark hair, a fascinating mouth, thoughtful, wide-set eyes, and a
general appearance of breeding which justified her rather prominent
though finely chiselled nose. He was charmed by her personal ap-
pearance, and yet I fancy that he must have felt a little embarrass-
ment at the theatricality of her studied pose and at her carefully
staged tableau; for, as we shall presently see, she very quickly
changed her tactics.
Antony, it has to be remembered, had had so much to do with
the theatre and with all sorts of professional actors and actresses
his former mistress, Cytheris, in particular that by now he must
have been quite incapable of being bewitched by the histrionics of an
amateur, however splendidly presented. He could admire her dis-
play as a work of art; but he could not respond to it in the same un-
natural vein, and, indeed, it would seem that the more ardently she
enacted the part of the voluptuous goddess the more uncomfortable
he became, and the more he felt himself to be a practical, vulgar
man. As so often happens when a would-be enchantress plays her
romantic part before a man of the world, his response was discon-
certingly close to laughter. His identification with Dionysus, after
all, had not been of his own seeking; and he was not prepared to
sustain the role for the sake of supporting this young lady in her
own celestial impersonation.
"She, perceiving that his joking behaviour was broad and vul-
gar," says Plutarch, "and tfrat it savoured more of the soldier than
the courtier, soon responded in the same manner" ; and though that
writer is here referring to the following day, one may suppose that,
being a quick-witted woman, she did not take long to step t^t of
her role and to explain it as a piece of fun, or as something intended
for the eyes of the people. At any rate, she had made herself look
charming: that was enough, and for the rest, she had to admit, as
many a young woman has had to do, that her intended effect had
been ruined by its contact with the armour of a middle-aged man s
experience. Antony was now forty-two: he had reached the age at
32 6 MARC ANTONY
which plain-dealing on the part of the other sex is more appreciated
than the cleverest acting.
'History does not tell us more of that first meeting after
these three and a half years; but we are informed that on the
next night, or the night after that, Antony entertained the Queen
in return, and that on this occasion she herself behaved as jovially
and as naturally as he did, capping his improper stories with her
own, passing ribald remarks upon the cooking, teasing him about the
dearth of sparkling conversation, and generally treating him like an
old friend and boon-companion. This bantering, outspoken woman
was far more to his taste than the languorous Venus of the night of
her arrival; and he was quite captivated by her.
"Her actual beauty," writes Plutarch, "was not in itself so
remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no
one could see her without being struck by it; but the contact of her
presence, when one got to know her, was irresistible. The attractions
of her person, combined with the charm of her talk, and the distinc-
tive character of all she said or did, was something bewitching. It
was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, especially as
she could pass from one language to another, and could speak with-
out an interpreter to Ethiopians, Bedouins, Jews, Arabs, Syrians,
Persians, and many others," not to mention Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans. .
On the following night Cleopatra entertained Antony at an-
other banquet, and on this occasion the entire floor of her vessel's
saloon was carpeted with roses so thickly packed that they formed
a sort of sweet-smelling mattress. For some weeks she remained
at Tarsus with him, and at length she suggested that he should visit
her at her capital, Alexandria. Antony was in any case going to
continue his tour from Tarsus on into Syria and Palestine, where he
expected to arrive in November or December ; and from Palestine
it would be a simple matter to cross the desert into Egypt, and he
felt that he could spend his time very profitably there during the
winter months. I imagine that at first he merely thought of exacting a
handsome sum of money from the Queen in return for a promise of
Roman support for her on her always precarious throne ; but gradu-
ally, it seems to me, a larger plan presented itself to his mind, and
he was eager to study the resources of her country, financial, mill-
Photograph by Macbeth
CLEOPATRA
British Museum
MARC ANTONY 327
tary, and naval, and to enroll her as an active ally in his future
schemes.
There was every reason for him to avoid going back to Italy
for the present; for he must have been most anxious not to involve
himself in the difficult situation which had there developed. Oc-
tavian had unexpectedly recovered from his illness and was now
not only unlikely to die young, but was proving himself quite cap-
able of asserting his authority even though it were in opposition to
that of Antony's self-appointed representatives Fulvia, his wife,
and Lucius, his brother, who was one of the Consuls for this year
41 B.C.
It had been Octavian's thankless task to try to settle the de-
mobilised soldiers on the land, and to satisfy their demands both
for profitable acres and for payment of the money due to them; but,
having no available funds for the purpose, he had been obliged to
ask the municipalities and private landowners in certain districts to
find room for the veterans on their estates and to supply them with
their initial stock. This, so Antony heard, had caused an uproar;
and Lucius, supported by Fulvia, had opposed the plan, saying that
the grants to the ex-soldiers should be suspended until Antony re-
turned to look into the matter. 6 Octavian, on his part, had angrily
declared that Lucius was not acting in accordance with Antony's
wishes in taking the part of the threatened landowners against the
soldiers; and to mark his disapproval of Fulvia, whom he regarded
as more to blame than Lucius, he had divorced her daughter, Clodia,
Antony's step-daughter, whom he had married at the time of the
establishment of the Triumvirate, and had sent her back, still a
virgin, to her mother.
The upper classes had for the most part decided that Lucius
was quite right in opposing this spoliation of the rich for the
benefit of the disbanded troops, and in demanding that no such
drastic measures should be taken until Antony had been consulted
and had had time to raise money in the east. Lucius had thus become
the hero of the moneyed classes and what remained of the republican
party, and the enemy of the veterans; but with one section of the
latter he had retrieved his popularity by suggesting the compromise
that lands should be found for those soldiers who had been loyal to
*Dion Cassius xlviii, 5-7.
328 MARC ANTONY
Csesar's memory from the first, and who had actually fought at
Philippi.
Matters had then passed out of control. The veterans in some
cases had forcibly seized the lands which Octavian was trying to
obtain for them, and had come to blows with the owners, who
relied on the support of Lucius; and there were indications that
actual warfare would break out between the two parties, Lepidus,
the discredited third Triumvir, meanwhile, had played so ignoble
a part that he had been brushed aside in the general commotion, and
was no longer of the least importance. According to the dispatches
which Antony received, however, it seemed that Fulvia was the
stormy petrel, and was encouraging these disturbances in order to
oblige her husband to return to Italy, 7 not only so that he should be
once more under her control but also that he might be forced to quar-
rel with Octavian whom she now passionately desired to destroy
if only in revenge for his insult to her daughter.
Antony, however, did not want to quarrel with Octavian at the
moment, and, indeed, had honourable scruples in that regard, since,
after Philippi, he had made an amicable agreement with him, bind-
ing so long as the Triumvirate should last, and since, moreover, he
had the interests of the veterans at heart himself, and was most
anxious to avoid being involved in the difficulties consequent on
their demobilisation until he had collected sufficient money to satis-
fy in cash their just demands. That was the crux of the matter :
money. By hook or by crook he would have to raise money; and, at
the moment, Egypt seemed to him to be the most likely source of
the gold he needed. Cleopatra's kingdom was immensely wealthy;
and I think he must have seen that he could probably persuade her
to raise the required sum with which to satisfy the veterans in the
hope that thus she would pave the way for their recognition of
Caesarion as Caesar's true heir.
He knew that Csesar had intended to marry her and to make
her his consort upon the world-throne which he had desired to es-
tablish; he realized that the dream of such a throne for her son
still haunted her thoughts; he saw that a goal of this kind was to her
thef only hope for her dynasty, since its alternative fate would prob-
ably be extinction, and the annexation of Egypt by Rome, at no dis-
T Appian: Civil Wars, v, 19.
MARC ANTONY 329
tant date. If, then, he could induce her to place all her resources at
his disposal in return for a promise that he would act as guardian
to her son and that he would launch him, when he was of age, into
the adventurous sea of Roman life as the heir of the adored Dictator,
he would not only be able to return to Rome with enough money
to win the gratitude of the ex-soldiers, but would ultimately be able
to place in the field a formidable rival to Octavian. It was necessary,
then, for him to get to know the young Csesarion, and, if he should
prove to be a promising boy, to arrange for his education in Rome.
It was some such plan, I think, which led him to accept Cleo-
patra's invitation to visit her in Egypt. It is true that he had found
her to be a most entertaining companion now that she had dropped
her celestial pose and had come down to earth, so to speak, with
such an uncompromising impact, and it is certain that he had already
entered into amorous relations with her in his own light-hearted way;
but I do not think that he was as yet at all deeply in love with her,
nor she with him. He was a very fine figure of a man and she was
greatly attracted, no doubt, by him: she was an exceedingly charm-
ing young woman, and he was greatly intrigued by her. But world-
events were too serious just now for the consideration of them to be
relegated to the back of the mind; and neither he nor she could
forget that they were leaders in momentous movements. Both were
bent on obtaining from the other certain material advantages. There
was no room yet in their hearts for sensational romance.
After Cleopatra had left Tarsus, Antony moved on to Daphne,
near Antioch, in Syria, and later into Palestine, whence, having
made certain dispositions in regard to the Jewish government, 8 and
having apparently sent most of his troops back into Asia Minor, he
crossed the desert into Egypt, and so arrived at Alexandria probably
in December. The Egyptian capital was at this time the most im-
portant city in the world, with the exception of Rome, and not even
Rome could rival it as a seat of learning and a centre of intellectual
and artistic life, in which respect it had long since taken the place
of Athens. In character it was predominantly Greek; and although
the population was very mixed and contained Egyptian, Syrian,
Jewish, and many other elements, the language, dress, and habits
of the upper classes were Greek, as also was the city's architecture.
; Antiquities of the Jews, xiv, xiii, 2.
330 MARC ANTONY
It had been founded by Alexander the Great to serve as a Greek
port on the conquered coast of native Egypt; but Cleopatra's an-
cestor, a Greek general who had made himself King of Egypt after
Alexander's death, had converted it into the capital of the country,
and he and his descendants had there ruled for the last three hundred
years over the people of the Nile, with whom they had no more real
or penetrating connection than Englishmen in India today have with
the natives of that country, or the early settlers in America had with
the pacified Redskins. Cleopatra, as has already been pointed out,
was not an Egyptian: she was a- Macedonian Greek, enthroned in
a Greek palace, and living a Greek life in a Greek city which had
little concern with the native Egyptian nation other than that of
governing it and drawing enormous wealth from it.
The palace stood upon the Lochias promontory, on the east
side of which the rocks and sandy coves fronting the city extended
into the distance, while on the west was the 'harbour protected from
the open sea by the long, low island whereon rose the famous
Pharos lighthouse, then regarded as one of the wonders of the world.
This lighthouse, built two centuries earlier, was a white marble
structure, nearly six hundred feet in height, and having a beacon-
light visible for thirty miles out to sea.
The city was full of magnificent buildings, the Temple of
Serapis (the Jupiter of the Egyptians) being without a rival. The
Museum, which was what we should now call a university, was
the greatest institute of learning in the world, its particular sub-
jects of study being medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and litera-
ture; and its famous library contained nearly half a million books.
The mausoleum in which lay the body of Alexander the Great, in
a coffin of gold, was one of antiquity's most revered monuments,
and around it were the splendid sepulchres of Cleopatra's royai an-
cestors. The Forum, the theatres, the Hippodrome or racecourse, the
Gymnasium, and the famous arcaded Street of Canopus, were
amongst the other architectural marvels; and the public parks and
gardens were celebrated.
The Alexandrians carried on an immensely prosperous trade
with the Mediterranean lands. Egypt has been called the gran-
ary of the ancient world, and corn was exported to Rome and else-
where in great quantities. The linen trade was extensive, and
MARC ANTONY 331
the material of which the sails of ships were made came nearly
all from here. Perfumes, incense, and oils were exported, and many
manufactures such as glass, pottery, and paper (papyrus) were
sent across the seas. Gold, copper, and ornamental stone were ex-
tracted from the eastern Egyptian deserts; and works of art of all
sorts were carried over to the European markets, while Greek and
native Egyptian artists and craftsmen were everywhere in demand.
Over this wealthy Greek city, and over the teeming Egyptian
race dwelling in the Delta and the Nile Valley beyond, Cleopatra
ruled in strangely solitary splendour. Her two brothers, who
had in turn been her consorts, 9 were both dead, the one having
been killed in 47 B.C. in the war which was waged when Csesar
was in Alexandria, and the other having died early in 44 B.C. just be-
fore the Dictator's assassination. Her now exiled sister, Arsinoe, and
her little son, Csesarion, were the only other surviving members of
the royal family; and it appears that the boy was all the world to
her. It is indeed remarkable that after Caesar's death she had not
married, but had for these three and a half years and more remained
in lonely control of her kingdom; and the explanation must be that
she was waiting for that new master of Rome to arise who would
take the place of Csesar as the protector of her boy and as the as-
pirant to the world-throne to which Caesar had wished to elevate her,
and of which she had never ceased to dream.
Antony was now that master : he seemed to her to be the hero
for whom she had been waiting so patiently, watching with anx-
ious eyes the movement of Roman affairs. Until lately she had
hardly supposed that the expected man of destiny would prove to
be this Antony, Caesar's jovial colleague; but now that she had
come to know him in Tarsus, and had seen his popularity and his
power, she was convinced that in him lay all her hopes. Her
attitude to him differed from his to her in this respect, that
whereas he sought to make use of Egypt's wealth for his own po-
litical ends, offering in return to promote the future interests of
her son in the arena of Roman ambition, she, on her part, re-
garded Antony as the destined ally and husband for whom she had
waited, and saw no reason why he should not create with her
She had been "married" to each of them, according to the Egyptian custom of
brother-and-sister marriages in the royal house; but this was an empty formality.
332 MARC ANTONY
that Roman throne which Caesar had so nearly succeeded in found-
ing. Her line of action was quite clear to her: she would have
to excite his admiration for her regal power and her boundless
resources of wealth, and at the same time she would have to win
his actual love as she had won Cesar's.
When she had captivated Caesar, it should be pointed out, she
had been no more than twenty-one years of age, and had been a
wayward, capricious, audacious little creature, whose pluck had
greatly appealed to him. She had been driven out of Alexandria
by her brother, it will be remembered, and when the Dictator
had taken possession of the palace she had managed to penetrate the
enemy's lines and to be carried into Csesar's room rolled up in a
carpet. He had promptly seduced her, but she had so won his affec-
tion that he had remained with her until her child was born, it will
be recalled, and then had renewed his relations with her in Rome.
There she had perhaps become a little vain and haughty, as Cicero
had found her ; but the disaster of Caesar's death, and her consequent
flight back to Egypt, had knocked all the vanity out of her, and
now, as her twenty-eighth birthday approached, she was a woman
of much deeper character. There is no reliable evidence that she was
less moral than most other women of the time; 10 and, in any case,
it is not for us to sit in judgment upon her if it be true, which is
questionable, that she had not behaved with continence during these
years of her solitude. She must have been very lonely.
It must be admitted that the writers of antiquity have por-
trayed her character in ugly terms, presenting her as a lewd
and vicious enchantress, ambitious, ruthless, and cruel; but if we
remember that she ultimately did make the bid for a throne in
Rome, that the attempt was wrecked by Octavian, who himself
became the first Emperor, and that the writers of the imperial age
not unnaturally placed the blame upon her for the unaccountable
behaviour of the popular Antony, we can easily see that they would
be prone to describe her as a siren and a courtesan, the slave
of her passions.
Actually, Cleopatra was not altogether the cause of Antony's
downfall; and in the light of this unavoidable conclusion the
Queen's character takes on a fairer aspect. To understand her we
"Sec my Life and Times of Cl to pair a.
MARC ANTONY 333
must think of her at this time as a woman struggling to prevent her
country being annexed by Rome, and audaciously meeting that
danger by aiming at no less than an Egypto-Roman crown, a world-
wide sovereignty, which was, she hoped, to be established for her
and her son, Csesar's child, by the aid of Caesar's kinsman, friend,
and representative Antony. Let us admit that she was ambi-
tious, scheming, and unscrupulous; let us admit what nobody de-
nies, that she was brilliant, energetic, courageous and tenacious;
yet in the absence of any but vague and prejudiced gossip about
her, we must surely receive the conventional stories of her immoral-
ity with the greatest caution.
Like many of her ancestors she was a woman of refinement
and culture, a true Greek in her artistic and intellectual equip-
ment; and as soon as Antony arrived she set herself to the task
of dazzling him with the brilliance of her court, and shaming
him out of those less elegant kinds of entertainment in which
she had participated in Tarsus. Here in Alexandria she was sur-
rounded both by genuine scholars and artists and by fashionable
and wealthy intellectuals who seem to have combined the art of
good living with the rarer accomplishment of clever conversation;
and Antony at once found himself the guest of honour, and, in-
deed, the dominant figure, in a scintillating company such as
he had not known since the days when he was a member of the fa-
mous bevy of talent over which the astonishing Csesar had pre-
sided. It is true that he was a simple soul, and was as happy in a
rough company of soldiers as he was, in other mood, in the society
of the elegant; but here in Cleopatra's gay capital there was a
Greek spirit of light-heartedness in these men of brains which
nothing in Rome could match; and its effect upon him was like that
of wine. It seems that he had never before. so thoroughly enjoyed
himself.
Very soon he proposed that Cleopatra and the most brilliant
of his new friends should form themselves into a society or club
which should be called the AmimetoUoi, or "Inimitable Livers";
and, the idea being well received, Antony became the chief "In-
imitable," with the Queen as his colleague. Each member of the
club in turn entertained the others, all vying with one another
in their attempts to stage the perfect party. As an instance of
334 MARC ANTONY
the length to which these efforts were carried, Plutarch mentions the
fact that on one occasion a visitor to the royal kitchens saw no
less than eight wild boars in different stages of being roasted whole,
not because the company was large, but because the cooks, having
no idea of the hour at which Antony and Cleopatra would choose to
dine, were obliged to employ this method of ensuring that the pork
would be cooked to a turn.
Antony, however, was incorrigibly boisterous, and the Queen
did not neglect to meet his chronic high spirits with a revival of
her own. "Were he disposed to mirth," writes Plutarch, n "she
had at once some new amusement or delight to meet his mood : at
every turn she was with him, and let him escape her neither by
day nor by night. She played at dice with him, drank with him,
hunted with him; and when he exercised himself in arms, she was
there to see. At night she would go rambling with him to dis-
turb and play pranks on people by knocking at their doors or win-
dows, she and he being both disguised in servants' clothes; and
from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered
and sometimes even roughly handled, though most people guessed
who he was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well
enough, and joined good-humouredly in his frolics and jokes, saying
they were much obliged to him for acting his tragic parts at Rome
and reserving his comedy for them/'
It is hardly necessary to say that she was now his habitual bed-
fellow. She made no secret of it; and, since in her own country she
was above the law, she allowed her subjects to recognize in Antony
her chosen consort, who, though having another wife in Rome,
was here by the special sanction of the gods united to her, just
as the divine Caesar had been. Thus, when it became known that she
was again going to become a mother, nobody was either surprised or
shocked.
She herself, no doubt, was happy to think that a definite link be-
tween herself and Antony would thus be created, which might
cause him to regard an ultimate legal marriage with her almost as a
duty; but he, on his part, was not prepared to admit any such obli-
gation. Perhaps he would divorce Fulvia and marry the Queen one
day; but he was a busy man, and this little holiday in Alexandria
"Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 335
would presently end, and he would have to return to Rome to pur-
sue his destiny. The thought had probably been implanted in his
mind by now that his fortune might lead him to that throne of which
Caesar had dreamed; but the time had not yet arrived. For the pres-
ent he was only prepared to offer Cleopatra his protection on her
own Egyptian throne, and his guardianship of her boy, Csesarion,
whom he had found to be a promising child; and in return for this
protection he was going to avail himself of Egypt's wealth. But
for the rest, his future was in the lap of the gods.
One service, however, he was able to perform for the Queen,
namely the removal of two pretenders to her throne. Her sister
Arsinoe, that same princess who had been led through the streets of
Rome in Caesar's Triumph, had from childhood never ceased to
plot against her ; and it seems that she had given what help she could
to the enemies of the Csesarian party in the hope that their victory
would lead to the dethroning of Cleopatra. She was now residing
in Asia Minor, having found sanctuary with the priestesses of Arte-
mis; and the Queen asked Antony to give orders for her execution.
This he did, for she was unquestionably a dangerous enemy; and
she was despatched at the steps of the altar where she was serving,
the High Priest of Artemis being arrested as a conspirator against
the Caesarian cause, and a general clean-up of this nest of treason
being carried out. The other pretender was a man who claimed to be
that brother of Cleopatra who had really been killed in his war
with Caesar: he seems to have been in league with Arsinoe, and
was trying to raise an army in Phoenicia at the time when Antony's
agents seized him and put him to death. An ambitious Egyptian
general, named Serapion, who had helped them both, was also exe-
cuted.
The close of 41 B.C. found Antony at the height of his en-
joyment of Cleopatra's splendid hospitality; but, probably in Jan-
uary or February of the new year, 40 B.C., he received belated de-
spatches 12 from Rome, giving him an account of what had occurred
in Italy since last he had had news, in the autumn.
The opposition of Lucius and Fulvia supported by the men-
M News travelled from Rome to Alexandria very slowly in wintertime, for shipping
was then disturbed by the dangers of rough seas, and dispatches were generally
carried around by land, through Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Syria.
33 6 MARC ANTONY
aced landowners to Octavian's intended appropriation of lands
for the disbanded veterans, recorded earlier in this chapter, had
at length developed into open hostilities, and the former had gone
out into the country to recruit an army. At length Lucius had forci-
bly seized upon Rome, and had made a speech in the Forum, pro-
posing that Octavian should be declared a public enemy, that the
Triumvirate should be ended, and that Antony should be asked to
return to Rome and to assume the post of Consul for 40 B.C., with
special powers for the pacification of the country. These proposals
may be described as an attempt to form a coalition between the
democrats and the remnant of the republicans; and it is evident that
Lucius and Fulvia had supposed Antony to be ready for a reconcilia-
tion of the two parties in opposition to the bullying Csesarianism of
the ex-soldiers. Octavian, however, with the aid of the veterans, had
gained the upper hand, and had obliged Lucius to retire to Perugia,
where he had soon been closely besieged; while Fulvia had taken up
her headquarters at Prseneste (Palestrina), and not only had as-
sumed command of a military force, but had actually dressed herself
like a general and had buckled on a sword. 1S
She was smarting under the now unconcealed insults of Oc-
tavian, and she had believed that she and Lucius, by declaring
that they were carrying out the wishes of her absent husband, could
rouse the country against the young man, and could clear him out
of the way, so that she, Lucius, and Antony should be in complete
control of the empire. Octavian, very wisely, had stated that he
had no quarrel with his friend and colleague, Antony* but only with
this tufbulent couple, who, though Antony's wife and brother,
were really acting against his interests: in fact, he seems to have
said, he and Antony were both good democrats, having the welfare
of the poor soldiers at heart, while Lucius and Fulvia had become
traitors to the party, and were leaguing themselves with the old re-
publicans, the conservatives and the aristocrats.
Antony, of course, was extremely troubled by this news ; and, in
the words of Plutarch, "at last arousing himself with difficulty from
idleness, and shaking off the fumes of wine," he made preparations
for his departure. He must have been furious with Fulvia and his
brother Lucius for having thus recklessly jeopardised his cause by
M Floras, iv, v.
MARC ANTONY 337
this premature attempt to pick a quarrel with Octavian; and one
may suppose that his intention was to hasten back to Italy, to re-
pudiate his wife, and, with Cleopatra's money and such funds as he
could raise elsewhere, to satisfy both the veterans and the land-
owners, thus gaining personal credit for the ending of the quarrel,
re-establishing his endangered position at home, and relegating
Octavian once more to the background.
But now came another piece of news, this time from Syria,
which was even more disconcerting. After the battle of Philippi
a good many Roman fugitives had taken refuge in Parthia; and
one of their number, Labienus, the son of the Pompeian general
killed at Munda in Spain in 45 B.C., had persuaded the Parthians
to invade Syria and Cilicia, his reckless aim being, apparently,
to crush Antony and thus to pave the way for a future return of the
republicans to power. A great invading army had crossed the Eu-
phrates, and was marching on Antioch in northern Syria, and such
Roman troops as were in that part of the country were in full retreat.
The attack was a complete surprise.
With such dangers threatening him, Cleopatra had no wish
to keep Antony in Alexandria. Egypt itself was safe from a Parthian
invasion, for the Egyptian army, aided by the Macedonian troops
permanently stationed in the capital, and the Roman soldiers who
had been there ever since the days of Gabinius, could be relied on to
hold the eastern Egyptian frontier. With a sudden sinking of her
heart the Queen must have realized that Antony was not the un-
disputed master of Rome that she had supposed him to be. She had
been too hasty, perhaps, in staking her all upon him; for he had yet
far to go, and much lost ground to retrieve, ere he could think of
championing her cause and that of Csesarion before the Roman
world. Her attitude towards him is revealed in an anecdote related
by Plutarch. During the idle days shortly before his departure, he
used to go out fishing with the Queen; but having been unlucky in
his catches, he jokingly engaged some divers to descend unseen
into the water and to fasten large fish onto his hook one after the
other, so that he appeared to be the most wonderful of fishermen.
Cleopatra, however, detected the trick, and sent a diver down with
a salted fish, which Antony drew to the surface amidst great laugh-
ter, whereupon the Queen said to him: "Leave the fishing-rod, An-
338 MARC ANTONY
tony, to us poor little sovereigns of Egypt : your game is cities, prov-
inces, and kingdoms !"
Early in March, 40 B.C., he set sail for the city of Tyre, on the
Syrian coast, with a small fleet, leaving Cleopatra to bring into the
world, when her time should come, the offspring of their happy
nights together. Neither he nor she could tell when they would meet
again.
CHAPTER XVI
Antony's Return to Rome ; His Marriage to Octavia ; and His Maneuvers
for Political Unity.
40-39 B.C.
WHEN Antony arrived at Tyre he was dumbfounded to find the
city already in a state of siege. The Parthians, advancing with
wholly unexpected speed, had swarmed over Cilicia, Syria, and
Palestine, and the Roman troops in this particular neighbourhood
had retired headlong within the impregnable Tyrian walls. For-
tunately they were here quite safe for the present; for though
they were thus besieged by land, they had command of the seas
and were unlikely to run short of food. Antony therefore decided
that he must hasten by ship to Greece and mobilise his army;
and one may suppose that he promised to return as soon as he
had cleared the Parthians out of Asia Minor. Tyre could hold
out indefinitely; Egypt was pretty safe; Syria and Palestine could
be reconquered when the time came. The danger-point was in Asia
Minor, for there was nothing to stop the Parthian advance through
Cilicia to the Hellespont, Thither it was obvious that he must go.
He sailed by way of Cyprus and Rhodes to Ephesus, at the
other the western end of Asia Minor; but meanwhile the Par-
thians under Labienus had marched along the coast and were head-
ing for the same city. In anticipation it may be said that their rapid
advance was finally checked in Caria, the province just to the south
of Ephesus; for here the three cities of Stratonicea (Eski-Hisar),
Mylasa (Melasso), and Alabanda (Arabissor), held out against
them, and, with the aid of Roman troops, blocked their way.
At Ephesus Antony received a full account of the troubles in
Italy, and for a while he must have been distracted. Fulvia and
339
340
MARC ANTONY
Lucius seemed to have ruined his prestige in Rome, and his hopes
of returning there to settle triumphantly the dispute between them
and Octavian between the landowners and the veteran soldiers
had to be abandoned. He had no money to take home; and money
was the essential factor. The funds which he had expected to receive
from Cleopatra had been greatly reduced, I suppose, because of the
needs of the Queen herself in placing her country in a state of
defence against the Parthians; and whatever amount he had been
able to procure from her was now required for the war against these
invaders here in Asia Minor. Moreover, matters, in any case, had
gone too far in Italy to be so simply set to rights.
It will be recalled that Octavian had shut up Antony's brother,
Lucius, in Perugia, and had wrecked his and Fulvia's foolish at-
tempt to rid themselves of him by forming a militant coalition of
democrats and republicans. After a long but hopeless siege Peru-
gia had surrendered early in March; and Octavian, being anxious
not to rupture his relations with Antony for good and all, had al-
lowed Lucius to go unmolested into retirement, at the same time,
however, showing the utmost severity to the other prisoners, sen-
tencing great numbers to death, and, to those who implored his
mercy, making but one invariable reply: "You must die." * It
was said that he had actually selected three hundred of the half-
starved citizens, and had slaughtered them before the altar of the
deified Csesar on the anniversary of the Ides of March, as a sort of
human sacrifice; but we may infer from the words of Suetonius that
this story lacked confirmation.
