Augustus. Buchan John
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to a stalemate till hunger or sedition broke down their armies.
Antony had a difficult part to play, for he had to keep facing both ways. He sent Gaius Norbanus and Decidius Saxa with eight legions across the Adriatic, while he got together the twenty legions which were to be his main expeditionary force for the East. But difficulties of transport and the constant threat from the sea delayed him, and it was not till well on in the summer that the ships could sail. Octavian meantime had his own troubles. On January i the Senate had deified Julius, so now—for what it might be worth—he was “divi filius,” the son of a god. He was instructed to take order with Sextus Pompeius, but the expedition which he sent against him under Salvidienus Rufus was a fiasco. Then his health failed him; it had never been good, and it had been weakened by the excitements of the past two years. But when Antony summoned him and his fleet to his aid at Brundisium he dared not refuse. If Brutus and Cassius were to be crushed, Antony could not be allowed to have all the glory; if they won, he could do nothing in Italy to stave off the irretrievable ruin.
Norbanus and Decidius, marching along the Egnatian Way, secured Amphipolis, passed beyond Philippi, and occupied the passes of the hills. There in late September they came into touch with the advancing republicans. But the latter by a flank move compelled the triumvirs’ advanced guard to fall back on Amphipolis, and themselves took up at Philippi a strong position on high ground defended on the north by mountains and on the south by a sea-marsh. Antony, fearing for Amphipolis, hurried along the Egnatian Way, and Octavian, whom ill-health had delayed at Dyrrachium, forced himself to join him.
Philippi, though a decisive event in the world’s history, is without military interest as a battle. The armies were nearly equal in infantry, each nineteen legions, and the better quality and training of the Caesarians was balanced by the republican superiority in cavalry. The aim of Brutus and Cassius, with the fleet and the rich East to support them, was to let the enemy break his strength on an impregnable fortress, while that of Antony was to bring matters to a decision at once, since he could not afford to wait. During the first days of October, a season of wind and rain, he offered battle many times but without result. Then he decided to try to cut the enemy’s communications with Neapolis, and began to construct by night a causeway across the sea-marsh. The campaign had become a struggle of engineers, like so many of Julius’s. Cassius, who commanded on the enemy’s left, started counter-works, and battle was joined apparently more by accident than design. The troops of Brutus on the right routed Octavian and broke into his camp, but Antony’s fierce assault carried the day in his section and drove Cassius from his entrenchments. Cassius, ignorant of Brutus’s success and believing his own capture inevitable, fell on his sword, and the news of his death forced Brutus to retire from the ground he had won. For a fortnight he held his position, but he could not restrain the impatience of his troops and was forced to take the offensive. The triumvirs were quick to seize the chance, for news had come that Murcus and Ahenobarbus had destroyed the transports carrying their reinforcements. The fighting began in the late afternoon of October 23, and in a short time the triumvirs had broken the three lines of the enemy, and, while Octavian stormed the camp, Antony pursued the fugitives into the hills. Brutus with four legions retreated in good order, but next morning, finding escape impossible, he induced a freedman to slay him.1
With Brutus perished the republican cause, for he alone of its leaders had the moral authority which can dignify stagnation and reaction. It is a strange accident which has given him so great a name in history, for the man himself was inconsiderable. Of the two chief enemies of Julius, Cassius was the more vigorous and resolute in action, but he was a type common in history, the ambitious condottiere who can readily adapt a principle to self-interest. Brutus was a rarer species, who both impressed and puzzled his contemporaries. Julius out of friendship for his mother Servilia was his constant patron, and seems to have regarded him with a half-amused respect as an interesting relic; it was his policy, too, as it was Napoleon’s, to be polite to the old nobility. The famous comment on him, “Quicquid vult valde vult,”2 is as much a criticism of his limited outlook as of his intensity of purpose. Cicero wrangled with him and flattered him, but does not seem to have greatly liked him. Brutus had a solemn condescending manner, a hard face, a pedantic style in speech and writing, and a stiff ungracious character. He was capable of extreme harshness, as he showed in his treatment of the Asian cities before Philippi, and he was to the last degree avaricious. There was little principle about him when his investments were in question, and he extorted forty-eight per cent. from one wretched Cypriote community.1 His philosophy of life was not profound, and he died abjuring his creed.2 He was an egotist and a formalist, yet he won an extraordinary prestige, for to his contemporaries he seemed the living embodiment of certain ancient virtues which had gone out of the world. To adopt Sydney Smith’s phrase about Francis Horner, he had the Roman equivalent of the Ten Commandments written on his countenance and about him an air of inaccessible respectability. History has by one of its freaks perpetuated this repute, and he remains the “noblest Roman” when in truth he was a commonplace example of aristocratic virtues and vices. Cicero was in a far truer sense the last republican.
The half-educated Antony had an admiration for acquirements and qualities which he did not share, and was prepared to treat the dead regicide with honour. Octavian is said to have been harsh to the prisoners, and especially to have insulted Brutus’s remains. The stories do not hang together,3 but one thing is plain: Octavian could not away with Brutus, disliking both the individual and the type. He detested the man who had been Julius’s protégé and also his murderer. As for the type, he was as intolerant of it as his great-uncle had been of Cato. It seemed to him, in Cicero’s phrase, a mere desert island, “shore and sky and utter desolation.”
1 iv. 6.
2 Julius Caesar, Act iv.
1 Plut. Cic., 47, 48;
2 “Ille vero liber (Cicero’s Hortensius) mutavit affectum meum, et ad te ipsum, Domine, mutavit preces meas et vota ac desideria mea fecit alia.” Confess., iii. 4.
3 Julius’s own tribute. Cic. ad Brut., 72; Pliny, N. H., vii. 117.
1 “Lassam crudelitatem,” Seneca, de clem.., i. 9.
2 e.g., Suet. Div, Aug,, 68, 69. See pp. 88-9 infra.
3 Attempts will be found in Vell., ii. 61, and Dio, xlvii. 7.
1 Livy, xxii. 57, 6.
2 “Natura propensi sumus ad diligendos homines, quod fundamentum iuris est.” de Leg,, i. 43.
1 Suet. Div. Aug., 27.
2 App., iv. 16; Val. Max., vi. 72; C. I. L., vi. 1527; Dessau, 8393.
3 Macrob. Saturn., ii. 4, 18; Plut. Cic., 49.
1 The authorities for Philippi are App., iv, 108 sqq.; Dio, xlvii. 41 sqq.; Vell., ii. 70; Plut. Ant., 22; Brut., 41 sqq. For the troops engaged see Rice Holmes, i. 217. The date of the second battle is fixed by the latest found fragments of the Fasti of Praeneste. The battle has been reconstructed by Rice Holmes, i. 84-8, and Ferrero, iii. 201-7; cf. also Kromayer, Schlachten-Atlas Roms, Abt. iv. There is a careful study of the preliminary movements by P. Collart in Bull, de C. hell., liii. (1929) 351-64.
2 Cic. ad Att., xiv. 1; cf. Tyrrell, v. 249.
1 Cic. ad Att., v. 21; vi, 1, 2.
2 Dio, xlvi. 49.
3 They will be found in Suet. Div. Aug., 13; App., iv. 135; Plut. Ant., 22; Brut., 53; but see Mon. Anc., i. 13-15, and Ulpian, Dig., xlviii. 24.
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