The old aristocracy fought its last land battle at Philippi. Many of them—Cato’s son, Hortensius’ son, Quintilius Varus, and Quintus Labeo—joined Brutus and Cassius in suicide. The victors divided the Empire between them: Lepidus was given Africa, Octavian took the West, Antony, having his choice, took Egypt, Greece, and the East. Always needing money, Antony forgave the Eastern cities their contributions to his enemies on condition that they give him a like sum—ten years’ taxes within a year. His old geniality returned as victory made him seemingly secure. He reduced his demands upon the Ephesians when their women, dressed as Bacchantes, greeted him as the god Dionysus; but he gave his cook the house of a Magnesian magnate as reward for a distinguished supper. He called an assembly of the Ionian cities at Ephesus and settled the boundaries and affairs of these states with such good judgment that Augustus a decade later found little to change. He pardoned all who had fought against him except those who had shared in killing Caesar. He gave relief to the cities that had suffered most severely from Cassius and Brutus, released several of them from every Roman tax, freed many who had been sold into slavery by the conspirators, and liberated the cities of Syria from the despots who had overthrown their democracies.10
While displaying these graces of his simple character, Antony surrendered to such exuberant sensuality that his subjects lost respect for his authority. He surrounded himself with dancers, musicians, courtesans, and roisterers, and took wives and concubines whenever a fair woman struck his Olympian fancy. He had sent messengers to bid Cleopatra present herself before him at Tarsus and answer charges that she had aided Cassius to raise money and troops. She came, but in her own time and way. While Antony sat on a throne in the forum, waiting for her to plead and be judged, she sailed up the river Cydnus in a barge with purple sails, gilded stern, and silver oars that beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. Her maids, dressed as sea nymphs and graces, were the crew, while she herself, dressed as Venus, lay under a canopy of cloth of gold. When the news of this seductive apparition spread among the people of Tarsus they flocked to the shore, leaving Antony solitary on his throne. Cleopatra invited him to dine with her on her ship. He came with an overawing retinue; she feted them with every luxury, and corrupted his generals with gifts and smiles. Antony had almost fallen in love with her as a girl in Alexandria; now he found her, at twenty-nine, in the full maturity of her charms. He began by reproving her, and ended by presenting her with Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, and parts of Arabia, Cilicia, and Judea.11 She rewarded him according to his desire and invited him to Alexandria. There he spent a carefree winter (41-40), drinking the Queen’s love, listening to lectures at the Museum, and forgetting that he had an empire to rule. She herself was not in love. She knew that Egypt, rich but weak, would soon attract the cupidity of omnipotent Rome; the only salvation for her country and her throne lay in marriage with Rome’s lord. She had sought this with Caesar; she sought it now with Antony. And he, who had no policy but Caesar’s, was tempted to realize the dream of uniting Rome and Egypt and making his capital in the fascinating East.
While Antony frolicked in Alexandria, his wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius were plotting to overthrow Octavian’s power in Rome. Octavian had found no happiness there: the Senate was a rump of adventurers and generals, labor was restless with unemployment, the populares were disorganized, Sextus Pompey was blocking the import of food, business was petrified with fear, taxation and spoliation had ruined nearly every fortune, and many men were living in a reckless and sensual riot on the ground that the morrow might in any case bring repudiation of the currency, or further spoliation, or death. Octavian himself was anything but an exemplar of chastity at this time. To perfect the confusion, Fulvia and Lucius raised an army and called upon Italy to oust him. Marcus Agrippa, Octavian’s general, besieged Lucius in Perusia and starved him out (March, 40). Fulvia died of illness, frustrated ambition, and grief over Antony’s neglect of her. Octavian pardoned Lucius in the hope of maintaining peace with Antony, but Antony crossed the sea and besieged Octavian’s troops in Brundisium. The armies, showing more sense than their leaders, refused to fight each other, and compelled them to a peaceable agreement (40). As a pledge of good behavior Antony married Octavian’s sister, the gentle and virtuous Octavia. Everybody was briefly happy; and Virgil, writing now his Fourth Eclogue, predicted the return of Saturn’s Utopian reign.
In 38 Octavian fell in love with Livia, the pregnant wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero. He divorced his first wife Scribonia, persuaded Nero to release Livia, married her, and found, in her persuasive counsel and her aristocratic connections as a member of the Claudian gens, a passage to reconciliation with the propertied classes. He reduced taxes, returned 30,000 runaway slaves to their masters, and set himself patiently to restoring order in Italy. With the help of Agrippa, and of 120 ships contributed by Antony, he destroyed the fleet of Sextus Pompey, secured Rome’s food supply, and ended the resistance of the Pompeians (36). The Senate by acclamation named him tribune for life.
After marrying Octavia in a state ceremony at Rome, Antony went with her to Athens. There for a time he enjoyed the novel experience of living with a good woman. He put aside politics and war and, with Octavia at his side, attended the lectures of philosophers. Meanwhile, however, he studied the plans that Caesar had left for conquering Parthia. Labienus, son of Caesar’s general, had entered the services of the Parthian king and had led Parthian armies victoriously into Cilicia and Syria—lucrative provinces of Rome (40). To meet this threat Antony needed soldiers; to pay soldiers he needed money; and of this Cleopatra had plenty. Suddenly tiring of virtue and peace, he sent Octavia back to Rome and asked Cleopatra to meet him at Antioch. She brought him a few troops, but she disapproved of his grandiose plans and apparently gave him little of her fabulous treasury. He invaded Parthia with 100,000 men (36), tried in vain to capture its citadels, and lost almost half his forces in a heroic retreat through 300 miles of hostile country. On the way he annexed Armenia to the Empire. He awarded himself a triumph and shocked Italy by celebrating it at Alexandria. He sent a letter of divorce to Octavia (32), married Cleopatra, confirmed her and Caesarion as joint rulers of Egypt and Cyprus, and bequeathed the Eastern provinces of the Empire to the son and daughter that Cleopatra had borne him. Knowing that he would soon have to square accounts with Octavian, he abandoned himself to a year of frolic and luxury. Cleopatra encouraged him to dare the last gamble for omnipotence, helped him to raise an army and a fleet, and chose as her favorite oath, “As surely as I shall one day give judgment in the Capitol.”13