Antony's family, and the few of his highly-placed officers who
had lent support to this armed movement against Octavian, had been
allowed to betake themselves unmolested out of the country, for
Octavian had persisted in his refusal to annoy his colleague by
punishing any one of them, and, indeed, his troops would never have
allowed him to harm a relative or friend of the popular Triumvir.
Antony's mother, Julia, now a woman of over sixty, had taken
fright, however, and had crossed the sea to Sicily, where she had
placed herself under the protection of the gallant and picturesque
Sextus Pompeius, who was still leading his sea-roving life as the
pro-republican commander of an independent fleets The ill-starred
1 Suetonius : Augustus, rv.
MARC ANTONY 341
rising had been to a certain extent republican in character, and at
any rate it had had the sympathy of the republican exiles to this
extent, that Sextus was very willing to give sanctuary to the refu-
gees, being in this instance glad also to put Antony under an obli-
gation to him. Fulvia, meanwhile, had been escorted by three thou-
sand of Antony's Gallic cavalry to Brindisi, where, breathing fiery
threats of vengeance, she was preparing to take ship for Greece to
join her husband.
Octavian had then returned to Rome, where he was now in
absolute control, and, so Antony heard, was behaving himself
with great brutality, maintaining a diplomatic pretence of fidelity
to the Triumvirate, but quietly taking his revenge on all the lesser
supporters of Lucius and Fulvia, putting many of them to death,
some even by torture. To satisfy the veterans he was pursuing his
policy of placing them upon the lands confiscated without any
compensation from their rightful owners, most of whom were beg-
gared by these now wholesale transactions; and all the upper classes
both republicans and right-wing democrats were looking to An-
tony to come home to save them from this detestable young man, 2
who was only maintaining his position by such pandering to the un-
ruly ex-soldiers.
Octavian was at this time in his twenty-third year, and his so
far strangely successful struggle against sickness and opposition
had hardened him into a man of unpleasant and cruel character.
He was leading an unnatural life of anxiety and excitement, and
the condition of his nerves was such that he could not sleep properly
at night, and by day had often to distract bis mind by throwing the
dice and gambling for heavy stakes. Eating or drinking offered
no temporary deliverance from his worries, for he had little appetite,
and more than two or three cups of wine upset his stomach 3 ; but,
as is often the case with the sickly, his thoughts turned with great
frequency to the gratification of his passions, many ugly stories
being told of him in this regard, and, indeed, the widely believed
reports that he had been perverted in his sexual tastes as a youth
"Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, iii, xiii) describes Octavian at this
time as "a monster incarnate" and "the abomination of Italy"; but this seems an
overstatement
'Suetonius: Augustus > Ixxvi, Ixxvii.
342 MARC ANTONY
are only to be discredited on the grounds that now in manhood He
was so addicted to common rape or adultery.
He was never free of his fear of Antony's popularity, and the
fact that for this reason he had been obliged to let Fulvia, Lucius,
and others go unpunished, must have been a constant irritation to
him. He knew, too, that he was hated by the upper classes, and
only tolerated by the army because he gave them what they de-
manded; and his own unpopularity was making him sly and morose.
Moreover, Italy was at this time almost in a state of famine, large-
ly because Sextus Pompeius was preventing the safe arrival of
corn-ships from abroad; and his inability to cope with this master
of the seas was a source of continuous annoyance to him, more es-
pecially since the people blamed him, rather than Sextus, for all
their miseries, and openly prayed for Antony's return,.
In this connection it may be mentioned that one day about
now Octavian gave a party to eleven of his friends, at which the
ladies dressed themselves as the goddesses Juno, Vesta, Minerva,
Ceres, Diana, and Venus, and the men as the gods Jupiter, Mars,
Mercury, Vulcan, and Neptune, while he himself appeared as
Apollo. The blasphemy, and the reported obscenity of the proceed-
ings, were greatly resented, and the jesting remark was widely cir-
culated that the scarcity of corn was due to these gods having eaten
it all up at this notorious entertainment. Very truly Octavian was
Apollo, people said: not Apollo the Preserver, however, but Apollo
the Tormentor, the Death-dealer, in which aspect that deity was
propitiated in flagellatory rites in certain parts of the city. 4
These things Antony heard while he was at Ephesus, where he
stayed throughout April and May, energetically organizing the re-
sistance to the Parthian advance; and then, in the latter month, came
the news that Octavian had opened negotiations with Sextus Pom-
peius, sending the latter's mother, Mucia, (one of Caesar's former
mistresses, it will be remembered,) to him with proposals for an ac-
commodation. The overtures, however, were unsuccessful, apparent-
ly because Sextus demanded full rehabilitation for the republican
refugees in return for the cessation of his attacks upon the corn-
ships. In June further disquieting news reached Antony, this time
of the death of Calenus, his old friend and defender against Cicero's
"See Martial, xi, IS, 1.
MARC ANTONY 343
attacks, who had been in command of his legions in Gaul. Octavian
was reported to be hurrying thither to take control of these legions;
and though he could be said to be doing so on behalf of the Trium-
virate, it was apparent that he was in reality about to attempt to
seduce this army from its allegiance to Antony.
The Parthian advance appeared now to be finally checked; and
Antony, whose energies were concentrated upon the preparations
for an offensive which should drive them out of Roman territory,
came to the conclusion that his best course would be to go into
Greece so as to be nearer to Italy in case of any trouble with Oc-
tavian in regard to the raising of troops. He therefore crossed over
to Attica, and arrived at Athens towards the end of June; but
meanwhile Fulvia had reached this city in her flight from Italy,
and thus they met again. There is no clear evidence of what hap-
pened at that meeting, but it seems 5 that, while his wife furiously
lashed out at him for his now notorious intrigue with Cleopatra,
he as angrily attacked her for the mess she had made of his affairs
in Italy. There was evidently a violent quarrel, for Fulvia did not
remain long with her husband, but went to Sicyon (Vasiliko), 6 a
little to the west of Corinth, and some eighty miles from Athens;
and there she seems to have abandoned herself to despair, caring
not whether she lived or died.
Two or three weeks later Antony's mother arrived from Sicily,
bringing an offer of friendship from Sextus Pompeius, and a pro-
posal that they should unite against Octavian. An agreement of
this kind would have been extremely advantageous to Antony, for,
in the difficulties of his situation, the taking of the republican refu-
gees under his benevolent wing would have been very helpful to
him; and in any case Sextus would be a useful ally, since he was in
command of so powerful a fleet. But Antony, in spite of his many
faults, was a man of honour, and he did not feel able to break the
pact he had made with Octavian. He therefore sent a reply saying
that he was grateful for the offer of friendship and that he would
avail himself of it if Octavian should play him false; but that if
Octavian should, on the other hand, remain faithful to the terms
"Appian: Civil Wars, v, 52.
e Dion Cassius, xlviii, 28. Plutarch's statement that Fulvia was at Sicyon on her
way to meet Antony seems incorrect.
344 MARC ANTONY
of the agreement ratified after the battle of Philippi, then Antony
would do his best to bring about an amicable agreement between
all three of them.
In August Antony received news which confirmed his growing
suspicion that Octavian was trying to hamper him in his prepara-
tions for the offensive against the Parthians. The unscrupulous
young man had managed to obtain the support of the legions of
the late Calenus in Gaul, and, having placed them under the com-
mand of one of his own friends, had returned quietly to Rome.
This was a definite breach of their agreement, for Gaul was An-
tony's province, and the troops therein were supposed to take their
orders from him alone; and Octavian's only possible justification
would be that his action had been designed to prevent these legions
from raising a rebellion of their own 7 now that their commander
was dead. Octavian, however, evidently realized that his behaviour
would appear to Antony to be hostile; and he therefore took the
friendly step of appointing Antony's brother, Lucius, to the gov-
ernorship of Spain, 8 in spite of the fact that a few months ago
they had been at each other's throats. I do not know of the existence
of any evidence as to what then became of the turbulent Lucius;
and it would seem that he did not long survive this quick change
in his fortunes.
Octavian, however, was very worried on hearing of the over-
tures Sextus Pompeius was making to Antony, and at length de-
cided to renew his own overtures to him. Sextus was married to
the young daughter of a certain Lucius Scribonius Libo, a man of
important plebeian family who had a sister, Scribonia. Scribonia
had already been married twice and was the mother of two chil-
dren, but she was now a widow; and although she must have been
considerably older than Octavian, that harassed young opportun-
ist conceived the idea of taking her to wife in place of the re-
pudiated Clodia, and of thus uniting himself with the family of
the dangerous Sextus. True, Sextus was the son of Gesar's old
enemy, Pompey, and had himself held command under Gesaf s
murderers; but Octavian was entirely without principle in his
political orientations. He therefore sent his confidential friend,
Cilnius Maecenas the afterward well-known patron of Virgil and
7 Appian: Civil Wars, v, 60-63. *IbiA, 54 %
MARC ANTONY 345
Horace to negotiate this curious union by which he would be-
come the uncle of the sea-rover's wife; and within a few weeks
the marriage took place to the mingled anxiety and amusement
of Rome.
Antony's response to this action was immediate. He wrote to
Sextus inviting him to reopen the subject of an alliance on the
basis of the rehabilitation of the republican refugees ; and he also
came to an agreement along the same lines with Domitius Aheno-
barbus, the other independent sea-rover, promising him immunity
from punishment as one of the conspirators against Gesar, in
return for his support. Ahenobarbus was probably able to show
that he had not actually taken part in the murder of the Dictator;
and Antony, so far the implacable hounder of the assassins, was
glad to wink at whatever guilt was really his a compromise which
leads Dion Cassius to remark that in difficulties of this kind "those
in power decide nothing in accordance with principles of justice,
but determine on friend and foe merely as their passing needs
demand, regarding the same men now as enemies and now as
allies according to the exigencies of the moment."
So far there was no actual rupture between the two Triumvirs, 10
but Antony was quite sure that Octavian would be ready enough
to come to blows if he were to feel that such hostilities held for
him any hope of success, and he was determined to forestall him*
Early in September, therefore, he set sail for Italy with a strong
force of loyal troops, seized Sipontum (Siponto), on the coast,
north of Brindisi, and then proceeded to invest the latter port. At
the same time Sextus Pompeius, always ready for an adventure*
landed a small body of troops to the south, and also took pos-
session of Sardinia. Octavian at once despatched a force under
the command of his young friend Agrippa, which succeeded in
beating Antony's men out of Sipontum; but at the same time
Antony defeated Octavian's troops who were marching to the relief
of Brindisi.
These movements, although attended by bloodshed, were re-
garded by both sides as simple maneuvers for position* not as
actual warfare; for neither the one leader nor the other dared to
begin another civil war. Both wished to show that they were ready
f Dion CMitui, xlvHI, 2*. "VdMui, it, txxvl
346 MARC ANTONY
for a fight, if fight there was to be, but each wished to avoid strik-
ing the blow which would carry the scuffle beyond the bounds of
this perilous but not envenomed game of tit for tat. Antony was
saying that so long as Octavian did not definitely break the pact
renewed between them after Philippi, and so long as he gave what
help he could in the preparations for the campaign against the
Parthians, he, Antony, had no desire to go to war with him ; and
Octavian, on his part, was saying that not Antony but Fulvia
was the enemy of peace.
At that critical juncture Fulvia suddenly died at Sicyon: no-
body knows how she came to do anything so beneficial to peace,
and, strange to say, the suggestion that one or other of the Tri-
umvirs had administered a dose of poison was never advanced;
but the effect of her death was astonishing in its instantaneousness.
Octavian immediately wrote to Antony saying that the cause of
his fears was now removed, and apologising for having inter-
fered with the legions of Calenus in Gaul; and Antony responded
by apologising for Fulvia's behaviour, and saying that the blame
for all the unpleasantness was entirely hers. In a few days that
is to say, in the early part of October the two Triumvirs met
in the camp outside Brindisi, and a new pact was made between
them, while their troops shouted and clapped their hands in en-
thusiastic approval, and all Italy breathed again.
The agreement was of the most novel and far-reaching char*
acter. Octavian was to be sole ruler of the western empire Italy,
Dalmatia, Gaul and Spain; and Antony was to be autocrat of the
entire eastern empire Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor,
Syria, and Cyrenaica in North Africa; while the feeble Lepidus
was to be allowed to retain control of the remainder of North
Africa west of Antony's dominions. Octavian was to hand over
the legions of Calenus, and a distribution of the other forces was
to be made so that he and Antony should have from sixteen to
eighteen legions each, while Antony was to be allowed to enlist
new recruits in Italy if the Parthian War made it necessary to do
so. Both sides agreed that Sextus Pompeius should be dropped,
and that force should be used jointly against him if he were re-
calcitrant. Finally, it was arranged that Antony should marry
Octavian's half-sister, Octavia, whose husband, Marcellus, had
MARC ANTONY 347
recently died : it is true that Octavia was the mother of two infants
and was about to give birth to a third, 11 but the latter exigency
was a disqualification which would be removed shortly, and which
need cause no delay to the marriage.
Octavia, of course, was not consulted in the matter. She was an
unemotional, kindly, nice-looking young lady of about twenty-
five years of age, whose virtue was beyond reproach, and who is
described by Plutarch as "quite a wonder of a woman." Her
brother was devoted to her, as she was to him; and it is said that
she made his clothes for him/ 2 and looked after him like a mother.
She belonged very definitely to that category of the female sex
which is typified by sweet and patient subserviency to the male,
and which, for that reason, is described as virtuous by men of
narrow outlook. To Antony, however, who had once capitulated to
the stirring ambition of the masterful Fulvia and had lately been
captivated by the courageous and vital Cleopatra, she must have
seemed if the epithet be not too strong somewhat bovine. He
can hardly have looked forward with much pleasure to domestic
life with her, for passive feminine goodness can be exceedingly ex-
asperating; but at least he could feel that she would not interfere
with his freedom, except in so far as her gentle chiding might some
day bring the blush of shame to his cheek. At any rate she was
comely, and, indeed, Plutarch declares that she was more pleasing
to the eye, at first sight, than Cleopatra, whose charm lay in her
brilliancy and in that quality which is now commonly termed "'sex-
appeal," wherein, one may suppose, Octavia was somewhat lacking*
The marriage had been forced upon Antony to a great extent
by the soldiers who saw in this union a guarantee of peace; and
there can be little doubt that, while he was not really in love with
the Egyptian queen, his mind was never quite free of her memory.
Indeed, at this time she must have been very much in his thoughts,
for he had just received news that she had presented him with
twins, a boy and a girl, whom she had named Alexander Helios
and Cleopatra Selene, the "Sun" and the "Moon." They had been
bora in September, and their arrival must have recalled very clearly
to his mind those romantic nights in early winter when the splendor
of the Alexandrian palace and the intoxication of Cleopatra's en*
W 0i<m Calu8> xlviii, 31* "Suetonius: Augustus t Ixxiii.
34 8 MARC ANTONY
ticements had combined to make life for him an enthralling dream.
But the vast expanse of the ocean today lay between them,
and even though she were now nursing at her bosom the babes
which were his, even though she were sustained in her loneliness
by the expectation of his return, the picture of her must have had
little substantiality in his busy thoughts. Unquestionably he would
go back one day to her, temporarily or even permanently; but for
the present it was to her interest as well as to his that he should
climb the difficult path of his ambition without her charming com-
panionship. It was his business first to conquer Parthia, and to ex-
tend the Roman dominions to the very frontiers of India; then, re-
turning to the west in the glory of these conquests, he would unite
the warring political factions in the capital, and would so out-
shine Octavian that the perpetual rulership of the entire empire
would perhaps pass into his hands. After that the next step would
possibly raise him to that dreamed-of throne, Cleopatra being
then at his side, and Octavia divorced. Until that great day, how-
ever, the Queen would have to remain an absent helper and friend,
and the memory of her an unsubstantial vision to warm his nights
by Octavia's placid side.
As soon as the agreement with Octavian was signed and sealed
the two Triumvirs made their way to Rome, both riding in tri-
umph into the city, escorted by tumultuous crowds of townspeople
and soldiers ; and the marriage was celebrated with prolonged pub-
lic festivities which had hardly terminated when the bride's con-
finement took place.
The people then demanded that peace should be made with
Sextus Pompeius, so that his raids upon the corn-ships coming to
Rome should be ended, and the menace of famine removed. Public
opinion turned in favour of this outlawed son of Pompey the
Great, and soon the very mention of his name was received with
loud applause. At the Circenses, the annual races and contests held
in November, it happened that the statue of Neptune was carried
around the course in the religious procession which opened the
day's sport; and at sight of it the crowd cheered and clapped, for
the house of Pompey was said to trace its descent back to that god.
Antony and Octavian thereupon removed this statue from the
procession, and were in consequence hooted. A dangerous riot en-
MARC ANTONY 349
sued, in which Octavian lost his self-control, implored the mob to
do him no hurt, and rent his clothes in despair, while Antony cursed
and swore at the rioters and vainly defied them and their brick-
bats. 13 They escaped only with difficulty, and were obliged after-
wards to promise that negotiations would soon be opened with
Sextus.
Meanwhile, Antony turned his attention to the Parthian men-
ace, and having appointed Domitius Ahenobarbus to the governor-
ship of Bithynia, Asinius Pollio to that of Macedonia for the
coming year, and Munatius Plancus to that of Asia Minor, made
Ventidius Bassus governor of Syria, and gave him the command of
the large army he had prepared for the attack upon the Parthian
invaders. Asinius Pollio and Plancus, it will be remembered, were
the former generals of Caesar who had thrown in their lot with
Antony during his final struggle with Cicero : they were both men
of culture who had once been members of Caesar's brilliant circle,
and although Plancus was too fond of the gaieties of fashionable
life to leave much of a name for himself in history, Asinius Pollio
was a true patron of the arts and himself a distinguished poet,
dramatist and scholar. I mention the fact because it is ah indication
that Antony was maintaining his own position as a patron of the
arts, and that his officers and intimate friends, like Gmr's, were
largely drawn from Rome's intellectual and artistic circles. Ven-
tidius Bassus, however, was a man of very different stump: he had
risen from the lowest ranks, had won G&sar's esteem, and after-
wards had endeared himself to Antony by his fidelity and help
after the disaster of Modenn. He was a brave and brilliant soldier;
but since, as a youth, he had been taken prisoner in the civil wars
of 89 B.C., he must have been old enough to be Antony's father-
In parenthesis it is necessary to speak here of the two great
poets, Virgil and Horace; for at this time they were already known
to Antony and must have received his patronage while he was in
Rome, Virgilius Maro (Virgil) was born in Cisalpine Gaul in 70
B.C., arid was at this time about thirty years of age. His small
family estate had been seized by Octavian and handed over to
some ex-soldiers during those wholesale confiscations after the
battle of Philippi which had caused the rising engineered by Fulvia
u Dion Cassias, xtvli!, 31.
350 MARC ANTONY
and Lucius; but Antony's friend, Asinius Pollio, had taken up his
case, and, through the good offices of Msecenas, had obtained com-
pensation for him from Octavian. Virgil had already composed
some poems of importance, and Antony's former mistress, Cytheris,
had recited them in the theatre with great success; and though
his famous works were still to be written, he was now recognised
as one of the coming men in that world of literature which so
greatly interested Antony.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) was five years younger,
having been born in southern Italy in 65 B.C. He had been at
Athens during the time when Brutus was organizing there his
coming campaign; and he had taken part in the battle of Philippi,
and thereafter, as has already been mentioned, had fled before
the Csesarians' victorious pursuit. Antony, however, had pardoned
him, and he had returned to Italy, only to be deprived of his
paternal domain by Octavian during that same confiscation of
lands for the benefit of the ex-soldiers. His friend Virgil now
introduced him into the society of the great, and with the help
of Maecenas he was able to obtain employment in Rome. At this
time he had just composed his first important Satire, the subject
of which is an indication of the lax morals of the age: it is a
discussion as to whether a young man should confine his amorous
attentions to professional prostitutes or to other men's wives.
The close of the year 40 B.C. found Antony still in Rome,
working in outward harmony with Octavian, with whose half*
sister, Octavia, he had now begun his conjugal life. Her baby by
her husband, Marcellus, had been born at the end of October or
early in November, and already at the end of December or be-
ginning of January fecund Nature had once more delegated her
for motherhood in the following autumn. Antony, it should be
observed, was ever proud of his productivity, and used to say that,
like his ancestor, Hercules, he wished thus to propagate his race in
many lands nor cared to confine his hopes of progeny to any one
woman. Already he had many illegitimate children by Fadia and
others; a daughter, Antonia, by his first wife of the same name;
two sons, Antyllus and Julus Antonius, by Fulvia; the twins,
Helios and Selene, by Cleopatra; and now Octavia was to perform
MARC ANTONY 351
her hurried part in the perpetuation of his healthy and vigorous
line.
He was, of course, eager to get back to Asia Minor to direct
the operations against the Parthians, but affairs in Rome required
his presence, and in particular the promised treaty with Sextus
Pompeius had to be arranged a treaty which was in effect a step
towards the unification of all political parties, since Sextus was
sheltering so many political refugees. Antony had lately come to
feel that a coalition of democrats and republicans such as Gssar
had once aimed at was the most desirable form of government;
and he was evidently now working towards this end. Sextus, how-
ever, did not respond very willingly to the first negotiations, and
Octavian was none too eager in the matter, since the refugees
loathed him; and thus the spring of 39 B.C. had gone by before the
two sides came seriously to business. Messages, thereafter, passed
slowly between them, conveying terms and modifications of terms,
until at length in the summer a full agreement was arrived at and
a meeting arranged for the signing of the treaty. This meeting
took place at Misenum (Miseno), the important naval base at
the northern end of the Bay of Naples.
Both sides feared treachery, and while Antony and Octavian
placed themselves in a commanding position upon the quay, sur-
rounded by their bodyguards and backed by a great army which
lined the shores in both directions, Sextus took his stand upon a
breakwater separated from them by one of the narrow mouths of
the harbour, his huge fleet covering the sea behind him, the decks
of the ships being crowded with his soldiers. Across the few yards
of intervening water the Triumvirs and the famous outlaw ex-
changed their salutations, and made their protestations of friend-
ship to one another, after which the documents to be signed were
conveyed by boat from one side to the other.
The terms of the treaty were simple, and one can plainly see
in them Antony's efforts to heal the old sores left by Pharsalia
and Philippi^ and to unite the two political parties. From Octavian*s
western empire, Sicily and Sardinia were conceded to Sextus who
already occupied these islands as territory to be governed for
five years by him on behalf of Rome; and from Antony's eastern
empire, the northern coast of the Peloponnesus Achaia, that is to
352 MARC ANTONY
say i* was handed over to him, obviously because Octavian had
not been willing to cede any territory unless Antony did the same.
Sextus undertook to add no more ships to his fleet, to give sanctuary
to no refugees from Italy, and to interfere no more with Rome's corn-
supply. The Triumvirs, on their part, agreed to extend a free pardon
to the political fugitives, runaway prisoners or slaves, and all the
others who had collected under the standard of the sea-rover, with
the exception of any of the actual assassins of Csesar who might
have obtained sanctuary with him. Certain of the republican refu-
gees, who had fled to Sextus after Philippi, were to receive com-
pensation to the extent of a quarter of their confiscated property;
and some were to be given office as Tribunes or Prsetors in Rome.
Sextus himself was to receive an indemnity for the loss of his
father's property, and at the end of the five years was to be one
of the Consuls.
As soon as the signed documents had been exchanged between
the contracting parties, a great shout was raised by the men on
either side, for at long last the remaining menace of political war-
fare was removed, and the fugitive republicans and other out-
laws would be able to rejoin their families. The cheering is de-
scribed by Dion Cassius as having been "tremendous and inex-
tinguishable," and with charming exaggeration he adds that the
hills shook thereat and several people died of fright or from con-
cussion. Many of the refugees who had come over in the boats of
Sextus dived into the sea and struck out for the shore from which
they had been exiled, while their friends swam to meet them,
cc hailed them while swimming, and sank under the water with
them as they embraced." For the rest of the day and far into the
night the vociferous reunions continued, while here and there
the sounds of lamentation told of someone's discovery that a rela-
tive on the other side was no longer living. "Those who could get
no news of their loved-ones," says Dion, "were like maniacs; or, on
learning the worst, they would tear their hair and rend their clothes,
calling upon the lost by name as if they had just died and were
lying there before them." 15
14 The whole of the Peloponnesus, and northern Greece south of Thessaly T was
included by the Romans in the province known as Achaia; but it seems that only the
actual little region of Achaia itself was now ceded.
"Dion Cassius, aclviii, 37.
MARC ANTONY 353
Meanwhile, the Triumvirs and their new ally drew lots as
to which should entertain the others to supper, and the lot hav-
ing fallen to Sextus, Antony asked him where the meal would be
served. "There," said Sextus, pointing to his flagship, which had
now been moored at the quay; "that is the only house that Pompey
has inherited from his father" and as he spoke he gave a mean-
ing glance at Antony, who, it will be remembered, was now in
possession of the former mansion of Pompey the Great in Rome.
Wine flowed freely at the supper, and presently, says Plutarch,
Sextus began to make jokes about Antony's love-affair with Cleo-
patra, which Antony, being benevolently intoxicated, took in good
part. All were making merry when suddenly Menas, the captain
of the ship, whispered to Sextus: "Shall I cut the mooring-ropes
and make you master not only of Sicily and Sardinia, but of the
whole Roman empire?" Sextus remained silent for a while, and
during that silence the lives of Antony and Octavian, all unknown
to them, hung in the balance. Then he replied: "You could have
done it without telling me; but now it is impossible. I cannot break
my word."
On the two following days Sextus was entertained ashore first
by Antony and then by Octavian, and so promising did the alliance
seem to be that the three men decided to make it more binding
by some new marriage between the families. Now Sextus had an
infant daughter, who was the niece of Scribonia, Octavian's wife;
and Antony's new wife, Octavia, had a little son of about four
years of age, the child of her previous husband, Marcellus. This
boy was both Octavian's nephew and Antony's stepson, and what,
therefore, could be more agreeable than that he should complete
the circle by becoming Sextus's son-in-law? The fact that the
girl and boy were not yet out of their nurseries was some hindrance
to their marriage, of course; but there was no reason why they
should not be formally betrothed, and this ceremony was therefore
performed at once. Everybody was in the highest spirits; for the
return of the republican outlaws, their compensation and the prom-
ise of office made to them, was an indication that a new spirit of
political toleration was abroad, and that Caesar's old dream of a
coalition of all parties had been successfully revived once more.
It was generally felt in Rome that Antony had been the mov-
354 MARC ANTONY
ing spirit in this pacification of the country, and though he had
been unable to do much to alleviate the bitterness felt by the
landowners dispossessed by the ex-soldiers, the blame for that in-
justice was laid wholly upon Octavian, whose unpopularity was
increased by the return of the exiles men who hated him for
his treachery after Modena, when he had suddenly turned upon
them and had joined Antony, and for his cruelty after PhilippL
Antony, at any rate, had never been treacherous, they said, and
had seldom acted with cruelty. Both political parties liked him
as greatly as they disliked Octavian; and this attitude was so fre-
quently expressed by voice and gesture that while Antony went
about his business unarmed and unattended, smiling good-naturedly
upon all men, and hobnobbing alike with rich and poor, Octavian
was morose and nervous, dreading assassination and seeing dangers
everywhere.
A certain inoffensive gentleman named Pinarius was one day
making some shorthand notes of a speech then being delivered by
Octavian, when the latter thinking he was a political enemy gather-
ing material for a later verbal attack, ordered him to be arrested;
and on the man resisting, a soldier ran him through with a sword
before Octavian's eyes. On another occasion a Pnetor named Quin-
tus Gallius approached him, carrying a writing-tablet tinder his
cloak: Octavian thought it was a dagger, and had him put to
torture in order to find out whether he belonged to any group of
conspirators. He was never seen again. 16
In the month of September two interesting events occurred*
Octavian celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday, and thereupon
shaved his chin for the first time, 17 giving a great public enter-
tainment to celebrate the event. As has already been said, it was
the custom in Rome for young men to allow their natural beards
to grow untouched until at some age, generally soon after twenty,
they and their relatives deemed the time to have come for their
entrance into the sedate and' clean-shaven company of their elders;
but it seems that only now did Octavian feel that his career could
dispense with the prerogatives and the palliations of youth. The
other event was the confinement of Octavia, and the birth of a
daughter, whom she and Antony named Antonia. (I may mention
"Suetonius: Augustus, xxvii. 17 DIon Cassius, xlviii, 34.
