Part 11

Whilst he now lay there in the chains of Armida, but not as Rinaldo, there arose in Italy a new misfortune which sprang from his love affair with Cleopatra. Octavian had led back his legions, and his veterans were about as insolent as in the times after the death of Commodus: it is surprising how for two centuries these wild beasts, in whose hands was the fate of the empire, still let themselves be kept under as subjects. Octavian had promised them the most flourishing municipal towns and colonies of Italy,—one cannot for certain make out which: in 710, the battle of Philippi took place; and in 711, the founding of the Julian colonies. (I trust that I shall one day ascertain these military colonies, with tolerable exactness.) Every one knows that Cremona, which had at first been a Latin colony, and afterwards since the _lex Julia_, a _municipium_, had become now—perhaps ever since the time of Sylla—a military colony: it was on this occasion that Virgil’s life was endangered. The allotments of those days far exceeded the old proportions: the fields around for many square miles were parcelled out, and a common soldier got from fifty to a hundred _jugera_, a centurion double, a tribune three times as much. If however, the territory of a place thus doomed would not suffice, there was cut off from a neighbouring district as much as was required to complete the assignments; for the soldier was everything. Thus when Cremona was allotted, a great part of Mantua was taken in, which otherwise would not have been divided; and Virgil moreover lived about three (Italian) miles from Mantua: from the distance between the two towns, one may learn what was the extent of such assignments. One can hardly form an idea of it! All the landed property was entirely taken away from the citizens, and given to the soldiers, from whom the countryman of course generally had his piece of ground again to farm; and perhaps he bought it all back, in the course of time, when the new possessor had lived too wastefully.

In Italy there now arose the greatest despair. Places which had not offended in the least, nor ever once withstood the Julian party, were confiscated just as much as those which had sided with the Pompeians. Among those who were driven out, there were no doubt in many instances the sons of the old soldiers of Sylla: these were ready to rush to arms, and were only looking about for some one who would put himself at their head. Two men now declared for them. One of these was the consul L. Antonius, a brother of the triumvir, who was seeking for an opportunity to overthrow the rival of his brother, in which he was chiefly set on by Fulvia, his sister-in-law. Fulvia was a termagant, a furious bloodthirsty woman, profligate but clever: to Antony she was attached with passionate love, and she had also been faithful to him ever since she married him. The late Queen Caroline of Naples, the wife of Ferdinand, was by no means unlike her. Fulvia had been a deadly enemy to Cicero; now she was jealous of Cleopatra, and brooding over schemes for putting everything into confusion, so as to bring Antony back to Italy. In Præneste she gave out that the oppressed should be protected. In the same manner, Tib. Claudius Nero, the husband of Livia, had stood forth in Campania, and he seems to have done it out of humanity and justice. Octavian, however, never once lost his head. He was a coward; but by degrees he had accustomed himself to look difficulties in the face, events having matured him, and therefore, thanks chiefly to Agrippa, he now behaved with prudence and address. He turned himself to his veterans. Those generals of Antony who were near at hand, showed themselves undecided; C. Asinius Pollio in Gaul and Illyria, would not declare for Antony, though in his heart he was for him; and thus Octavian succeeded in isolating L. Antonius, who with part of the old soldiers, with refugees, senators, and knights, and also with Fulvia, betook himself to Perugia. There they were blockaded by Octavian, and as peace seemed hopeless, they held out to the last: at length, driven to it by the most frightful famine, and left by M. Antony to their fate, they capitulated. L. Antonius betrayed his party, made up with Octavian, and was allowed to go free with Fulvia who now withdrew to Asia. The veterans went into the service of the young Cæsar, having hopes of new assignments of land, as he promised to take care of them as he would of his own men; the newly levied soldiers also went over to him: and thus there remained only the unfortunate senators, knights, and inhabitants of Perugia, who were obliged to surrender at discretion. Three hundred of these, all of them men of rank, were offered up like beasts of sacrifice at the altar of Divus Julius; Perugia was set fire to, and burned to ashes, either during the pillage, or owing to the despair of the inhabitants. The town was afterwards rebuilt as a Julian military colony, under the name of Augusta Perusia, as it is still called on solemn occasions.

