THE assassination of Caesar was one of the major tragedies of history. Not merely in the sense that it interrupted a great labor of statesmanship and led to fifteen years more of chaos and war; civilization survived, and Augustus completed what Caesar had begun. It was a tragedy also in the sense that probably both parties were right: the conspirators in thinking that Caesar meditated monarchy, Caesar in thinking that disorder and empire had made monarchy inevitable. Men have divided on the issue ever since the Senate sat for a moment in consternation at the deed and then fled in tumult and terror from the hall. Antony, arriving after the event, saw valor in discretion and fortified himself in his house. Cicero’s eloquence lost its tongue, even when Brutus, dagger in hand, hailed him as “Father of His Country.” Emerging, the conspirators found an excited populace in the square; they tried to win it with catchwords of Liberty and the Republic, but the dazed crowd had no homage for phrases so long used to cover greed. Fearing for their lives, the assassins took refuge in the buildings on the Capitol and surrounded themselves there with their personal gladiatorial guards. Toward evening Cicero joined them. Antony, approached by their emissaries, sent a friendly reply.
The next day a larger crowd gathered in the Forum. The conspirators sent agents to buy its support and organize it into a legal assembly; then they ventured down from the Capitol, and Brutus delivered an oration which he had prepared for the Senate. The speech failed to move its hearers. Cassius tried and was met with cold silence. The Liberators returned to the Capitol, and as the crowd thinned out they stealthily departed to their homes. Antony, thinking himself Caesar’s heir, obtained from the stunned Calpurnia all the papers and funds that the dictator had left in his palace; at the same time he secretly summoned Caesar’s veterans to Rome. On the 17th, by his authority as tribune, he convened the Senate and astonished all parties by his amiability and calm. He accepted Cicero’s proposal for a general amnesty, and agreed that Brutus and Cassius should receive provincial governorships (i.e., flight with safety and power), on condition that the Senate should ratify all the decrees, legislation, and appointments of Caesar. Since a majority of the Senate owed office or emoluments to these acts, it consented; and when it adjourned Antony was acclaimed as a statesman who had snatched peace out of the jaws of war. That evening he entertained Cassius for dinner. On the 18th the Senate met again, recognized Caesar’s will, voted him a public funeral, and appointed Antony to deliver the customary eulogy.
On the 19th Antony secured the will from the Vestal Virgins, with whom it had been deposited, and read it, first to a small, then to a larger gathering. It bequeathed Caesar’s private fortune to three grandnephews and (to the astonishment and anger of Antony) named one of them, Caius Octavius, as adoptive son and heir. The dictator had devised his gardens to the people as a public park and had left 300 sesterces to every citizen of Rome. The news of these benefactions sped through the city; and when, on the 20th, Caesar’s body, which had been embalmed in his home, was brought into the Forum for the last rites, a great concourse of people, including Caesar’s veterans, gathered to do him reverence. Antony seems to have spoken at first with cautious restraint; but as he went on, his pent-up feelings flared into eloquence. When he raised from the ivory bier the torn and bloody robe through which Caesar had been stabbed, the emotions of the crowd were stirred beyond control. Amid weird wailing and frenzied cries men gathered wood anywhere and built a fire beneath the corpse. Veterans threw their weapons upon the pyre as an offering, actors threw their costumes, musicians their instruments, women their most precious ornaments. Taking brands from the fire, some enthusiasts sought to burn down the houses of the conspirators; but these buildings were well guarded, and their masters had fled from Rome. A large part of the crowd stayed all night long by the smoldering pyre; many Jews, grateful for Caesar’s sympathetic legislation, remained there three days, intoning their ancient funeral chants. During those days riot surged through the capital; at last Antony directed his soldiers to restore order and to fling persistent marauders from the Tarpeian rock.
Antony was one half of what Caesar had been, as Augustus would be the other half; Antony was a good general, Augustus a superlative statesman; neither would be both. Born in 82 B.C., Antony had spent a large part of his life in camps and more in the quest of wine, women, good food, and fun. Though of high lineage and handsome features, he had the characteristic virtues of the common man: strength of body, animal spirits, good nature, generosity, courage, and loyalty. He had scandalized even Caesar by keeping a harem of both sexes in Rome, and traveling with a Greek courtesan in his litter.1 He had bought in Pompey’s house at auction, occupied it, and then refused payment.2 Now he found in Caesar’s papers, or (some said) placed there, whatever it suited him to find—appointments for his friends, decrees for his purposes, perquisites for himself; in two weeks’ time he had paid off $1,500,000 in debts and had become a rich man. He seized the $25,000,000 that Caesar had deposited in the Temple of Ops and took another $5,000,000 from Caesar’s private treasury. Noting that Decimus Brutus, whom Caesar had appointed governor of Cisalpine Gaul, had assumed that lucrative office despite sharing in the assassination of Caesar, Antony passed through the Assembly a bill giving himself that strategic province and consoling Decimus with Macedonia. Likewise Marcus Brutus and Cassius were to surrender Macedonia to Decimus and Syria to Dolabella, and were to content themselves with sharing Cyrene and Crete.