MARC ANTONY 355
in passing that the girl was ultimately married to Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus, the heir of that Ahenobarbus who had just been
reconciled to Antony; and the son of this union was the father of
the Emperor Nero).
The good Octavia was now mother or stepmother to no less
than nine children Antony's eldest daughter, Antonia, the child
of his first marriage; his two sons by Fulvia; Fulvia's two chil-
dren, Clodius and Clodia, the latter being the repudiated wife
of Octavian; Octavia's own boy and two girls by Marcellus; and
this new baby, Antonia. Pompey's house on the Palatine, where
they lived, must thus have been a lively place enough; and what
is known of Antony's character permits us to suppose that he en-
joyed the racket, and endeared himself to these occupants of the
nursery. He was not happy, however, at this time; for he could
not overcome a distaste for the company of Octavian who, as his
brother-in-law as well as his colleague, was frequently a guest at
his house. The young man was invariably the winner, and Antony
the loser, in any friendly contests or games in which they indulged
in cock-fighting, for example, or dice-throwing; and, in fact,
the phenomenon was so remarkable that Antony at length con-
sulted an Egyptian fortune-teller about it, who, having evidently
a deep insight into men's characters, advised him to keep clear of
Octavian, since, he declared, there was something in Antony which
instinctively feared and mistrusted him. "When you are away
from him," the soothsayer explained, "your spirit is proud and
brave, but when he is present it becomes depressed." 18
There was, indeed, something coldly masterful in this remark-
able young colleague of his, something unpleasantly domineer-
ing, which suggested that his phenomenal rise to be, at twenty-
four, the acknowledged ruler of the western empire was due to
more than good luck. He had done innumerable things which ought,
by every rule of the game, to have consigned him to limbo: he
had been a traitor and a turncoat, he had appeared to run away in
battle, he had mercilessly put men to death; and yet here he was
with half the Roman world under his command. It is true that in
all their joint actions in affairs of state Antony was still the
stronger partner; but he experienced increasing difficulty in sup*
** Plutarch; Antony.
356 MARC ANTONY
pressing Octavian's independence. Like some phantom of a night-
mare which rebounds after every blow, interminably beaten down
only to rise again unharmed and threatening, so Octavian must
have presented himself to Antony's troubled mind as a menacing,
contemptuous figure, endlessly overwhelmed yet ever indestructible,
continuously defeated yet always the ultimate, sneering victor.
It may be supposed that the healthy-minded, robust, and simple
Antony watched with perplexity the seemingly undeserved good-
fortune of his unclean and sickly colleague. The frigid grey eyes
of the younger man, with that unblinking stare of which he was
beginning to be so proud; 19 the cruel little mouth; the sallow,
pimpled face; the untidy, fair hair; that perpetual, sniffling cold
in the head these characteristics, one may suppose, were begin-
ning to get upon Antony's nerves, more particularly because they
were so inexplicably associated with a certain dignity and power
and with this irritating disdain of the fortunate for the unlucky.
We who look back upon these times from a distance of nearly
two thousand years, and who know that Octavian became in the
end an outstanding benefactor of his country, and a strong, puri-
tanical ruler a hypocrite always, but, like many a hypocrite, a
pillar of the state can see the cause of Antony's perplexity and
sense of frustration; for in this ailing and iniquitous youth we
behold the potentialities which transformed him into the revered
Augustus, and we know that Antony was baffled by a brain and a
will-power greater than his own. To him, however, this was not
apparent; and the annoying consciousness that Octavian was the
incurable cancer in all his plans came to assume an uncanny sig-
nificance.
The treaty with Sextus Pompeius, however, spared Antony
the necessity of having to remain longer in Rome. His work there
was done. He had accomplished by statesmanship what Fulvia and
Lucius had so disastrously failed to accomplish by their rash re-
sort to arms. The rehabilitation of the republican exiles had put
the necessary check on Octavian's activities, for there was now
quite a large body of men in office who were opposed to his par-
ticular brand of Csesarianism and were hostile to the man him-
self; and thus Antony felt that he could return to Greece with his
n Suetonius. Augustus, Ixxix.
MARC ANTONY 357
mind at ease in regard to the probable developments in the capital.
The Senate was like clay in his hands, and, indeed, he had created
so many new senators in conjunction with Octavian that the House
had little character, opinion, or prestige, and could be relied on to
do what it was told.
Some time in October, therefore, as soon as Octavia was able
to travel, he set out with her and the baby for Athens, carrying
with^him a senatorial decree ratifying in anticipation all the dis-
positions he should make while absent from Rome.
CHAPTER XVII
The Enforced Renewal of the Triumvirate, and Antony's Departure for
the East, and Reunion with Cleopatra.
39-36 B.C.
UPON Antony's arrival at Athens he received the most welcome
news in regard to the struggle with the Parthians. Not in vain had
he devoted weeks and months of his time to the organisation of a
trustworthy Roman expeditionary force; nor had he been mis-
taken in his choice of a general. The doughty old Ventidius Bassus
had led his army, in the spring of 39 B.C., through Thrace and
across the Hellespont into Bithynia, whence, in the summer, he
had marched southwards through Galatia; and at this the Par-
thians under Labienus, who were still in occupation of the south-
ern coast of Asia Minor, had hastily withdrawn into Cilicia, near
the Syrian frontier.
Some time in September Ventidius had come to grips with La-
bienus amongst the Taurus Mountains and had utterly defeated
him. The Parthians had fled into northern Syria and thence east-
wards to the Euphrates; whilst Labienus had escaped in disguise
into Cilicia, but shortly afterwards had been captured and executed
as a traitor a Roman in command of Rome's enemies. Thereupon
the other Parthian armies in Syria had also withdrawn to the Eu-
phrates, all Syria and Palestine being once more opened to the
Romans, the siege of Tyre raised, and the highroad to Egypt re-
established. Thus, in one brilliant campaign, the invaders had been
entirely cleared out of Antony's eastern empire,
Antony was elated, and ordered public feasts and thanksgiv-
ings to be celebrated throughout Greece and Asia Minor. In Athens
itself he caused great festivities to be held; and at the races and
358
MARC ANTONY 359
games he astonished everybody by discarding the dress and circum-
stance of a military ruler and by acting, himself, as steward, ap-
pearing in the square-cut gown and white attic shoes of that office.
Moreover, so thoroughly did he perform the steward's duties that
whenever he considered the two champions in any combat to have
fought long enough he entered the ring, took them by the scruff
of the neck, and separated them, his own exceptional strength en-
abling him to do so with loudly applauded ease.
Having sent orders to Ventidius to remain in Cilicia, probably
at Tarsus, during the winter, and having promised to join him
there in the spring, he settled down to reorganize the eastern em-
pire and particularly to give his attention to the improvement of
conditions in Greece. 1 So greatly was he beloved that on all sides
the people revived the legend that he was Bacchus or Dionysus come
to earth ; but it should be pointed out that in doing so they were
not identifying him merely, or even at all, with the rollicking and
tipsy god of wine, but rather with that gentle and benevolent
spirit of goodness and happiness which was this deity's most
widely recognised aspect. In this connection I think it will be as
well to remind the reader that a few generations later, when the
story of the beautiful life of Christ was spread throughout these
parts, the people at once identified Him with Dionysus; and, in
fact, the date of our Christian Epiphany January 6th is none
other than the date of the great Dionysian festival. 2 Evidently there
must have been some exceptional qualities of sweetness in Antony's
disposition, or, at any rate, in the side of his character shown to
the Greeks, which thus caused them to associate him in their minds
with that same diety to whom they afterwards found a resemblance
in Jesus of Nazareth.
A curious story, by the way is related by Dion Cassius s that
at the great festival of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens,
when it was customary to celebrate her mystical betrothal, the
Athenians invited Antony to play the male role in his aspect as
the incarnate Dionysus, and that he agreed to do so, insisting, how-
*Dion Casslus's remark (xlviii, 39) that he tried to impoverish those cities of
Achaia which were to be handed over to Sextus Pompeius, is against all the
evidence. , ,
'Weigali: Tk* Paganism in Our Christianity, Chap. xxu.
*Dion Cassius, atlviii, 39.
3 6o MARC ANTONY
ever, that his celestial bride should bring him a dowry, or, in
other words, that Athens should make him a handsome present
for his services on the occasion.
This winter in Athens marks a considerable change in Antony's
political views, or, rather, it marks the putting into execution of
a policy which had perhaps been developing in his mind ever
since he had come under the influence of Queen Cleopatra in Alex-
andria. Like Csesar, Antony had been a democrat, but, again like
Caesar, he had begun to consider the possibility of converting his
popularly sanctioned autocracy into actual monarchy. In his dreams
of the expansion of Roman power into the Orient he had realized
the disadvantages of holding his authority simply from the Senate
in Rome for a limited number of years; and he had begun to feel
that his interests could not well be developed by a system under
which he himself was a temporary ruler served by governors of
provinces and other magistrates appointed for short periods. Some-
thing more permanent was required.
Here in the eastern empire many of the provinces were accus-
tomed, or had been in the recent past, to the idea of monarchy,
and even the Roman rnind, he believed, was almost ripe for the
acceptance of a king, although expressed opinion was still opposed
to such a thought. The two Consulships of earlier days provided
a now unwieldy form of government, and, in fact, their power had
already been destroyed by the superimposing of his and Octavian's
joint autocracy. It had once been suggested that Caesar should be
actual king outside Italy; and Antony saw no reason why that
permanent position of regal authority should not ultimately be
his, In the meantime, he felt that he should be supported not by
temporary provincial governors but by petty kings each at the
head of a local government made strong by the removal of the
exigencies of frequent change ; and in pursuit of this policy he now
decided to play die part of King-maker upon the grand scale.
The country of Pontus, at the north-east corner of Asia Minor,
had been without a monarch since the death, in 47 B.C., of Phar-
naces, the successor of that Mithradates who had fought against
Rome, as recorded earlier in this book; and now Antony restored
the monarchy, giving the crown to Darius, the son of Pharnaces.
The mountainous land of Pisidia, just to the west of Cilicia* had
MARC ANTONY 361
never fully admitted Roman authority; and here Antony estab-
lished a certain Amyntas as king. Upon the empty throne of the
neighbouring territory of Lycaonia he placed an officer named
Polemo, who had taken an active part in the defeat of the Par-
thians: he was the son of Zeno-, a famous orator of Laodicea. At
about the same time he recognized as King of Judsea that after-
wards celebrated Herod who was still alive at the time of the
birth of Christ and who figures in the Gospel story. 4 He also gave
his patronage to the kings of Thrace, Galatia, Cappadocia, Paphla-
gonia, Upper Cilicia and elsewhere, who had all been expecting
extinction by Rome rather than support, being the last left of the
dynasts; and of course he confirmed Cleopatra in her sovereignty
of Egypt.
Antony himself, meanwhile, was unquestionably adopting an
attitude towards life and a manner of living which were those of
a Hellenised potentate rather than of a Roman magistrate. The
transformation in his person is noticed by some of the ancient
writers, and, indeed, they are inclined to exaggerate it in order
to present a picture of him in keeping with the tradition, which
later grew up, of his having ultimately become a typical oriental ;
but actually the change was slight, though noticeable, and was, I
fancy, no more than that which we might observe today in a man
of northern race who had taken up his abode in a Latin land an
Englishman or American living in Paris, for example.
In many respects he was following a course already pursued
by Caesar, Conventional and conservative Romans men of Cicero's
or Cato's stamp had always regarded Caesar as "a dangerous
man," one who had broken with traditional Roman habits, and
had become somewhat foreign in his ideas; and the case of Antony
was very similar, with this addition, that he was rather fond of
theatrical display, enjoyed dressing the part, liked a splash of
colour. His entertainments were sumptuous; wine, women, and
song were to be found wherever he went; and his house was always
open to actors and actresses, dancers and musicians, artists and
men of letters clever and talented people of all kinds, in fact to
whom he played the host with prodigal generosity, Yet he did not
lose the common touch, and almost to the end was adored by his
362 MARC ANTONY
soldiers and by the masses, the secret of his popularity being his
unbounded sympathy, his easy manners, his simplicity, and just
that democratic attitude which the stiff-necked Roman aristocrat
believed to be incompatible with the maintenance of prestige.
The beginning of the year 38 B.C. brought Antony an astound-
ing piece of news from the metropolis. Octavian had divorced his
wife Scribonia upon the very day on which she had borne him a
daughter, Julia. He said he was quite tired out by her peevish-
ness 5 ; but there were two more palpable reasons for the separa-
tion. In the first place he wished to sever his connection with the
family of Sextus Pornpeius, - against whom he had made up his
mind to launch an attack at the first possible opportunity; and
Scribonia, it will be remembered, was the sister of Sextus's father-
in-law, and had been married to him to create an alliance between
the Pompeian and Caesarian houses. In the second place he had
fallen in love with another man's wife.
This lady was the beautiful and talented Livia, daughter of
the republican Livius Drusus who, it will be recalled, had com-
mitted suicide in his tent after Philippi. She was the wife of
Tiberius Claudius Nero, an important person of ancient lineage
who had taken up arms with Lucius and Fulvia against Octavian,
had later fled to Sextus Pompeius, and thence to Antony, and
had been one of the exiles rehabilitated by the terms of the treaty
of Misenum. To her husband she had borne one son, who was named
Tiberius, and ultimately became Emperor of Rome. Octavian had
fallen in love with her some time ago; and now, when she was
going to have a child in about three months time, either by him or
by her husband, a divorce was arranged so that she might marry
her lover. The husband, apparently, was quite agreeable to the
arrangement, and not only attended the wedding and formally
handed Livia over to Octavian, but also gave her a dowry as though
he had been her father.
It is to be supposed that Octavian believed Livia's unborn baby
to be his, for it is difficult, otherwise, to understand for what reason
he married her thus in haste when she was in this condition; yet
no such explanation was put forward by ancient writers, and when,
in the spring, the child was born and proved to be a boy, Octavian
* Suetonius: Augustus, Ixii.
MARC ANTONY 363
named him Claudius Drusus Nero, and sent him with his compli-
ments to Livia's former husband, at the same time placing it on
record that the latter was the infant's father. Yet gossip seems to
have implied that Octavian was the real parent; for the remark
was widely repeated, and passed into a proverb, that in the fam-
ilies of the great the children are born in three months. 6
Rome was scandalised by the marriage and its circumstances,
and Octavian was regarded as a very unpleasant young scoundrel.
The gods, too, were outraged, and, in fact, the goddess Virtus fell
off her pedestal flat on her face 7 ; and when the priests took her
down to Ostia to purify her in the sea, she tumbled into the waves
and was with difficulty recovered.
But if Antony was astonished at the news, his surprise was
turned to anger when he received the intelligence that Octavian
had followed up his divorce from Scribonia by persuading the
forces of Sextus Pompeius in Sardinia to desert their leader and
to hand that island over to him with sixty ships and many men.
Sextus at once reported to Antony that Octavian had broken the
treaty, and therewith the angry sea-rover began again to attack
the Roman shipping. Octavian then wrote to Antony asking him to
come at once to Brindisi to discuss the situation, declaring that
the fault lay with Sextus who had himself broken the treaty in
various little ways.
Antony was furious. He was just about to start for Cilicia to
join Ventidius Bassus, having heard that the Parthians were mak-
ing a new incursion into Syria; and the dislocation of his plans
thoroughly upset him. With all possible speed he raced back to
Italy, determined to stop the expected fight 8 ; but to his great an-
noyance Octavian was not at Brindisi to meet him. He therefore
wrote very sharply to him telling him to behave himself and to
respect the treaty with Sextus; and therewith he sailed back to
Greece, and at once set out for Cilicia, hoping to reach the army in
time to lead them against the enemy.
He arrived there in June, only to find that Ventidius had
already marched into Syria to attack the Parthian invaders and
*DIon Cassius, xlviii, 44.
v /*&,43.
*So Appian, Civil Wars* v, 79, which contradicts Dion Cassius, xlviii, 46.
364 MARC ANTONY
had overwhelmed them at Gindanis in the land of Cyrrhestice,
that area of northern Syria above Antioch which lay between
Cilicia and the Euphrates. Pacorus, the son of the King of Parthia,
had been killed, and so many thousands of his men with him, that
the Romans were justified in regarding the victory as full revenge
for the destruction of Crassus and his army at Carrhse, sixteen years
earlier. Ventidius had then pushed on to the city of Samosata
(Samosat) on the Euphrates, the capital of Commagene, Parthia's
ally, and had laid siege to it.
Antony must have been bitterly disappointed at having arrived
too late to take command of these operations ; but he hastened on
to Samosata, where he and Ventidius spent the summer in fruitless
siege operations which were terminated at last, probably in August,
by the surrender of the beleaguered King of Commagene on terms.
Antony then went south to Palestine in order to establish Herod
upon the throne of Judsea which had been seized, with the aid of
the Parthians, by that same Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus,
against whom he, Antony, had fought in 57 B.C. The authorities
in Jerusalem, however, refused to receive Herod, and submitted to
a siege, during which, according to Josephus,* Antony took the
opportunity to make a brief visit to Egypt to see Cleopatra and
to make the acquaintance of the twins, who were now just two
years old.
It is unlikely that he went to Alexandria. It is more probable
that Cleopatra came by ship to some point, such as Pelusium, near
her eastern frontier, to meet him; and their time together was
necessarily brief, for Antony had just heard that Octavian had
begun hostilities against Sextus Pompeius, and he was most anxious
to get back to Greece or Italy in order to set this matter to rights.
It can hardly be supposed that the Queen received with much
enthusiasm the man who had deserted her to marry Octavia; and
one may suppose that the meeting was charged with all those
potentialities of domestic storm which are usually present when
an errant lover returns to the unmarried mother of his children.
Antony's excuses, however, seem to have been as masterly as
Cleopatra's tact; and though history does not offer us any guiding
light through the dark channels of their brief reunion, we may
' Josephus, Antiquities, xiv, xv, 9. Plutarch, however, does not mention this visit
MARC ANTONY 365
suppose that Antony's approach to their inevitable compromise was
illuminated by many vows of fidelity. Doubtless he told her that
he would have nothing more to do with Octavia, or at any rate
that he would begin to do something about their divorce.
Returning to the siege of Jerusalem, he gave orders to his new
governor of Syria, a certain Caius Sossius, to lend all possible aid
to Herod in his efforts to capture the Jewish throne; and therewith
he and Ventidius Bassus hastened back to Greece. Having arrived
at Athens towards the end of September, he found the patient
Octavia and her baby awaiting him; and the fact that a few weeks
later she learnt that she was once more to become a mother indi-
cates that her warm-hearted pleasure at seeing him again had quite
overcome his resolve to keep her at arms' length. It was now that he
heard the news of the warfare which had been waged between her
brother and Sextus Pompeius during the summer; and her dis-
appointment and anxiety in this regard may well have obliged
him to refrain from adding just now to her unhappiness.
Octavian had attacked the latter's province of Sicily, and had
been completely defeated at sea off that ill-omened rock, Scylla,
which, with the neighbouring Charybdis, was the bane of the
sailor. He had behaved despicably in the fight, and, losing his
head as was his habit, had gone ashore in the midst of the fight, 10
leaving his men to the mercy of the enemy and of the tempest
which had arisen* His fleet had been sent to the bottom, and
thousands of his men drowned. Octavia, who loved her brother
deeply, must have been heartbroken at the news; and it was not
in Antony's sympathetic and generous nature to turn from her
at such a time*
Hard on the heels of these tidings there arrived at Athens an
embassy from Octavian, headed by Maecenas, and including the
poets Horace and VirgiL 11 The object of the mission was obvious.
The five years originally ordained for the duration of the Trium-
virate would end at the close of this present year, 38 B.C., and
Octavian, after the fiasco of his campaign against Sextus, saw no
hope for himself except in its renewal Without Antony's patron-
10 Appistt : Cwil Wan t v, 85,
11 The embassy's journey is described by Horace, Satires, i, v.
366 MARC ANTONY
age he would be completely discredited, and would have to re-
tire from public life, at any rate for the time being. He was eager,
therefore, to place his version of his trouble with Sextus before
his elder colleague, to excuse himself, to minimise the seriousness
of his defeat, and to put forward the advantages of a continuance
of the existing arrangements. He was thoroughly frightened, and
his perpetual dread of Antony's popularity was increased almost
to panic by the spectacular successes of the latter's army in the
east, of which he had just received the news.
Antony, however, was not willing to commit himself. The
ball was at his feet: fortune had suddenly showered her blessings
upon him, and the goal of his ambitions was within sight. His
young colleague and rival was disgraced, but his own reputation
had risen to unexpected heights. For some time he had been con-
sidering the possibility of invading Parthia, and of putting into
execution the plan of campaign which Csesar had worked out and
of which Antony had probably found all the memoranda amongst
Csesar's papers. There remained now only the realization of this
dream of conquest in the east; and after that the pathway to his
sole autocracy, to his absolute rulership of the entire Roman em-
pire, east and west, would be open to him. This time, surely, Oc-
tavian would fail to weather the storm.
Antony's first move was to send Ventidius Bassus to Rome
to celebrate the Triumph which the Senate and People had ac-
corded him with enthusiasm; and thus, on November 27th, the aged
general went in procession through the streets of the capital. That
Antony did not go himself to Rome to take part in the Triumph
seems to have been due to some extent to his desire to allow Ven-
tidius to have full credit for the victory, for, as Plutarch remarks,
Antony wished him to receive the glory. 12 But there was another
reason which kept him from going to Rome, namely his anxiety
not to be drawn into any discussion of the future with Octavian:
he did not wish to meet him just now; he wanted the troublesome
young man to sink into the quicksands of his ignominy, and he
knew that in Rome he would be obliged for decency's sake to give
him a helping hand.
"The suggestion of Dion Cassius that Antony waa jealous of him is a later In-
vention, and has no foundation.
MARC ANTONY 367
When the Triumvirate should come to an end on January 1st,
37 B.C., a few weeks hence, Roman law and custom prescribed that
the retiring parties should remain outside the capital until further
arrangements had been made. Lepidus was in Africa, and well out
of the way; and if Antony were to remain in Greece, Octavian
would be obliged to follow suit and to retire from the city. Antony
would then wait awhile until Octavian's rustication had completed
his political collapse; and thereupon he would ask the Senate to
transfer some of Octavian's legions to him to serve in the Parthian
expedition which he was now planning for the following autumn.
The Triumvirate being ended, Octavian would have no authority
to hold back these troops; but Antony, meanwhile, would have
caused himself to be appointed by the Senate as Commander-in-
Chief of the Parthian campaign, and would therefore have a right
to their use.
That, at least, is how I interpret Antony's decision to remain
for the winter in Athens : in a word, he could not go back to Rome
without being drawn into a renewal of this bargain-making Trium-
virate. Octavian, however, with equal cunning, decided to retain
command of his troops by the simple expedient of assuming, like-
wise with the consent of the Senate, the position of Commander-
in-Chief in another campaign against Sextus Pompeius; and thus
on January ist, 37 B.C., both he and Antony allowed their posi-
tions as Triumvirs to fall into abeyance in place of these appoint-
ments as generals, respectively, of the expeditionary forces against
Parthia and Sicily,
Now Antony was seriously in .need of the extra troops, and
his annoyance must have been extreme when he found that Oc-
tavian's proposed renewal of the war against Sextus Pompeius had
provided justification for their withholding. He, Antony, was
entitled to recruit soldiers in Italy, but what he wanted was the
trained veteran legions ; and soon, it seems to me, he realized with
dismay that nothing short of another bargain with Octavian could
obtain them for him. He would have to offer his former colleague
some of his ships which he himself did not require for his inland
campaign in exchange for the legions he needed; but when this
compromise was suggested, Octavian made the stipulation that the
Triumvirate should in that case be renewed, and to this Antony re-
368 MARC ANTONY
plied by postponing the discussion of that matter until April or
May, that being the latest date to which the mobilisation for the
autumn campaign against Parthia could be held over.
Meanwhile, during the early months of 37 B.C. Antony, from his
headquarters at Athens, enthusiastically organized his forces for the
coming invasion of the Orient which had so taken hold of his ima-
gination, and administered his empire, keeping himself informed
of Octavian's movements and watching with bitter disappointment
the amazing young man's recovery from his disaster. He was told
that a new fleet was being built in the Bay of Naples to take the
place of that destroyed by Sextus; and presently it became ap-
parent that soon Octavian would have no real need of the ships
which Antony was offering him in exchange for the legions. As week
after week went by, the position of affairs, so favourable to Antony
in November, became equalised as between him and his rival : Oc-
tavian' s prestige recovered, and soon there was little doubt that he
would in the end overwhelm Sextus Pompeius as fully as Antony
hoped to overwhelm Parthia.
By May Antony was exasperated, and determined to go to Brin-
disi to see Octavian and to force him to hand over the required
legions. He therefore sailed across the Adriatic with a large fleet,
taking with him Octavia, who was expecting her baby in about
four months' time. But when he arrived before Brindisi the au-
thorities in that city took fright, thinking that he had come over
with intentions hostile to Octavian, and refused to allow him to
land. Antony therefore sailed on to Tarentum, a port at which
he had reason, apparently, to expect a friendlier reception; and
there he waited for Octavian to come to him. Octavian, however,
was now in a truculent mood, and would do nothing until Antony
had agreed to renew the Triumvirate; and the letters exchanged
between them seem to have breathed the defiance of both.
At last Octavia intervened, and persuaded her angry hus-
band to let her go to her brother to arrange a meeting. To this
he agreed, and it was by her exertions that a complete rupture was
avoided. With tears and lamentations she told Octavian, in the
words of Plutarch, "that from being the most fortunate woman on
earth she was in danger of becoming the most unhappy, for as yet
the eyes of everyone were fixed upon her as the wife and sister of
MARC ANTONY 369
the two great commanders, but, if rash counsels should prevail, and
war ensue, she would be reduced to hopeless misery, since, which-
ever side won, she would be the loser. 53 At this, Octavian agreed to
meet Antony, and came in state to Tarentum, where, with much
pomp and ceremony, the two men dined together and composed their
differences.
It was agreed between them that the Triumvirate should be
renewed for five years, dating from January 1st, 37 B.C.; that
the promise of a Consulship for Sextus Pompeius at the close
of the period of their treaty with him should be rescinded; that
Octavian should hand over to Antony twenty-one thousand soldiers,
and that Antony should deliver to Octavian one hundred and
thirty ships in exchange 18 ; and that, to cement the bargain, Oc-
tavian's infant daughter Julia, the child of his divorced wife
Scribonia, should be betrothed to Antyllus, Antony's son by Fulvia.
Lepidus, the third Triumvir, was allowed to retain office, simply to
save trouble.
This agreement was a veritable climb-down on Antony's part,
for it placed Octavian once more in undisputed authority in the
western empire. Again Antony had found it impossible to get
the better of him; again this discredited rival of his had miracu-
lously extricated himself from his difficulties, and had turned
defeat into victory in such a way that the elder man could but re-
gard him with superstitious awe- Octavian's good fojtune was un-
canny,
Antony at once gave orders for his new troops to begin their long
journey to Syria, and with such ships as remained under his com-
mand he set out for Greece. By the time that he reached the island
of Corcyra (Corfu), however, he had made up his mind to postpone
his Parthian campaign for some months, and to concentrate his
army in Syria in preparation for an offensive in the spring. Thither
he would go at once, if only to be as far away as possible from
Octavian* He was exasperated beyond endurance by affairs in Italy,
and by the frustrations which there always met him. He could not
stand the sight of the gentle Octavia, in whom he daily saw the
depressing reflection of her brother; and suddenly he told her to go
back to Italy, protesting, in excuse, that as she was so soon going to
**Appian: CMl Wars, v, 95*
37 o MARC ANTONY
have a baby she would be more comfortable there. He wanted to be
free; to leave behind him all incumbrances; to be rid even of his
children. .
His eldest daughter, Antonia, the child of his first marriage
with his cousin of the same name, had recently been betrothed
to the son of Lepidus, the third Triumvir, and it seems that she
was already with her future father-in-law. Fulvia's children, Clo-
dius and Clodia, appear now to have been housed elsewhere. His
own two sons by Fulvia, Antyllus and Julus, had been with him in
Athens, and could now be handed over to Octavia, who would
look after them until he could send for them to join him in Syria.
