THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY

CHAPTER X

Antony's Consulship, and the Death of Caesar.

45-44 BC

In Caesar’s mind there was never rest: no sooner had he completed one task than his ambition set him another. He came back from Spain full of the idea of conquering Parthia, the mighty Oriental 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 Caesar who does not realize that with him accomplishment always stumbled impatiently 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 imperiled 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 equaled the record of Alexander the Great!, and now at the age of fifty-seven he still desired with burning 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 annexed Gaul, the road would be open to India and the remainder of the known world. Alexander had marched through Persia into India; but he, Caesar, 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 lie 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 concern 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 BC, 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 at this time absolute law and he was surrounded by people who made it their business to agree with everything he said and to approve 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 BC he came to be regarded with more actual awe and reverence than had ever been bestowed by the Romans upon any one of their rulers at any time in their history. The growth of this public attitude towards him had been rapid and bewildering; and it is perhaps best exemplified by a reference to the letters of Cicero in regard to him.

A year ago the orator had boasted of Caesar 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 BC Caesar came to dinner with him while staying in the neighborhood of his country home; and after he had gone, Cicero wrote to Atticus 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 “I shall be most delighted if you will come again. Once is enough!” An army of at least two thousand 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 democrats, would be given some position of trust, even the Consulship, in spite of his youth, untrammeled 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 great was his annoyance, that Caesar was quite afraid of the young man, and once, when he had to pass the gates of Dolabella’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 Caesar, angrily 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, Caesar hit upon the novel compromise of proposing to make the hostile Dolabella vice-Consul for him in Rome during his absence, that is to say a sort of junior partner with Antony in the government, though without much real authority. But here Antony showed once more his fearless defiance of Caesar. In a public meeting of the Senate he opposed the appointment of Dolabella with all his might, abusing him roundly and being abused by him in return; and, later, when the matter was being put to the vote in the Comitia, he forbade the proceedings on technical grounds, and Caesar was obliged to abandon the idea, thereby incurring Dolabella’s passionate hatred.

It had not yet been decided at what date the Parthian campaign should be opened, and meanwhile Caesar 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 actual, 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. 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 divert 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 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. He was a happy man at this period, for not only was he enjoying 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 definitely considering the possibility of making himself actual monarch of the Roman world, and of this project Antony did not approve. It frightened him, because he felt that it might result in another catastrophic civil war—the republicans against the monarchists 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 society—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 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 BC, and there can be little doubt that she played an active part in the development of these schemes, and that her baby, Caesarion, was the heir whom Caesar 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

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, possessing 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 splendor 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 beautiful, and, being just four-and-twenty years of age, she still enjoyed 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 splendors had so gripped Caesar’s imagination.

Antony, as Consul now and Caesar’s partner, must often have met her, and must have been called upon to express polite admiration for her baby, whose parentage Caesar did not deny, the child having, indeed, a close resemblance to him. 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 intrigue than in the nursery. But the situation was awkward both for Antony, and his wife, for they had also constantly to meet Calpurnia, Caesar’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. Caesar himself, however, was not conscious 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, 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 Caesar’s mistress for years, and though she was nearly as old as Caesar himself, she was still his good friend and had recently received from him the present of some great estates—as compensation, people said, for his having transferred his affections to her daughter, Tertia, the child of her marriage with Junius Silanus and wife of that Cassius who was afterwards the chief of Caesar’s assassins. Servilia was the mother of Brutus, presumably the son of her adultery with Caesar; and since it was quite likely that Caesar might forgive Brutus his recent marriage and nominate him as his heir, in the event of his plans in regard to Cleopatra and Caesarion miscarrying, the future of this now elderly lady was full of possibilities.

As the weeks went by Caesar 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 Caesar’s death while abroad, it would be he who, as Consul, would have to carry out the great man’s last wishes. In Spain Caesar 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 Philippus, Atia’s second husband, where he had had the opportunity of taking another look at Octavian; yet still he was undecided as to whether to make him his successor.

Octavian was a rather pimpled and unhealthy youth with a chronic cold in his head; 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 decided, however, to give him a military training with a view to taking 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.

Caesar does not seem to have considered him a desirable heir to the sovereignty which he wished to establish, but in the event of his, Caesar’s, death in Parthia while Caesarion 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 Caesar. He did not tell him of his intention, however, 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 favor of the latter; but Antony was undoubtedly in the secret, and perhaps approved of the nomination, for Brutus, the only likely alternative, was a rather critical and unfriendly personage. It was no good considering Cleopatra and her infant son at this juncture, Caesar 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 Cleopatra, and make him heir-apparent to the sovereignty of the whole earth, with Rome and Alexandria as joint capitals of the world­wide kingdom.

