passionate adoration with which the soldiers of Cæsar had regarded
their general; they were his trusted lieutenants, Marcus Lepidus and
Marcus Antonius, the former a Proconsul in command of an army, the
latter Cæsar’s colleague in the Consulship at the time of his death,
and his intimate friend; Cæsar’s widow placed all her husband’s papers
in his hands. Antonius had the advantage of being constitutional head
of the Government, and as soon as it was clear that the popular feeling
at Rome was strongly adverse to the Liberators, he procured a decree
from the frightened Senate sanctioning all Cæsar’s arrangements. Any
other course would in fact have produced intolerable confusion. The
most important consequence of this measure was that the Liberators
were put into positions of great power and influence by the voice of
the man they had killed, and were protected from the consequences of
their own imprudence. Cicero threw aside his literary work and rushed
to Rome, to assist in the restoration of the Republic, and to revive
the party of Pompeius. Antonius, however, had no intention of letting
the reins of Government slip from his grasp; being possessed of the
dead Cæsar’s papers, he was able to produce at his pleasure decrees
which the constitutional party had already sanctioned by anticipation,
and the partisans of the dead man were bound to support. Moderation
was no part of the character of Antonius; he prepared himself to enjoy
thoroughly the wealth which was poured into his hands; with Cæsar’s
soldiers at his back, he felt that he could do what he pleased. An
unexpected event shook his self-confidence, and revived the prospects
of the constitutional party by dividing the Cæsarians.
The young Octavian crossed from Apollonia and landed at Brundisium.
Cæsar had left no direct descendants except an illegitimate son by
Cleopatra, but he had distinguished his great-nephew Octavius by
such indications of his confidence and affection as a Roman would
bestow upon his destined heir. The year before his death he had taken
the young man with him to Spain, on the expedition against the sons
of Pompeius, which ended in their defeat at Munda; he had attached
him closely to his person, shared his tent with him, conducted
all his business in his presence, had in fact begun his political
apprenticeship. Apparently Cæsar came to the conclusion that his
nephew’s education was inadequate, and on the return from Spain he sent
him to Apollonia on the Illyrian coast, a Greek town of considerable
commercial importance, which was the seat of a University largely
frequented by Roman students. So far Cæsar had not taken the final step
of adopting Octavius, but he did so by his will.
Octavius was at this time little over eighteen years of age; his mother
and stepfather were alive, both of them devoted to his interests, but
nobody seems as yet to have thought of him as a possible factor in the
politics of the future.
By removing him to Apollonia his uncle had to some extent withdrawn him
from political life, and the Liberators had forgotten his existence. He
was of weakly health, and had shown no particular aptitude for military
pursuits. Antonius thought him of such small importance, that he
disregarded those portions of Cæsar’s will which referred to him, and
actually seized the private treasure which had been bequeathed to him.
Friends and relatives were alike urgent that Octavian should either
remain where he was, or delay his journey to Italy till he was assured
of the support of an Army. The young man wisely relied on his own
judgment; he was Cæsar’s heir and adopted son, but Cæsar could only
bequeath to him his private inheritance; it was not in his power to
transfer the reins of Government; the nature of the conspiracy against
Cæsar and its extent was still unknown; Antonius and other leading
Cæsarians had been spared, it was clear that no proscription of the
adherents of Cæsar had been contemplated, or, if contemplated, it had
been abandoned. If Octavian were marked out for slaughter, he was
already doomed; nothing could save him but the affection of Cæsar’s
veterans; they were all in Italy, and there was as yet no evidence
that they were prepared to transfer their allegiance to so distant
a relative of their late commander. To appear with an army would be
to invite attack, and Octavian knew his own limitations better than
anybody else; he knew that he was no general, and he had not as yet
a general in whom he could trust. By appearing in Italy simply as a
private person engaged in an ordinary matter of private business, the
formal succession to an inheritance, he disarmed prejudice. If Antonius
wished to put him out of the way, he could do so in any case. On the
other hand, by appearing simply as a defrauded heir, he might attract
popular sympathy; Cæsar’s will had already proved to be a political
force; and the Constitutional party might be glad of a counterpoise to
Antonius.
Such considerations may well have influenced Octavian in the adoption
of the important step which he took contrary to advice. It is even
possible that he contemplated nothing more than the assertion of his
undeniable right; and that the consequences of his daring step took him
by surprise. It is certain that he had no sooner landed at Brundisium
than he found himself a power; the soldiers flocked to meet him, and
his march to Rome was a triumphal progress.