As for his little daughter, Antonia, the child of Octavia, her
place was obviously with her mother and her uncle Octavian; and
he now told his wife to take her back to Italy, nor did he care
greatly if, as proved to be the case, he should never see her
again.
Octavia was complacently obedient to his wishes. During these
last months she must have found him increasingly difficult; and the
anticipation of a quiet life alone with her children may well have
made its appeal to her disturbed mind. She did not realize, when
she bade him farewell, that he was shaking from off his shoes the
dust of the west, and was hastening with outstretched arms to the
adventurous east. She was unaware that she had no part in the
bright visions which lured his thoughts away from the paralysing
rebuffs, the lame and impotent conclusions, of his dark struggle
with her brother; and she was happy in her ignorance of the fact
that he was going out of her life for ever.
Historians have never asked themselves a simple question which
may well have presented itself to the reader. Why, during the great-
er part of the course of the Triumvirate, was Antony content to en-
gage himself in the affairs of the east and to leave Rome and the
west to Octavian? Why had he not concentrated his efforts all
along upon establishing his authority in the capital? Why, when
he might have fought it out with his rival, as Csesar did with Pom-
pey, had he now turned his back upon Rome as though the metro-
polis and its affairs were not worth the struggle? In my opinion the
answer is to be found in the statement of Suetonius that Csesar had
often thought of transferring the capital of the entire Roman world
OCTAVXA
Louvre
MARC ANTONY 371
to Troy, in northwestern Asia Minor, or to Alexandria, 14 and that
Rome was not a city "suitable to the grandeur of the empire." is
Antony, in fact, who had been Cesar's confidant, and, af-
ter his death, had possessed himself of all his memoranda, seems
to have believed with him that the future capital of the Roman
dominions ought to be situated in some part of the world more
central than Italy. A glance at a map will show that Athens was
geographically a better centre than Rome; and now that Antony had
hopes of bringing Parthia and the Orient under Roman sway, and
adding the eastern dominions of Alexander the Great to the re-
gions which he already ruled, the transfer of the seat of government
to Asia Minor or even to Alexandria seemed desirable. Antony
had travelled extensively. Gaul and the countries northwest of
Italy were regarded by him as barbarous territories, and even
Spain and the western coast of North Africa were not of first-rate
importance. But east of Italy, in that empire which he now admin-
istered, there were the wealthy and ancient cities and lands of
Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Syria and, south of
Syria, Egypt which together formed a teeming hive of human
activity; and in relation to them Italy was as it were a mere western
outpost. In this rich and busy eastern area he had made himself
fully acquainted with mighty cities such as Athens, Ephesus, Tar-
sus, Tyre, and Alexandria; and Italy had become to him but a far-
away limb of this pulsing body.
I think there can be little doubt that he desired to found a
new capital, possibly in Cilicia, that region being equidistant
from Greece and Egypt, from Italy and Parthia, and practically
the centre of the known world. In this new Rome he intended to es-
tablish the Senate and the government, and perhaps his own throne;
and thus Italy did not hold so important a place in his thoughts as
might now be supposed. He turned his back upon it without regrets,
glad, indeed, to put seas and kingdoms between himself and the
exasperating Octavian. For a brief period in the previous winter he
had thought that the time had come for him to add Rome and
the west to his sphere of authority; but he had been disillusioned,
and now he would have to wait for that consummation until Parthia
was his, and until the entire eastern empire, from Greece in the
"Suetooius: C*tar, Ixxbc. "Suetomvia: Augustus * xxix.
372 MARC ANTONY
west to the Indus in the east, from Scythia in the north to Ethiopia
in the south, was consolidated into one vast realm such as Alexander
the Great had dreamed of and planned.
His brain was full of such visions as he sailed now over the
summer seas towards Syria. But during his journey, says Plutarch,
"the mischief that had long lain dormant, his love for Cleopatra,
which wiser thoughts had seemed to have lulled and charmed into
oblivion, upon his approach to Syria gathered strength again, and
broke into flame; and, like Plato's restive and rebellious horse of
the human soul, flinging off the harness of good counsel and breaking
completely loose, he sent for her to come to him in Syria." This,
doubtless, is something of a misinterpretation of his state of mind,
for his love for the Egyptian Queen could not at this time have been
overwhelming. Yet his repugnance to all that he had left be-
hind him in the west, and his memory of his happy days in brilliant
Alexandria three years and more ago, must have combined to fill
his heart with the warm consciousness of Cleopatra's importance in
his life.
There was today a place for her in his plans. That old prophecy
which declared that Parthia would be conquered by a "king," and
which had had such influence upon Caesar, was always in his mind,
it would seem; and he knew that Cleopatra, unable to conceal the
fact that he was the parent of her twins, had made the knowledge
palatable to her subjects by speaking of him as her legal consort
legal, that is to say, by Egyptian royal prerogative. In Egypt, in
fact, he was almost a king, and there was no reason why he should
not regularise that position by some arrangement with Cleopatra
tantamount to a marriage, which should make of him an actual
monarch in that country while leaving him still Triumvir in Roman
eyes.
Such a marriage, geographically restricted in its legal acceptance,
would be a first step towards that wider sovereignty which was now
his ultimate ambition- After all, everybody knew that Caesar had in-
tended to marry Cleopatra; and it was common knowledge that she
had termed him her royal and divine consort in Egypt, the earthly
and celestial father of her son, Gmrion, Now, therefore, that he,
Antony, had turned his back upon the west, and was definitely com*
mitted to the Parthian adventure and thereafter to the creation of a
MARC ANTONY 373
great empire of the east, there was every reason why he should legal-
ize his position as the sovereign lord of Cleopatra's realms while re-
taining his position as the democratic Triumvir of the eastern Ro-
man world. In Greece and Asia Minor he was widely accepted by
the masses as a kind of deity, an incarnation of Dionysus; and in
Egypt Cleopatra had already covered their union with a mantle
of divinity similar to that which she had cast about her previous
union with Csesar. It would be all to the good now to capitalise that
royal and celestial position in his dealings with the east, just as
Alexander the Great had done when he accepted his identification
with the Egyptian god Ammon.
At the time of his previous association with Cleopatra he had
felt that Caesarion, her son by Csesar, was the most important factor
in the situation; for this youth might be put forward one day as the
true heir of the Dictator in place of Octavian. But since that time,
by the unaccountable workings of Fate, Octavian's position as
Cesar's successor had been unexpectedly consolidated, if only by
the years and by the accustoming of the public mind to this view of
his claims upon their allegiance. Yet there was still something to be
said for Antony's assumption of the position of guardian and step-
father of Csesar's only son, who was now ten years of age; and the
boy's existence would certainly serve to make a closer connection
with Cleopatra more understandable in Roman eyes.
Thus, in sending for the Queen and in inviting her to meet
him in Syria* it was not so much a revival of his passion for
her which was the incentive, as it was her usefulness to him.
She was now thirty-one years of age, and the mother of three
children, and he was forty-six, had been married three times, and
had enjoyed the charms of many mistresses. Yet, even so, he must
have been prompted in part by his affection for her, or, rather, by
the memory of her brilliant and alluring companionship. He wanted,
I suppose, to make amends to her for his treatment of her; he wanted
her to know that his marriage to Octavia had been a political ne-
cessity which had now outgrown its value. The Queen had been so
faithful to him in her loneliness; and at their recent meeting she
had been so justified in her rebukes. Apart from all other considera-
tions, she must have been, so to speak, on his conscience.
He reached northern Syria early in September, arid took up
374 MARC ANTONY
his headquarters at Antiochia (Antioch), a pleasant city some twen-
ty miles back from the sea. Here he received news that the siege of
Jerusalem had at last been brought to a successful conclusion, and
that Antigonus had surrendered to Herod and his Roman allies. 16
Shortly afterwards the defeated monarch was brought to him at
Antioch, where Antony ordered him to be kept in captivity; but
later, at Herod's request,- the unfortunate man was beheaded, after
having been scourged and crucified 1T as a vicarious sacrifice, I pre-
sume, of the kind mentioned by Philo of Byblus 1S and others as
being prevalent amongst the peoples of Syria and its neighbour-
hood.
The fall of Jerusalem released a considerable Roman force;
and Antony now decided to take the first step in his Parthian cam-
paign by sending an army of six legions and their auxiliaries, under
Publius Canidius Crassus, into the Caucasus to open the northern
route into Parthia, this being the route which Csesar had planned
to follow in his proposed campaign of 44 B.C. 19 Marching north-
eastwards across the eastern edge of Asia Minor, this army was to
move into Iberia (southern Georgia), and thence south-eastwards
to the plateau of Erzeroum, where it was to winter preparatory to
the invasion of Media, the sister-state of Parthia.
It was towards the end of September when Cleopatra arrived
at Antioch; and in the absence of any ancient account of the meet-
ing itself, the apparent fact can only be recorded that she and An-
tony wasted no time in entering into a businesslike discussion of the
general situation, as the result of which an agreement of the most
far-reaching character was made between them. He and she were to
be married according to Egyptian law, and the union was to be re-
garded as binding upon them, although it would not be recognized
as legal in Roman law, nor would necessitate the divorcing of Oc-
tavia. By the legalising of his position as Cleopatra's consort, Antony
would become actual king of Egypt ; but it was agreed that he would
not assume this title, reserving it, in fact, for Csesarion when the boy
18 For accounts of the siege, see Josephus : Antiquities t xiv, xvi, and Dion Cassius,
adix, 22.
1T Dion Cassius, xlix, 22.
" Eusebius : Preparatio Evangelica, i, x, 29. See my Paganism In Our Christianity,
Chap. vii.
"Suetonius: Casar t xliv.
MARC ANTONY 375
should come of age. Instead, he chose to be called Autocrat or, a
Greek word signifying an absolute personal ruler or autocrat, and
corresponding more or less to the Latin term "Imperator." Thus,
while he would be "King" to Cleopatra's subjects, he was to be
"Autocrator" throughout his eastern empire, yet would still be a
democratic "Triumvir," a chief magistrate of the Republic, in
Roman eyes. It is to be presumed, however, that he stated privately
his intention of establishing in the end a throne for himself from
which he and his successors would rule the entire Roman world
the whole earth, in fact, if his plans of conquest did not miscarry;
and it seems to me that in order to benefit by Caesar's worshipped
name and authority, he was prepared to regard Caesarion, Caesar's
only son, as the heir-apparent to this future throne.
It was agreed, also, that all the wealth and power of Egypt
should be placed at his disposal in the colossal undertakings he
had in mind ; and in return he now proposed to extend Cleopatra's
dominions so that they should be stretched around the east end of
the Mediterranean. Nearly all Phoenicia and Syria and a great
part of Cilicia should be hers, together with Cyprus and a part of
Crete. Tyre and Sidon were to remain outside her authority, and
Judaea, Herod's kingdom, was to be independent; but she was to
have Damascus, Jericho, and the strip of country east of the Jordan,
while Egypt's ancient claim to Sinai and northern Arabia was to
be recognised.
History tells us nothing of the manner in which this agree-
ment was ratified or the marriage performed ; 2a but the event was
celebrated by the striking of coins upon which their two heads were
represented, she being Queen and he Autocrator and Triumvir.
Moreover, Cleopatra introduced a new dating of the years of her
reign : she was now beginning her fifteenth year as Queen of Egypt,
but she spoke in future of this year as the first of her larger
sovereignty ; and thus on a coin minted six years later we find an in-
scription giving that date as the "2ist, which is also the 6th year"
of her reign.
The gift of all this territory is said to have been very dis-
*That some sort of marriage took place at this time between Antony and Cleo-
patra wa first shown by Letronne, Recuell des inscriptions grtcques et latines de
pte, ii, 90; and then by Kromayer, Hermes, xxix, 5S4, See also Ferrero; Great-
and Dedin* of Rome, iv, L
376 MARC ANTONY
pleasing to the Romans of the west, "for," says Plutarch, "although
Antony had bestowed great kingdoms upon several private per-
sons, and had taken away the thrones of many kings, nothing stung
the Romans as did the shame of these honors paid to Cleopatra, their
dissatisfaction being increased also by his public acknowledgment
that her twins were his ; yet he, who knew how to put a good colour
on the most discreditable action, now excused himself by saying that
the greatness of the Roman empire lay more in giving kingdoms than
in taking them away/' Cleopatra, however, was not altogether sat-
isfied with the arrangement; and she is said to have pleaded so hard
to be given also the kingdom of Herod, the cities of Tyre and Sidon,
and the land of Arabia, that Antony had to speak very sharply to
her. 21
One gets the impression, in fact, that this beginning of their
renewed life together was not altogether idyllic. Antony was busy
with his preparations for the Parthian campaign, and this enormous
undertaking must have caused him the greatest anxiety. Yet An-
tioch was a charming city in which to spend the winter; and, being
famous for its art and learning, it provided, no doubt, a pleasant
setting for that kind of elegant existence which both he and she
so much enjoyed. At any rate, in spite of worries and distractions,
their intimate life together was happily renewed; nor was it dis-
turbed by the news which presently arrived from Italy, that in the
autumn Octavia had given birth to a daughter, whom, like her pre-
vious child by Antony, she had named Antonia. By the beginning of
the new year, 36 B.C., Cleopatra found that she, too, was once more
to become a mother.
By March all was in readiness for the campaign, and Antony
set out from Antioch, marching north-eastwards, at the head of his
legions. Cleopatra accompanied him for the first hundred and fifty
miles; but at Zeugma on the Euphrates she turned back, probably
owing to her condition, and began the return journey to Egypt,
there to await the birth of her child and the hoped-for news of
Antony's triumphant progress. It was hard to say when he and she
would meet again, for the conquest of the Orient might occupy two
or three years : there was no telling what would happen, and it might
even be that he would never return.
^Josephus: Antiquities, xv, iii, 8, and xv, iv, 1.
MARC ANTONY 377
The task he had set himself was one which, if victoriously car-
ried out, would place his name alongside that of Alexander the
Great; but if he were to fail, his death and the slaughter of his
army would be a more likely consequence than a successful re-
treat. It was an appalling risk that he was taking; and the fact
that he was prepared to take it, and to endure the inevitable hard-
ships of the campaign, is an indication that at this time he was
neither the chronic drunkard nor the luxury-loving libertine, nor yet
the love-sick loon, which history has supposed him to have been. He
was the fact must surely be obvious a man in perfect health,
keen, ambitious, and extremely active in mind and body; and as
he watched Cleopatra's cavalcade moving away on the road back
to Antioch and the south, it may be supposed that he turned to the
task before him with an eager heart not so greatly weighed down
by his bereavement as eluted by his vast hopes.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Great Parthian Adventure, and Antony's Movement towards Sovereign
Power.
B - c -
THE fact that in the previous spring Antony had been so im-
patient to obtain from Octavian the extra legions he required for
the Parthian expedition indicates that he had planned to open the
campaign in the autumn; and the choice of this time of year suggests
that he had intended to take the southern route into Parthia, march-
ing down the valley of the Euphrates through Mesopotamia to
Babylonia and thence to Ctesiphon, one of the Parthian capitals,
for in these parts winter was the only tolerable season for cam-
paigning. The fact that he himself took up his headquarters in Syria
suggests, too, that he had expected to follow this southern route.
But when the delay in Italy had forced him to postpone the expedi-
tion until the spring he had altered his plans and had chosen the
northern route through Armenia and thence down into Media to
the city of Ecbatana, for the reason that here in the north the sum-
mer season was more suitable for warfare.
When he reached the Euphrates at Zeugma, therefore, and
first came into touch with the enemy outposts, they must have won-
dered whether he would advance up-stream to join his advance-
guard already sent into Armenia, or whether he would move down-
'stream towards Ctesiphon. Antony, himself, was perhaps even yet
not absolutely decided, for there seems to have been some delay here,
and some uncertainty in regard to the plan of campaign, which led
Plutarch to suppose that Antony was a man in love, unable to think
of anything but his passion for Cleopatra. He seems, however, to
have had little doubt that he should take the northern route, more
especially since his general in Armenia had reported that Artavasdes,
378
MARC ANTONY 379
the King of Armenia, was prepared to co-operate with him, having
a private quarrel with his namesake Artavasdes, King of Media, the
Parthian ally.
The Parthian empire included within its wide bounds an area
as big as that of the entire Roman world. Mespotamia, and ancient
Assyria and Babylonia, formed its western wing; Persia, Carmania,
and Gedrosia (Beluchistan) were comprised in its southern terri-
tory; and Bactriana (Bokhara) and those states which lay on the
near side of the Indus, over against northern India, constituted its
eastern possessions. Parthia (Khorassan) itself lay in the midst of
these, just to the east of Media, and south-east of the Caspian Sea.
It was a vast territory to conquer ; but Alexander the Great had done
so, and Antony was sure that he could achieve with his great Roman
army the same success which Alexander's smaller force of Greeks
had achieved three centuries earlier.
It was the middle of April, 36 B.C. when he set out upon his
march northwards. Moving up the valley of the Euphrates, he
passed through Samosata, the city which he and Ventidius Bassus
had besieged in the previous campaign, and so came to Melitene in
Cappadocia, and thence to Satala in northern Armenia Minor, which
he reached in early June. He then proceeded into Armenia where,
at the end of that month, he made his juncture with the troops which
had been sent ahead ; and here he proudly reviewed his whole army
prior to the southern advance into Media. Not less than a hundred-
thousand men were now tinder his command, the bulk of these troops
being Roman legionaries amongst which were many of his veteran
Gauls*
Polemo, whom Antony had made King of Laodicea, had recently
been transferred by him to the throne of Pontus, the kingdom in
north-eastern Asia Minor which adjoined Armenia; and this mon-
arch was now here with a small but useful contingent of troops.
King Artavasdes of Armenia was also in the camp, having placed
in the field sixteen thousand horsemen, 1 these being extremely valu-
able because they were roughriders trained in the Parthian method
of warfare, namely that of shooting with bow-and-arrows from
horseback. Artavasdes himself proved to be most helpful and friend-
ly : he was a man who had been educated as a Greek, and, being in-
*Hutardb: Antony*
380 MARC ANTONY
clined to literature, had written some passable Greek plays and also
a number of historical works. His people had received the Romans
very hospitably, and were glad to open their country to them as a
base of operations against their hereditary southern enemies, the
Medes. A matter of great satisfaction to Antony, moreover, was the
fact that a number of Parthian nobles had come into Armenia with
offers of aid, having quarrelled with the King of Parthia, Phraates,
a man of great cruelty who had begun his reign by murdering his
father and most of his relations.
The frontier between Armenia and Media was formed by the
river Araxes (the Aras), and Antony's army crossed this river
about the end of July. Antony himself pushed rapidly forward
with the main army to the city of Phraaspa, some forty miles
north of Ecbatana, his object being to overwhelm these two im-
portant centers in the first rush, and thence to move eastwards
into Parthia or southwards to Ctesiphon. He expected to take
Phraaspa by assault, and he therefore left his baggage-train and
his great siege-engines to follow him with an escort of ten thousand
men or more, including the King of Pontus. But when he reached
the city, in the middle of August, he found it strongly defended, and,
to his great disappointment, he was obliged to prepare for a siege.
Meanwhile, the Parthian monarch, Phraates, had come up from
the south with his host of mounted archers; and, hearing that
Antony at Phraaspa was separated from his siege-train, which was
now at Gaza, fifty miles to the north, he made a wide detour and
suddenly fell upon it. The result was a disaster for the Romans
which ruined Antony's hopes. All the siege-engines were destroyed,
the baggage was lost, King Polemo of Pontus was captured, and
nearly all the ten thousand men of the escort were slaughtered to-
gether with their general. On hearing the news, Antony at once
hastened back with all the troops he could spare ; but he found only
dead men and the wrecks of his engines. He then learnt that the
King of Armenia who had been advancing behind the siege-train,
had at once fled with his sixteen thousand horsemen, and was now
on his way back to his own country.
Antony would have been wise to have accepted his misfor-
tune and at once to have marched his army back to Armenia; but
the effect of the catastrophe upon him was that of angering* him
MARC ANTONY 381
into the determination to fight it out. Such was his nature: the
more formidable the enemy the more stubbornly he desired to hit
back. Returning to Phraaspa he settled down to starve it into
surrender; but owing to the fact that King Phraates and his Par-
thian and Median horsemen were hovering around the outskirts
of his camp, he himself was almost as closely besieged as was the
city he was besieging. He had to fight for his food in the country
round about; but though he attempted to force the enemy into a
pitched battle on the one side or to take the city by assault on the
other, he failed to bring about a major engagement of any kind.
September went by, and, when the approach of cold weather
in October and the difficulty of obtaining food had reduced him
and his troops to the verge of despair, he made an elaborate and
carefully planned movement to jockey the enemy into the open.
Taking ten legions and all his cavalry he went a day's march from
the camp, and when, as he expected, he was followed by the enemy,
he suddenly turned upon them. As a result of the surprise, however,
he killed no more than eighty of them and took only thirty prisoners,
the fact being that the Parthian and Median horsemen were al-
together too nimble for him, and prided themselves on their equal
ability to swoop down on their opponents and to gallop away to
safety. He was exasperated by his failure, and when he returned to
the siege-lines and found that there had been a sortie which had
put some of his men to flight, he angrily punished the cowardice of
those who had fled by imposing upon them the old Roman penalty
of "decimation," that is to say, the execution of one in every ten
of the delinquents, the victims being drawn by lot. This severity
checked a tendency to mutiny which would have meant disaster to
the whole force; but if it startled the men into the endurance of
their hardships with outward courage, it did nothing to relieve
the inward depression of them all. The retirement of the King
of Armenia from the campaign, with his sixteen thousand cavalry,
was an irreparable loss, for these men would have been of the
utmost service in dealing with the evasive enemy horsemen, their
methods of fighting being similar.
At length the Parthians proposed an armistice, and to this
Antony responded by saying that if the eagles captured from the
legions of Crassus at Carrhse in 53 B.C. were returned to him,
382 MARC ANTONY
and if the prisoners then carried off were released, he would take
his departure. The Parthian King, however, rejected these terms,
and merely sent word that if Antony would leave the country at
once his retreat would not be molested.
In the deepest dejection, therefore, as the winds of winter
began to whistle about the camp, Antony accepted this offer,
consoling himself as best he could by the thought that he would
recuperate in Syria and recommence the campaign next year. His
sorrow and shame, nevertheless, were so great that he refused to
address his men to acquaint them with the news which to them
must have been so welcome. "Some of the soldiers," Plutarch
writes, "resented this behaviour on the grounds that it slighted
them, but the greater number understood the cause and pitied
him, finding in it a reason why they on their part should treat
him with even more respect and obedience than was their usual
habit."
Antony had intended to march back by the way he had come,
the road passing through open country; but a certain friendly
chief of the Mardi a people living in that part of Media which
lay along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea who had served
with the Romans throughout the campaign, earnestly advised him
to make for the mountains on the eastern side of Media and to follow
the upland highway northwards to the frontier of Armenia, for in
so doing he would prevent an attack by the Parthian horsemen who
could maneuver at will on the level plains but were useless in the
rugged hill-country. That such an attack was contemplated by the
treacherous King Phraates, he declared, he had no doubt. Antony
did not know whether or not to believe the man, but when he of-
fered to allow himself to be shackled during the march, so that he
could not escape if treachery were suspected, his good faith was
recognized and his advice taken.
The retreating army therefore headed for the mountains; and
three days later, when they were fording the river Amardus (the
Sufeid), presumably near the town of Batina (Sultanieh), where
it runs at the foot of the hills, they were attacked by the Parthians,
as their guide had predicted. Antony's Gallic cavalry, however,
saw that these wild horsemen got as good as they gave; and the en-
counter had the value of putting him on his guard and taught him
MARC ANTONY 383
to flank his heavy infantry with his archers and light cavalry. A
few days later, however, an officer named Flavius Gallus took his
men too far away in pursuit of the enemy who had again attacked
the column, and, being ambushed, suffered a very serious defeat.
Three thousand Roman and Gallic cavalry-men were left dead upon
the ground, while five thousand were wounded. An even greater
disaster was only averted by Antony's prompt action: he personally
led out the Third Legion, and drove off the enemy. Flavius Gallus
was brought in with four arrows shot through his body, and died a
few hours later.
After this engagement, Plutarch tells us, "Antony went from
tent to tent to visit and comfort those of the defeated men who
were left alive, and was not able to look upon them without
tears and a very passion of grief. They, however, seized his hand
with happy faces, bidding him go and see to his own needs and
not to worry about them, calling him their Emperor and their
general, and saying that if he himself fared well they were safe.
Never, indeed, in all these times can history point to a general at the
head of a more glorious army, whether you consider their strength
and youth or their patience and endurance in hardships and fatigue,
while as for the obedience and loving respect they showed towards
their general, and the unanimous feeling amongst humble and great
alike, whether officers or common soldiers, that they preferred his
good opinion of them to their very lives and existence, it is not
possible that they could have been surpassed even by the Romans
of old. For this devotion to Antony there were many reasons : his
nobility, for instance, his frank and open manners, his generous
and magnificent mode of life, his familiarity in talking with every-
body, and, at this time in particular, his tender-heartedness in vis-
iting and pitying the wounded, joining in all their pain, and furnish-
ing them with all things necessary, so that the sick and disabled were
even more eager to serve him than those who were well and strong."
Upon the next day Antony thought it would be only right to
address the troops; and in order to show them how deeply he
felt their sufferings and the loss of so many brave men he put on
a mourning-garment, and went, unshaven and with tear-stained
face* to the platform. But his anxious staff-officers stopped him,
insisting that he should don his general's scarlet cloak; and this
384 MARC ANTONY
he finally consented to do. "There was no man of his time like
him," says Plutarch, "for carrying his soldiers with him by the
force of words," and on this occasion he made an impassioned speech,
praising those who had fought well in the recent skirmishes, and re-
proaching a particular contingent which had shown signs of panic.
At this the men of the latter called out that they were ready to
undergo decimation or any other punishment so long as he would
forgive them and not thus shame them; whereupon Antony flung
his hands upwards to heaven, and, closing his eyes, uttered a prayer,
saying that if, to balance the great blessings he had received, any
misfortunes were in store, he implored the gods to pour their
wrath upon his head alone, and to spare his soldiers.
Day after day the weary and underfed army made its way along
the mountain road, while the Parthians and Medes shot at them
from behind the rocks, and killed the stragglers. It was difficult to
forage for food under these conditions, and the men had often to be
content to eat the roots of wayside plants or anything else which
seemed to be edible. Unfortunately, several men cooked and ate a
certain herb, and were poisoned thereby. Its effect was said to be that
of causing them to lose their reason, so that, like men enchanted,
they wandered about, moving stones from place to place, or engag-
ing vaguely in other useless tasks, until at last they collapsed and
died.
Antony was the life and soul of the retreat, and from time to
time he was heard to exclaim, "O, the Ten Thousand !" as though
proudly comparing their journey to that of the Greeks under
Xenophon. Sojely by the power of his personality he preserved the
spirit and the discipline of his men; but at length a series of new
misfortunes broke down their endurance and there was a serious
mutiny. One night, while they were camped, several soldiers made
themselves sick by drinking at a stream the water of which was
brackish, and Antony, having failed to dissuade others from drink-
ing, gave orders for the march to be resumed, there being better
water a short distance ahead, so the Mardian guide had told him,
and an attack by the enemy from the rear being expected. The night
march which ensued was trying to the nerves of everybody; and at
last some of the men revolted, beginning to plunder the baggage of
their officers and even seizing Antony's own belongings. The noise
MARC ANTONY 385
and confusion caused by their behaviour led Antony to suppose that
the enemy had attacked them, and were in their midst; and to him
this seemed to be the end. Calling aside one of his f reedmen, Rham-
nus by name, he obliged him to take an oath that at a given signal
he would kill him and cut off his head, burying it so that it should
not fall into the hands of the Parthians; and, in fact, he was about
to give this signal when he learnt the true cause of the disturbance.
Thereupon he called a halt, and took the necessary steps to
restore order; but at break of day they were again attacked, a
severe fight taking place, in which, however, the Romans were
victorious. It now became necessary to descend into the plains and
to cross a river; and here Antony expected another battle, but
to his surprise the enemy allowed them to make the crossing
unmolested, and, indeed, made signs to them from a distance as
though bidding them farewell, thereafter unstringing their bows
and riding away southwards. For the remainder of their journey
they were not attacked, and six days later they crossed the Araxes
and attained the friendly soil of Armenia. Here the men kissed
the ground in their excitement, and there were scenes of intense
emotion, the soldiers embracing one another and shedding tears of
joy, while Antony himself received an ovation.
