Roman arms had been unsuccessful at Carrhæ, and he wished to subdue the
Parthians, but the ghost of Pompey would not down. His sons raised the
banner of revolt in Spain, and the officers sent against them did not
succeed in their efforts to assert the supremacy of Rome. It was
necessary that Cæsar himself should go there, and accordingly he set
out in September. Twenty-seven days later he was on the ground, and
though he found himself in the face of greater difficulties than he had
anticipated, a few months sufficed to completely overthrow the enemy,
who were defeated finally at the battle of Munda, not far from
Gibraltar (March, 17, 45). Thirty thousand of them perished. Cæsar did
not return to Rome until September, because affairs of the province
required attention. Again he celebrated a triumph, marked by games and
shows, and new honors from the senate.
Cæsar's ambition now made him wish to continue the supreme power in his
family, and he fixed upon a great-nephew named Octavius as his
successor. In the fifth year of his consulate (B.C. 44), on the feast
of Lupercalia (Feb. 15th), he attempted to take a more important step.
He prevailed upon Marc Antony to make him an offer of the kingly
diadem, but as he immediately saw that it was not pleasing to the
people that he should accept it, he pushed the glittering coronet from
him, amid their plaudits, as though he would not think of assuming any
sign of authority that the people did not freely offer him themselves.
[Footnote: "I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet 't was not a
crown neither, 't was one of these coronets; and, as I told you, he
put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have
had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but
to my thinking, he was very loth to lay his fingers off it. And then he
offered it the third time; he put it the third time by, and still as
he refused it, the rabblement shouted and clapped their chapped hands,
and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of
stinking breath because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost
choked Cæsar; for he swooned and fell down at it." Casca's account, in
Shakespeare's _Julius Cæsar_, act i., sc. 2.] Cæsar still longed
for the name of king, however, and became irritated because it was not
given him. This was shown in his intercourse with the nobles, and they
were now excited against him by one Caius Cassius Longinus (commonly
called simply Cassius), who had wandered and fought with Crassus in
Parthia, but had escaped from that disastrous campaign. He had been a
follower of Pompey, and had fallen into Cæsar's hands shortly after the
battle of Pharsalia. Though he owed his life to Cæsar, he was
personally hostile to him, and his feelings were so strong that he
formed a plot for his destruction, in which sixty or eighty persons
were involved. Among these was Marcus Junius Brutus, then about forty
years of age, who had also been with Pompey at Pharsalia. He was of
illustrious pedigree, and claimed to be descended from the shadowy hero
of his name, who is said to have pursued the Tarquins with such
patriotic zeal. His life also had been spared by Cæsar at Pharsalia,
and he had made no opposition to his acts as dictator. Cato was his
political model, and at about this time, he divorced his wife to marry
Portia, Cato's daughter. Cassius had married Junia Tertulla, half-
sister of Brutus, and now offered him the place of chief adviser of the
conspirators, who determined upon a sudden and bold effort to
assassinate the dictator. They intended to make it appear that
patriotism gave them the reason for their act, but in this they failed.
The senate was to convene on the Ides of March, and Cæsar was warned
that danger awaited him; but he was not to be deterred, and entered the
chamber amid the applause of the people. The conspirators crowded about
him, keeping his friends at a distance, and at a concerted signal he
was grasped by the hands and embraced by some, while others stabbed him
with their fatal daggers. He fell at the base of the statue of Pompey,
pierced with more than a score of wounds. It is said that when he
noticed Brutus in the angry crowd, he exclaimed in surprise and sorrow:
"_Et tu Brute!_" (And thou, too, Brutus!).
Brutus had prepared a speech to deliver to the senate, but when he
looked around, he found that senators, centurions, lictors, and
attendants, all had fled, and the place was empty. He then marched with
his accomplices to the forum. It was crowded with an excited multitude,
but it was not a multitude of friends. The assassins saw that there was
no safety for them in the city. Lepidus was at the gates with an army,
and Antony had taken possession of the papers and treasures of Cæsar,
which gave him additional power; but all parties were in doubt as to
the next steps, and a reconciliation was determined upon as giving time
for reflection. Cassius went to sup with Antony, and Brutus with
Lepidus. This shows plainly that the good of the republic was not the
cause nearest the hearts of the principal actors; but that each, like a
wary player at chess, was only anxious lest some adversary should get
an advantage over him.