The events of the next three years are difficult to disentangle; to
the actors they must have been perplexing in the extreme. The factor
which had been omitted from the calculations of all the leaders was the
character of the army, which Cæsar had created. As fast as Cæsar made
way in Gaul he enlisted the Gauls in his service; his legions were in
the end less Italian than Gallic; to the Gauls the abstraction called
the Roman Senate had no more significance than the House of Commons to
Sikhs and Gurkhas; they had not got beyond, or not fallen behind, the
conceptions of personal fidelity to a chieftain which are developed
by the clan system. Not only was it natural to them to transfer their
fidelity from the person of a father to that of his son and successor,
but such personal ties were their strongest political passion. They
would obey Antonius and even Lepidus as Cæsar’s friends and trusted
subordinates, but their affection for Cæsar’s heir was of a different
character; to avenge their dead commander, to put his son in his
rights, were to them matters of the first importance; as for the Roman
Constitution and theoretical Republics, they neither cared about them
nor understood them. At first Octavian did not grasp the situation;
his temperament was legal and formal; his first preoccupation was to
assert his legal rights against Antonius, and in order to do this
effectively, he had no objection to using such help as might be given
him by Cicero and the Constitutional party, who for their part proposed
to use against him Antonius and then put him out of the way. The
first serious operation in the field showed Octavian his mistake; the
Senate sent him with the Consuls to relieve Decimus Brutus, brother of
Marcus Brutus, who was being besieged by the Cæsarians under Antonius
at Mutina; both Consuls, old Cæsarians, were killed, and the soldiers
insisted on bringing Octavian back to Rome and making him Consul; it
was not long before they also insisted on a reconciliation between
the Cæsarian leaders, compelling Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavian to
work together and unite in the task of punishing the enemies of Cæsar.
The proscription was partly the work of the army; so far as it was a
punishment of the enemies of Cæsar, Octavian was an accomplice, though
an unwilling accomplice; Antonius and Lepidus both took advantage of
it to satisfy old grudges and make large confiscations. Meanwhile the
general disorganization invited any man who found himself in command of
troops, or was otherwise favourably circumstanced, to fish in troubled
waters; Cicero’s son-in-law Dolabella, the dissolute little gentleman
who was “tied to a sword,” was not the only man who saw an opportunity
of doing something to his own advantage. Adventures of this kind
disturbed the world for a few months, but after Brutus and Cassius had
been beaten near Philippi a fairly definite division declared itself;
the world was again divided between Cæsarians and Pompeians, and the
chief Pompeian leader was Sextus Pompeius. Antonius had gone off to the
East to meet Cleopatra and his fate on the Cydnus. Lepidus, though in
command of an army and Governor of Africa, was a negligible quantity,
destined to suffer a very remarkable disillusionment as soon as he
ventured to assert himself in an independent position.
Few men have ever been so fortunate as Octavian in the mistakes of
their adversaries, and few have ever turned them to such good advantage.
East and West alike were taught to adore the memory of the great
Cæsar by the incompetence of the men who proposed to succeed to his
power; under his sway the commercial cities of Asia Minor had thriven;
Cassius plundered them in the name of the Senate, Dolabella on his
own responsibility, Antonius as the successor of Cæsar; Italy had no
sooner begun to look forward to relief from civil war on the departure
of Antonius than the Constitutional party allied itself with Lucius
Antonius and Fulvia, the brother and wife of Marcus Antonius, to impede
the settlement. Tiberius Nero was among those who joined the new
movement. Relieved of the presence of Antonius, who in spite of all
his faults was a general of ability, the Pompeians hoped to be able
to crush Octavian, who was no general; the proscription had left very
bitter feelings; Octavian had so far had no opportunity of indicating
his pacific inclinations; he had had to do what his soldiers required
of him; Antonius was obviously a self-indulgent adventurer, with
whose fortunes no self-respecting man could ally himself; Fulvia
was a virago, and Lucius Antonius no less greedy than his brother,
though less amiable; still it seemed that these latter with their
adherents embodied the Republican principle; and the remnants of the
Constitutional party joined them. Incompetent generalship allowed their
forces to be locked up in Perusia, and after a siege of three months
the soldiers of Octavian glutted their vengeance upon the enemies of
Cæsar; the terror that was inspired served its purpose in two ways:
there were no more conspiracies in Italy, and Octavian made up his mind
never again to be the slave of his own army.
