A noble ruin, p.44
A Noble Ruin, page 44
Fulvia did not fail her brother-in-law. She wrote Antony’s commanders—Ventidius, Pollio, and Quintus Fufius Calenus—urging them to rush to Lucius’ aid. Ventidius and Pollio complied, at first anyway, by advancing to the south. As for Calenus, he remained unmoved. Destined to die early in the next year, he was perhaps already too ill to act. By putting her enormous personal influence to work, Fulvia also managed to raise fresh troops for Plancus. With these reinforcements, he annihilated one of Octavian’s legions near Rome.152 The soul of assiduity, Fulvia even began a correspondence with Sextus Pompey, whom she pressed to take advantage of this opportunity to strike.153 In the end, however, none of her exertions mattered. Octavian’s forces were quick in blocking the advances of Ventidius and Pollio, nor could Plancus distract and dislodge Octavian. Lucius’ cause was not helped by the reality that these Antonian generals disliked and distrusted one another. Although action was now required, Ventidius alone was bold: Pollio remained cautious, and Plancus was ultimately persuasive in making a case to the others that they should wait on events.154
Propaganda played its part during this crisis, a reality visible on surviving sling bullets that were cast by troops on both sides.155 Soldierly esprit was stimulated by inscribing designations of legions or the names of esteemed commanders—or by etching in abuse of the enemy.156 ‘Lucius Antonius, baldy, you are doomed’, reads one. Others ridicule Octavian—he is always denominated Octavian or even Octavius and never Caesar by Lucius’ men—in fiercely obscene terms. Fulvia, too, attracted scurrility.157 It hardly mattered that she was elsewhere. For the Romans, insults against women very often came by way of collateral damage in conflicts between men, and this is obviously the case here.158 Brickbats hurled at Fulvia implied that she, not Lucius, was the central figure, a conceit that degraded the consul and fashioned any opposition to the triumvir as something perverse and unnatural. This was a strategy that owned Octavian’s approval. An epigram attributed to him159 defines the Perusine War as the consequence of Fulvia’s jealousy and sexual appetite:
Because Antony fucks Glaphyra, Fulvia sentences me to this punishment: I must fuck her too. I fuck Fulvia? What if Manius begged me to sodomise him? Would I do it? I don’t think so, not if I have any taste. ‘Fuck me or fight me’, says she. Well, isn’t my dick dearer to me than my very life? Let the trumpets sound!160
Here Octavian belittles Lucius’ campaign by humiliating Manius and Fulvia—all by way of a robust and vulgar sexism (and a witty allusion to Caesar’s claim in his Civil War that his dignity was dearer to him than his life).161
It may be owing to this strategy of trivializing Lucius that the consul is mocked as calvus. He may, of course, actually have been bald. But baldness was a disfigurement Romans often took as evidence of sexual incontinence: even Caesar was needled by his soldiers a moechus calvus, a bald adulterer.162 During the empire, the semiotics of baldness, because it marked a man for his carnal excesses, could also signal an emperor’s tyrannical tendencies.163 Consequently, it has been suggested that these sling bullets launch a similar slur against Lucius.164 But not everything is about sex, and it is perhaps more likely that here Octavian’s soldiers refer to a familiar figure from popular mimes, one of the public’s favourite forms of entertainment. The Stupid Bald Man, the butt of ridicule in multiple mimes, was a stock character who, because he was hopeless, hapless, and stupid, ‘was deceived and disappointed in all that he did’.165 This is an insult that works very neatly with complaints about Fulvia’s masterful manliness. Lucius got the point. He, too, ventilated vilification: in pamphlets or in verse he reproached Octavian for surrendering his chastity to Caesar and to Aulus Hirtius.166
We must ask: does Octavian’s epigram against Fulvia deprecate Antony? An affair with Glaphyra, if one took place, while not exactly a specimen of sterling behaviour, was by no means profoundly immoral or even objectionable conduct for a Roman husband. Its inclusion here hardly constitutes calumny. By contrast, any sexual advance outside marriage was absolutely disgraceful on the part of a Roman matron.167 In this poem, Fulvia is irredeemably bad, and Antony is, if anything, unfortunate in the choice of his wife. Octavian’s feud, this poem makes clear, is with the irrational and reprobate Fulvia—and so by unmistakeable implication with the non-entity Lucius. Not, however, at least not strictly speaking, with Antony. Some of the sling bullets cast by Lucius’ soldiers are inscribed with Antony’s name and underline his victory at Philippi: the great man’s prestige was clearly a rallying cry inside Perusia.168 Nothing in the way of a contradiction ever fell from the other side. Lucius and Fulvia were targets of abuse in this conflict, but never Antony.169