The retreat from Phraaspa had occupied twenty-seven days,
and during that time the Romans had beaten off the enemy on no
less than eighteen distinct occasions. The total losses of the whole
campaign, including those incurred in the overwhelming of the siege-
train, were twenty-four thousand dead, of whom a large part had
died of sickness. Now, since ten thousand of these had been mas-
sacred on that one occasion, and three thousand on the occasion of
the ill-advised action of Flavius Gallus, Antony could console him-
self with the thought that his unavoidable losses the ordinary
casualties of the war had not been more than eleven thousand
men, which was not excessive. His depression was thus relieved by
the hope that he would be able to make a second invasion in the
following year, and that, having now learnt the tactics of the Par-
thians, he would be able to prevent a repetition of his two major
disasters. If only he could recruit a force of mounted archers in
Armenia, or train his own Gallic cavalry in the Parthian methods,
he would have a chance of success.
386 MARC ANTONY
For this reason he forbore to punish the Armenian King for
his desertion, but, wishing to use him to better purpose next time,
marched through that country with flags flying, so to speak, making
light of his retreat and giving out, apparently, that he would resume
the war at no distant date. At first he may have thought of wintering
in Armenia, but presently he seems to have decided to make his
second attack from the south, beginning the new campaign, there-
fore, in the following autumn; and with this purpose in view he
seems to have deemed it better to march back into Syria, where he
could obtain money from Egypt and elsewhere with which to reward
his men, and could more conveniently rest and reorganize his army.
But ill-luck dogged him. No sooner was he well upon his way
than a spell of particularly severe weather set in, and during his
march through Armenia Minor and Cappadocia there were almost
continuous snowstorms. Epidemics of sickness attacked the troops,
and before they had reached the warmer climate of Syria, eight
thousand of them had died. He did not halt, however, at Antioch,
but passed on down the Syrian coast to a point just to the south
of Berytus (Beirut) . This city stood at the western end of the great
caravan-route which crossed the Lebanon to Damascus and thence
traversed the desert by way of Palmyra to Mespotamia- It was the
most direct route to Ctesiphon, the southern capital of the Parthians;
and Antony's selection of the neighbourhood of Beirut for his head-
quarters seems to me to indicate that he intended to take this desert
route in his next campaign, as did Roman armies of later times.
The army which he thus brought back into Syria in the early
days of 35 B.C. was but the sorry wreck of that with which he had
set out in the previous spring. The men were emaciated and in
rags; and Antony himself, in spite of his indomitable determina-
tion to attack again, was physically exhausted* Yet he sent off
a report to the Senate in Rome in which he stated that his cam-
paign had been most successful, and that he had returned undefeated
to Syria to prepare for a second campaign. Meanwhile, however,
the news which he received from Italy must have greatly discon-
certed him.
In the summer of 36 B.C. Octavian had made another onslaught
upon Sextus Pompeius, and, working in conjunction with Lepidus,
who had brought a powerful force over from North Africa, he had
MARC ANTONY 387
attacked him in Sicily. At first he had been badly defeated, be-
ing more than once nearly taken prisoner, and on one occasion nar-
rowly escaping assassination, while Sextus had inflicted enormous
losses upon him; but at last the roving son of Pompey the Great
had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and had fled to Mytilene
in the isle of Lesbos. The third Triumvir, Lepidus "the vainest
of human beings/' as Velleius calls him, 2 "who had merited not
by a single good quality so long an indulgence of fortune" had
then quarrelled with Octavian, and as a punishment for a foolish
attempt at rebellion, had been forced by him to retire into private
life; and thus the Triumvirate had come to an end, Octavian and
Antony being left as the sole rulers respectively of the west and
east.
In November Octavian had returned to Rome in triumph, and,
having decided that the time had come to improve his personal repu-
tation, had adopted a conciliatory attitude to all parties and had
even announced that he was prepared to lay down his exceptional
powers if his colleague, on his return from Parthia, would do like-
wise. So far as Antony could make out, in fact, he had definitely
turned over a new leaf, and now, in the twenty-seventh year of
his age, was at last attempting to consolidate his position and to con-
sider the future, instead of acting simply as the needs of the mo-
ment required, without policy, prudence, or principle. For the
first time since the division of the empire into an eastern and a west-
ern area* Octavian's position was as powerful as his own; and An-
tony now learnt, with a sinking of his heart, that the Senate had in-
vited the young manj:o assume any distinctive honour he cared to
suggest, * and meanwhile had decreed him the right to wear on all
occasions a crown of laurel, and had bestowed all manner of other
privileges upon him, such as that of feasting annually with his
wife and family in the precincts of the Temple of Jupiter Capitol-
inus upon the anniversary of his victory over Sextus Pompeius. 4
Another piece of news which Antony now received was that
Cleopatra in the early autumn had given birth to a son, whom
she had named Ptolemy, according to the custom of her house.
These tidings were interesting, to say the least, and, indeed, may
s, li, Ixxx, *Appian: Civil Wars, v, 130.
4 DIOB Cassius, xlix, 15.
3 88 MARC ANTONY
well have touched his sentimental heart, though the emotional
tremor of becoming a father must by repetition have lost its
poignancy ; but since he knew that the announcement of the event
must have already reached Rome, its probable effect upon Octavia
and her brother was for him a further cause of anxiety. He was
determined, however, never to return to his Roman wife; and as
though to defy the gossip at home, he sent a letter to Cleopatra,
telling her to come to him at once, and incidentally, to bring with
her as much money as she could lay her hands on, and also all the
clothes and comforts she could collect for his men.
He then gave himself up to the only relaxation his tired body
and mind desired after these months of toil and fatigue: he turned,
that is to say, to the gods of oblivion, and drank himself daily into a
condition of complete stupor. During the next weeks, in his moments
of sobriety, he asked for news only of the Queen's coming; and when
at last he heard that she was on her way, not even his wine could
long detain him in the house or keep him from starting up every
now and then to scan the sea in the hope that the far line of the
southern horizon might be etched with the masts and sails of her
approaching fleet.
When at length Cleopatra arrived, bringing with her many
shiploads of clothing and supplies for the army, Antony's rela-
tionship towards her seems to have passed into that new phase to
which his impatience for her coming had been the prelude. It
would be perhaps a little too bold to say that now for the first
time he fell in love with her the woman who in Tarsus, in Alex-
andria, and in Antioch had lived in such tender intimacy with
him, and as a consequence had borne him three children; and yet it
is not an uncommon experience in the life of errant men that at
middle age and Antony was now about forty-eight & pleasantly
amorous relationship widens and deepens into the proportions of a
lifelong devotion and dependence, Antony was at this time a tired
and disappointed man; and the comfort of Cleopatra's tactful sym-
pathy, the brightness and charm of her society which not even her
worst enemies have denied, the encouragement of her unconquerable
optimism, and, above all, her masterfully feminine handling of his
masculine difficulties, combined to make her companionship for the
first time essential to him. From this date onwards his life was in-
MARC ANTONY 389
separably linked to hers; and the reader will have seen that this was
not the case before the present year, 35 B.C.
Having learnt from him that he intended to march upon Par-
thia from the south in the following autumn, she made him come
back to spend the spring and summer with her in Alexandria, not
only that she might revive his energies and restore his confidence
in himself, but also that she might present him to her people as
her husband and their sovereign lord. Antony, of course, was
ready enough to be persuaded that he could make his military plans
as well from Alexandria as from Beirut; and the luxury of Cleo-
patra's palace, the pleasures of her beautiful capital, and the well-
remembered perfection of the banquets of the Inimitable Livers,
were temptations which he could not resist. It is even possible, too,
that he wanted to see the new baby and the twins.
Just as he was about to leave for Egypt he received news
that Sextus Pompeius, in a desperate attempt to restore his for-
tunes, was attempting to stir up trouble in Asia Minor. He had
sailed with the remnant of his fleet through the Dardanelles, had
tried to capture Cy/icus (Kyzik) on the Sea of Marmara, had passed
through the Bosporus into the Black Sea, and was attacking the
coast of Bithynia prior to a movement towards Pontus and Armenia,
which is said to have had as its object an alliance with the Par-
thians. Antony therefore despatched one of his generals, Marcus
Titius by name, to suppress the marauder; and in anticipation it
may be said that the unfortunate Sextus was at length captured in
Phrygia and was put to death by Titius who had failed to receive
Antony's instructions that his life should be spared. 5 It was an in-
glorious end to a romantic career; and with his death the line of
Pompey the Great became extinct upon the male side. Sextus
Pompeius may be described as the last of the militant republicans;
but now, indeed, the democratic party, to which both Antony and
Octavian belonged, was itself losing its identity and was, more-
over, becoming divided by its allegiance to one or other of these
leaders*
Antony's holiday in Alexandria was interrupted in the spring
by the wholly unexpected arrival of an embassy from the King of
Media, headed by King Polemo of Pontus, who, it will be recalled,
* Dloa CftSttlus, x!ix 18.
390 MARC ANTONY
had been captured by the enemy on the occasion of the disaster
to Antony's siege-train, and who had now been released as an ear-
nest of the Median monarch's good will. The King of Parthia, it
appeared, had not behaved himself with proper regard to the
terms of his alliance with Media; and the friction between them
which was perhaps the cause of the sudden abandonment of their
attacks upon Antony's retreating army had developed at last into
open hostility. The Median King therefore proposed now that
Antony should return at once into his country, and that they should
together invade Parthia.
Antony was dumbfounded. As Plutarch puts it, "he was being
asked, as a favour, to accept that very thing, the want of which had
hindered his conquest of the Parthians before, namely a force of
mounted bowmen/' These Median horsemen, indistinguishable in
skill and training from the dreaded light cavalry of Parthia, would
make a Roman victory almost certain; and Antony, aflame with
excitement, instantly agreed to march his men back into Armenia
at once, so as to move into Media in the summer and thence to
invade Parthia in the autumn. Now was his chance to recover the
ascendancy of his position over that of Octavian, and by a spec-
tacular conquest of the Orient to impose his dominant personality
upon the mind of every man in the Roman world.
Cleopatra insisted upon coming with him, at any rate as far
as Syria; but when he was once more back at his military head-
quarters, insurmountable obstacles to an immediate campaign pre-
sented themselves. What these were is not recorded, but we may
conjecture that the depleted numbers of his soldiers, their reluc-
tance to risk treachery on the part of the Median King, and certain
rumours which were current in regard to the untrustworthiness of
the King of Armenia, were amongst the objections advanced. It was
not long, in fact, before Antony realized that protracted negotia-
tions with both these monarchs would have to be undertaken before
the campaign could be initiated; and at the same time a great deal
of recruiting would have to be accomplished before his army could
be brought to the necessary size. He had recently extended a pardon
and a promise of employment to all the men in his area of govern-
ance previously in the service of Sextus Pompeius, and he had also
used his right to send his recruiting officers into Italy; but the re-
MARC ANTONY 391
suits of these efforts would now have to be awaited. Very re-
luctantly, therefore, he postponed the campaign until the following
spring.
While he was here in Syria, and before this decision had finally
been taken, he received letters from his wife Octavia, telling him
that sEe was on her way to join him, carrying with her not only
money, supplies, and comforts for his men, of whose return in rags
from the Parthian war she had just heard, but also bringing him
two thousand picked soldiers, perfectly armed and accoutred,
these being a present to him from her brother Octavian, who wished
thereby to show his good will.
This news was immensely embarrassing, and he sent an im-
mediate answer, telling her that he was about to set out for Parthia
again, and that she was to await his return at Athens. But when
Cleopatra learnt that he had thus prevaricated, and had not taken
the opportunity to give Octavia her final dismissal, she was beside
herself with anxiety and annoyance. It is to be remembered that
the Queen's fate and that of her country, her dynasty, and her
children depended almost entirely upon Antony. Csesarion, her
son by Caesar, was now nearly twelve years of age, and would soon
be old enough to be regarded as a serious rival by Octavian: if,
then, Octavian were ever to attain to sole power in the Roman
empire, Gesarion's arrest and execution would be certain in which
regard it may be said in anticipation that Octavian did in the end
put the boy to death on the grounds that there could not be two
Caesars in the world.
So long as Antony retained his power and continued to be her
consort and her protector she and her family were safe, and there
was every hope that one day he would found a throne for himself
and her at the steps of which the nations of the whole earth would
do obeisance* But if he were to return to Octavia, he might be in-
veigled into a new accommodation with his brother-in-law Oc-
tavian, and one of the terms of the bargain forced upon him by the
upholders of the Roman Republic might well be his abandonment
of his connection with the Egyptian throne.
The ancient historians have always endeavoured to present
Cleopatra as a wicked siren, scheming to hold Antony to her by
means of her voluptuous charms in order to use him for the pur-
392 MARC ANTONY
pose of her personal aggrandisement; but actually, as has already
been said, there is no evidence that her character was^ evil. 6 She
was a brave, tenacious, anxious woman, the "widow" of Oesar
and the mother of his son, persistently fighting for the realisation
of those ambitions with which the Dictator had once filled her
head, but struggling also to maintain that security for herself and
her line which would at once be menaced by the supremacy of
Octavian.
She was not yet sure of Antony's devotion; and although it is
to be presumed, I think, that she now loved him had gradually
passed, in fact, into that same condition in which he also found
himself she was continuously worried about him, asking herself
whether Octavia's gentleness and goodness could make an appeal
to his pity stronger than her own bright appeal to his manhood and
his intellect, and wondering, too, whether he might think that there
was a quicker route to the autocracy of the world by way of those
sedate mansions in Rome and Athens over which Octavia presided
than through the pleasant halls of the Alexandrian palace. Octavia
still had the guardianship of Antony's two sons by Fulvia, and
of his two infant daughters of whom she, Octavia, herself was the
mother: would these parental ties outpull those which she, Cleo-
patra, could put forward in the existence of her twins and her
latest baby? Antony, in spite of his feverish manner of life, was
one of those good-natured giants who, at heart, love their homes
and their children; and it may be supposed that the Qxieen often
asked herself whether he would give heed to the call of his Roman
family. Indeed, it was probably at her suggestion that not long
afterwards he sent for his eldest son, Antylhis, who was now about
ten years of age, the boy being brought at length to Alexandria as
a playmate for the young Caesarion.
Cleopatra was not very skillful in intrigue. Many of her actions
suggest, in fact, that she was not easily able to conceal her feelings,
or to play a sustained part; and one gets the impression that on
most occasions her behaviour must have corresponded in a some-
what startling degree with her actual thoughts and emotions. Thus,
in regard to this letter from Octavia and Antony's reply to it, she
6 In ray Life and Times of Cleopatra I have defended her character at length,
and have explained how the prejudice against her originated.
MARC ANTONY 393
did not attempt to hide her distress. She told her immediate circle
that he was not behaving fairly to her : she, the sovereign lady of
many nations, she cried out, had been content to be called his
mistress, and had not spurned such a relationship so long as she
might thereby enjoy his love; and what was her reward? he was
still allowing Octavia to call herself his wife, although the mar-
riage had been one of mere political convenience, and he was even
undecided as to whether or not to go back to her, although he
knew quite well that she, Cleopatra, could not survive his loss. He
was unfeeling and hard-hearted, she declared, thus to play fast
and loose with one who loved him and whose whole life depended
upon him.
Plutarch has supposed that this behaviour was play-acting on
her part. "She pretended," he writes, "to be dying of love for him,
bringing her body down by slender diet. When he entered the room
she fixed her eyes upon him in rapture, and when he left, seemed to
collapse and half faint away. She took great care that he should
see her tears, and, as soon as he noticed them, hastily dried them
and turned away, as if it were her wish that he should know nothing
of her feelings/* But this was no pretense. The possibility of losing
him had served both to make clear to her her dependence upon
him, and to arouse her love for him into a turmoil of jealous and
passionate emotion. She knew from past experience that it was
useless to employ mere feminine wiles in dealing with a man of his
wide experience of the arts of woman, or to act in front of one who
was a patron of actresses; and her behaviour appears to me to have
been entirely sincere*
But her fears were unwarranted: Antony had no intention of
returning to Octavia. Yet he must have been sorry for his patient
Roman wife, who possessed in a high degree the typical Roman
virtues* and was reported to be looking after his children and at-
tending to his interests in the most gracious and estimable manner.
The faults so often attendant upon these virtues, however, were
evidently very conspicuous in Octavia: the spiritless docility of an
obedient spouse, the conventionally-minded care of a woman of
good repute to be correct in all her behaviour, the indifference of a
domesticated wife to the mental and physical elegances of fashion-
able life, the limited outlook of a mind directed along the narrow
394 MARC ANTONY
path of duty, the very absence of those culpable frailties which
make the human sinner eternally beloved these things may well
have rendered a comparison between the good Octavia and the
unconscionable and hot-tempered Cleopatra wholly favourable to
the latter. The Queen of Egypt was not a bad woman; but it is
evident that she reflected just that little sparkle of the everlasting
fires which, in the eyes of a Caesar or an Antony, is an indispensable
attraction in the female.
The Parthian campaign being postponed, Antony gladly went
back with Cleopatra to Alexandria; and here during the summer of
35 B.C. he received another letter from Octavia saying that she
would do as he bade her, and await his coming, asking him to
what place it was his pleasure that she should send the supplies
and troops which she had brought with her to Athens. Antony's
reply indicates the development of his relationship to Cleopatra.
There was now no prevarication in regard to his ultimate return:
he simply thanked her for the gifts, asked her to forward them
to Syria under the care of the troops, and bluntly told her to go
back to Rome. 7 He did not yet institute divorce-proceedings, for
he knew that such a step would cause an immediate rupture of his
relations with Octavian; and he was not prepared to come to grips
with him until his now hopeful Parthian schemes had been brought
to a successful issue, and his prestige raised to the consequent
heights.
Octavian, so his despatches from Rome informed him, was
equally anxious to maintain peace between them for the moment,
deeming it necessary to consolidate his own position in the west
before tackling the great problem of his rivalry with Antony. More-
over, he was now conducting a difficult campaign against certain
rebels in Illyria and Pannonia, his two most eastern provinces, at
the north-east corner of the Adriatic; and he had no wish to be
involved in a dispute with Antony while his attention was thus
distracted.
Thus, the summer passed into autumn, and the autumn into
winter, while Antony remained at Alexandria busy with the or-
ganisation of his coming campaign against Parthia, with the nego-
tiations between himself and the Kings of Armenia and Media,
7 Dion Cassias, xlix, 33.
MARC ANTONY 395
and with the administration of his great empire. During this time
his tendencies towards monarchy developed indeed, it would
hardly have been possible for him to live in the palace at Alex-
andria, as husband and consort of a Queen, without himself assum-
ing the general aspect of royalty. At the state functions of the
Egyptian capital, and in its many religious ceremonials, he
was obliged, I suppose, to play his part as actual King, or Pharaoh,
of Egypt, and to perform those immemorial rites wherein the sov-
ereign acted as the representative and the incarnation of the sun-
god.
It is of course an exaggeration to say, as does Florus, 8 that
"he so openly aspired to sovereignty that, forgetting his country,
his name, his toga, and the Roman magisterial insignia, he de-
generated wholly, in thought, sentiment, and dress, into that mon-
strositya King, in his hand there being a golden sceptre, at his
side a scimitar, his robe being of purple clasped with enormous
jewels, and his head being adorned with a royal crown, to the
end that as a King he might dally with the Queen." Yet it is
probably true that neither his official manner nor his private out-
look were any longer those of a chief magistrate of the Roman
Republic* save to those of his own countrymen who were with
him in Egypt, and to the Roman soldiers who were in his service.
To these latter he was always a democratic general, a soldier like
themselves* although, according to Dion Cassius, he now termed
his military headquarters "the Palace/' The same writer says that
"he sometimes dressed in a manner not in accord with the customs
of his native land, wore an oriental dagger at his belt, and let
himself be seen even in public upon a gilded couch or a chair of
similar appearance'* a more modest statement than that of Florus,
and one which we may accept.
As the spring of 34 B.C. approached, both he and Cleopatra
became increasingly uneasy in regard to the Parthian adventure.
It seemed so hazardous to stake their entire fortune upon a difficult
campaign which might possibly end in disaster. If he were vic-
torious, of course, his prestige would be enormously enhanced, and
Rome would welcome him as a conquering hero; but if he were
defeated &ot even his present eastern empire would maintain its
*Ploru* Iv> xL *Dion Cassius, 1, 5.
396 MARC ANTONY
allegiance, and Octavian might find himself in a position to force
him to retire from public life, as he had forced the third Triumvir,
Lepidus. This was not the time to go adventuring into the Orient;
and, in fact, the dream of emulating the exploits of Alexander
the Great and of carrying the Roman eagles to the confines of
India had already faded from his mind. The farthest extent of his
hope was now the infliction of a single, resounding defeat upon
Parthia, and the recovery of those standards and those prisoners
captured from Crassus.
At any rate he was set upon a military parade through Ar-
menia, the fidelity of whose monarch, Artavasdes, was ever in
doubt, and also upon the clinching of his alliance with Media,
whose King was already impatient at his delay. In about April, 34
B.C., therefore he left Cleopatra and sailed across to Syria, where
he placed himself at the head of his army not the great army
with which he had previously marched northwards, but a powerful
force, nevertheless. He sent his friend Dellius ahead to the Ar-
menian court with the proposal that a contract of betrothal should
be made between his eldest son by Cleopatra the young Alexander
Helios, who was now in his sixth year and one of the daughters
of Artavasdes; and when he reached the city of Nicopolis on the
borders of Pontus and Armenia Minor, he sent a further message
to the King, inviting him to come there to discuss the general situ-
ation. Artavasdes, however, declined the invitation, making some
specious excuse, and thereupon Antony marched upon Artaxata
(Ardesh), the Armenian capital, which stood a few miles to the
north-east of Mount Ararat.
Further negotiations, however, persuaded Artavasdes to come
into the Roman camp to make his peace with Antony ; but, upon
doing so, he was at once put under restraint, and was compelled to
accompany the army upon its tour through the country and to
issue orders for the payment of a heavy tribute to the Romans, as
compensation for his having deserted them in the last campaign in
Media. Thereupon, the Armenians raised his eldest son, Artaxes,
to the throne, and attempted to put up a fight; but they were
quickly overcome, and the new King fled to Parthia. Antony then
caused Artavasdes to be put in fetters, but, out of consideration
for his rank, directed that the chains should be made of silver;
MARC ANTONY 397
and presently he sent him as a prisoner back to Alexandria, per-
mitting him to take his wife and children with him. His kingdom
was afterwards freely looted, and it is said 10 that in the temple
of Anaitis the local Aphrodite in Acilisene, a district in the
south-west of Armenia, the soldiers found a statue of that goddess
made of pure gold, which they melted down and divided among
themselves.
Antony then got into touch with the King of Media, his for-
mer enemy; and a very satisfactory alliance was made with him,
by the terms of which it was agreed that, in preparation for a com-
paign in the following year, a number of Roman legions should be
left for the present in Armenia, which country should henceforth
be regarded as a dependency of Media, both Armenia and Media,
however, becoming an integral part of the Roman empire. It was
further agreed that the son of Antony and Cleopatra, the little
Alexander Helios, should at once be married by proxy to lotapa,
the infant daughter of the Median King, and that the King should
make the boy his heir, so that one day he should be ruler of Ar-
menia, Media, and of all Parthia, as far as the borders of India,
when it should be conquered. Thus, by the arts of diplomacy, and
without any actual campaign, Antony added an enormous area to
the Roman dominions over which he ruled as Autocrat; and at the
same time he so distributed his forces in Armenia and Syria that
a double invasion of Parthia from the north and south through
Media, that is to say, on the one hand, and through Mesopotamia
on the other would have every chance of success. The faded
vision of a march t6 the frontiers of India became bright once
more with vivid possibility.
It was a splendid summer's work, and when Antony returned to
Alexandria in the early autumn of 34 B.C., he had reached the
highest peak of his power yet attained in his entire career. More-
over, the loot of Armenia, much of which was in precious metal
able to be turned into money, was sufficient for the payment of his
soldiers, all of whom were in high spirits and were ready to follow
their general withersoever he should lead them. Like Octavian,
Antony seemed to bear a charmed life, and to be able to extricate
himself from every difficulty, rising* after each relapse, to a higher
"Orotiua, vi, *tx, $
39 8 MARC ANTONY
level of attainment. His confidence in himself was fully restored.
He appears to have felt young again in spite of his forty-nine
years; and Cleopatra, who was nearing her thirty-fourth birthday
and was the mother of four children, was so infected by his high
spirits that she, too, must have been radiant with happiness.
The consciousness of his power caused Antony to take a step
which he knew would be resented by Rome: he decided to celebrate
a Triumph in Alexandria. Now a Triumph was a ceremony which
had never yet been performed outside Rome; it was an honour
accorded to a victorious commander only by the mother-city; it
was the particular privilege and prerogative of the ancient capital ;
and that this Triumph should be held in Alexandria was tanta-
mount to a declaration that Rome had ceased in his opinion to be
the official center of the empire. Antony was quite aware of the
fact, and in breaking thus with tradition he was definitely pursu-
ing that policy to which attention has already been called, the
policy of transferring the seat of supreme government from Oc-
tavian's western sphere to his own eastern dominions, so that in
the end Italy should become what its geographical situation showed
it to be a western appendage to the world-empire of the Romans.
The great temple of Serapis was to Alexandria what the Capitol
was to Rome, and, one bright, autumnal day, the triumphal pro-
cession made its way thither from the palace, through the Forum
and along the famous Street of Canopus and Street of Serapis, 11
passing many of the celebrated buildings which made Alexandria
so much more magnificent a city than the Rome of that date. An-
tony drove through the crowded streets In his triumphal chariot;
and in the procession walked the captive King Artavasdes of Ar-
menia with his wife and children, having chains of gold attached
to their wrists, while behind them followed the wagons heaped
high with the spoils of their country. Triumphal processions were
always occasions for a striking display of wealth and might ; and it
may be supposed that amongst the military forces which took part
in the spectacle were detachments of Roman legionaries and
Roman and Gallic cavalry, Macedonian Household-troops which
formed the permanent bodyguard of the sovereign, Egyptian sol-
11 For a description of ancient Alexandria, see my life and Times o/ Cleopatra,
Chap, it
MARC ANTONY 399
diers, mounted bowmen from Media, light cavalry from Pontus,
and various units from Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Libya,
the upper Valley of the Nile, and so forth.
In a certain open space, perhaps in front of the Temple of
Serapis, Cleopatra sat upon a golden throne raised upon a plat-
form plated with silver ; and here the captive Armenian King was
led forward to do obeisance. 12 He, however, while willing to pay
homage to Antony, refused to bow to the Queen or to address her
in any other manner than by her name, Cleopatra, without titulary
embellishments; and though he was in consequence subjected to a
good deal of rough handling, he maintained his proud dignity,
standing upright before her until at last he was dragged away. It
was the Roman custom, as we have seen, to put an important
prisoner of this kind to death at the end of a Triumph; but the
good-natured Antony had decided to break with tradition in this
respect also, and he did him and his family no hurt, but kept them
afterwards as honourable prisoners in Alexandria, where, no doubt,
Artavasdes amused himself by continuing to write his historical
books and his dramas.
On the following day, or at any rate shortly afterwards, a
great public ceremony was held in the Gymnasium, a kind of sta-
dium having a stone-built grandstand the columned frontage of
which, facing the Street of Canopus, was more than two hundred
yards in length. Here in the open air, upon a platform of silver,
were two golden thrones whereon Antony and Cleopatra were
seated side by side, while near them were four other thrones oc-
cupied by the four children Caesarion, now some months over
thirteen years of age, the twins Alexandria Helios and Cleopatra
Selene, six years old, and the little Ptolemy, two years old. (An-
tyllus, Antony's son by Fulvia, had not yet arrived from Rome.)
Antony, speaking in Greek, then made a speech to the assembled
crowds, announcing the honours and dignities which he had ob-
tained for, or conferred upon, their royal family; and so splendid
were these that the Alexandrians who heard his words must have
been left almost breathless. 13
"Dioa Ca8tu, xlix, 40*
"The laada assigned to each are given differently by Plutarch and Dion Cassias,
but I have tried to adjust the two accounts.