Alarmed by Antony’s spreading power, the Senate invited to Rome, as a foil to him, Caesar’s adopted son. Caius Octavius, who was to make himself the greatest statesman in Roman history, was eighteen years old in 44. By natural custom he took his adoptive father’s name; adding his own as a modifier, he became Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, until, seventeen years later, he received that lofty name of Augustus by which the centuries have known him. His grandmother was Caesar’s sister Julia; his grandfather had been a banker of plebeian stock at Velitrae, in Latium; his father had served as plebeian aedile, then praetor, then governor of Macedonia. The boy was trained to Spartan simplicity, and educated in the literature and philosophy of Greece and Rome. In the last three years he had lived a good part of the time in Caesar’s palace. It was one of the sorrows of Caesar’s life that he had no legitimate son and one of his profoundest insights that he adopted Octavius. He took the boy with him to Spain in 45 and was pleased to see the courage with which the frail and nervous invalid endured the perils and hardships of the campaign. He had him carefully instructed in the arts of war and government.3 Many statues have made his features familiar: refined, delicate, serious, at once diffident and resolute, yielding and tenacious; an idealist forced to be a realist, a man of thought painfully learning to be a man of action. He was thin and pale and suffered from a poor digestion. He ate little, drank less, and outlived the strong men around him by abstinence and the regularity of his life.
Late in March of 44 a freedman arrived at Apollonia, in Illyria, where Octavian was stationed with the army, and brought the news of Caesar’s death and will. The sensitive youth was horrified at men’s ingratitude; all his love for the great-uncle who had so cherished him, and had worked so feverishly to rebuild a shattered state, welled up in him and filled him with a silent resolve to complete the labors of Caesar and avenge his death. He rode down to the sea, crossed to Brundisium, and hastened to Rome. His relatives there advised him to stay in hiding lest Antony destroy him; his mother likewise recommended inaction; but when he scorned such a course she rejoiced, merely suggesting that whenever possible he should use patience and subtlety rather than open war. He followed this wise counsel to the end.
He visited Antony and inquired what was being done against Caesar’s enemies. He was shocked to find Antony busy planning to lead an army against Decimus Brutus, who had refused to surrender Cisalpine Gaul. He asked Antony to disburse Caesar’s legacies according to will, especially the forty-five dollars bequeathed to every citizen. Antony saw many reasons for delay. Octavian thereupon distributed the money to Caesar’s veterans out of funds borrowed by him from Caesar’s friends, and with this approach, organized his own army.
Infuriated by the insolence of this “boy,” as he called him, Antony announced that an attempt had been made upon his life and that the would-be assassin had named Octavian as the instigator of his plan. Octavian protested his innocence. Cicero took advantage of the quarrel to persuade him that Antony was a ruffian, who must be defeated. Octavian agreed, joined his two legions with those of the consuls Hirtius and Pansa, and marched with them northward to battle Antony. Cicero lent this new civil war the aid of his invective in fourteen powerful “Philippics” against the public policy and private life of Antony, some delivered to the Senate or the Assembly, the rest published as propaganda broadcasts in the best tradition of martial blackening. In the ensuing engagement at Mutina (Modena), Antony lost and fled (44); but Hirtius and Pansa fell, and Octavian returned to Rome sole commander of the Senate’s legions as well as his own. With this force behind him he compelled the Senate to name him consul, to repeal its amnesty to the conspirators, and to sentence them all to death. Discovering that Cicero and the Senate were now his enemies, and were merely using him as a temporary tool against Antony, he composed his differences with Antony and formed with him and Lepidus the Second Triumvirate (43-33). Their combined armies marched into Rome and took it without resistance. Many of the senators and conservatives fled to south Italy and the provinces. The Assembly ratified the Triumvirate and gave it full power for five years.