Tiberius Nero either escaped from Perusia before the town was
completely invested, or had started on a special mission to Campania
with the object of creating a diversion in Southern Italy. He still
held the office of Prætor though his legal term had expired, and thus
invested his enterprise with a legal and constitutional aspect. The
territory of Capua had been confiscated by Rome after the second Punic
War, the penalty of the destructive friendship which that city had
conferred on Hannibal; the Senate of those days had appropriated the
land to its own purposes; the redivision of this land had been part
of the programme of the popular party from the days of the Gracchi,
and their heirs the Cæsarians now proposed to assign it to Octavian’s
veterans. Tiberius Nero took up the cause of the proprietors, who
were threatened with expropriation, thus adopting the old Senatorial
standpoint; he doubtless expected to find that the Campanians, to whom
the existing conditions, sanctioned as they were by the precedents of a
century and a half, caused no grievance, would flock to his standards;
but he met with languid support from the beginning, and the fall of
Perusia with the subsequent atrocities destroyed every prospect of
success; the Campanians preferred a peaceful spoliation to the chances
of war. Tiberius Nero was obliged to fly for his life; accompanied
by his wife, his eldest son barely two years of age, and only one
attendant, he made his way to Naples. Here a romantic incident took
place. C. Velleius Paterculus, the grandfather of the historian, had
been associated with Tiberius Nero in all his enterprises; he had been
his friend all his life; he had served under him as Chief Engineer at
Alexandria, and in his subsequent campaigns; it is not clear whether
he had been the sole companion of the flight from Campania, but in any
case he rejoined his friend at Naples; but Naples was no safe refuge;
Octavian was pressing southwards; it was necessary to cross to Sicily;
when it proved to be difficult to provide for the escape of the whole
party, the old man committed suicide rather than be an impediment to
his friend.
Tiberius Nero had suffered two disappointments: he had been
disappointed in Cæsar; he had been disappointed in the attempt to form
a constitutional party in opposition to Cæsar’s heir; a third and
severer disappointment awaited him in Sicily.
Of the two sons of Pompeius, the elder had been killed in Spain
at or after the battle of Munda; the younger, Sextus, had escaped,
and adopted the life of a corsair in the Mediterranean; during the
confusion which reigned in Italy after the death of Cæsar he had
escaped notice, and had been able to get together a formidable fleet of
pirates; he had seized Sicily, and now hoped to be able to secure the
restitution of his father’s property by imposing terms on Rome, for he
controlled the food supply of the capital. The proscription had sent
him many valuable allies, and the anti-Cæsarian party began to look to
him to take his father’s place as their leader. Sextus, however, was no
politician; he was a mere marauder; the corsairs whom his father had
dispersed reassembled from the bays and islands of the Mediterranean,
and joined in an organized system of brigandage; the subordinates
of Sextus were adventurers of the type which has been the perennial
curse of the inland sea, repeatedly stamped out, and ever ready to
reassert itself till the advent of steam power made such operations
too dangerous. It was not the policy of Sextus, but circumstances
beyond his control, which elevated him from being a leader of bandits
to the position of an umpire between parties in the threatened break
up of the Empire. Outlaws and broken men of all kinds gathered to his
headquarters, and the grave Senators of Rome found themselves strangely
out of place in this assemblage of cut-throats and their mistresses.
Tiberius Nero was among the last to arrive; he attempted to assume
the position of a Roman official, and to exact the respect due to
one before whom the prætorian fasces were carried. Sextus, however,
was by no means inclined to put himself under the orders of men of
respectability; still less so the Greek corsairs, who looked forward to
unlimited plunder under his flag.
When Octavian arrived in due course he temporized; his advisers saw
that for the time being nothing could be done; the Cæsarians had no
fleet; on the other hand, Sextus was glad to disembarrass himself
of the Roman notables; and the result was that the victims of the
proscription were pardoned and received into the Cæsarian ranks. This
was the first occasion on which Octavian was able to manifest his
moderation, and to begin his career of conquest by diplomacy. Sextus
was recognized, admitted to a share in the dismembered Empire; there
was no alternative; Rome was relieved from the danger of starvation,
and Octavian was left free to deal with the veterans and the
consolidation of Italy.
Tiberius Nero was not among those who accepted the amnesty; he again
fled, this time to Corinth, which was associated with his family by
ancient ties of patronage. He became a wanderer, a hunted man; romantic
adventures are assigned to the months of danger and hardship which
followed; he even sought the protection of Antonius; at length he
too made terms with Octavian and returned to Rome, where a further
disappointment awaited him; his young wife attracted the notice of
Octavian; she accepted his attentions, and shortly afterwards an
amicable divorce and re-marriage were arranged. Six months later Livia
bore a second son, who was sent to her first husband by Octavian,
and acknowledged by him as his own. The families lived on terms of
intimacy, and when Tiberius Nero died five years later, both his sons
passed under the care of their mother and Octavian, whose family now
consisted of his own daughter Julia by a previous wife, Scribonia, and
his two stepsons. Julia was a little over a year younger than Tiberius
the future Emperor.
So far there had been nothing discreditable in the life of Tiberius
Nero, and it was never attacked even by the bitterest enemies of his
son. He followed the fortunes of Cæsar, so did many men who saw in
Cæsar the only hope of a reformed constitution; he was frightened by
Cæsar’s root and branch reforms, so were many moderate men; he saw in
Cæsar the tyrant, and applauded the men who cut him down, so did Cicero
and many honourable men; in the confusion that ensued he steadily clung
to any power that seemed to make for the restoration of the Republic;
in this he may have been mistaken, but was not dishonourable; he
eventually made terms with the one party which promised a restoration
of order--no other policy was open to a wise and prudent man; he
surrendered his wife to the conqueror; at this point we withdraw our
approval; we think of Cæsar, who refused to put away his wife at the
bidding of Sulla, and our inclination is to see in the action of
Tiberius Nero contemptible weakness.