Inside Perusia’s walls, deprivation soon led to starvation—and desperation. More than once, Lucius attempted to break out, but without success. In the end, he was forced to capitulate.170 Lucius was not merely pardoned by Octavian but offered a command in his Spanish province. Under the circumstances, he could hardly refuse. He is not mentioned again: presumably he died not long afterwards. Lucius’ officers and staff, including his senatorial and equestrian supporters, were likewise pardoned, although some preferred flight. Tisienus joined Sextus Pompey. Claudius Nero, after staging another unsuccessful rebellion in Campania, also made his way to Sicily, taking with him his wife, Livia, and their son, the future emperor, Tiberius.171 Perhaps this was wise: a very few aristocrats, Octavian’s bitterest enemies, were executed. As for Lucius’ soldiers, they were added to Octavian’s. And the townsfolk of Perusia were spared. The leading men of the city were not so fortunate. With a single exception, a man who had served on the jury which condemned the Liberators, the town’s council were put to death. The city itself was wrecked, perhaps by Octavian’s pillaging troops, perhaps by arson.172 Perusia’s grim fate was later memorably lamented in the poetry of Propertius. And, in the months prior to Actium, Octavian’s cruelty at Perusia, including allegations of human sacrifice, animated Antonian propaganda.173 In time the city was restored, as Perusia Augusta, and once more it thrived.174 But in the winter of 40 its ruin, and the execution of its decurions, made it clear to the whole of Italy that rebellion against Octavian would not be tolerated.
Coda
For Octavian, this was intended to be the end of the matter. His conflict with Lucius was now concluded. So, too, any further resistance from the municipalities. Lucius insisted to Octavian that his brother played no part in his rebellion and Octavian, whether or not he was convinced, deemed it prudent to take him at his word.175 Antony, he hoped, would likewise be prepared to move forward. Fulvia, to whom Plancus granted an honour guard of 3,000 cavalrymen, travelled east to join her husband. Plancus accompanied her. Octavian took no action to deter them. Nor did he impede Antony’s mother, Julia, when she departed Rome for Sicily, from which island she, too, headed east to meet her son.176 Her movements must have worried Octavian. Still, he took no action to hinder her. Ventidius moved, without opposition, to southern Italy, where he took command of Antony’s legions in the region, apart from two which elected to serve under Agrippa. Asinius Pollio, now consul, shifted his forces to Venetia. There he commenced negotiations with Domitius Ahenobarbus. Once again, there was no intervention by Octavian, who, anxious over Antony’s reaction to the Perusine crisis, was instead endeavouring to relax tensions between himself and Antony’s partisans.177 From the east, there was still no word.
XI
Enforce no further the griefs between ye
Rude Awakening
Very early in the spring of 40, Parthian armies, led by Labienus and Pacorus, the king’s son, invaded Syria.1 Owing to its political instability, even after Antony’s settlement, a fact of Syrian life familiar to the Parthian court, this region was vulnerable. Nor was Decidius Saxa, Antony’s legate in the province, in a position to repulse his attackers: he lacked sufficient troops and many of his soldiers remained discontented men. He did what he could, but after more than one defeat was driven into Cilicia.2 Some of his soldiers deserted him, preferring the victorious Labienus.3 When Antony learned of this disaster, he reacted at once. He sailed to Tyre, which, divided by water from the mainland, remained secure.4 By then, however, Syria had been lost. Labienus was making his way into Cilicia. Pacorus turned toward Palestine. Antony then sailed toward Asia Minor.5
Antony was alarmed but undaunted. His immediate plans are fathomable enough. He could not summon legions from Macedonia, where Marcius Censorinus, its governor, needed every man in defending the province from incursions by northern tribes. Consequently, it would be necessary to import troops from Italy. Lucius and Octavian, Antony would insist, must put aside their conflict for the sake of the empire. Until reinforcements arrived, Antony must rally such Roman resistance as he could and deploy auxiliaries supplied by client kings. The situation was grim but far from unsalvageable. True, Antony could not repel the enemy straightaway, but he could confront it stoutly enough to reassure Rome’s subjects and, before the end of the summer, launch his counterattack.