The senate was immediately convened, and under the direction of Cicero,
who became its temporary leader, it was voted that the acts of Cæsar,
intended as well as performed, should be ratified, and that the
conspirators should be pardoned, and assigned to the provinces that
Cæsar had designated them for.
Antony now showed himself a consummate actor, and a master of the art
of moving the multitude. He prepared for the obsequies of the dictator,
at which he was to deliver the oration, and, while pretending to
endeavor to hold back the people from violence against the murderers,
managed to excite them to such an extent that nothing could restrain
them. He brought the body into the Campus Martius for the occasion, and
there in its presence displayed the bloody garment through which the
daggers of the conspirators had been thrust; identified the rents made
by the leader, Cassius, the "envious Casca," the "well-beloved Brutus,"
and the others; and displayed a waxen effigy that he had prepared for
the occasion, bearing all the wounds. He called upon the crowd the
while, as it swayed to and fro in its threatening violence, to listen
to reason, but at the same time told them that if he possessed the
eloquence of a Brutus he would ruffle up their spirits and put a tongue
in every wound of Cæsar that would move the very stones of Rome to rise
in mutiny. He said that if the people could but hear the last will of
the dictator, they would dip their kerchiefs in his blood--yea, beg a
hair of him for memory, and, dying, mention it in their wills as a rich
legacy to their children.
The oration had its natural effect. The people, stirred from one degree
of frenzy to another, piled up chairs, benches, tables, brushwood, even
ornaments and costly garments for a funeral pile, and burned the whole
in the forum. Unable to restrain themselves, they rushed with brands
from the fire towards the homes of the conspirators to wreak vengeance
upon them. Brutus and Cassius had fled from the city, and the others
could not be found, so that the fury of their hate died out for want of
new fuel upon which to feed.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE FORUM ROMANUM]
Antony was now the chief man of Rome, and it was expected that he would
demand the dictatorship. To the astonishment of all, he proposed that
the office itself should be forever abolished, thus keeping up his
pretence of moderation; but, on the other hand, he asked for a body-
guard, which the senate granted, and he surrounded himself with a force
of six thousand men. He appointed magistrates as he wished, recalled
exiles, and freed any from prison whom he desired, under pretence of
following the will of Cæsar.
It soon became apparent that, in the words of Cicero addressed to
Cassius, the state seemed to have been "emancipated from the king, but
not from the kingly power," for no one could tell where Antony would
stop his pretence of carrying out the plans of Cæsar. The republic was
doubtless soon to end, and it was not plain what new misery was in
store for the distracted people.
XVII.
HOW THE REPUBLIC BECAME AN EMPIRE.
When Cæsar had planned to go to Parthia, he sent in that direction some
of his legions, which wintered at Apollonia, just over the Adriatic,
opposite Brundusium, and with them went the young and sickly nephew
whom Cæsar had mentioned in his will as his heir. While the young man
was engaged in familiarizing himself with the soldiers and their life,
a freedman arrived in camp to announce from his mother the tragedy of
the Ides of March. The soldiers offered to go with him to avenge his
uncle's death, but he decided to set out at once and alone for the
capital. At Brundusium he was received by the army with acclamations.
He did not hesitate to assume the name Cæsar, and to claim the
succession, though he thus bound himself to pay the legacies that Cæsar
had made to the people. He was known as Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus,
or, briefly, as Octavius. [Footnote: Octavius was son of Caius Octavius
and Atia, daughter of Julia, sister of Julius Cæsar, and was born Sept.
23, B.C. 63. His true name was the same as that of his father, but he
is usually mentioned in history as Augustus, an untranslatable title
that he assumed when he became emperor. His descent was traced from
Atys, son of Alba, an old Latin hero.] Cæsar had bequeathed his
magnificent gardens on the opposite side of the Tiber to the public as
a park, and to every citizen in Rome a gift of three hundred sesterces,
equal to ten or fifteen dollars. These provisions could not easily be
carried out except by Antony, who had taken possession of Cæsar's
moneys, and who was at the moment the most powerful man in the
republic. Next to him stood Lepidus, who was in command of the army.