400 MARC ANTONY
Cleopatra, he announced, was the true wife and widow of
the divine Csesar, 14 and as such, besides her kingdom of Egypt, he
named her Queen of all Libya the territory west of Egypt
except for the promontory of Cyrene, Queen of Syria north and
east of Palestine, and Queen of Cyprus, and declared that her
title henceforth would be Queen of Kings. Caesarion, he said, was
the only son of Csesar, and in honour of that great name, he was
to be entitled King of Kings, and was to rule jointly with his
mother as Pharaoh of Egypt and King of Libya, Syria, and Cy-
prus. 15 Alexander Helios, he declared, was Prince, and future
King, of Armenia and Media, and also of the Parthian realms as
far east as the Indus when they should be conquered. Cleopatra
Selene was to be Queen of Cyrene, that part of the Libyan sea-
coast just east of Tripoli, with which, so it seems, went the island
of Crete, for Crete and Cyrene, since 95 B.C., had been regarded as
a single Roman Province, though separated by a hundred and
thirty miles of open sea. And finally the infant Ptolemy was de-
clared King of the northernmost corner of Syria west of the Eu-
phrates and north of Antioch, and of the adjoining Cilicia,
There followed a kind of coronation ceremony, in which Cleo-
patra was robed in the ancient Egyptian manner as the goddess
Isis-Venus, assuming the famous vulture-headdress surmounted by
the horns and disk; while upon the head of C&sarion, it is to be sup-
posed, was placed the old Pharaonic double-crown of Upper and
Lower Egypt encircled by the golden diadem of his Macedonian
line. Alexander Helios was presented to the people wearing Median
costume and having upon his head the tall tiara of the ancient
Persians, while a bodyguard of Armenians waited upon him; and
the little Ptolemy, guarded by Macedonian troops, and dressed in
Macedonian robes, was crowned with a cap and diadem such as had
once been worn by Alexander the Great.
Two points must be noticed. Firstly, in declaring Csesarion
King of Egypt, Antony abandoned his own right to that title as
consort of Cleopatra; and we may suppose that this was a gesture
which was intended to contradict the common report that he had
"Dion Cassius, xlix, 41.
"So Dion Cassius, but Plutarch says that the title King of Kings was also con-
ferred on the two younger boys.
MARC ANTONY 401
ceased to regard himself as a magistrate of the Roman Republic.
His title of Autocrator, however, was higher than that of any
King, and he was satisfied with it, knowing that it would serve
him even if he were to establish a throne for himself. Secondly, his
insistence upon the fact that Cleopatra was the widow, and Csesar-
ion the son, of the great Caesar, was clearly an attempt to show the
world that he was acting as Caesar's executor, so to speak, in thus
honouring them. "It was his purpose," says Dion Cassius, 16 "in this
way to cast reproach upon Octavian as being only an adopted,
and not a real, son of the Dictator"; and in becoming openly the
boy's patron and guardian he must have deliberately thrown down
a gauntlet which his rival could not fail to see.
He then sent a report of the proceedings to Rome ; and although,
before leaving Italy, he had obliged the Senate to agree to an
anticipatory ratification of all his acts, as has already been re-
corded, he now demanded that they should pass a special decree to
ratify these latest dispositions. He declared also that he was quite
willing to place himself at the disposal of the Senate and to abide
by its wishes, being ready even to resign his command if he were
required to do so- 17 He said 'this, however, knowing that his offer
would not be acted upon. His letter would reach Rome at about
the beginning of the new year, 33 B.C. when, by his general ar-
rangements made with Octavian before he left Italy, the two
Consuls-elect for the following year, 32 B.C., would be his friends
and supporters, Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Sossius, his former
governor of Syria* 18 Consuls-elect had the right of addressing the
Senate before the other members 19 ; and this fact, coupled with his
belief that at least half of the Senators favoured him rather than
Oetavian, made him pretty sure that he would not be too greatly
censured, Rome was thoroughly used to creating vassal kingdoms,
if not quite on this vast scale. In any case he wished to show some
outward deference to the Senate; for even if he were in the end to
transfer the seat of government from Rome to the East, it was to
be presumed that this ancient assembly would also be transferred,
and not disbanded.
"Dion Ctsaiut, xlix, 41.
* Dion Caius <xli* 41) ha made an error in calling these two the Consuls,
and not the Consuls-elect, in this year.
*SaIlutt: &&***> 1; etc.
402 MARC ANTONY
Antony was at this time in a condition of great exhilaration;
and his sense of the limitless power wielded by him throughout
his eastern empire was a stimulant which projected him into his
daily affairs with overwhelming zest. It is true that from time
to time he drank heavily, and behaved riotously; but life itself
was usually intoxication enough for him. The longer he lived with
Cleopatra the more devoted he became to her; and though, ob-
viously, there were quarrels between them, these had the nature
of lovers' tiffs, and were soon followed by happy reconciliations.
He was hardly willing to let her out of his sight; and it is said
that sometimes when he was engaged in official business, or was
acting as judge in the courts of law, he would start to his feet on
seeing her passing in her litter, and, leaving his work, would hasten
out to her, and walk through the streets at her side, laughing and
talking with her.
He gave her a bodyguard of Roman soldiers, and caused their
shields to be inscribed with the letter C, the initial of her name,
He and she used frequently to sit together for the Alexandrian
painters and sculptors, he being sometimes represented in the guise
of Dionysus, or of the Egyptian god Osiris who was in certain
aspects identified with that deity, and she being portrayed as
Isis or Venus. He allowed the Alexandrians to begin the erection
of a temple in honour of his divinity, corresponding to the temple
of Isis-Venus which was dedicated to hen It pleased him to be
hailed as the New Dionysus, and at certain festivals, he would ap-
pear in public in that guise, garlanded with ivy, wearing the Diony-
sian buskins on his feet, and holding the thyrsus in his hand; while
Cleopatra played the part of the New Isis. In the great games held in
the Gymnasium, however, he threw off his celestial character, and,
to the huge delight of the crowds, assumed the office of Gymnasi-
arch, or Chief Steward of the Proceedings, conducting himself in
the arena like a burly ring-master.
In the palace, meanwhile, magnificent banquets were held, at
which he and his Greek and Roman friends became thoroughly in-
ebriated, though Cleopatra herself drank little and was so habitu-
ally sober that people supposed her to wear a magic ring which
had the faculty of preventing intoxication. At these parties Antony
played the fool with carefree indifference to scandal; and it is
MARC ANTONY 403
related that on one occasion he made his friend Plancus dance be-
fore the guests in the guise of the Boeotian sea-god Glaucus, naked
and painted blue, a chaplet of seaweed on his head, and a fish-tail
tied to his waist. So wildly was money spent in these revels, that
even the newly-arrived young Antyllus, Antony's son, on one oc-
casion is said to have made a gift to one of his friends of all the
rich silver plate used at a palace banquet.
Yet in spite of these splendid frivolities, Antony was daily
busy with his administrative work, and with his preparations for
the Parthian campaign of his dreams; and these tasks must have
been so exacting that one cannot suppose him to have wasted un-
due time over his amusements. Five or six months of this full Alex-
andrian life were all that he allowed himself; and in the early
spring of 33 B.C. he bade farewell to Cleopatra and her gay capi-
tal, and set out to join his army in Syria, preparatory to a new
march into Armenia.
CHAPTER XIX
The Final Quarrel Between Antony and Octavian, and Rome's Declaration
of War Against Cleopatra.
33-32 B.C.
ANTONY, it will be recalled, had left a considerable Roman
force in Armenia, and had concentrated a large army in Syria. Still
enthralled by his vision of Oriental conquest, his plan, I think,
was now to march several more of his legions into Armenia, and
thence to move on into Media, where he and the Median King
would together work out their plan of campaign and make the
proper disposition of their united armies. He intended then, it
would seem, to leave the invasion of Parthia from the north in
the hands of his generals, and himself to return to the south with
a powerful force of Median mounted archers, and to lead these
and the legions left in Syria together across the desert to Parthia
by the Mesopotamian route. The double invasion from the north
and the south would probably overwhelm the Parthians; and,
with the attendance of good fortune, the two invading armies might
meet again on the far-off banks of the Indus.
He marched to Armenia and thence to Media without mis-
hap; and there he and hi generals perfected their plans with the
Median monarch, who handed over to him the required force of
cavalry, and at the same time delivered to him his little daughter,
lotapa, so that Antony might carry her back to Syria with him,
and send her on to Alexandria to be educated in Cleopatra's palace
with her boy-husband, Alexander Helios, to whom, it will be re-
called, she had already been married by proxy. As a further token
of goodwill he returned to Antony the military standards
captured from the Romans in the disaster to the siege-train. The
scope of the alliance was then extended by the promise of the
404
MARC ANTONY 405
Median Kong that he would give what aid he could to Antony in the
event of a struggle with Octavian a contingency which seemed
likely to happen at no very distant date.
Antony had already on his arrival in Armenia received
letters from his friends in Rome reporting the capital's first re-
action to his announcement of his donations of territory to Cleo-
patra's family, which had been decidedly unfavourable ; and he
was expecting that his relations with Octavian would soon be-
come strained. But when he was about to set out on his long march
back into Syria at the head of the Median cavalry which he was
going to use in his southern campaign, he received further de-
spatches from Rome of so ominous a character that all his plans
were upset. It was now mid-summer of the year 33 B.C., and these
despatches, which had left Rome in the late spring, gave him
details of what had happened there since the digestion of the
news of his high-handed actions.
In the first place there was the matter of his relationship to
Octavia. When he had told that unfortunate lady to go back to
Rome, Octavian had very naturally felt that she had been insulted,
and had advised her, though in vain, to cease to reside in Antony's
house that great mansion on the Palatine which had once be-
longed to Pompey. But when it had become clear that Antony had
contracted some sort of marriage with Cleopatra, the angry Octa-
vian had again pressed her to leave her errant husband's house,
declaring that the insult could only be wiped out in blood. Octavia,
however, had implored him with many tears not to resort to arms
on her account, saying that it was intolerable that a great civil
war should be waged simply because her husband, on the one
part had left her for another woman, and her brother, on the
other, resented this treatment of his sister. "And her behaviour
writes Plutarch, "proved her words to be sincere, for she remained
in Antony's house, and took the noblest and most generous care
of his children, receiving all his friends who came to Rome on
any business, and even doing her best to recommend to Octavian
those who were seeking government employment; but this honour-
able behaviour of hers did unintentional damage to Antony s repu-
tation, for the wrong he had done to such a woman caused turn
to be disliked, and now this donation of kingdoms to his children
406 MARC ANTONY
by Cleopatra in Alexandria also made him unpopular, for it seemed
a theatrical piece of insolence to her and of actual contempt of
his native land."
Again, Antony's declaration that Cleopatra was to be regarded
as Caesar's widow, and that Csesarion was Caesar's true son and
heir, had raised a storm of protest amongst Octavian's supporters.
Antony had declared, quite truthfully, that Csesar himself had
acknowledged the boy as his own * ; and at this, Caius Oppius, a
former friend of Csesar who had attached himself to Octavian, had
issued a pamphlet which he had written to prove that Csesarion
was not Caesar's child at all.
Antony had assigned to Domitius Ahenobarbus and Sossius the
duty of reading his despatches to the Senate; but he was now in-
formed that these two men, the Consuls-elect for the next year,
had decided that the documents ought not to be read in full in
the present state of senatorial opinion, and had only communi-
cated to the House those relating to the disaffection and suppression
of the King of Armenia. Thereupon, Octavian himself had told the
Senate all that Antony had done, and had used his influence to
arouse the public against him and also against Cleopatra whom he
accused of having placed Antony under a kind of enchantment*
He said it was clear that Antony intended to transfer the seat
of government from Rome to Alexandria 2 ; and, indeed, it seems
that in this he was quite correct, for, obviously, in view of the
expected extension of the Roman empire into the Orient, Alexan-
dria would be a much more convenient centre than Rome, as the
great Caesar had already seen.
It would appear that in private letters to friends in Italy,
Antony had some time ago complained that Octavian had not be*
haved fairly by the terms of the Triumvirate in discharging Lepi-
dus and in seizing that deposed Triumvir's legions and sphere of
governance, and also in taking possession of all the lands, ships,
and men of Sextus Pompeius, without proposing any division of
these with Antony. Antony had also protested that Octavian had
given all the available lands in Italy to his own ex-soldiers, and
had left nothing for Antony's men when they should be demobilised.
And now came a personal answer from Octavian to these complaints,
* Suetonius: Catsar, Hi. *Dfon Cassfas, 1, 4w
MARC ANTONY 407
saying cynically that he was perfectly willing to divide with An-
tony the new possessions which had come into his hands, on con-
dition that Antony would, on his part, give him a share of Armenia
and its loot; and that, as to the gift of lands to the soldiers,
it was better, surely, to settle them on the new territory acquired
in Armenia and Media.
In this same letter another sore spot was touched upon. The
execution of Sextus Pompeius had been much regretted by the
old republican party in Rome, and now Octavian, wishing to gain
the approval of this section of opinion, accused Antony of having
unkindly put him to death when he, Octavian, would have spared
him 8 (Antony, it will be recalled, had also wished to spare him,
but the execution had taken place before his orders to this effect
had been received). Moreover, Octavian further accused Antony
of having taken the King of Armenia prisoner by treachery when he
had visited the Roman camp under a truce, which, apparently,
was not true. Octavian also took the opportunity to make some
rude remarks about Cleopatra, describing Antony's relations with
her as immoral in view of the fact that he was married to Octavia.
These despatches made it clear that Octavian felt strong enough
to press his quarrel with his rival to an issue, now that the five
years of the renewed Triumvirate were drawing to a close. With
the end of the present year the agreement made between the two
rivals at Tarentum in 37 B.C. would terminate; and Octavian's
trueulence, which meant that he had no wish to renew the arrange-
ment, came as a shock to Antony who, just now, was regarding
himself as supreme in the world and was not prepared to brook
defiance from any source whatsoever. He was beside himself with
fury, and his anger was increased, no doubt, by the fact that he
knew in his heart that, in regard to Octavia at any rate, these cen-
sures had good cause* He saw immediately that the Parthian ad-
venture would have to be postponed, and that he would have to
fight it out with his rival before venturing to lose himself in the
Orient. Impulsively he wrote a reply to Octavian in which he
hotly defended his relationship to Cleopatra, and asked how his
colleague could dare to criticise him in that regard when he himself
was notorious for his loose morals.
Dion Caesiua, I, L
408
MARC ANTONY
He spoke of the scandal of Octavian's divorce from Scribonia,
which, he said, was due to that lady's resentment at her husband's
misbehaviour with other women; and he declared that the circum-
stances of his hasty marriage to Livia had been disgraceful. He
reminded him of an occasion when Octavian had, at a banquet,
taken the wife of an ex-Consul from the table to his bedroom,
and had brought her back to her outraged husband, who was also
his guest, with her hair and clothes disordered and her ears very
pink. 4 He stated, further, that Octavian's friends were in the
habit of procuring women for him, and of making an inspection of
them as though they were slaves in the market.
He then mentioned several of the young man's mistresses by
name, referring in particular to a certain Drusilla who was his last
fancy. "And you do not make free with Drusilla only/ 7 he wrote.
"When you read this letter, if you still have your health and
strength, you will probably be dallying with Tertulla, or Terentilla,
or Rufilla, or Salvia Titiscenia, or all of them together, for what do
you care where, or upon whom you spend your manly vigour? But
why are you changed towards me? Is it because / live with a
Queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with me? Have I
not done so during these last nine years?" that is to say from
41 B.C., in which year Cleopatra came to Tarsus.
He sent this angry and vulgar letter off, and therewith pro-
ceeded on his way to the south, despatching messengers back to the
King of Media telling him that the invasion of Parthia must be
postponed, and others ahead to Cleopatra notifying her of his
change of plans and asking her to meet him.
History has nothing trustworthy to tell us of the meeting or
the meeting-place. 5 and it is a question whether Antony crossed
the Mediterranean to Alexandria, or made a rendez-vous with the
Queen in Syria or Asia Minor. It was now his purpose to collect
his forces at Ephesus, and presently to proceed to the western
coast of Greece whence he could hurl his defiance at Octavian
across the Adriatic and force him to fight; but, in the innumerable
calls upon his time and in the urgency of the business of gather-
* Suetonius: Augustus, Ixix.
Bouch6 Leclercq (Historic des Lagides, ii, 2S6) thinks that Antony went to
Alexandria.
MARC ANTONY 409
ing men, ships, money, and munitions, it is a question whether he
found it necessary to give his personal attention to the mobilisation
of Egypt's contribution to the cause, or was content to leave the
matter to Cleopatra. He knew, at any rate, that she would be glad
to hear that he had decided to tackle Octavian at once; and he
could be certain that she would strip her country to the bone to
provide the sinews of war.
In the late winter of 33 B.C., or in the early weeks of 32 B.C.,
he and Cleopatra arrived together at Ephesus where the great
gathering of his forces had already begun. Both of them must
have been in a state of great excitement, though in the case of
Antony there was an anger, an exasperation, in his heart which
must have flashed its flames across the ferment of his hopes and
plans. From Cleopatra's point of view the coming war was greatly
to be desired, because the ending of the Triumvirate and the ex-
pected eclipse of Octavian would not only place her consort and
lover, Antony, in a position to establish a world-throne for himself
and her, but would raise her son Gesarion now nearly fifteen
years of age to the status of sole heir of the divine Csesar. It was
customary for a youth of Roman blood to assume the toga virilis^
the dress of a grown man, on his fifteenth birthday ; and thus Csesar-
ion would soon be able to be presented to the Roman world as
something more than a child, and when she and Antony should
enter Rome in triumph the boy would ride through the streets
like a young soldier at the head of the adoring veterans of his
father, the deified Caesar. The crushing of Octavian had been de-
layed too long already; and the removal of that further cause of
delay, the Parthian campaign, with its terrible risks of disaster,
was a matter of extreme relief to the anxious Queen*
Antony himself viewed the situation somewhat differently. He
had been so eager to have his revenge on the Parthians, to emu-
late the exploits of Alexander the Great, and to add the vast
Orient to his Roman dominions; and this necessity of dealing first
with Octavian must have come as a great shock to him. But now
that he was committed to it, he had thrown himself into the enter-
prise with confident hopes of success. He knew that there was a
large body of opinion in Rome which was warmly attached to him
and hostile to Octavian, The two Consuls for the new year, 33 s.c.,
410 MARC ANTONY
Domitius Ahenobarbus and Sossius, were his firm supporters; and
he could reckon on about half the members of the Senate as his
friends. Thus, his rival would be beset by enemies in his own camp.
Moreover Antony could undoubtedly put a larger army into
the field than Octavian; and Cleopatra's fleet, combined with his
own, would give him a superiority on the sea also. Again, Italy
was on the verge of financial ruin, whereas Antony could command
not only the wealth of Egypt but that of a hundred states and
cities in his Eastern empire.
The overthrow of Octavian, therefore, seemed almost a cer-
tainty; but when it should become an accomplished fact what,
then, would he do? For some time he would have to remain the
first magistrate of the Republic, having the title Autocrat or in
the eastern empire, and its equivalent, Itnperator, in the western
dominions; but at length, with Cleopatra as his consort, he would
convert his position into an actual sovereignty, and, in the end,
would hand on his throne to Caesar's son, Csesarion. His capital
would be Alexandria, or perhaps one of the great cities of Asia
Minor or Syria; and Rome would become this world-empire's
second city.
There was one all-important question, however, which must
have exercised his thoughts, and have overshadowed all else: dur-
ing the coming war with Octavian, what would Rome's attitude
be towards Cleopatra? Gradually she had become a very part of
his existence. Not by a violent onrush of romantic passion, but by
the slow results of intimacy, interdependence, and familiarity,
she had taken possession of him little by little* until today he
could not think of a life that was separate from her. Octavian's
insulting remarks about her had aroused in him a fury of resent-
ment, and had made him eager to secure her acknowledgment in
Rome as his legal wife; yet he knew well enough that her presence
at his side would displease all those who supported the old in-
stitutions of the Republic and still nursed that ancient hatred of
kingship which was the traditional mania of conservative Romans.
Already he had received a letter from Domitius Ahenobarbus
urging him to send Cleopatra back to Egypt to await there the
outcome of the struggle, 6 in order that public opinion in Rome
'Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 411
might not be outraged by his intimate relationship with a queen.
But, apart from all other considerations, he could not in fairness
dismiss her when he was spending her money for she had brought
with her a huge sum drawn from her Treasury and was relying
on her supplies and armaments, which included a quarter of the
ships at his disposal. After all, as one of his generals, quoted by
Plutarch, put it, "it would not be just that she who was bearing
so great a part of the cost of the war should be robbed of her share
of glory in carrying it on, nor would it be polite to offend the
Egyptians w ho were supplying so considerable a part of his naval
forces, especially as the Queen was not inferior in wisdom to any
one of the kings who were serving with him, she having for years
governed a great kingdom by herself alone, and having long lived
with him and gained experience in public affairs."
Antony could argue, too, that his position was surely strength-
ened in its Ca2sarian aspect by the fact that he had with him, under
his protection, Caesar's "widow" and the mother of his only son.
Yet such arguments were superfluous for the reason that his de-
termination to keep her with him was based upon a now genuine
love for her and dependence upon her, and that this determination
was rendered all the stronger by the opposition of his supporters
in Rome, Opposition always stirred him to defiant, hostile action.
With the ending of the Triumvirate on January 1st, 32 B.C.,
and the beginning of Antony's great mobilisation at Ephesus, the
situation became startlingly clear to the people of Rome, and the
city was seething with excitement. On that date the Senate met,
and the new Consul, Sossius, greatly daring, delivered a speech in
praise of Antony and in denunciation of Octavian who had gone
out of town to mark by so doing the termination of his tenure of
office as Triumvir. The speech has not been preserved, but it is to
be supposed that he enumerated Antony's causes of complaint, and
asked the senators to invite him to return so that he might be given
special powers to reorganise the whole empire; and he told them,
no doubt, that if by blind adherence to Octavian they were to give
Antony cause for fear for his own position, a sanguinary war would
result* , ,
When this speech was reported to Octavian he at once convened
the Senate again, and, on the appointed day, entered the assembly
412
MARC ANTONY
guarded by soldiers and by a large company of his supporters, all of
whom carried daggers concealed beneath their robes. 7 Seating him-
self upon his chair of state between the two Consuls, he addressed
the anxious senators, accusing Antony and Sossius of being en-
gaged in a plot to overthrow the Republic; but when his words
were received in nervous silence, nobody daring to take sides, he
declared in anger that he would bring documentary proof before
the House at its next meeting in a few days' time. This speech
was regarded as tantamount to a declaration of war in defence of
Rome, and within a day or so Ahenobarbus and Sossius, the two
Consuls, together with several of the leading supporters of Antony,
secretly left the city and made their way to Brindisi where they
took ship for Greece to join their chief.
Octavian, now thirty-one years of age, was no longer the rash
and hesitating opportunist of earlier days. The turmoil and racket
of his strangely fated career had accustomed him to life's alarms,
and he was able to think clearly in a situation fraught with dan-
gers. The silent reception of his speech in the Senate revealed to
him, perhaps for the first time, the extent of Antony's following
in Rome; and with admirable cunning he decided to direct his
attack not against his popular rival but against Cleopatra. Rapidly
he spread the story that this unholy Queen of Egypt had set her
dark heart upon the conquest of Rome, and with this object in
view had bewitched the easy-going Antony by her voluptuous
charms, assisted by magic, so that he was no more than her slave.
He said that her common form of asseveration was "As surely as
I shall one day reign in the Capitol in Rome** ; and he told of her
skill in enchantment, and how, for instance, she wore that magic
ring which enabled her to remain sober while Antony, drinking
with her, passed into oblivion.
He then issued an edict which had as its object the removal
from the city of all those who would be likely to work against
him: he announced that every senator who wished to leave Rome
and go over to Antony might do so without hindrance. He was
not prepared, however, for the great exodus which immediately
took place; and when some four hundred senators promptly left
Rome in a body to follow the two Consuls across the Adriatic, he
7 Dion Cassius, 1, 2.
MARC ANTONY 413
must have received an unpleasant shock. The numbers of the
Senate, however, had been greatly increased since the days of Sulla,
who had raised them to six hundred; and the departing four hun-
dred represented considerably less than half the assembly. It speaks
highly for Antony's prestige, nevertheless, that so large a company
of Rome's legislators should thus have placed their trust in him
and their fortunes in his hands, and should have left their homes and
their families in order to associate themselves with him. Allowing
for the numbers of like-minded senators who yet did not dare to take
the step, it may be supposed that more than half the Senate was
really on Antony's side, in spite of his long absences from the
capital, and in spite of the stories spread against him particularly
in regard to his relations with Cleopatra and his desire to found
a Roman throne for himself and her.
But if Octavian were disturbed by this debacle, Antony must
also have been dealt a serious blow by the sudden flight of two
of his most trusted friends, who slipped away from him and went
over to Octavian. These two were Plancus and Titius. Plancus was
last seen by us, it will be recalled, dancing about at one of the
Alexandrian parties, painted blue in an impersonation of a sea-
god: he had been the foremost of Antony's boon-companions, and
having apparently fallen foul of the Queen, he carried to Rome an
exaggerated tale of her influence over her lover which may well
have almost raised the hair on the heads of conservative Romans.
Tititis was the man who had put Sextus Pompeius to death, and it
may be that he had quarrelled with Antony in regard to the assign-
ing of blame for that unpopular act. But whatever may have been
their personal reasons for their departure, their change of sides
must have been the cause of misgiving to Antony. Could it be pos-
sible, he may well have asked himself, that these two men supposed
Octavian to have a chance of victory? He could hardly believe it,
surrounded as he was by Roman legionaries and foreign soldiers in
number like the sands of the sea*
From all directions fighting forces were trooping into Ephesus
in response to his general call to arms. From Asia Minor came
King Tarcondemus (or Tarcondimotus) of Upper Cilicia, and the
young King Archelaus of Cappadocia whom Antony had raised to
the throne in 36 B.C. as a tribute to the charms of his mother,
4 i 4 MARC ANTONY
Glaptiyra. The Cilicians and Cappadocians, with the Carians, were
known as "the three bad Cs"; and the troops which these kings
brought with them must have been little better than brigands. Phila-
delphus, King of Paphlagonia, Amyntas, King of a part of Galatia
and Lycaonia, and Deiotarus, King of the other part of Galatia,
and son of the monarch of the same name who had been restored to
his throne by Antony shortly after Caesar's death, were three other
sovereigns of Asia Minor who arrived with their contingents of
troops; while King Polemo of Pontus and Armenia Minor, though
unable to come in person, sent strong bodies of his celebrated
javelin-throwers and light cavalry. The rulers of Bithynia, Phrygia,
Pamphylia, Lydia, Lycia, Mysia, and other districts of Asia Minor,
also provided their contingents of fighting men. Sadalas and Rhce-
metalces, joint Kings of Thrace, arrived at the head of their world-
renowned slingers; and the Athenians, Boeotians, Spartans, Mace-
donians, Thessalians, Rhodians, and other Greek nations, sent
their still famous soldiery; while from Crete came a body of the
unequalled bowmen of that island.
Mithradates, King of Commagene, the successor of that mon-
arch whom Antony had besieged in Samosata, rode in with his
contribution of men. King Herod of Judaea sent a contingent of
Jewish troops; the soldiers of Syria were led in by their Roman
officers; Bang lamblicus of Emesa (Horns) and other kings of the
Syrian desert and Sabsea (Sheba) 8 each provided a picturesque
quota. King Artavasdes of Media had already supplied a force of
mounted archers, and from his new realm of Armenia he now sent
further detachments of light cavalry. Even from the shores of the
far-off Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea, came an unruly band of
soldiers. 9
From North Africa arrived King Bogud of Mauretania, son of
that Bocchus who betrayed Jugurtha, bringing with him the flower
of his army; Libyan troops and the warriors of Cyrene made the
long voyage across the sea at Cleopatra's command; and from
the Queen's own country came troops of Greeks, Egyptians, Ethio-
pians, and Bedouins. The Roman legions included men recruited
in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Illyria; and there were divisions of
Gallic and German cavalry.