From the year of the Perusian war (712), dates Virgil’s fourth eclogue, which is in praise of Asinius Pollio under whose protection he then was, probably at Mantua: Asinius was, at that time, all but an enemy to Octavian, and very near taking up arms against him. Now that all was over, Antony, who had concentrated his troops in Greece, went across to Brundusium; and there, by the mediation of Mæcenas and Cocceius, a peace was concluded between him and Octavian, by which the civil war was put off for nine years. To this period belongs Horace’s journey to Brundusium. (The greatest part of his poems were written in his early youth, or at least before the battle of Actium: his most poetical time was about his thirtieth year.) As a bond of peace, it was agreed that Antony should marry Octavia, the widow of C. Marcellus, and half sister of Octavian,—not indeed by Atia, and therefore not of the Julian house, but by the same father. In the midst of a most corrupt age, and in a bad family, she was a noble-minded woman,—a sad example of the hard fate to which persons of the highest rank may be subjected. She was an exemplary wife: in her behaviour to C. Marcellus, she was spotless; and such she was also to Antony, who neglected her in the most shameful way. An excellent mother she also was; but she had the misfortune of losing her dearest son, the hope of the Roman people: of her children by Antony, the Antonia who was afterwards married to Drusus, the son of Livia, seems alone to have been worthy of her. Antony got the empire of the east as far as the Ionian Sea,—the self-same division which was projected under Severus, nearly settled under Diocletian, and at last established under the sons of Theodosius; the west was given to Octavian; but Lepidus was to have Africa, and doubtless Sicily also and the islands between those countries.

But Sicily was then in the power of Sextus Pompey, the younger son of the great Pompey. He had, after the battle of Munda, collected a force among the Celtiberians, and in the year of Cæsar’s death he carried on an indecisive war against Asinius Pollio. When the amnesty was decreed, at which time he was at Marseilles, he was recalled together with the rest by the senate; the value of his father’s property was to be refunded to him, and the _imperium oræ maritimæ_ was promised him. This _imperium_, however, he had first to create. When the proscriptions came out, he was in great danger: Antony was in possession of his paternal mansion on the Carinæ, and for the sake of it, he was already trying to have him killed. He did not therefore venture to come to Rome, but surrounded himself with all sorts of adventurers, and gathered together a swarm of pirates such as his father had crushed,—in fact the sons of these, and even in some instances the self-same men: he was their natural patron; for, according to Asiatic custom, the conquered placed themselves under the protection of the conqueror. Thus he made himself master of Sicily, which was still quite a Greek island: his pirates too were either Greeks or hellenized Asiatics. He was joined by Statius Murcus, with part of the fleet of Brutus and Cassius. With the rest of it, Domitius Ahenobarbus carried on the war for two years under his own auspices; after this, he united himself with Asinius Pollio, and by him was reconciled to Antony, to whom also he then attached himself. Antony had, even before the battle of Philippi, been foiled in an attempt on Sicily, and moreover Sextus Pompey had very much strengthened himself since; Antony therefore and Octavian now began to treat with the latter by themselves, taking no heed of Lepidus, whom, without asking his leave, they confined to Africa. There was a peace made near the headland of Misenum. Pompey went to them on shore, and trusted himself to them with some generosity; they, on the other hand, with a magnanimity which was otherwise foreign to them, went on board his flagship, and partook of a meal with him. One of his commanders wanted on this occasion to cut the cables of the anchors, and to seize them; but Pompey ordered that it should not be done. By this peace Pompey had Sicily, and as it is stated in an account very likely to be true, Achaia likewise, together with Sardinia, given up to him; so that he had the heart of the maritime dominion. In this possession he peacefully maintained himself for four years.

Sextus Pompey is said to have been _sermone barbarus_. He was indeed a rough fellow, and had lived abroad from his earliest youth; but we see in what a corrupt and neglected state the vulgar tongue must at that time already have been. People only who were highly educated spoke well; it was a particular refinement, a perfection of language, which, if not carefully cultivated, was very liable to degenerate before long. Cicero tells us of the _sermo urbanus_ of the time of Lælius, and remarks that the ladies of that period spoke an idiom of uncommon elegance.[23] But now this refined style was already gone off, as is the case at the present day nearly everywhere, even in England and France. Sextus Pompey was a mere _condottiere_ like Antony and others: he thought of nothing beyond maintaining himself in Sicily and those parts, the restoration of the republic being no concern of his. By the peace of Misenum, all the proscribed were allowed to return to Rome.

Peace having been thus restored, Antony turned to the east, where Labienus had fled over to the Parthians. The latter was one of those men whose fate does not inspire any sympathy: he was a seditious tribune in Cicero’s consulship, and afterwards a tool of Cæsar’s usurpation. His family also was a seditious one: his uncle had been slain with Saturninus, and he had tried to avenge him upon C. Rabirius, one of the few still living of those who with Marius had stormed the Capitol, thirty-seven years having passed since then. Labienus was an intriguer from inclination, not from need, as he was very rich: he threw himself into the arms of Cæsar, and distinguished himself as an officer in the Gallic wars. Afterwards, it is not known for what reason, he went over to Pompey, to whom he remained faithful. Then, after the battle of Pharsalus, he went to Africa, and from thence to Spain; after which he again makes his appearance in the army of Brutus, takes a part in the battle of Philippi, and at last betakes himself to the Parthians. He now led a Parthian army to Syria, and these barbarians, when commanded by one of Cæsar’s comrades, achieved things such as they had never done before: yet after gaining several victories, they were at length driven back by Ventidius.