None of these things happened. When Antony learned of the fall of Perusia, he turned his attention fully toward Italy, still the centre of any Roman’s political universe. What to make of matters there remained far from obvious, but Antony was soon briefed by trusted informants. He travelled to Greece, where he met Fulvia and Plancus. Manius was also there.6 Antony’s mother, Julia, soon joined them. She was accompanied by a highly distinguished delegation from Sextus Pompey, including Lucius Scribonius Libo, Sextus’ able and cunning father-in-law, who sought an alliance.7 Their collective account of Octavian’s conduct and current disposition will not have been a balanced one, nor was its tenor intended to reassure. Lucius’ failure they portrayed as the consequence of Octavian’s aggression against Antony.
We do not know what was said or how at first these disturbing reports were received by Antony. Later revisionism required an Antony who was furious with his brother, his procurator, and especially his wife, whose health broke down under her husband’s reproaches. But this thread in the story must be unpicked. If Antony’s temper was now raised, it was owing to allegations of Octavian’s cruelty and menace. Julia certainly did not blame her younger son for the Perusine crisis. Indeed, it is highly plausible that it was Julia, abetted by Fulvia’s earlier correspondence, who persuaded Sextus to seize this opportunity to seek an alliance with Antony. What part, if any, was played by the embassy of veterans who had spent the winter in Alexandria with Antony, we do not know.8 But even if they spoke up for Octavian, Antony had no reason to prefer them to his closest family and advisors. Or his own political instincts. It was not so long ago, after all, that Antony had been a victim of Octavian’s aggressive, opportunistic antagonism. And when news reached him from Asinius Pollio that Domitius Ahenobarbus, like Sextus, was seeking his friendship, he must have concluded that these parties, like his wife and mother, now saw Octavian as his enemy.9 The old animosity was rekindled. Parthia would have to wait.10
And so Antony left the east to fend for itself. Decidius Saxa was subsequently routed in Cilicia, captured, and executed.11 Labienus proudly minted coins on which he styled himself Q. Labienus Parthicus imperator, Quintus Labienus Parthicus, conquering general. Pacorus invaded Judea, toppling the government of Hyrcanus and Herod and installing Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus II, as king. Herod fled to Rome. Soon Parthian domination extended from Nabatea in the south into Anatolia in the north, where Labienus marched westwards into Caria.12 Antony’s legate in Asia, Marcus Turius, evacuated.13 Coastal regions managed to remain in touch with Roman authority. Inland, some of Rome’s client kings and a few determined cities, hopeful of a Roman counterattack, struggled loyally if not always effectually against Parthian hegemony. In the Phrygian city of Laodicea, for instance, Zeno the Rhetorician and his son, Polemo, led a heroic struggle against Labienus.14 Laodicea was not unique: resistance was also exerted in Aphrodisias, Alabanda, Miletus, Mylasa, and Stratonicea.15 But these were exceptions. Unaided by Rome, polities too weak to maintain their independence had little choice but to accommodate their new masters. Antony’s departure was striking. It signals his conviction that Octavian was now truly his enemy, and it marks Antony’s determination to prevail even if that meant misery for Rome’s eastern subjects. Neither Sulla nor Caesar, although each strained everything in his quest for political domination, abandoned the east as Antony did. Only a year ago Antony had entered Rome’s eastern possessions by way of a splendid, confident parade of triumviral authority. He now withdrew, leaving behind a shambles.