These two seemed to stand between Octavius and his heritage.
Octavius understood the value of money, and took possession of the
public funds at Brundusium, captured such remittances from the
provinces as he could reach, and sent off to Asia to see how much he
could secure of the amount provided for the Parthian expedition, just
as though all this had been his own personal property.
Thus the timid but ambitious youth began to prepare himself for supreme
authority. When he reached Rome his mother and other friends warned him
of the risks involved in his course, but he was resolute. He had made
the acquaintance at Apollonia of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, then twenty
years of age, who afterwards became a skilful warrior and always was a
valuable adviser, and now he determined to make a friend of Cicero.
This remarkable orator had already been intimate with all the prominent
men of his day; had at one time or another flattered or cajoled Curio,
Cassius, Crassus, Pompey, Antony, and Cæsar, and now, after thoroughly
canvassing the probabilities, he decided to take the side of Octavius,
though he was loth to break with either Brutus or Antony. His weakness
is plainly and painfully presented by his own hand in his interesting
letters, which add much light to the story of this period. [Footnote:
James Anthony Froude says: "In Cicero, Nature half-made a great man and
left him uncompleted. Our characters are written in our forms, and the
bust of Cicero is the key to his history. The brow is broad and strong,
the nose large, the lips tightly compressed, the features lean and keen
from restless intellectual energy. The loose, bending figure, the neck
too weak for the weight of the head, explain the infirmity of will, the
passion, the cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and
veracity. He was born into an age of violence with which he was too
feeble to contend. The gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence
will forever preserve his memory from too harsh a judgment."--"Cæsar, a
Sketch," chapter xxvii.]
Octavius gathered together enough money to pay the legacies of Cæsar by
sales of property, and by loans, in spite of the fact that Antony
refused to give up any that he had taken. He artfully won the soldiers
and the people by his liberality (that could not fail to be contrasted
with the grasping action of Antony), and by the shows with which he
amused them. Thus with it all he managed to make the world believe that
he was not laying plans of ambition, but simply wished to protect the
state from the selfish designs of his rival. In this effort he was
supported by the oratory of Cicero, who began to compose and deliver or
publish a remarkable series of fourteen speeches known as Philippics,
from their resemblance to the four acrimonious invectives against
Philip of Macedon which the great Demosthenes launched at Athens during
the eleven years in which he strove to arouse the weakened Greeks from
inactivity and pusillanimity (352-342 B.C.).
Cicero entered Rome on the first of September, and delivered his first
Philippic the next day, in the same Temple of Concord in which he had
denounced Catiline twenty years before. He then retired from the city,
and did not hear the abusive tirade with which Antony attempted to
blacken his reputation. In October he prepared a second speech, which
was not delivered, but was given to the public in November. This is the
most elaborate and the best of the Philippics, and it is also much more
fierce than the former. The last of the series was delivered April 22,
43. Antony was soon declared a public enemy, and Cicero in his speeches
constantly urged a vigorous prosecution of the war against him.
Octavius gained the confidence of the army, and then demanded the
consulate of the senate. When that powerful office had been obtained,
he broke with the senate, and marched to the northward, ostensibly to
conquer Antony and Lepidus, who were coming down with another great
army. Instead of precipitating a battle, Lepidus contrived to have a
meeting on a small island in a tributary of the Po, not far from the
present site of Bologna, and there, toward the end of October, it was
agreed that the government of the Roman world should be peaceably
divided between the three captains, who were to be called Triumvirs for
the settlement of the affairs of the republic. They were to retain
their offices until the end of December, 38, Lepidus ruling Spain;
Octavius, Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa; and Antony, the two Gauls;
while Italy was to be governed by the three in common, their authority
being paramount to senate, consuls, and laws. This is known as the
Second Triumvirate, though we must remember that the former
arrangement, made by Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus, was simply a private
league without formal sanction of law. The second triumvirate was
proclaimed November, 27, 43 B.C.
[Illustration: MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.]