The same family policy as that of Labienus is met with at that time in more instances than one. That Asinius Pollio was so determined an enemy to Pompey, Cicero, Brutus, and the other Pompeian senators, whose characters he must otherwise have liked, whereas the Cæsarians were not at all to his taste; was owing to nothing else but personal feeling. It so happened that when Pompeius Strabo, the father of Cn. Pompey, overcame in the Social War the Picentines and Marrucinians, the prætor of the Marrucinians was slain, Herius Asinius, the father or grandfather of Pollio (very likely his father; for he also called his son again Herius Asinius). For this reason, he looked upon Cæsar’s party as the Marian one, and attached himself to it as such. This was also the case with Munatius Plancus, a man of distinguished intellect, and not to be slightingly spoken of; but whom in other respects I cannot uphold. He was a Tiburtine, and all the inhabitants of Tibur, Præneste, in short, all the Latins, were thoroughgoing partisans of Cinna; so that Munatius quite naturally became a Cæsarian, as Cæsar, who was Cinna’s son-in-law, might in truth be deemed the representative of his party.

Antony now again withdrew to the East, and being separated from Cleopatra, he lived for some time with Octavia, until he obliged her to go back to Rome. Whilst he now stayed in Asia, and sometimes also in Alexandria, he was allured by the hope of Asiatic trophies; for the Romans still smarted under the disgrace of the overthrow of Crassus. The Armenian king Artavasdes had made advances to him. The whole of the Parthian empire consisted of a number of distinct kingdoms, which in reality were vassal principalities, and not mere satrapies of the king of kings who kept his court at Ctesiphon near Seleucia. Antony marched with a large army through Armenia and Aderbijan to Media, the true Irak Ajemi; and there he besieged the town of Phraata. (The geography of those parts we know very little of.) His plan was wretchedly devised. Owing to the impassable nature of the ground, he had left his battering engines behind, with two legions under the legate Statianus to protect them; this depot was taken by the Parthian sovereign Phraortes, and the two legions were cut to pieces. Afterwards the main army also was so closely pressed, that Antony, having narrowly escaped the fate of Crassus, had to retreat to Armenia: the fourth part of his army had been annihilated, and most of his baggage entirely lost. Antony now returned to his revels with his paramour, to whom he gave Cœlesyria, Judæa, and Cyprus for her empire, a thing which highly disgusted the Romans. To that kingdom, as the coins of Cleopatra show, the puzzling name of Chalcis is given, which I cannot account for in any way: it is certainly to be understood of this realm, and not of the tetrarchy of a later day.

The life of Antony by Plutarch is a very lengthy one; but there are many very remarkable accounts in it, which he had still heard from his grandfather or great grandfather, especially about the frightful distress which there was in Greece: the parallel with Demetrius is very happy. To this period belong the stories of the profligate way in which he spent his time, squandering in eastern luxury and pomp the sums which he had extorted from the nations. The only feeling that one can have with regard to Antony, is that of satisfaction that all is over with him. Here he forgets the shame which he had suffered in war. Fortune, however, was yet once more favourable to him; for the king of Media besought his protection, and showed himself inclined to acknowledge his supremacy instead of that of the king of the Parthians.

In the meanwhile, Octavian took up arms against Sextus Pompey. The soul of this war was Agrippa, who built a fleet on the Lucrine Lake, which he converted into a sort of harbour, where he exercised his ships: a fair ground of quarrel did not exist. Twice was the fleet destroyed by storms: when it was restored, Agrippa gained a glorious victory near Mylæ (Milazzo); but at Tauromenium, Octavian’s ships were utterly routed before his eyes, the commanders of the Pompeian fleet, to crown his disgrace, being freedmen, Mena (Μηνᾶ = Μηνόδωρος, not Mænas; we know the name from Horace’s Epistles)[24] and Menecrates. Octavian’s troops had landed under Cornificius, one of his most faithful servants, and had likewise been beaten, almost indeed annihilated: Agrippa retrieved matters. Another fleet was built, and now Agrippa won a great naval victory. Pompey left Sicily, sought the protection of Antony, and staid for some time in the Levant. Antony was favourably inclined towards him; but whilst he wavered as to whether he should receive him or have him executed, Pompey, owing to one of those fatal orders, was murdered by a proscribed person in Phrygia, a deed which was yet more shameful, as he had formerly made it a point in the peace of Misenum, that all the proscribed should be reinstated. Whether the house of the Pompeii became extinct with him, or whether the consul Sextus Pompeius in the reign of the emperor Tiberius was a descendant of his, is more than I can say.