War in the West
Fighting yet another civil war held no attractions for Antony, but nor was he inclined to flinch from it if Octavian refused to submit to his authority.16 It was with this possibility in mind that he accepted an alliance of some kind (we cannot be more specific than that) with both Domitius and with Sextus Pompey.17 Antony gathered his ample fleet and a modest force of soldiers, probably little more than his praetorian guard. For troops, he realized, he must rely on his legions in Italy and the two legions under Domitius’ command.18 Sextus, too, had infantry. Antony believed he held at least twenty-four legions in or around Italy, but at what strength he could not be sure. He was certainly outmanned by Octavian, who soon improved his advantage: by the time Antony reached Italy, Fufius Calenus, Antony’s governor in Transalpine Gaul, had died and Octavian had usurped his eleven legions, an extraordinary and provocative action.19 But Caesar’s heir, however much he may have hoped Perusia could be relegated to the past, remained too astute not to prepare for the worst. Even he was shocked by the news that Sextus had begun negotiations with Antony. His colleague’s protracted silence—not a single signal of comity arrived from the east even after Lucius’ surrender—can only have provoked graver consternation.20 So he naturally seized every resource: retaliation, he was certain, was on its way. Antony’s coalition with Sextus and Domitius was proof of that.
This renewal of hostility against Octavian stimulated an adjustment in Antony’s public posture. Amid the conflicts of 44, as we have seen, Antony was obliged to repudiate the amnesty of 17 March. Since that time, he had campaigned as a fierce avenger of Julius Caesar, openly despising his enemies as the ‘party of Pompey’. Even after Philippi, during his reorganization of the east, he persisted in condemning, at every chance, the Liberators’ pollution and treachery. Constancy counted for much among the aristocracy. How, then, could Antony justify his new coalition against Caesar’s heir? For he was now allied with Domitius Ahenobarbus, nephew of Cato and a resolute enemy of the dictator. This man, almost certainly involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, had been condemned by the Pedian law.21 Even more incongruous to his earlier policy, Antony was also attached to Sextus Pompey.
Antony made use of the resources offered by Domitius and Sextus because he believed he needed them. That much is obvious. But there is something more. He also believed that he could make use of Domitius and Sextus without suffering any significant ill-will in Italy. He was convinced that, as the victor at Philippi, he need no longer be defined solely as a Caesarian or even as the leading Caesarian. His loyalty to that cause could hardly be impugned, but now his personal stature was ample enough for him to move ahead by forming a distinctive, Antonian political identity. The soldiery and the citizenry of Italy, knowing he had crushed the Liberators, must trust him in his decision to cooperate with Domitius and Sextus. It was a bold gamble, but also an expression of Antony’s confidence and optimism, undeterred even by a Parthian invasion and violent conflict at home.22
This new posture Antony scaffolded with a new policy, or rather, by recurring to the programme of reconciliation that had animated his consulship in the aftermath of the Ides. Antony complained of Octavian’s failures as a colleague, and he denounced his unrelenting propensity for strife. By contrast, Antony emphasized his preference for harmony and concord among the aristocracy. We can see this, at least obliquely, in Appian’s distillation of Antony’s agreement with Sextus: he promised to regard Sextus as an ally in war but only if Octavian proved to be his enemy. If, however, Octavian remained a loyal colleague, Antony promised to do what he could to repair the breach between Caesar’s heir and Pompey’s son.23 Similarly, he endeavoured to bring Domitius home to the republic. In Appian’s account, these are negotiations Antony handed over to his diplomatic friend, Lucius Cocceius Nerva, who folded Domitius’ restoration into a more general triumviral policy of making peace even with men who in the past had been sympathetic to the Liberators’ cause: with the Liberators now removed, Cocceius insisted, this shift was necessary if the triumvirs did not wish to remain the enemies of nearly everyone.24 As for Domitius specifically, it was now claimed he was never actually one of assassins, and although he may have approved the deed, it was now necessary that he, like any others who had fought on the wrong side at Philippi, be regained by the republic for the sake of the republic.25 Who better to make this claim than the victor at Philippi and his supporters? Clearly Cocceius and Antony had in mind the multitude of distinguished refugees who had fled Italy for safety with Sextus. And it is clear how all this sounds very much like the Antony of 44, who preferred amnesty to revenge. By way of these principles, then, which he hoped would appeal to many, Antony publicly justified his deployment of the forces of Domitius and Sextus.