The first work of the three rulers was to rid themselves of all whom
they feared as enemies, and we have to imagine them sitting down to
make out a list of those who, like the sufferers at the dreadful time
of Marius and Sulla, were proscribed. Among the prominent men seventeen
were first chosen to be butchered, and on the horrid list are found the
names of a cousin of Octavius, a brother of Lepidus, and an uncle of
Antony. To the lasting execration of Octavius, he consented that
Cicero, who had so valiantly fought for him, should be sacrificed to
the vengeance of Antony, whom the orator had scarified with his burning
words.
This was but the beginning of blood-shedding, for when the triumvirs
reached Rome they issued list after list of the doomed, some names
being apparently included at the request of daughters, wives, and
friends to gratify private malice. The head and hands of Cicero were
cut off and sent to be affixed to the rostra, where they had so often
been seen during his life. It is said that on one occasion a head was
presented to Antony, and he exclaimed: "I do not recognize it, show it
to my wife"; and that on another, when a man begged a few moments of
respite that he might send his son to intercede with Antony, he was
told that it was that son who had demanded his death. The details are
too horrible for record, and yet it is said that the massacre was not
so general as in the former instance. In this reign of terror, three
hundred senators died, and two thousand knights.
While these events had occurred in Rome, Brutus and Cassius had been
successfully pursuing their conquests in Syria and Greece, and were now
masters of the eastern portion of the Roman world. When they heard of
the triumvirate and the proscription, they determined to march into
Europe; but Antony and Octavius were before them, and the opposed
forces met on the field of Philippi, which lies nine miles from the
Ægean Sea, on the road between Europe and Asia, the Via Egnatia, which
ran then as now from Dyrrachium and Apollonia in Illyricum, by way of
Thessalonica to Constantinople, or Byzantium, as it was then called.
Brutus engaged the forces of Octavius, and Cassius those of Antony.
Antony made head against his opponent; but Octavius, who was less of a
commander, and fell into a fit of illness on the beginning of the
battle, gave way before Brutus, though in consequence of misinformation
of the progress of the struggle, Cassius killed himself just before a
messenger arrived to tell him of his associate's success. Twenty days
afterwards the struggle was renewed on the same ground, and Brutus was
defeated, upon which he likewise put an end to his own life. If the
murderers of Cæsar had fought for the republic, there was no hope for
that cause now. The three rulers were reduced to two, for Lepidus was
ignored after the victory of his associates, and it only remained to
eliminate the second member of the triumvirate to establish the
monarchy. For the present, Octavius and Antony divided the government
between them, Antony taking the luxurious East, and leaving to Octavius
the invidious task of governing Italy and allotting lands to the
veterans.
Thousands of the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul were expelled from their
homes to supply the soldiers with farms, but still they remained
unsatisfied, and Italy was filled with complaints which Octavius was
unable to allay. Antony, on the other hand, gave himself up to the
grossest dissipation, careless of consequences. At Tarsus, he had an
interview with Cleopatra, then twenty-eight years of age, whom he had
seen years before when he had accompanied Gabinius to Alexandria, and
later, when she had lived at Rome the favorite of Cæsar. Henceforth he
was her willing slave. She sailed up the river Cydnus in a vessel
propelled by silver oars that moved in unison with luxurious music, and
filled the air with fragrance as she went, while beautiful slaves held
the rudder and the ropes. The careless and pleasure-loving warrior
forgot every thing in his wild passion for the Egyptian queen. He
forgot his wife, Fulvia, but she was angry with Octavius because he had
renounced his wife Claudia, her daughter, and stirred up a threatening
revolt against him, which she fondly hoped might also serve to recall
Antony from the fascinations of Cleopatra. With her supporters she
raised a considerable army, by taking the part of the Italians who had
been dispossessed to give farms to the veterans, and by pretending also
to favor the soldiers, to whom rich spoils from Asia were promised.
They were, however, pushed from place to place until they found
themselves shut up in the town of Perusia, in Etruria, where they were
besieged and forced to surrender, by the military skill of Agrippa,
afterwards known as one of the ablest generals of antiquity.
Meantime, Antony's fortunes in the East were failing, and he determined
upon a brave effort to overthrow Octavius. He sailed for Brundusium,
and laid siege to it; but the soldiers on both sides longed for peace.
