Augustus. Buchan John
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right. On the 29th of May Lepidus came over to Antony’s side. Plancus, who was joined by Decimus Brutus, made at first some show of resistance, and all summer there was marching and counter-marching beyond the Alps. But neither Antony nor Octavius had any doubt about the ultimate issue. Most of the troops were Caesarians, and would force their commanders to join the Caesarian side as soon as its leaders had made their peace.
The news of the defection of Lepidus caused the Senate to declare him a public enemy, and to commission Octavius to protect Italy. The latter, while busy negotiating with Antony through the medium of Lepidus, did not forget the situation in Rome. About the middle of July he sent an embassy from his troops thither to settle certain points about the bounties and to request the consulship for their general. The latter question had been already raised by Cicero, but the Senate took refuge in the technical difficulty; both consuls being dead and a praetor not being able to create a higher authority than his own, it would be necessary to wait till the new year, when, as the phrase went, the auspices would revert to the Conscript Fathers. This was the answer given to the deputation from the legions, who were also refused the bounties which they had claimed.
To the mind of Octavius the moment had come for swift action. The Senate had shown itself patently hostile to him, and he could not afford to be put off by a technicality which in the past had been disregarded.1 With his eight legions he crossed the Rubicon, like his great-uncle before him, and marched on Rome. Resistance collapsed; the three legions there, two of which had come from Africa, declared for him; after assuring himself of the safety of his mother and sister, he entered the city and found himself its master. The Senate hastened to do his will. The urban praetor nominated two proconsuls to hold the election, and on August 19, along with his cousin, Quintus Pedius, he was duly elected consul. Twelve vultures, as in the case of Romulus, obligingly attended his first taking of the auspices. From the public treasury he paid the promised bounties to his troops. The law necessary to confirm his adoption, hitherto blocked by Antony, was passed, the amnesty of March, 44 B.C., was rescinded, and a special court was established to outlaw the murderers of Julius. Cicero left Rome, never to return. His nerve was broken, and he wrote a pathetic last word to Octavius thanking him for his leave of absence, and trusting that it meant forgiveness for the past and indulgence for the future.2
Octavius was now consul at a younger age than Pompey, twenty-four years before the statutory date. With eleven legions he was master of Rome and of all Italy. He had on his side not only Caesarian loyalty, but the sympathy of many of the middle classes who saw in him the sole alternative to Antony. For the moment he was secure; some day he must fight Brutus and Cassius, but they were far off and had still to combine their armies, and when that day came he hoped to have Antony by his side. He had made himself so formidable that the latter must accept him on equal terms, and between them they would achieve his first purpose, the avenging of Julius. What lay beyond that was still on the knees of the gods; in these difficult times one must live by the day. Three striplings—Octavius and Agrippa were just nineteen and Maecenas a few years older—had to their credit an extraordinary achievement, and the chief actor had been Octavius himself. He had patiently unriddled a situation of extreme complexity, feeling his way with a precocious prudence, trimming his sails to catch every favouring wind, but never forgetful of his ultimate port. He had sunk his pride and made himself the servant of his enemies, till through them he had won purchase with his natural allies. He had compelled those who were most ready to betray him to be his unwitting tools. He had won a repute for a balanced sagacity, so that men forgot his youth. He had shown at once an uncanny self-restraint and a supreme self-confidence; in the happy phrase of Aulus Gellius he was “lifted high on the consciousness of himself.”1 Above all, he had won the Caesarian glamour, which for the Rome of that day was what the Napoleonic legend was in the nineteenth century for France. His name was now by Roman custom Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. More important, to the legions and to the people he was Caesar.
1 Gardthausen, i. 52-3.
2 For the mind of Octavius during this year we have little direct evidence. The chief sources are Cicero’s general correspondence, and a few references in the Res Gestae. Suetonius is fairly informative, but Plutarch’s lives of contemporaries like Cicero, Brutus and Antony cast little light on the main figure. Dio is rhetorical and diffuse. For actual events Appian is the best guide, since he used not only the memoirs of Augustus but the lost work of Asinius Pollio.
1 Suetonius (Div. Jul., 84) denies that Antony made a speech, and Ferrero (iii. 27 n.) accepts his denial on the ground that Cicero does not mention it in his contemporary letters. But see ad Att., xiv. 10. All other historians accept the speech: App., ii. 143-7; Dio, xliv. 35-49: Plut. Ant., 14.
1 They surrendered their shares to Octavius, having no wish for such a damnosa hereditas.
2 Tac. Dialog., 28. The Dialogus appears anonymously in the manuscript which contains Germania and Agricola, but I incline to its Tacitean authorship, Cf, however, C. Marchesi, Tacito (1924), 301 sqq.
1 Iliad, xviii. 98 sqq.
2 M. A. Levi, Ottaviano capoparte, i. 88 sqq. On the meaning of Julius’s will, see C. A. H., ix. 724-6.
1 For the influence of Cicero’s thought upon Augustus, see A. Oltramare’s “La réaction cicéronienne et les débuts du Principat “in Rev. des É. L. (1932), 58-90.
1 Cic. ad Brut., i. 17, 5; ad Att,, xiv. 10, 11, 12.
1 ad Att., xv. 2.
2 ad Att., xiv. 15; cf. Rice Holmes, i. 190.
1 Cic. ad Att., xvi. 10.
2 For his bad Latin, see his letter to Cic. ad Att., xiv. 13a, and Cic. Phil., xiii. 43. There are many tributes to Octavius’s literary fastidiousness, e.g, Aul. Gell., xv. 7; Dio, xlv. 2, 7; Tac. Ann., xiii. 3.
3 The year of Antony’s birth is uncertain; it may have been 83, 82 or 81 B.C. App., v. 8, 33; Gardthausen, ii. 5 n.
4 Cic. ad Att., xv. 20—“iste qui umbras timet”; Phil., i. 11, 27.
1 App., iii. 14; Nic., 28; Plut. Ant., 16; Vell., ii. 60, 3. Antony had not Caesar’s tact, who, when he kept Cicero waiting, made ample apology, ad Att., xiv. i.
1 Pliny, N. H., ii. 93. Malcovati, 63.
2 The date of the lex de permutatione provinciarum is uncertain. Ferrero (iii. 85) places it after the conclusion of the games, but it was more likely promulgated in the first half of June. See Levi, Ottaviano capoparte, i, 77.
3 Dio, xlv. 8; Nic., 29; Plut. Ant., 16.
4 ad Att., xii. 18.
1 Ibid., xv. 12.
2 Nic., 31.
1 Cicero believed the story and approved, but the wish was father to the thought. ad Fam., xii. 23. It is rejected by Nic., 30, App., iii. 39, and Plut. Ant., 16.
1 See Hardy’s ed. of Mon. Anc., 27.
2 It is not clear where Antony found Alauda; perhaps they were the veterans whom he had re-enlisted in his journey through Italy in May. For this legion see Suet. Div. Jul, 24, and Pauly-Wissowa, i. 1295, xii. 1208.
1 ad Att., xvi. 8, 9.
1 ad Att., xvi. 15; cf. Tyrrell, vi. xviii. n.
2 He arrived on Dec. 9. I follow Rice Holmes (i. 204) in his interpretation of ad Fam xi. 5.
1 Cic. Phil. iii. vi. 15; viii. 21; Suet. Div. Aug., 68. The youth of Octavius was a target for scandalous tales, which carry their own refutation, for it is difficult to see how a young man in poor health, with desperate problems