"Florus, iv, xi 'Plutarch: Antony*
MARC ANTONY 415
The total land-forces at his disposal not counting four le-
gions left in Egypt, four in Cyrene, three in Syria, and many
others at different strategic points amounted to between a hundred
and a hundred and fifty thousand men ; and against this Octavian
could muster no more than eighty thousand, drawn from Italy,
Sicily, Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, and parts of North Africa. Antony's
ships numbered at least eight hundred, of which five hundred were
men-o'-war 10 ; but Octavian, according to Plutarch, had only two
hundred and fifty first class fighting ships and a collection of other
vessels, which brought his total fighting-force up to about four
hundred.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Antony was confident of
victory ; and he must have felt himself already to be the sovereign
lord of the world as he reviewed these troops who had come to
him from the corners of the earth, watched the legions of Rome
march before him in their tens of thousands, received the respectful
salutations of the vassal kings, presided over the meetings of the
four hundred senators who had now arrived at Ephesus, gave his
orders to the two Consuls, the highest magistrates of Rome, and all
the while enjoyed the loving attentions of Cleopatra, Queen of
Kings, who, with admiration in her eyes, saw him thus transform-
ing her dreams into reality. There can be no doubt that she loved
him now to the depth of her capacity; for glory, magnificence,
majesty, and power were the gods of her woman's heart, and Antony
was ringed about with these in such a blaze of splendour that
his hours of simple and intimate relaxation at her side or in her
arms were a source of boundless pride to her and pride in the
loved-one is a very root of love.
When Octavian*s defiant actions, and his libels upon Cleopatra,
were reported to Antony he responded by sending a bill of di-
vorcement to Octavia, at the same time ordering her to leave his
house in Rome, which she did, taking with her her own three chil-
dren by Marcellus, Julus, Antony's second son by Fulvia, and his
two daughters, Antonia the Elder and Antonia the Younger. She
wept bitterly as she took her departure; but, in view of the stories
which had been spread of Antony's bewitchment by Cleopatra,
"the Romans pitied her not so much as they pitied him, and more
** Plutarch: Antony*
416 MARC ANTONY
particularly those who had seen Cleopatra, whom they reported to
have no sort of advantage over Octavia, either In youth or in
beauty/' 11 Cleopatra, indeed, was not remarkably beautiful, though
it seems that she carried well her thirty-seven years : her attractions,
as I have already said, lay in her beautiful voice, her grace, her
elegance, her brilliance, her brains, her wit, and her general charm;
and with these the unfashionable Octavia's good looks and docile
nature could not compete.
It must be mentioned in passing that history tells us nothing
more of Antony's mother, Julia, after her visit to her son at Athens
in 40 B.C., eight years ago. If she were still alive she would now
have been nearly seventy years of age; but being herself a Caesar
and a kinswoman of the great Dictator, she would have been in
no danger of molestation in Rome or anywhere else. It is not unlike-
ly that she was spending the evening of her life in Athens,
Towards the end of April of this year 32 B.C. Antony trans-
ferred his headquarters to Samos, the historic city on the island of
the same name, lying off the western coast of Asia Minor not more
than twelve miles, as the crow flies, from Ephesus ; and here he cele-
brated a great festival of some kind. The city was famous for its
beautiful buildings, amongst which was the Temple of Hera, the
goddess of marriage, which was supposed to mark the site where
she was wedded to Zeus. We are not told the nature of Antony's
festival, although Plutarch states that "the island resounded for
some days with the music of pipes and harps/* and that "every
city sent an ox as its contribution to the sacrifices" ; but I venture
to suggest that the celebrations were those of the marriage of An-
tony and Cleopatra according to Greek or Roman law now that
their union had been made legal by the divorce of Oetavia, for it is
surely more than a coincidence that they should have thus held
high festival at a renowned nuptial shrine just at the time when this
divorce enabled them to be joined in recognized matrimony, An-
tony, of course, had regarded Cleopatra as his wife for several years*
but their marriage had not been legal outside the sphere of Egyptian
law until now.
For these festivities Antony gathered all the stage players
from round about to entertain the company, and rewarded them af-
"Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 417
terwards by assigning them lands near the city of Priene, a few miles
south of Ephesus, thus founding a kind of theatrical colony. Mag-
nificent banquets were given during these days at Samos, and the
vassal kings are said to have vied with one another in the sumptu-
ousness of their entertainments.
In May Antony sailed with Cleopatra across the ^Egsean Sea to
Athens, giving orders to the army to follow him into Greece so that a
new concentration might be made on the coast opposite Italy. Now
Octavia had made herself very popular with the Athenians during
her residence there while waiting for Antony's return; and Cleo-
patra therefore felt it incumbent upon her to court public favour
so that Antony's change of partners might be understood. So suc-
cessful was she in this that the Athenians presently decreed her
all sorts of civic honours; and Antony came under a good deal
of criticism because, on the occasion of the sending of the humble
deputation to her to confer upon her these honours, he insisted upon
being its leader and making a speech to her. It was considered very
droll of him by some, and very undignified of him by others, in
view of the fact that he was the prospective lord of creation; but
he caused an even greater sensation shortly afterwards by going
over to her at a public banquet and affectionately patting her feet.
People commented* too, on the way he followed her about; and it
was said that when they were away from one another, even for a
few hours, they were always exchanging tender little notes and mes-
sages*
Here at Athens, in fact, they were enjoying a belated honey-
moon; and Antony, at the age of fifty-one, was at last in love to
distraction. She was now his wife in the eyes of the entire world,
and he was immensely proud of her. Her success in winning the af-
fection of the Athenians seemed to prove to him that nobody could
resist her; and he felt sure that she would one day have the heart
of the good citizens of Rome at her feet as now she had that of
the people of Athens. Ephesus, too, during their short stay there,
had gone mad about her, and in the streets had shouted at her that
they wanted her for their queen. He felt that he could not do
enough for her; and he looked forward with eagerness to the day
when he would be able to enthrone her at his side as sovereign lady
of the whole earth.
4 i8 MARC ANTONY
Meanwhile in Rome Octavian was suffering from the fears
which had followed his bold movement towards warfare, and was
collecting his forces at the highest possible speed, believing that
Antony would attack before the summer was gone. There is some in-
dication 12 that he attempted to exact from all the cities of Italy
an oath of fidelity to him; and he certainly imposed a heavy tax
all round, demanding an eighth of the total property of the rich,
and a quarter of the income of the small landowners. This, of
course, led to riots and bloodshed which he suppressed with a
heavy hand, his pitilessness serving him now in good stead, for he
soon inspired the refractory elements with a blanched and open-
mouthed dread of him little short of petrifaction.
At the same time, however, he made himself as condescending
and gracious to his supporters as his callous nature would permit,
and he went out of his way to win those whose friendship was
doubtful. To Asinius Pollio, Antony's former governor of Macedon-
ia, for instance, he offered a command in his army; but this old gen-
eral, who had been in retirement for some years, made a reply
which is worthy of notice. 13 "No," he said, "my services to Antony
are too great; his kindnesses to me are too notorious: I must keep
aloof from this war and be the prey of the conqueror/*
The renegades Plancus and Titius had both been witnesses of
the will which Antony had made in the previous year before set-
ting out for Armenia; and they now told Octavian of the contents
of the document and revealed that it had been secretly deposited
with the Vestal Virgins in Rome, it being customary to place im-
portant legal papers of this kind in the keeping of these sacrosanct
nuns. Octavian at once caused the will to be seized by force, al-
though an act of this kind was sacrilege; and, taking it to the
Senate, he read to that assembly the clauses which in his opinion
were likely to tell against his rival. The document, however, bore the
impress of a sincerity by which only Octavian himself was too
obtuse to be touched ; and Plutarch tells us that many of the senators
expressed the opinion that Octavian's action was scandalous, and
"they deemed it unfair, in any case, to call a man to account for
what was not to be until after his death/* In this will Antony had
13 Monumentum Ancyranum, v, 3 and 4. It was Ferrero who noticed the point*
"Velleius, u, Ixxxvi.
MARC ANTONY 419
stated that his children by Cleopatra were to be his co-heirs with
Qesarion, whom he declared to be the rightful son and heir of
Csssar " ; and he asked that his body should be carried to Alexandria
and laid to rest in the tomb wherein Cleopatra was also to lie.
Few thought the less of Antony for the terms of this testa-
ment, but many saw in it a confirmation of the Queen's mysterious
power over the great general, and they were ready enough to be-
lieve the tales which Octavian was assiduously spreading. He de-
clared that Antony had allowed the people of Ephesus to hail
Cleopatra as their queen, thereby indicating that he was going to
add this part of Asia Minor to her dominions; he said which was
quite true that Antony had made her a present of the great li-
brary of Pergtimus, consisting of nearly a quarter of a million
books, which ought to have been sent to Rome; and he repeated with
awful gravity the story that the Queen had given love-potions to
Antony to drink, which had bereft the poor fellow of his senses,
so that nowadays her very ladies-in-waiting, Iras and Charmion,
were amongst his chief councillors, and were the generals whom
they would have to fight.
Antony's friends in Rome and they were still many at
length decided that they must warn him of the great danger of
this propagation of hatred against Cleopatra and contemptuous pity
for Antony for his subservience to her: they felt that the Queen's
presence at his side was likely to ruin his cause, and that he ought
to be urged to send her back to Egypt at once to await the issue of
the war. They therefore deputed one of themselves, an important
personage named Geminius, to go over to Athens to try to per-
suade Antony to separate himself from her for the time being;
but when this well-meaning envoy arrived there and made it
known that he had something of a secret nature to say to Antony,
all the staff regarded him as a spy, and treated him with studied
rudeness at those daily banquets in the house of Antony and Cleo-
patra to which his high standing gave him entrance.
One day, however, when most of the company were slightly
intoxicated, somebody brought the matter into the open by drunken-
ly demanding to know what was the business on which Geminius had
"Dion Ctwlu., I, 3. There i. no mention of Antyllus, but doubtless he figured in
the will BWgt the co-heirs, and probably Julua too.
420 MARC ANTONY
come; and to this, having lost his patience, he blurted out a
truthful reply. "I will keep most of what I have to say for a so-
berer hour," he declared, "but this much I will say here and now,
drunk or sober all will be well if Queen Cleopatra will go back
to Egypt!"
Antony turned upon him in anger and surprise; but Cleopatra,
her voice icy with resentment, said: "You are wise to have told
your secret, Geminius, without having to be put to torture/* The
unfortunate man, no doubt, was given an opportunity next day
of explaining his mission to Antony; but the advice from Rome
fell on deaf ears; and, in fear of his life, Geminius fled from
Athens. 15
With that began a struggle, partly hidden, partly open, which
caused Antony's headquarters to become a hotbed of intrigue, and
introduced a dark element of suspicion into all future discussions
of plans and policy. From that hour there was no peace for Antony:
Geminius, he discovered to his astonishment, had expressed the
views not only of his friends in Rome but of the majority of the
Roman senators and officers who were here with him. These men
saw clearly that Octavian's cunning in arousing the resentment
of the people at home against Cleopatra was a master-stroke
which could only be countered by the Queen's retirement from ac-
tive participation in the war. They knew that If the struggle
were to be kept as a direct issue between the two great Roman
commanders, each desiring simply the political leadership in the
Republic, victory was pretty well assured to Antony, and, indeed*
bloodshed on a large scale might be wholly avoided. He was far
more popular than Octavian; and if he were to present himself to
the yearning gaze of distracted Rome as democracy's hero coming
to restore peace and prosperity to the Republic, there might well
be a landslide in his favour. But the presence of royal Cleopatra
at Antony's side gave Octavian the opportunity to pose as the de-
fender of Rome against foreign monarchistic aggression, and
placed in his hands a deadly weapon.
Octavian could say, and, in fact, was saying, that Cleopatra
was bent upon establishing herself and Antony as actual sovereigns
of the eastern empire over which they already ruled, and that she
"Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 421
Lucius seemed to have ruined his prestige in Rome, and his hopes
of returning there to settle triumphantly the dispute between them
and Octavian between the landowners and the veteran soldiers
had to be abandoned. He had no money to take home; and money
was the essential factor. The funds which he had expected to receive
from Cleopatra had been greatly reduced, I suppose, because of the
needs of the Queen herself in placing her country in a state of
defence against the Parthians ; and whatever amount he had been
able to procure from her was now required for the war against these
invaders here in Asia Minor. Moreover, matters, in any case, had
gone too far in Italy to be so simply set to rights.
It will be recalled that Octavian had shut up Antony's brother,
Lucius, in Perugia, and had wrecked his and Fulvia's foolish at-
tempt to rid themselves of him by forming a militant coalition of
democrats and republicans. After a long but hopeless siege Peru-
gia had surrendered early in March; and Octavian, being anxious
not to rupture his relations with Antony for good and all, had al-
lowed Lucius to go unmolested into retirement, at the same time,
however, showing the utmost severity to the other prisoners, sen-
tencing great numbers to death, and, to those who implored his
mercy, making but one invariable reply: "You must die." * It
was said that he had actually selected three hundred of the half-
starved citizens, and had slaughtered them before the altar of the
deified Csesar on the anniversary of the Ides of March, as a sort of
human sacrifice; but we may infer from the words of Suetonius that
this story lacked confirmation.
Antony's family, and the few of his highly-placed officers who
had lent support to this armed movement against Octavian, had been
allowed to betake themselves unmolested out of the country, for
Octavian had persisted in his refusal to annoy his colleague by
punishing any one of them, and, indeed, his troops would never have
allowed him to harm a relative or friend of the popular Triumvir.
Antony's mother, Julia, now a woman of over sixty, had taken
fright, however, and had crossed the sea to Sicily, where she had
placed herself under the protection of the gallant and picturesque
Sextus Pompeius, who was still leading his sea-roving life as the
pro-republican commander of an independent fleets The ill-starred
a Suetotiias: Augustus, xv.
422 MARC ANTONY
and officially cursing the Queen of Egypt and all her works. 16
"He had made no declaration of war against Antony himself,"
writes Dion Cassius, "knowing that he would be made an enemy in
any case, since he was certainly not going to betray Cleopatra
and take up Octavian' s cause; and, indeed, it was desired that
this additional reproach should be placed upon him, that he had
of his own free will gone to war against his country in behalf
of this Egyptian woman, although no provocation had been offered
him, personally, by his countrymen." Nevertheless, he, Octavian,
deprived him officially of his authority, on the grounds that he had
allowed a foreign queen to exercise it in his stead 17 ; but this action
meant little to Antony, of course, who had the two Consuls and a
great part of the Senate with him at Athens and could snap his
fingers at the assembly in Rome.
The leader of the party in Athens which advocated the re-
tirement of the Queen to Egypt so that the issue between Antony
and Octavian might be clarified, was the Consul Domirius Aheno-
barbus whose sympathies had always been stoutly republican and
who had been concerned, it will be recalled, in the conspiracy
against Caesar. He was a Roman aristocrat of the old school, and
his training had imbued him with so proud a republican disdain
for all foreign royalty that he would never address Cleopatra
by her title, but only by her name, 1S as though to emphasise the
fact that she was now simply the wife of a plain Roman magis-
trate. The news from Rome made him all the more eager to be
rid of the Queen, so that Antony might give the lie to Octavian
and might, indeed, make a fool of the young man by telling him
that Cleopatra, against whom alone war had been declared, had
returned to far-off Egypt to await the threatened attack an at-
tack which could not be delivered without exposing Italy, almost
defenceless, to Antony's invasion* Ahenobarbus, therefore, im-
plored his chief to send her away; but his appeal was received with
a distracted but absolute refusal.
Antony, indeed, was in a terrible dilemma. He saw the
force of these arguments, but against them he could advance the
plea that Cleopatra, as his wife, as the "widow" of Caesar, and
"Dion Cassias, 1, 4 and 6. "Plutarch: Anton*
11 Velleius, ii, Ixxxiv.
?' .Mif'.l 'I\''*lilr;Alil
^$mmii'
OCTAVIAN
Copenhagen
MARC ANTONY 423
as the mother of Caesar's child, was too deeply involved in this
business to withdraw from it, even if he could do without her aid
in ships, supplies, and money. Supposing he were to tell her to go,
what would she think? She would think that he was a traitor, aban-
doning her cause in the interests of his own ambitions ; and his love
for her did not permit him to tolerate the thought of hurting her
thus. She would suppose that he had in mind an accommodation with
Octavian, another patching up of their quarrel which, in the event
of Antony's death or loss of power, would leave her and her boy at
the mercy of this cold and heartless ruler of Rome. Her life, Caesar-
ion's life, and all their hopes of safety and happiness, depended
upon Antony and upon the removal of Octavian from their path.
But, apart from these considerations, he wanted her to be
with him because he loved her, and he believed that she loved
him. His destiny had gradually become so linked with hers that
he could not so much as consider an existence bereft of her pres-
ence. He needed her beside him; and all else in life, even his vast
ambitions* had become secondary to this overwhelming necessity.
The mere suggestion that she should leave him, moreover, had
aroused, one may suppose, such a passion of anger and dismay in
her that he could not discuss the matter with her nor face the re-
buke in her eyes and the heart-breaking lash of her tongue.
I think she must have said to him, that, so far as she was con-
cerned, the matter of the creation of a Roman throne for herself
and him could be relegated to the far future, since all she wanted
was to be relieved of this gnawing dread of Octavian which haunted
her thoughts by day and night. Octavian had let it be known that
there could not be two Caesars in the world, there could not be, that
is to say, an Octavian and a Gssarion now that the latter was about
to come of age ; and her one supreme desire was that Antony should
rid her life of this menace, even though in doing so he would have
to abandon all immediate thought of the dreamed-of throne of the
world.
Be this as it may, Antony now told his Roman supporters that
it was his chief purpose to re-establish the Republic, and he gave
them the promise that immediately after victory had been assured
he would place himself entirely in the hands of the Senate, so that
the Roman People might decide in what future capacity he should
424 MARC ANTONY
act. He was able to say this with confidence and I think he must
have had Cleopatra's approval in saying it because there was no
real doubt in his mind that the extinction of Octavian, followed
by the long deferred conquest of Parthia, would throw up a wave
of enthusiasm for him which would carry him of itself to the desired
throne. 19
These protestations, However, did not mend the rift; and Ahen-
obarbus and his party continued with such vehemence to urge
him to send Cleopatra away that the enemy's spies seem to have
reported to Rome the likelihood of her immediate departure, and
to have set Octavian thinking of the possibility of attacking her
in her own country. Antony was harassed by these angry differences
of opinion which were causing the Queen often to show towards
him a mistrust and a defiant contempt most devasting to their
loving companionship ; and it seems that on many an occasion he
turned for comfort to the wine-cup, and drank himself into a con-
dition of quiescence. Cleopatra, as has been said, was a woman of
great tenacity of purpose, and she was determined to prevent Antony
from passing under the influence either of those who even now saw
the possibility of a compromise between him and Octavian, or of
those who desired him to assert his democratic standing by severing
his connection with her. With this purpose in view she refused
to consider the matter of her departure, but at the same time gave
Antony no peace : she wounded him by withdrawing her love from
him; she maddened him by her tearful mistrust; she alternately
froze him by quarrels and melted him by passionate reconciliations*
In her anxious state of mind her own disposition became
soured, and, suspecting enmity in all around her, she made enemies
right and left. Ahenobarbus withdrew himself, insulted, from her
society ; Marcus Silanus, half-brother of Brutus, but a firm Caesarian
and friend of Antony, took his departure from Athens; and Dellius
was so estranged that he, too, contemplated a return to Rome
the first cause of the quarrel being in his case no more than a remark
of his that Cleopatra offered him wine of a poorer quality than that
given by Octavian to his servants,
Antony ought to have struck at his rival in the early summer
39 Octavian in the end obtained the throne, a fact which indicates that Rome wa*
ready for it
MARC ANTONY 425
while he was yet unprepared and while Italy was seething with
discontent at the taxes just imposed; but these troubles in his own
camp dislocated his plans. Moreover, he had sent his agents over to
Rome, well provided with money, to stir up rebellion there and to
win adherents to his cause; and the reports of their activities were
so promising that he believed delay to be in his favour. It was a
serious mistake ; for the disaffection around him in regard to Cleo-
patra was increasing more rapidly than were Rome's mutinous senti-
ments in regard to Octavian. At length, however, at midsummer,
he sent his transports and a fleet of two hundred of his largest
battleships, including the Egyptian squadron, to the Gulf of Am-
bracia (Arta), just to the south of Epirus on the western coast of
Greece, opposite the toe of Italy, there to prepare for the attack 20 ;
and early in the autumn he transferred his headquarters to Patrse
(Patras) on the west coast of Achaia, just south of the narrow en-
trance of the Gulf of Corinth, this town being a port much used in
passengeMniffic between Italy and Greece.
At the same time, however, he placed ships and men at Corcyra
(Corfu) and Leucadia (Santa Maura) islands to the north and
south of the Gulf of Ambracia; at Methone (Modon) on the south-
west coast of Greece; at Cape Tsenarium (Matapan) in southern
Greece, below Sparta; and he increased the force in Cyrene on the
opposite coast of North Africa, and presumably, sent men and
ships to the western ports of Crete, These dispositions, which can
only have been intended to defend the east-end of the Mediterra-
nean from attack, indicate that he had reason to believe that Octa-
vian, thinking Cleopatra would be forced to return to her own coun-
try, was seriously contemplating the expedition to Egypt, or a feint
in that direction made plausible by the fact that he was nominally
at war only with that country* It is possible, indeed, that while both
commanders really expected the final clash to take place in the
Adriatic, Octavian was anxious to distract Antony's attention from
that area by appearing to wish to strike at Alexandria itself, and
Antony was anxious to give the impression that he had been hood-
winked by this maneuver and was moving south to meet it.
At all events winter here intervened, and the war had to be
Ptomi t iv, *!, gives 200 At tmmter, and this seems a probable figure for
the big fighting
426 MARC ANTONY
postponed until the spring. It was a winter overshadowed for An-
tony by a cloud of misunderstandings and quarrels with Cleopatra
which reduced him to a condition of such misery that he seems to
have been as often drunk as sober. He knew that her presence was
ruining his cause; he saw that in her state of nervous irritation she
was becoming more and more unpopular with his Roman supporters,
if not with the vassal Kings and princes; he heard continuously
of the growing hatred of her in Rome, nurtured by those ridiculous
tales of her vices, her cruelty, her arrogance, and so forth, which
Octavian was gathering about her and which have survived to this
day to blacken her memory. Yet he could not bring himself to capit-
ulate to the force of public opinion and bid her go, since her retire-
ment to Egypt would mean that he might not see her for a year or
more, and would perhaps end for ever their mutual love and trust.
He was haunted, moreover, during this winter by an increasing
dread of the uncanny Octavian who again was emerging, trium-
phant, from his difficulties, and whose mysteriously growing
strength was being heralded or followed by strange portents and
omens which were reported to him from time to time, or which he
saw with his own eyes. The Temple of Hercules, his divine ancestor,
in this town of Patrse where he was staying, was struck by lightning,
and a cyclone at Athens threw down a figure of Dionysus, the god
with whom he was identified, and damaged two statues inscribed
with his name. Some swallows which frequented the rigging of
Cleopatra's flagship, the Antonias, were attacked by other birds and
driven off. At Pisaurum (Pesaro), on the east coast of Italy, a settle*
ment of ex-soldiers founded by Antony was destroyed by an earth*
quake; and at Alba a statue of him oozed moisture like a bloody
sweat.
A wolf entered the Temple of Fortune in Rome and was caught
and killed, and a strange dog which had invaded the Roman race-
course was killed by a local dog both of which occurrences in*
dicated the coming destruction of the enemy* Somebody's pet mon-
key entered the Temple of Ceres, and tumbled the sacred furniture
about before it was caught; and a large snake frightened many
people in Etruria, but was killed by a flash of lightning, Some
Roman boys, playing a game in which they called themselves An*
tonians, were defeated by their opponents who had named them*
MARC ANTONY 427
selves after Octavian an incident which indicates, by the way,
that Antony was still a hero amongst the youth of the capital.
These and many other ominous occurrences spread an intangi-
ble feeling of depression throughout Antony's headquarters; but
it would be a mistake to suppose that there was any real alarm
or any serious doubts of ultimate victory. Antony, though drink-
ing heavily and obviously worried almost to the point of frenzy
by Cleopatra's doubts and fears, was still the greatest and most
beloved figure in the world, and the expectation was still general
that his progress to the dizzy summit of mortal ambition could not
now be checked.
CHAPTER XX
The Battle of Actium and the Return of Antony and Cleopatra to Egypt*
31-30 B.C.
THE Gulf of Ambracia, or Arta as it is now called, is more
than a natural harbour: it is a lake-like inlet of the sea, twenty-
five miles long and ten wide, entered from the open water through
a narrow mouth varying from seven hundred yards to half a mile
in width. The south side of this mouth is formed by the promontory
of Actium, the north side by a tongue of land of which the ancient
name has been forgotten. The Gulf provided excellent winter-
quarters for Antony's transports and the main battle-fleet of two
hundred ships, and by placing strong garrisons on the two sides of
the entrance he was able to feel that these vessels were safe from at-
tack, although, as a matter of fact, Octavian did consider such an
enterprise, and was only deterred by bad weather.
During the winter, however, the fleet suffered serious losses by
an epidemic of some kind * which took a heavy toll of lives, its
ravages having been the more widespread because of the under-
feeding of the men, food being difficult to obtain in the
country round about. Many of the galley-slaves had deserted ; and
although the officers had seized upon farm-labourers, herdsmen,
and even unsuspecting wayfarers, and had pressed them into ser-
vice at the oars, the crews of the big battleships were incomplete
and all were out of training.
Meanwhile, the beginning of the new year, 31 B.C, found An-
tony still at Patrse, which place, though on the south side of the
Gulf of Corinth, was close to the narrow straits between the pro-
montories of Rhium and Anti-Rhium, whence a three or four days*
march north-westwards would take him to the Gulf of Ambracia* It
seems that he was now not sure whether Octavian would divide his
'Dion Cassius, 1, 11.
428
MARC ANTONY 429
forces and send a strong expedition to Egypt, or whether he would
bring his main army over to southern Greece, south of Patrse, or to
Epirus, north of the Gulf of Ambracia, or, again, whether he would
retain his ships and men on the east-coast of Italy, in the neighbour-
hood of Brindisi, and wait to be attacked.
Antony's dispositions provided against all these contingencies;
and towards the beginning of spring he must have watched anxious-
ly and impatiently, endeavouring to discover his enemy's plans.
He knew, at any rate, that if the attack on Egypt were launched,
Octavian would assuredly attempt to occupy points in southern
Greece, Crete, and Cyrene to protect his expeditionary fleet; and
it was for this reason that strong forces of ships and men had been
left to defend these areas. He must have hoped that Octavian would
undertake this adventure, for then he, Antony, would be able
to launch an attack on Italy from the Gulf of Ambracia or Epirus.
Early in March messengers suddenly arrived in Patrse with
the news that an enemy fleet, under the command of Octavian's
lieutenant, Agrippa, had appeared before Methone in southern
Greece; and soon the tidings came that that port had been cap-
tured, and that King Bogud of Mauretania, whose troops were
garrisoned there, had been killed, Antony, though disturbed by
this defeat, was probably relieved by what he supposed to be the
partial disclosing of the enemy's plans, and at once prepared to
send troops to the south to recapture Methone, and he made ready
to march in that direction himself with his main army if it should
prove that Octavian intended to make southern Greece the scene
of a decisive battle. 9
The enemy, however, had outwitted him; and while Antony s
attention was thus directed upon the south, news arrived from the
north that Octavian had descended in full force upon Corcyra
(Corfu), which had surrendered to him- He had then disembarked
his army on the coast of the mainland, and was marching at full
speed to the Gulf of Ambracia, The attack on southern Greece had
been a feint. Antony at once crossed the Gulf of Corinth and,
giving orders to his main army to come north with all speed, hur-
ried ahead to the point of danger; but when he arrived at the
mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, on both sides of which his gar-
risons were stationed, he found that Octavian had taken up his
430 MARC ANTONY
position on the northern side of the mouth, upon high ground now
called Mikalitzi, and then known as "The Ladle," just to the
north of Antony's own lines. This high ground, where afterwards
stood the city of Nicopolis, commanded a view, eastwards, of the
waters of the Gulf of Ambracia, and, westwards, of the open sea;
and between it and the latter, Octavian had thrown up defences
so as to retain touch with his fleet.
