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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER XVIAntony's return to Rome; His Marriage to Octavia;and His Maneuvers for Political Unity.40-39 BC
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 neighborhood had retired headlong within the impregnable Tyrian walls.
Fortunately 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 mobilize 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 Parthians under Labienus had marched along the
coast and were heading 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 (Heski-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 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 defense 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 attempt to rid themselves
of him by forming a militant coalition of democrats and republicans. After a
long but hopeless siege Perugia had surrendered early in March; and Octavian,
being anxious not to rupture his relations with Antony for good and all, had allowed
Lucius to go unmolested into retirement, at the same time, however, showing the
utmost severity to the other prisoners, sentencing 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 Caesar 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
fleet. The ill-starred rising had been to a certain extent republican in
character, and at any rate it had had the sympathies of the republican exiles
to this extent, that Sextus was very willing to give sanctuary to the refugees,
being in this instance glad also to put Antony under an obligation to him. Fulvia,
meanwhile, had been escorted by three thousand 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 beggared by these
now wholesale transactions; and all the upper classes, both republicans and
right-wing democrats, were looking to Antony to come home to save them from
this detestable young man, who was only maintaining his position by such
pandering to the unruly 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 his 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; 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 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 demanded; and his own unpopularity was making him sly and morose.
Moreover, Italy was at this time almost in a state of famine, largely 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 especially 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 proceedings were
greatly resented, and the jesting remark was widely circulated 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.
These things Antony heard while he was at Ephesus, where he stayed
throughout April and May, energetically organizing the resistance to the
Parthian advance; and then, in the latter month, came the news that Octavian
had opened negotiations with Sextus Pompeius, sending the latter’s mother,
Mucia, (one of Caesar’s former mistresses, it will be remembered) to him with
proposals for an accommodation. The overtures, however, were unsuccessful,
apparently 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 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 Triumvirate, 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 Octavian 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 happened at that meeting, but it seems 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), 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 proposal 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 refugees 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 honor, 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 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 preparations 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 command of one of his own friends, had returned quietly to Rome. This
was a definite breach of their agreement, for Gaul was Antony’s province, and
the troops therein were supposed to take their orders from him alone; and
Octavians only possible justification would be that his action had been
designed to prevent these legions from raising a rebellion of their own now
that their commander was dead. Octavian, however, evidently realized that his behavior
would appear to Antony to be hostile; and he therefore took the friendly step of
appointing Antony’s brother, Lucius, to the governorship of Spain, 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 overtures Sextus
Pompeius was making to Antony, and at length decided 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 children, but she was
now a widow; and although she must have been considerably older than Octavian,
that harassed young opportunist conceived the idea of taking her to wife in
place of the repudiated Clodia, and of thus uniting himself with the family of
the dangerous Sextus. True, Sextus was the son of Caesar’s old enemy, Pompey,
and had himself held command under Caesar’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 Horace—to negotiate this curious union by which, he would become the uncle
of the sea-rovers 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 Ahenobarbus, the other independent
sea-rover, promising him immunity from punishment as one of the conspirators
against Caesar, 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, 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 possession of Sardinia. Octavian at once dispatched
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 regarded 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 for a fight, if fight there was to be, but each wished to avoid striking the blow which would carry the scuffle beyond the bounds of this perilous but not enveno
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