Antony was perplexed and troubled by all this talk of monarchy. Since their estrangement Caesar had not been quite the hero 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 honors to be conferred upon him which were the most palpable preludes to kingship.

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 Alexandria Caesar had seen the sepulchers 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 m the middle of the metropolis.

Other honors 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 of having a goddess for his mistress but had found it not too preposterous to think of himself also as superhuman, for so the Egyptians regarded him, and so his invariable good fortune seemed to indicate. His family traced its descent back to Venus; and Cleopatra, 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 m his religious beliefs.

By his commands, or with his consent, a decree was now promulgated 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 honor and especially 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 honor—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, 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 Lupercal 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 establishment was called the Julian, its members being termed luperci 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 preserved in the name of the festal month, February.

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 unashamed, 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 something 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 BC, new honors were conferred upon Caesar. He was nominated 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 honor conferred by the army upon a leader who had been eminently successful 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 him by that name there was such general consternation that he quickly called out “I am Caesar, 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, increasingly worried Antony, who racked his brains for a means of turning Caesar’s mind from the thought of monarchy without incurring his violent displeasure. Instances of this arrogance were daily accumulating. On one occasion Caesar 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 apologized 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 resigning the arbitrary powers of Dictator.

Cleopatra, too, was becoming rather presumptuous now that she believed her hopes of marriage to Caesar and their joint elevation 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. Caesar 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 understandable; but none the less it gave great offence, and increased the sheer horror with which Caesar was regarded by the old-fashioned republicans. He had by now pardoned all his former enemies of the Pompeian 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 for Caesar’s safety 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 goat­skin around his loins and rather drunk. The people laughed and clipped their hands to see their Consul thus enacting the time-honored 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 delivering 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. 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 Caesar’s ardent admirers holding in his hand an improvised 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. Instantly a daring idea presented itself to Antony “who was always ready for any audacious deed”, as Veleius says, regarding the incident: he would otter this diadem to Caesar 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 Caesar were to accept it, the significance of this action could, if necessary, be explained away afterwards by referring to the jesting nature of the occasion or by saying that Caesar had merely been allowing himself to be crowned as king of the festivities. If, on the other hand, he were to reject the diadem, the quietus would be given to the rumors that he was about to over­throw 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 Caesar’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, 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 kingship. He spoke of the great Consuls of the past who had built up the Republic; and, declaring that Caesar had so greatly increased Rome’s power that he was now regarded as autocrat by Gauls, Africans, 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, annoyed by the levity 01 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 Caesar and that he had refused it. Thus, we are told, “by Antony’s cleverness and consummate skill an end was put to Caesar’s ideas of monarchy, the proof of which was that from that time forward he no longer behaved in any way as a king”.

But though Caesar, 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 despotism. 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 Caesar, a secret re-gathering 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 crystallizing, and that some sort of plot was being formed against Caesar. 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 Caesar, even though he did not approve of his actions.

There were two men in particular whom he suspected of hidden 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, Caesar’s supposed son. Cassius had been serving under Crassus at the time of the Parthian disaster, but had escaped from the shambles, and later had commanded a part of Pompey’s fleet in the war against Caesar, and in the end had surrendered to him and been pardoned. Caesar had magnanimously made him Praetor for the present year, 44 BC, and had promised him the governorship of Syria in the coming hatred of his benefactor had recently been 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: “I don't like Cassius”, the Dictator once remarked. “He looks so pale: I wonder what he can be aiming at”.

Brutus was a man whose character puzzled Antony; but Caesar, 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 account: 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 rumors 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?” - 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 which had so long been cast upon it. The founder of the family whose name he bore was the celebrated Brutus who overthrew the early kings of Rome and established the Republic; and he preferred this honorable lineage which—though of plebeian caste, glittered with illustrious figures—to the patrician but less historically famous ancestry of Caesar. It seems that he made a point of speaking of his descent from the great liberator, Brutus, and to Caesar’s affectionate and paternal advances he responded with a coolness which deeply hurt the elder man.

He was now forty year of age, a sallow-faced, thin, grave and silent man, rather conceited and self-centered, a considerable scholar, an eager student of philosophy, and a strict adherent to the old school of upright, temperate behavior. His manner of speaking was curt and abrupt; but there was no such brevity in his thoughts, for he was in the habit of turning matters slowly over in his mind, submitting his every action to the tribunal of his conscience, and so carefully considering the moral principles involved that he must have often been an intolerable bore. Goodness, integrity, and righteousness are qualities so essentially spontaneous that a man who would behave in a high-principled manner, but whose conscience does not give him an instant lead, must of necessity be wanting in that social ease which is true virtue’s passport and authority in a wicked world. But Brutus had no such case: he was always torturing himself as to whether he should act in this way or in that, and, consequently, he was often a most tedious companion.