Here Antony at once besieged him, increasing his forces on
the northern tongue of land at the mouth of the Gulf, opposite
Actium, and sending his cavalry round the Gulf to hem him in
on the Ambracian side; but as the main army had not yet come
up from Patrse, and as the fleet in the Gulf was in such poor con-
dition, a full attack on the invaders could not be developed. Oc-
tavian then sent his fleet a few miles southwards to the island of
Leucadia, which, following the example of Corfu, surrendered to
him; and thus he obtained possession of the open sea in this area,
and more or less bottled up Antony's ill-conditioned fleet and
transports within the Gulf of Ambracia, although the Antonian
land forces had possession of the two sides of the mouth of the
Gulf. The position which therefore developed was curious: Octa-
vian's army was besieged in the narrow strip of land at the
northern end of the promontory which formed the north side of the
mouth of the Gulf; but Antony's fleet was trapped inside the Gulf
itself, for the two hundred battleships were in no shape to fight
Octavian's fleet which now numbered, all told, some four hundred
keels, 2 and lay for the most part anchored across the outside of the
Gulf's mouth.
Antony's poor generalship, of course, cannot be excused. He
ought to have invaded Italy in the previous autumn; or, having
failed to do so, he ought to have given his closest attention during
the winter to his fleet and its disposition, instead of leaving a great
part of it to deteriorate at its moorings in the Gulf, and the rest to
waste its time in guarding Egypt from a highly improbable attack*
There can be no question, in fact, that he had frittered away his
winter at Patne; and the only explanation I have to offer is that
his violent disputes with his Roman officers in regard to Cleopatra,
and his personal quarrels with her and consequent drinking-bouts,
a FIorus, iv, xi.
MARC ANTONY 431
had played havoc with his abilities as a commander, and that he
had allowed himself to underestimate his enemy and to drift along
in the confused belief that everything would be all right.
The situation, however, was not desperate; and when Cleo-
patra arrived with the main army at Actium, and heard the news,
she said with a laugh, "Dear me, we may well be frightened if
Octavian has got hold of a ladle!" The invaders' position was
precarious, and the troops which Antony sent round the Gulf to
attack The Ladle on the far side nearly succeeded in cutting off
their water supply which was obtained from the Charadrus, a river
flowing down from the north. Moreover, Octavian's fleet was al-
ways open to attack by Antony's other squadrons when they could
be recalled from the Mediterranean, and he failed to interfere with
the corn-ships which brought their supplies safely to Antony from
the east*
But a deadlock could not be avoided, since Octavian's defences
repelled all assaults; and though the thought of a renewed period
of waiting must have been very trying to Antony's nerves, he was
obliged to make the best of it. He was forced to form a great en-
campment on the promontory of Actium, where around him and
Cleopatra the vassal kings and princes, the Consuls and Senators,
the military and naval commanders, and the soldiers, camp-follow-
ers and slaves of scores of different nations, were herded together,
treading on one-another's toes, arguing with each other over the
distribution of food, squabbling about precedence and privilege,
and hotly debating the right thing to do. Octavian appeared to have
no intention of bestirring himself save to make his defences more
and more secure ; and at length when he felt that his position was
absolutely impregnable, he sent back to Rome for the entire body
of senators who had remained faithful to him, obliging them to
come across the sea to him in their hundreds. His object, one may
suppose, was to have them here under his eye, for fear lest in the
distant capital they might intrigue against him, or, weary of wait-
ing for something to happen, might attempt to restore peace by
a compromise*
Thus, the months of spring and summer went by, and small en-
gagements by sea or land, of no great importance, alone served
to break the monotony* Profound discontent developed in An-
432 MARC ANTONY
tony's camp; but in his own mind there was more than discontent >
there was confusion of thought and consequent misery. Cleopatra
no longer gave him her confidence or her respect; yet her disdain-
ful attitude seems only to have induced in him a greater depen-
dence upon her, a sort of dog-like devotion almost pitiful to be-
hold. He continued to be frequently drunk, and when sober, was
overwrought and quarrelsome.
The question as to whether she should go back to Egypt or not
had for the moment been shelved, because her fleet was im-
prisoned in the Gulf of Ambracia, and could not force its way to
the open sea without a naval engagement of the first magnitude,
while her return overland would be a dangerous undertaking in
view of possible revolts inspired by Octavian's ubiquitous agents
in the countries through which she would have to pass, and, in any
case, would give a very widespread impression that she was in
flight. She herself was now willing to go, 8 and to take her Egyptian
fleet with her, for she was worn out by her domestic quarrels, and
was beginning, moreover, to doubt Antony's ability to defeat Oc-
tavian in battle, her confidence in him having been disturbed by
numerous ill-omens and by the more trustworthy portent of the
state of his nerves. She knew that she was unpopular in the camp,
for Antony, in his outbursts of temper, had doubtless told her
some home truths ; and she must have realized by now that his cause,
which was hers also, would really be strengthened by her departure.
Moreover, in the event of disaster, she would be safer and of more
use in Egypt than here where she might be taken captive. Yet,
under the circumstances, she was obliged to stay on at Actium* and
to tolerate as best she could the nerve-racking quarrels and brief
reconciliations with the distracted Antony, life with whom was
at this time a tempestuous round of emotional crises- He loved her
passionately; and yet, so close is love to hate, their relationship
was like a skyscape of sun and thunderclouds shot through with
murderous flashes,
On a certain occasion he accused her of wishing to kill him,
and thereupon she resorted to a method of giving him the lie which
reveals the ferocious state of mind in which they were both passing
their days. One night at supper she handed him a cup containing
*Dion Cassius, I, 15.
MARC ANTONY 433
wine of which she herself had just drunk half; and as he was
raising it to his lips, happy at this gesture of reconciliation, she
took a flower from her hair and dipped it into the wine. Antony
was about to drink when she snatched the cup from his hand, and
told him that the contents were poisoned. In fear and astonishment
he asked her how this could be so, since she herself had just drunk
some of the wine; and for a moment he must have supposed that
she had intended to kill herself and him together. She thereupon
explained that the flower which she had dipped into the cup was
poisoned, and that she had chosen this method of proving to him
how easy it would be to murder him did she desire to do so. "I
could have killed you at any time," she smiled, "if I could have
done without you/' 4
The great contention which now exercised the camp was as
to whether it would be better to bring Octavian to battle by taking
the fleet out of the Gulf and engaging him in a naval action, or
by retiring inland, as Pompey had done in his war with Csesar, so
that a second Pharsalia might be fought out on a selected battle-
field* Cleopatra favoured a sortie from the Gulf and a fight at sea,
combined with an assault by land on The Ladle; for her Egyptian
$Wp$*of~war would thus gain the open water, and even if the battle
should go against them* she would probably be able to make good
her escape, whereas a defeat on an inland battlefield would mean
her speedy capture. The fight she had in mind, in fact, was one
which was about to be fought so that her Egyptian ships might
break out of their prison and take her home, away from an in-
tolerable situation. 8 She had no great hopes of victory, but if An-
tony should win she would still leave him for a while, her general
unpopularity being now apparent to her, and her desire being in-
tense to punish him by showing him her independence and her
real need of rest away from him*
Antony and his generals, however, were set upon a land-battle,
and with this object in view he sent Dellius and King Amyntas of
Galatia into Thrace to raise more cavalry, for he had received word
from Dicomes, King of the Getse (or Daci), whose realms extended
about the Danube, north of Thrace, offering to help him a mes*
*f t, 12,
*Botb Plutarch tod Dfott Ctttiui think this WAI her object.
434 MARC ANTONY
sage which had greatly heartened him. The Consul Domitius Aheno-
barbus, whose personal dislike of Cleopatra led him always to op-
pose her advice, was in full agreement with Antony in regard to
the desirability of an inland battle, in spite of the fact that he
would be rid of her more surely by means of a naval engagement;
and the fact that he and Antony were now making their plans to-
gether for a retreat into the interior, with the object of drawing
Octavian after them, led to renewed quarrels between the Queen
and her husband.
Antony was completely distracted by the furious scenes which
ensued around the private council-table the impassioned demands
of Cleopatra that the blockade should be broken and her Egyptian
fleet released to sail away with her to her own country, and the
equally urgent insistence of Ahenobarbus and other generals that
the army should move inland, and, if necessary, let the ships in
the Gulf be destroyed. "It would not be any kind of disparage-
ment to Antony," these generals contended, "to yield the sea to
Octavian who, in the wars with Sextus Pompeius, had had such
long practice in naval warfare; but, on the contrary, it would be
simply ridiculous for Antony, who was by land the most experienced
commander living, to make no use of his well-disciplined and
numerous legions, but to scatter and waste his forces by parcelling
them out in the battleships." 8
There must have been in the end some violent rupture and
patched up peace between Antony and Cleopatra in this regard;
for suddenly Antony agreed to postpone the plans for a land-
battle until after he had tried his luck at sea. What happened we
do not know: Plutarch states laconically that "Cleopatra pre-
vailed," and we are left to picture Antony, urged by his wife's
tears and appeals, at last giving way to her, though he knew ia his
heart that he was bringing about their separation in doing so. He
was too deeply in love with her, too heartbroken by their estrange-
ment, too weary of their quarrels, to stand up to her any longer:
he would have to let her go. At the same time, however, he seems
to have insisted that Cleopatra should take with her only a few
of her ships, and that most of her powerful men*o**war should be
used by him in the naval battle.
'Plutarch: Antony.
MARC ANTONY 435
It was in the month of August that he came to this decision
ind communicated it to Ahenobarbus, explaining to him, no doubt,
that he did not feel it to be an honourable course after all the
ielp in money and arms which Cleopatra had contributed, to leave
ler Egyptian fleet shut up in the Gulf, where it faced the risk of
destruction by Oetavian*s ships as soon as the supporting army
lad been withdrawn into the interior. Ahenobarbus was suffering
from a slight fever at the time, and, upon hearing that his advice
lad been overruled, he told Antony that he would go for a short
>ea~journey in the Gulf to recover his health and his equanimity.
He boarded a small sailing-ship that same day, and never returned.
He went straight across the water to the mouth of the river Char-
adrus, presented himself before the enemy's lines, and so was con-
ducted to Octavian with whom he made his peace.
When it became known in Antony's camp that the Consul had
deserted there must have been something like a panic. It was a
crushing blow, and it struck fear into every heart, for it was felt
that if a man of the importance of Ahenobarbus had elected to go
over to the enemy, Qctavian's chances must have appeared to
him, with his inside knowledge, to be much better than those of
Antony- Rumour said, too, that the Consul had been driven to
this step by Cleopatra's insolence; and the general dislike of the
Queen was thereby increased, Antony was staggered by the deser-
tion, but he behaved with great magnanimity towards the traitor,
and sent after him a ship containing all his baggage and effects and
all his suite and slaves. The example of Ahenobarbus was speedily
followed by other important personages* Philadelphus, King of
Paphlagonia, and King Deiotarus of Galatia, both deserted, and
went ovf r to Octavian ; and shortly afterwards King lamblicus of
Emesa and a senator named Quintus Postumius were caught in the
act of making their escape to the enemy. To these latter Antony,
in his anxiety, showed no mercy: both were put to death by torture.
The desertion of Deiotarus caused him to fear that the other
royal Galatian, King Amyntas, might prove also to be untrust-
worthy, more especially since he now heard that Dellius, who
was accompanying Amyntas on the above-mentioned mission to
Thrace to raise reinforcements, was nursing a grievance against
Cleopatra, as already recorded; and Antony was so distracted that
436 MARC ANTONY
he actually set out, himself, to overtake the mission, 7 but presently
abandoned the pursuit and sent messengers after them, instead,
to recall them. When he arrived back in Actium he was greeted
with the news that a squadron of his ships, sailing to his aid from the
Mediterranean, had been routed by the enemy with great loss ; and,
enraged by this reverse, he himself led out a strong force of cavalry
to attack Octavian's cavalry which were reported to be daily recon-
noitring outside their defences. But in the engagement which en-
sued he was defeated, and shortly afterwards he was almost cap-
tured near his own lines, being ambushed by Octavian's men and
having to take to his heels. 8
These reverses, the increasing audacity of the enemy* and the
panicky condition in which he and his officers found themselves,
induced him hurriedly to decide upon an immediate naval battle,
and he gave orders to the captains of his ships to prepare to pass
out of the Gulf on August 29th, a few days hence. His plans seem
to me to have been these : he would send a small body of infantry
round the Gulf to attack Octavian's position on land, and at
the same time some twenty thousand Roman legionaries, and two
thousand archers, carried upon his best ships-of~war, would pass
out of the Gulf and attack the enemy's fleet at sea. If the sea*
battle should go in Antony's favour all his vast land-forces, not yet
engaged, would join in the assault upon The Ladle with the ex-
ception of the cavalry, which would be concentrated to the north
to cut off the enemy's retreat into Epirus; and Antony himself
would immediately lead his victorious fleet across the Adriatic
before the opposing ships could recover and reassemble, and, dis-
embarking a small army on the Italian coast, he would march on
Rome, while Cleopatra would sail for Egypt with a small squadron
of her own ships, there to wait until he could send for her and
Gesarion. If, on the contrary, the naval fight should go against
him, Cleopatra would seize her opportunity to sail away, touching
at some port of southern Greece to obtain news of the subsequent
movements; while Antony would retire to the Gulf* aad, burning
'Dion Cassius, 1, 13.
'Dion Cassius (1, 13) mistakenly says that Sossius wis killed ill thl* firiht,
statement which he himself contradicts in !!> &
MARC ANTONY 437
those of his ships which were unsunk, would lead his yet unused
main army inland, in the expectation that Octavian would follow
and that a land-battle would be fought with him on ground chosen
by Antony,*
In order to put these arrangements into effect certain measures
were taken, the references to which have much puzzled historians;
but it seems to me that the explanation in each case is clear, if the
above plan of action be correct. 10 Firstly, in the event of victory at
sea and a consequent invasion of Italy, the Roman and Egyptian
ships which were to take part in this enterprise would need to have
their large sails aboard, as also would those of the Egyptian squad-
ron which were to accompany Cleopatra to Egypt; and therefore
orders were given to this effect, much to the surprise of the ship's
captains who were accustomed to leave the sails behind when
clearing for action. Secondly, since Cleopatra proposed to sail for
Egypt whatever might be the outcome of the fight, her personal
belongings were carried onto the vessels detailed to go with her a
fact which again caused much surprise. Thirdly, the smaller ships
and those which were not to be used in the engagement were now
burnt or scuttled, this drastic measure being taken so that, in the
event of a defeat at sea and the retirement of the army inland,
they should not fall into Octavian's hands, and also that the galley-
slaves thus released might fill the vacancies at the oars of the larger
meW-war. Fourthly and this gives the chief clue to Antony's
plan the bulk of the troops stationed on the northern side of the
mouth of the Gulf were withdrawn to Actium on the southern side,
the obvious explanation being that Antony wished to concentrate
his main army at a point from which, in the event of defeat at sea,
he could march it inland, and he saw that any troops left on the
opposite side of the mouth would have to surrender if Octavian
should obtain the mastery on the water, whereas if Antony were
successful In the navai battle his ships could quickly transport the
f TWt bt*rpretit!o of bit plant differ* from that which I put forward 10 my
Ui* f Cltotttr*. It it i theory which has not before been advanced, so far a^ I
know; *Ht I thin* It mteti all the known facts, and explains them more saw-
*** Then *Mfmiii^ mytttrlotti arrangements are recorded by Plutarch and Dion
438 MARC ANTONY
army across the narrow straits to attack Octavian's position.
Finally a large force of cavalry was sent round the Gulf to the
north of The Ladle, to cut off Octavian's retreat if Antony were
successful, cavalry rather than infantry being chosen partly be-
cause, in the event of defeat at sea, they could the more rapidly
rejoin the main army retiring inland.
These arrangements reveal Antony's misgivings as to the re-
sult of the engagement at sea, and indicate that he was taking
all the necessary steps to secure a successful march into the in-
terior, there to renew the war on land if the naval project should
fail. The battle at sea had really been forced upon him by tem-
pestuous Cleopatra's decision to go back to Egypt, and by her
determination to prevent her Egyptian fleet from being sacrificed
by the retirement inland; but Antony, torn this way and that, at
last had cleverly adjusted his plans to hers by preparing at the
same time for an invasion of Italy, or, alternatively, for a march
into the interior to a chosen battlefield, after the Queen had gone.
He was going to use no more than a fifth part of his army in the
sea-fight, and the remainder was ample to assure him the prob-
ability of victory on land if the naval battle should f aiL
Those of his Roman troops who were to fight at sea much dis-
liked the prospect, and Plutarch relates that he was accosted by
one of the officers, who pleaded with him to abandon the project.
"What have our wounds and our swords done to displease you/*
this man asked him, "that you should give your confidence to rot-
ten timbers? Let Egyptians and Phoenicians fight at sea^ but give
us the land, where we know how to win or to die where we stand/*
To this, it is said, Antony made no answer, but by his looks and
gestures gave the officer to understand that there was no cause for
dismay.
On the eve of the battle Antony addressed his men, pointing out
to them that he himself was at the height of his powers and was in
no way the victim either of years or of dissolute habits, as some of
them, perhaps, had begun to think, but that Octavian on the con-
trary, was a physical weakling who had never been the victor in
an important battle in his life. Yet this Octavian, he declared,
desired to make himself King of the Roman world, whereas he,
Antony, had sworn to restore the Republic; and he bade them
MARC ANTONY 439
fight to the death for their just cause and for freedom. 11 A strong
wind* however, arose in the night, and next day the sea was so
rough that the battle had to be postponed. Everything was in readi-
ness; everybody was keyed up; but for four days the gale blew,
and nothing could be done. The cavalry had already gone round to
the north of Oetavian's position, and with them Antony had sent
Dellius and King Amyntas, who had just arrived back at Actium,
after being recalled from their mission to Thrace, as already men-
tioned. Antony's trust in them had been restored by an interview
with them on their return; and as Amyntas had at his command
two thousand of his own Galatian cavalry, it was felt that he and
his men could best be put to use in this way. But the howling wind
and the long delay played havoc with the King's nerves, already
frayed by his sudden recall ; and on the second or third day of the
storm ia he went over to Octavian with all his men, whereupon
Dellius did the same,
The news of these latest desertions reached Antony, it
would seem, on the first day of September, and struck him a
blow which completely upset his equilibrium. He did not dare
to delay the battle another day, and gave immediate orders that
the fight was to take place on the morrow. Then, in a frenzy of
dismay, he appears to have turned upon Cleopatra, and to have
vented his wrath upon her; for subsequent events indicate clearly,
I think, that a very serious quarrel took place between them a few
hours before the battle* It may be that he accused her of having
estranged his friends from him by what is spoken of as her "in-
solent usage 1 * of them; and since Dellius is quoted by Plutarch as
having declared that the Queen intended to murder him, we may
suppose that this reason for his desertion had now come to Antony's
knowledge, and that he charged Cleopatra with it.
The Queen, on her part, may well have retorted that he him-
self was alone to blame for the loss of confidence in him; and it
seems likely that she indignantly accused him of being about to
place her Egyptian battleshipsexcept those which were to ac-
* The long *pe*ch giveo by DJon CMI!U (1, I) aeema to be a composition written
up by that hUtorUn Irom *he data it hi disposal, for it presents no new facts,
and i not worth quoting, fine and impairing though it is.
"Dion Calu (I, 21) iy that IMllu* wt able to give Octavian details of
Antony'i final ptini, which #uggtt that the desertion was not earlier than this,
440 MARC ANTONY
company her to Egypt in such a position that they would have
to endure the brunt of the fighting, for such was certainly his in-
tention, 13 the Egyptian vessels being the most powerful in his
fleet. She may have reminded him, too, that her object in going
to Egypt was not merely to strengthen his cause by ridding it of
the only person herself against whom Octavian had been able
to arouse popular resentment, but also to seek rest from these
continuous domestic disputes which had made their relationship a
misery to her.
Be this as it may, we may imagine that the quarrel was contin-
ued far into the night, and that both husband and wife were
exhausted by it when at last they separated in ungovernable anger
and sought the needed sleep which would not come to them. On
the morrow Antony was to risk his life in battle, and, if he should
survive, victorious or defeated, he was to see the last of Cleopatra
for many a month, perhaps for ever. She was departing for her
own country, and he was going either to death or to a lonely victory ;
and here they were, loving one another Jn the secret depths of
their hearts, dependent upon one another, and yet, in spite of this
bitter love, wholly estranged, silenced by mutual abuse into dumb
separation, on this night of nights when they should have been
so tenderly bidding each other farewell.
On the following morning there was no reconciliation ; and
Antony, exhausted by want of sleep, and probably befuddled as
a consequence of having sought consolation from the wine-cup,
went out to do battle with Octavian for the mastery of the world,
not caring whether he should win or lose this prize which had
once seemed to him to represent the summit of his ambition*
Nothing mattered to him except that his wife should not leave
him with this weight of anger crushing deeper the already buried
sweetness of their love; and he was determined that* if the close
of the day should find him still alive, he would see her again be*
fore her departure and make his peace with her. We are so apt to
overlook the personal element in high affairs of worldwide im*
portance; but the Battle of Actium which was fought on this day,
"Plutarch (Antony) says that the Roman legionaries were crowded onto th
sixty beat Egyptian battleships. Plutarch, in fact, indicate* that the entire Roman force
of 22,000 men was placed on the Egyptian vessels; bat this, of course, is a mistake.
MARC ANTONY 441
September 2nd, 31 B.C., cannot be understood unless we presup-
pose that condition of mind in Antony which I have attempted to
indicate.
The sea was now calm; and Octavian, knowing from what
Dellius had told him that the battle would not be delayed after
the abating of the storm, prepared to draw up his fleet in three
squadrons and to place them less than a mile away from the
mouth of the Gulf* The left wing was commanded by Agrippa,
the right by Octnvian, and the middle by a certain Lucius Arruntius.
Antony had also divided his fleet into three commands: the left,
opposing Qctuvian, was in charge of Sossius, the right, opposing
Agrippa, was under Antony's personal direction, and the middle
was commanded by an officer named Marcus Insteius.
While Antony, during the early morning, went with aching
head from ship to ship encouraging his men, Octavian addressed
his troops which were about to embark; and though the words put
into his mouth by Dion Cassius 14 are not to be regarded as those
actually spoken, some sentences may be based upon genuine re-
ports of the speech, and deserve to be quoted. "It is unworthy of
our fathers/ 1 he is supposed to have said, "that we who are Romans
and lords of the greatest and best part of the world should be
despised and trodden under foot by an Egyptian woman: it is
unworthy of ourselves, who have subjugated Gauls and other
peoples, have crossed the Rhine, and have gone over into Britain.
How could we fail to grieve bitterly if these conquered nations
should hear that we had succumbed to an accursed woman, and
were humbly bearing the insults of a crowd of Alexandrians and
Egyptians?*
"Who can help lamenting to see Roman soldiers acting as the
bodyguard of this queen $ Who can help weeping when he both
hears and sees that Antony himself has abandoned all his ances-
tors* habits of life, has emulated foreign and barbaric customs,
and worships that woman as though she were the goddess Isis or
Selene, calling her children 'Sun* and 'Moon/ and himself tak-
ing the title of Osiris or Dionysus, and bestowing kingdoms as
though he were master of the whole earth? Fellow-soldiers, at first
I was so devoted to him that I gave him a share of my leadership,
"P!o& Cii!ut l !, 24.
442 MARC ANTONY
married my sister to him, and granted him legions. Even after
this I felt so affectionately disposed towards him that I was un-
willing to wage war on him because of his insulting my sister, or
because he neglected the children she had borne him, or because
he preferred the Egyptian woman to her and bestowed upon her
children your possessions. I deemed Cleopatra by the very fact of
her foreign birth to be fundamentally hostile to his career, but I
believed that he, as a Roman, could be corrected. Later I enter-
tained the hope that, if not voluntarily, at least reluctantly, he might
change his mind as the result of the declaration of war against her;
and consequently I did not declare war upon him"
"He, however, has treated my efforts with haughtiness and
disdain, and will neither be released though we would fain re-
lease him, nor be pitied though we try to pity him. He is either a
fool or mad; and this which I have heard I do believe that he
has been bewitched by that accursed female, and is in slavery to
her. What else, then, can be our duty but to fight him together
with Cleopatra? Henceforth let no one call him a Roman, but
rather an Egyptian, nor Antony but rather Serapio," u
In such scathing words as these the cunning Octavian aroused
the contempt of his men for the great Antony who, even as he
spoke, was preparing for battle with no thought in his bursting
head save that of his quarrel with the woman he loved to distrac-
tion. Antony's plan of action, however, had been fully discussed,
and now was automatically carried out, despite his abstraction.
Before noon his ships passed through the narrows, and drew up in
close formation in the open water outside the mouth of the Gulf,
where Octavian, from no great distance, gazed at them in admira-
tion, so it is said, the Antonian vessels being for the most part
much larger and more powerful, though less numerous, than his
own.
For some time no movement was made on either side, but at
last Antony advanced, whereupon Octavian retired a little so as
to entice him out to sea, and then maneuvered with, the object of
surrounding Antony's heavy and cumbersome men-o^war with
his own fleeter and more manageable vessels. Soon the fight had
developed along these lines, and Antony's great battleships were
"A common Egyptian name.
MARC ANTONY 443
being attacked as though they were besieged fortresses. For two
hours or so the struggle continued, without advantage to either
party ; and soon after two o'clock, when a strong wind from the
north had sprung up and had made the sea rough, the difficulties
of maneuvering and getting to close quarters were so great that
the casualties were few, and there was probably a good deal more
shouting and swearing than actual exchange of blows.
Cleopatra, meanwhile, was on her flagship, the Antonias,
riding at anchor near the shore, protected by those Egyptian ves-
sels which were to go with her to Egypt. It had been arranged, as
has already been explained, that in the event of obvious defeat, she
was to sail away and make good her escape down the wind, which,
in these parts, could he relied upon to blow from the north during
each afternoon, and would thus speed her on her journey to the
south* This wind, which was now whistling through her rigging,
had pushed the contending fleets some distance southwards; and
Antony, who was wearily directing the fight from behind his right,
or north, wing was now at no great distance from her. If he were
victorious, it was understood that he would board her ship at the
close of the buttle, and bid her farewell; but this, in her great
anger, she did not wish him to do: she wanted to hurt him by
leaving him without a word, and she began now to ask herself
whether it would not be more dignified in her, and more painful
to him, if she were to sail away at once,
The north wind usually sank at sunset, and if she were to
delay her departure, she would perhaps be unable to sail until
the next day* In the event of victory this would mean another
distressing interview with Antony; in the event of defeat, it might
mean that she would fail to escape- Moreover, she was finding it
hard, as Dion Cassius says, "to endure the long uncertainty, and
was harassed by womanly fears and terrible anxiety in regard to
the outcome of the long-continued and doubtful struggle;" 16 and
since Antony, in the madness of their violent quarrel on the pre-
vious night, had doubtless told her that he never wished to speak
to her again, she felt that it would but serve him right if she were
to slip away now while he was too busy to notice her departure, and
thus have her revenge*
*DSor> CatiSut* 1. S3.
MARC ANTONY
These reckless thoughts led her at length to a reckless decision,
and suddenly she gave orders to her little squadron 17 to hoist sail
and run with the wind southwards. Both Plutarch and Dion Cassius
state emphatically that the battle was still undecided when she
sailed away; but it seems that she intended to touch at some port
of southern Greece to obtain news of its result before crossing the
Mediterranean, and she evidently preferred to endure the longer
period of uncertainty than allow him the consolation of her for-
giveness. History has regarded her as a cruel woman; but in this
impulsive action the cruelty was of that feminine kind which is
born of love it was a case of cutting off her nose to spite her face.
Antony, at the height of the battle, saw her making off, and
the insanity of his warring emotions overwhelmed his tired brain.
She was going out of his life without a word of reconciliation;
mortally wounded by his insults she was leaving him for ever.
He was a man who, as Plutarch said of him in another connection*
was given to sudden and extreme repentance, and was ready to ask
pardon of those he had injured; and he could not now bear the
thought of parting from his wife in this manner, unforgiven and
unforgiving. His passionate desire to be reconciled to her in a last
loving farewell was irresistible; and at the same time his anger
and his dismay at her ability to leave him at a time when he was
facing death, demanded a final explosion of fury and an adequate
vent to his anguish.
Acting upon an impulse no less insensate than hers, he sum-
moned the swiftest ship in his fleet a galley of five banks of
oars and