Fulvia had died, and mutual friends prevailed upon Octavius and Antony
to make peace and portion out the world anew. Again the East fell to
Antony and the West to his colleague. Antony married Octavia, sister of
Octavius, and both repaired to the capital, where they celebrated games
and festivities in honor of the marriage and the reconciliation. This
was at the end of the year 40 B.C.
[Illustration: CLEOPATRA'S SHOW-SHIP.]
The next year peace was effected with Sextus, a son of the great
Pompey, who had been proscribed as one of the murderers of Cæsar,
though he had really had no share in that deed. He had been engaged in
marauding expeditions having for their purpose the injury of the
triumvirs, and at this time had been able to cut off a considerable
share of the supply of grain from Sicily and Africa. He was indemnified
for the loss of his private property and was given an important command
for five years. This agreement was never consummated, for Antony had
not been consulted and refused to carry out a portion of it that
depended upon him. Again Pompey entered upon his marauding expeditions,
and the price of grain rose rapidly at Rome. Two years were occupied in
preparing a fleet, which was placed under command of Agrippa, who
defeated Pompey off Naulochus, on the northwestern coast of Sicily
(Sept. 3, 36.)
In the midst of the preparations for the war with Pompey, (B.C. 37)
discord had arisen between Antony and Octavius, and the commander of
the Eastern army set out for Italy with a fleet of three hundred sail.
Octavius forbade his landing, and he kept on his course to Tarentum,
where a conference was held. There were present on this memorable
occasion, besides the two triumvirs, Agrippa, the great general;
Octavia, sister of one triumvir and wife of the other, one of the
noblest women of antiquity; and Caius Cilnius Mæcenas, a wealthy
patron of letters, who had also been present when the negotiations were
made previous to the peace of Brundusium, three years before. Probably
the satiric poet Horace was also one of the group, for he gives, in one
of his satires, an account of a journey from Rome to Brundusium, which
he is supposed to have made at the time that Mæcenas was hurrying to
the conference.
Horace says that he set out from Rome accompanied by Heliodorus, a
rhetorician whom he calls by far the most learned of the Greeks, and
that they found a middling inn at Aricia, the first stopping-place, on
the Appian Way, sixteen miles out, at the foot of the Alban mount.
Next they rested, or rather tried to rest, at Appii Forum, a place
stuffed with sailors, and then took a boat on the canal for Tarracina.
He gives a vivid picture of the confusion of such a place, where the
watermen and the slaves of the travellers were mutually liberal in
their abuse of each other, and the gnats and frogs drove off sleep.
Drunken passengers, also, added to the din by the songs that their
potations incited them to. At Feronia the passengers left the boat,
washed their faces and hands, and crawled onward three miles up to the
heights of Anxur, where Mæcenas and others joined the party. Slowly
they made their way past Fundi, and Formiæ, where they seem to have
been well entertained. The next day they were rejoiced by the addition
of the poet Virgil and several more friends to the party, and
pleasantly they jogged onwards until their mules deposited their pack-
saddles at Capua, where Mæcenas was soon engaged in a game of tennis,
while Horace and Virgil sought repose. The next stop was not far from
the celebrated Caudine Forks, at a friend's villa, where they were very
hospitably entertained, and supplied with a bountiful supper, at which
buffoons performed some droll raillery. Thence they went directly to
Beneventum, where the bustling landlord almost burned himself and those
he entertained in cooking their dainty dinner, the kitchen fire falling
through the floor and spreading the flames towards the highest part of
the roof. It was a ludicrous moment, for the hungry guests and
frightened slaves hardly knew whether to snatch their supper from the
flames or to try to extinguish the fire.
From Beneventum the travellers rode on in sight of the Apuleian
mountains to the village of Trivicum, where the poet gives us a glimpse
of the customs of the times when he tells us that tears were brought to
their eyes by the green boughs with the leaves upon them with which a
fire was made on the hearth. Hence for twenty-four miles the party was
bowled away in chaises to a little town that the poet does not name,
where water was sold, the worst in the world, he thought it, but where
the bread was very fine. Through Canusium they went to Rubi, reaching
that place fatigued because they had made a long journey and had been
troubled by rains. Two days more took them through Barium and Egnatia
to Brundusium, where the journey ended.