To pay their troops, replenish their coffers, and revenge Caesar, the three men now let loose the bloodiest reign of terror in Roman history. They listed 300 senators and 2000 businessmen for execution, and offered 25,000 drachmas ($15,000) to any freeman, and 10,000 to any slave, who would bring in the head of a person proscribed.4 To have money became a capital crime; children to whom fortunes had been left were condemned and killed; widows were shorn of their legacies; 1400 rich women were required to turn over a large share of their property to the Triumvirs; at last even the savings deposited with the Vestal Virgins were seized. Atticus was spared because he had helped Antony’s wife Fulvia; while acknowledging the courtesy, he sent great sums to Brutus and Cassius. The Triumvirs set their soldiers to guard all exits from the city. The proscribed hid in wells, sewers, attics, chimneys. Some died resisting, some submitted quietly to their slayers; some starved, hanged, or drowned themselves; some leaped from a roof or into a fire; some were killed by mistake; some, not proscribed, committed suicide on the bodies of slain relatives. Salvius the tribune, knowing himself doomed, gave a last feast to his friends; the emissaries of the Triumvirs entered, cut off his head, left his body at the table, and bade the feast go on. Slaves took the opportunity to get rid of hard masters, but many fought to the death to protect their owners; one disguised himself as his master and suffered decapitation in his stead. Sons died to protect their fathers, others betrayed their fathers to inherit a part of their fortunes. Adulterers or deceived wives surrendered their husbands. The wife of Coponius secured his safety by sleeping with Antony. Antony’s wife Fulvia had tried to buy the mansion of her neighbor Rufus; he had refused to sell; now, though he offered it to her as a gift, she had him proscribed and nailed his severed head to his front door.5
Antony placed Cicero high on the list of those who should be killed. Antony was the husband of Clodius’ widow and the stepson of the Catalinarian Lentulus whom Cicero had slain in jail; and he resented with some reason the unstinted vituperation of the “Philippics.” Octavian protested, but not too long; he could not forget Cicero’s glorification of Caesar’s assassins and the pun by which that reckless wit had excused to the conservatives his dalliance with Caesar’s heir.I Cicero tried to escape; but being buffeted and sickened by the sea, he disembarked and spent the night in his villa at Formiae. The next day he wished to stay there and await his executioners, preferring them to a choppy sea; but his slaves forced him into a litter and were carrying him toward the ship when Antony’s soldiers came upon them. The servants wished to resist, but Cicero bade them set the litter down and yield. Then, “his person covered with dust, his beard and hair untrimmed, and his face worn with his troubles,”7 he stretched his head out so that the soldiers might more conveniently decapitate him (43). By Antony’s command Cicero’s right hand was also cut off and brought with the head to the Triumvir. Antony laughed in triumph, gave the assassins 250,000 drachmas, and had head and hand hung up in the Forum.8
Early in 42 the Triumvirs led their forces across the Adriatic and marched through Macedonia into Thrace. There Brutus and Cassius had massed the last republican army, financed by exactions beyond even Roman precedent. From the Eastern cities of the Empire they demanded, and received, ten years’ taxes in advance. When the Rhodians proved reluctant, Cassius stormed the great port, ordered all citizens to surrender their wealth, killed those who hesitated, and carried away $10,000,000. In Cilicia he quartered his soldiers in the homes of Tarsus till it paid him $9,000,000 to leave; to raise this sum the citizens auctioned off all municipal lands, melted down all temple vessels and ornaments, and sold free persons into slavery—first boys and girls, then women and old men, finally youths; many, on learning that they had been sold, killed themselves. In Judea Cassius levied $4,200,000 and sold the inhabitants of four towns into slavery. Brutus, too, could raise money by force. When the citizens of Lycian Xanthus refused his demands, he besieged them until, starving but obdurate, they committed suicide en masse.9 For the most part Brutus, loving philosophy, tarried in Athens; but the city was filling with young Roman nobles clamoring for a war of restoration. When sufficient funds had been raised Brutus closed his books, joined his troops with those of Cassius, and took the field.
The rival armies met at Philippi in September of 42. Brutus’ wing forced back Octavian’s and captured his camp; but Antony’s routed the legions of Cassius. Cassius ordered his shield-bearer to kill him and was obeyed. Antony could not follow up his success at once; Octavian was confined to his tent with illness, and his troops were in disorder. Antony reorganized the whole army and after a few days’ rest led them against Brutus and put the last remnants of the republican forces to flight. Seeing his men yield, Brutus realized, perhaps with relief, that all was lost; he threw himself upon the sword of a friend and died. Antony, coming upon the body, covered it with his own purple robe. They had once been friends.