Apart, however, from the fact that marriages of convenience and
divorces of convenience were of frequent occurrence among the members
of the princely houses of Rome at this period, the personal conditions
in this case may have been such as to render the divorce in question
as little disgraceful to the injured husband as such an event can be.
There is nothing contrary to probability in assuming that Tiberius Nero
at the time of his marriage to Livia was an elderly, if not an old man;
his intimate friend Velleius Paterculus was certainly an old man when
he killed himself at Naples. The father of Livia had been a political
and possibly personal friend of Tiberius Nero; he fought on the
losing side at the battle of Philippi, and was among those who killed
themselves after their cause seemed to be irreparably lost; immediately
afterwards Tiberius Nero married Livia, who, if she was eighty-six
at the time of her death in A.D. 29, can have been little more than
fourteen at the time of her first marriage. According to Paterculus
the historian, the Emperor Tiberius was less than two years old when
his parents fled to Naples after the fall of Perusia in B.C. 40; this
places the marriage somewhere in 43 B.C., or at the latest very early
in 42 B.C. We have no mention of brothers or other relatives of Livia
in her later life; it would seem that her father’s death left her alone
and friendless; it is a possible conjecture that Tiberius Nero married
the daughter of an old friend, partly in order to save her life and
fortune. The disparity of age must have been great in any case, and
Livia must have accepted the marriage as the only way out of a position
of great peril. It is in accordance with all that we know of Livia
that she should have conducted herself with the strictest propriety
as a Roman matron, though the youthful wife of an elderly or aged
husband; and it is more than probable that he became strongly attached
to her, even though her feeling towards him was dutiful rather than
affectionate. When she met Octavian, she met a man but little older
than herself, who fell passionately in love with her; of their mutual
attachment there can be no doubt; it lasted through the whole of their
life together, and on his deathbed Augustus bade her never to forget
their union. Under these circumstances what was the best thing that
Tiberius Nero could do to secure the happiness of the child whom he
had taken to his home, and who now wished to leave him? By the custom
of his time and race no disgrace attached to a divorce in itself; the
Romans had no conception of a holy estate of matrimony indissoluble
except under scandalous circumstances; it was better that Livia should
be transferred peaceably to the man of her choice than that her
good name should suffer. Tiberius Nero accepted the inevitable, not
necessarily because Octavian could have compelled, but because Livia
had given to her young lover the affections which she had never been
able to give to her elderly protector.
Tiberius Nero died in B.C. 33; his eldest son was then only nine
years old, but had already been sufficiently well trained to be able
to recite the customary oration as chief mourner at his father’s
funeral; both he and his brother are said to have been exceptionally
well educated. We may imagine the solitary father with his strong
love of learning, the victim of so many disappointments, finding some
alleviation to his sorrows in bringing up his boys in the strictest
traditions of an old Roman house.
III
Octavian
To the student of even the clearest narrative of the events which
followed the assassination of Cæsar, the impression conveyed is one of
absolute chaos; officials are appointed and removed, decrees passed
and rescinded, provinces assigned and redistributed, leaders combine
and separate only to combine again; it is difficult to distinguish
any guiding principle, any organized force, by which order might be
restored. War and spoliation seem to be universal and continuous, and
the direction of the march of events to be subject to the caprices
of a licentious soldiery, led by rapacious adventurers, who can keep
hold of their troops only by extravagant largess and promises of
plunder. Licensed brigandage rules the world. And yet this turmoil was
immediately succeeded, and in part accompanied by such prosperity as
the civilized world had not yet known; trade flourished in spite of
piracy, great public improvements were designed and completed, young
men went to universities, travellers passed from one end of the Empire
to the other.
The exact date of the journey which Horace took from Rome to Brundisium
in attendance upon Mæcenas is still a subject of dispute among
scholars, but it certainly cannot be placed later than the battle of
Actium, and is generally assigned to a time before Sextus Pompeius had
been driven from Sicily; neither Italy nor the world were at peace,
and Italy had recently been the scene of civil war. There is, however,
nothing in the description of this journey to suggest a ruined or
disordered country; before Horace caught up the suite of his patron he
travelled by the ordinary conveyances along the road or the canal to
the South; the misadventures of his journey are only such as happen to
travellers in a well ordered country in times of the profoundest peace.
The ordinary routine of life can have been but little disturbed by the
marchings and counter-marchings of armies; and the habits of order must
have been too firmly established to be much shaken by the apparent
anarchy at the capital.