Cæsar was now master of Sicily. He had called on Lepidus to give him aid from Africa; but the latter, who was discontented with the smallness of his share, and insolent on the strength of the power which belonged to him, had delayed, and had only come over at last with a considerable army, when matters had already become very much entangled. He then began to quarrel with Cæsar for the possession of Sicily; and he seems to have been quite in the right, if in such a division of robbers there can be any question at all of right. But Lepidus had neither the respect nor the love of any one, not even of his own soldiers; and therefore Cæsar, who was his superior in determination and address, betook himself into his camp,—the boldest feat of his life!—and called upon the soldiers to declare for him. The thing succeeded: the daring recklessness of the step, perhaps also the feeling in favour of Cæsar’s adopted son, but more especially the hope of a great donation, such as Lepidus was not able to give, had its effect. Lepidus was forsaken by all the world. Octavian assigned him Circeii for his abode; and thus the whole of the west was united under him. In that dreary place near the Pontine marshes, which is only beautiful from the sea-side, Lepidus passed the rest of his life, having the title, but not the power of a _pontifex maximus_.

The immediate cause of the war which ended with the fight at Actium, was the divorce of Antony and Octavia. The latter had brought to him very rich presents, military stores, and troops which she had raised for him, and had gone with them to meet him to Athens; yet he would not see her, but ordered her to hand over the presents to his officers, and then to go back to Rome. There, however, she was not to dwell in his house, although she had even the children of Fulvia with her; and when moreover she still went on living as his wife, he sent her a letter of divorcement, and married his paramour, which was a great outrage in the eyes of the Romans. The war now began under circumstances which left no doubt whatever as to what its end would be. Antony indeed had formerly been a much superior general to Octavian; but the best commanders were now on the side of the latter, who could also recruit his legions, which his rival had not the means of doing, as he ruled over quite different races of men, and could get nothing better than deserters to fill up the ranks of his army with. Where Antony seemed to have the advantage, was in his fleet; for the Phœnician and Greek nations were at all times far more seafaring than those of the west: had these resources been for ten years in the hands of an able man, they might have given him power; but owing to the carelessness with which Antony had wasted his means, they were useless. The fleet of Octavian consisted of the remnants of Pompey’s, and also of the ships which Agrippa had lately built: these last were small sailing vessels, whereas Antony had immense rowing galleys fitted up with towers and additional decks, rather as if for fighting by land, than for manœuvring by sea. Agrippa, who to all intents and purposes was Octavian’s admiral, displayed from the very first quite an extraordinary activity.

At the entrance of the gulf of Ambracia, near the Corinthian colony of

## Actium, Antonius collected his fleet; so that in the event of a

favourable issue, he might have the passage open to Italy: the fleet of Octavian was lying off the Thesprotian coast. As the fleets faced each other, thus also did the two armies at the entrance of the gulf of Prevesa. Agrippa undertook several detached enterprises, and by taking Leucas and Patræ in the rear of the enemy, made it uncommonly difficult for them to get provisions. In the battle, the strength on Antony’s side was greatest; and if perhaps he could not have conquered, he might at least have stoutly disputed the victory, had not Cleopatra and the Egyptian ships taken to flight with womanish cowardice, at a moment when nothing as yet was lost. Whether Antony thought in his jealousy that Cleopatra meant to sacrifice him and gain over Octavian, or whatever it was; forgetting everything else, he followed her in a fast sailing vessel, and was received in her royal ship. The whole of the fleet which remained, being thus bereft of the strongest ships, was now destroyed by that of Agrippa. All was then lost. Antony was in despair: between him and Octavian no peace was possible; for the conquered there was nothing left but to die. Three days was he angry with Cleopatra, whom he had followed to Alexandria; but her power of bewitching him was so great, that he made it up with her again. He still tried to deceive himself as to the terrible condition in which he stood: he hoped that his land force would be more successful, as it was very much attached to him. It is remarkable how faithfully in these wars the troops still clung to their leaders: it was quite different under the Macedonian successors of Alexander, when, even on the field of the battle, the soldiers would pass over from one side to the other. After Antony had left his troops, though hard pressed by Agrippa, and in spite of all Octavian’s great promises, they held out with unshaken fidelity for six days, nor would they believe that he was not to return; but when Canidius, his lieutenant, also deserted them, they acknowledged Octavian as imperator. With this the war was ended: whatever Roman legions there were still in the eastern provinces, yielded without a struggle; though indeed there were some trifling exceptions, owing to personal motives.