Lately he and Cicero had become fast friends, though there was this difference in the character of the two men, that the orator was a bland, professional exponent of outward righteousness whose inner thoughts were often mean and contemptible, whereas Brutus was a struggling disciple of traditional virtue, whose heart was fundamentally honorable. At this time Cicero had returned to his accustomed position upon the fence, unable to make up his mind which side of the political field most sweetly called to him. He wanted to be friends with Caesar, that is to say with the paramount power, and would perhaps have stepped down upon that side of the fence had he been encouraged to do so; but neither Caesar nor Antony bothered very much about him—indeed, Cicero was once kept waiting so long in an anteroom for an interview with the Dictator that his vanity must have been greatly hurt. On 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 favorite of Caesar and a representative figure in that group which was most opposed to him. Together the two men bemoaned the Dictator’s growing despotism; and in many letters exchanged between them the impotence of the republican government, which lay fawning at Caesar’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 honorable means of escape from conditions, political or otherwise, which are intolerable.

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 autocracy. Unsigned messages had been found on Brutus’s desk, in which such words as “You are asleep”, or “You are not a true Brutus” were written; and at the foot of the statue of the first Brutus, who had overthrown the Roman kings, a note was discovered, reading “O that we had a Brutus now!”

It seemed unthinkable, of course, that this quiet and pedantic man would allow himself to be involved in any kind of murderous conspiracy against one who was his reputed father, and who certainly his loving benefactor; yet the fact could not be over­looked 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 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”—words which meant that, although he might perhaps really be Caesar’s son, he was prepared to resist any tampering by him with the constitution.

Meanwhile, Caesar 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 return. 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 matters 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 Caesar 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 so as to accompany him to the assembly, which was to meet in the early morning in the great hall adjoining the theatre built by Pompey in what is now known as the Campo di Fiore. To his surprise, however, he found Caesar 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, Caesar’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 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 Albinus, one of Caesar’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, particularly 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 Caesar’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 Caesar’s face, the galvanizing of his tired body as he rose to his feet and, in the characteristic manner described by Cicero, ran his fingers through his now grey and scanty hair, and adjusted his robes.

Albinus grasped his hand and led him towards the door, Antony following; and presently the three of them were being carried in their litters through the crowded streets. They had not gone far when Caesar observed the fortune-teller who had given him the 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 conversation for a while, much to the evident perturbation of Albinus, who was talking to Antony but whose eyes were fixed anxiously upon Caesar. 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 Caesar that he was already late enough. Caesar 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: Caesar had been assassinated, 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 door­way brandishing their daggers which were wet with blood; and at this, knowing that Caesar 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.

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 Dictator 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 between sixty and eighty, had marched up to the Capitol and had barricaded themselves in; and during the afternoon the further report 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 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”—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 honorable a man as Antony, and such a lover of great deeds” might perhaps be persuaded to come over to the side of “republican liberty”, 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 Consul, 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 16th, 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! 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 blessing. A few hours after the assassination, moreover, Cicero had sent a letter to Basilus, one of the conspirators, then in the Capitol, congratulating him and saying how delighted he was; 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 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 Republica, 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 Caesar’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 favor of the murderers, and this was so well received by the crowd that Brutus and Cassius were induced to come down from their stronghold and give a public explanation of 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 favor of the conspirators; and it emboldened him to adopt a stronger attitude. He therefore 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 17th the Senate met in the court of the Temple of Tellius, or the Earth; and here Antony’s statesmanship was tried to the uttermost, for while the majority of the senators were in favor 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 Brutus, Cassius, and their whole gang. Antony felt strongly that blood­shed 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; 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 conspirators be pardoned but also those who had supported Caesar 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 support he could command. He was obliged, however, to go across to the Forum and to address the crowd, telling them to await the issue 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 me paramount necessity of the moment was to maintain peace.

Next morning, the 18th, it was agreed by the Senate that Antony 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 behavior 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 Cassius as his guest—Cassius who was the murderer of his hero, Caesar; and no more painful situation could well be imagined. The conversation 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 dagger up your sleeve even now?”. “Yes, I have”, Cassius replied, “and a big one; if you, too, should try to play the tyrant!”

Early the following morning, the 19th, the Senate met again, and Antony, addressing the assembly, proposed that Cassius and Brutus should each be assigned the governorship of a distant province, and should thus be sent away from Rome; and to this the senators agreed. The meeting then passed a vote of thanks to Antony for having staved on 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 composed, 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 popular opinion definitely against the conspirators, for he had obtained possession of Caesar’s will, and knew that the contents would be sufficient 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 afternoon, 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.

44 BC