Antony and Cleopatra (46 page)

Lepidus reveled in his superiority, and took his time crossing the island. Even so, he arrived before Messana ahead of Octavian, encountering the most determined resistance on the straight coast north of Tauromenium. When Lepidus reached Messana, he found its Pompeian governor, Plinius Rufus, offering to surrender to Agrippa. An insult Lepidus would not brook. He sent to Plinius Rufus at once, demanding that the surrender be to him, not to Agrippa the low-bred nobody. That might have passed muster, save that he accepted the submission in his own name, not Octavian’s.

When Octavian arrived in Agrippa’s camp, he found Agrippa seething: a new experience! In all their years together, he never remembered Agrippa in a towering rage.

“Do you know what that
cunnus
did?” Agrippa roared, lashing a metaphorical tail. “Said he was the victor over Sicilia, not you, the Triumvir of Rome, Italia, and the Islands! Said—said—oh, I can’t think for the life of me, I am so furious!”

“Let’s go and see him,” Octavian soothed, “sort our differences out, and get an apology. How’s that?”

“Nothing short of his head will satisfy me,” Agrippa muttered.

Lepidus, however, was not in a conciliatory mood. He received Octavian and Agrippa wearing his scarlet
paludamentum
and a pretty set of gold armor, its cuirass tooled to show Aemilius Paullus on the battlefield at Pydna, a famous victory. At fifty-five, Lepidus wasn’t young, and felt his eclipse by mere youths acutely. It was now or never, as far as he was concerned; time to make that bid for power, which always seemed to elude him. His rank was equal to Antony’s and Octavian’s, yet no one took him seriously, and that had to change. Every “legion” of Sextus’s troops he found was incorporated into his own army, with the result that Messana saw his tally stand at twenty-two legions—and that didn’t even include the four guarding Agrigentum and the ones he had left to police Africa Province. Yes, time to act!

“What do you want, Octavianus?” he asked haughtily.

“My due,” Octavian said quietly.

“You’re due nothing. I beat Sextus Pompeius, not you or your low-bred minions.”

“How odd, Lepidus. Why did I think it was Marcus Agrippa who beat Sextus Pompeius? He staked his all on a sea battle at which you were not present.”

“You can have the seas, Octavianus, but you can’t have this island,” said Lepidus, drawing himself up. “As Triumvir with equal powers to yours, I declare that henceforth Sicilia is a part of Africa, and will be ruled from Africa by me. Africa is mine, apportioned out to me at the Pact of Tarentum for another five years. Except,” Lepidus went on with a smirk, “that five years are not sufficient. I’m taking Africa, including Sicilia, in perpetuity.”

“The Senate and People will deprive you of both if you’re not careful, Lepidus.”

“Then let the Senate and People go to war against me! I have thirty legions under my command. I order you to take yourself and your minions to Italia, Octavianus! Quit my province now!”

“Is that your final word?” Octavian asked, his hand clenched on Agrippa’s forearm to make sure he didn’t draw his sword.

“It is.”

“Are you truly prepared for another civil war?”

“I am.”

“Thinking that Marcus Antonius will back you when he returns from the Kingdom of the Parthians. But he won’t, Lepidus. Believe me, he won’t.”

“I don’t care whether he does or not. Now leave while you still have life in your body, Octavianus.”

“I have been Caesar for some years now, but you’re still just—Lepidus Turpis—Lepidus the Ignominious.”

Octavian turned and walked out of Messana’s best mansion, his hand still keeping Agrippa’s from his sword.

“Caesar, how dare he! Don’t tell me we have to fight him!” Agrippa cried, prising Octavian’s fingers from his arm at last.

His most beautiful smile curved Octavian’s lips; the eyes he directed at Agrippa looked luminous, innocent, endearingly young. “Dear Agrippa! No, we won’t have to fight, I promise.”

More than that, Agrippa couldn’t learn. Octavian simply said there would be no civil war, not even a tiny warlet, a skirmish, a duel, a drill.

Next morning at dawn Octavian disappeared; by the time a frantic Agrippa found him, it was all over. Alone and togate, he had entered Lepidus’s enormous encampment and gone among the many thousands of soldiers smiling at them, congratulating them, and making them his own. They swore mighty oaths to Tellus, Sol Indiges, and Liber Pater that Caesar was their only commander, that Caesar was their darling, their gold-haired mascot,
divi filius
.

Sextus Pompey’s eight legions of motley recruits were disbanded that same day, and milled under heavy guard speculating about their fate in a fairly complacent mood; from Lepidus they had been promised freedom, and as they knew little of Octavian, they fully expected the same kind of treatment.

“Your race is run, Lepidus,” Octavian said when the astounded Lepidus stormed into his tent. “Because you are related by blood to my divine father, I will spare your life and not subject you to a treason trial in the Senate. But I will have that selfsame body strip you of your triumvirate and all your provinces. You will retire to private life and never again leave it, even to seek the censorship. However, you may retain your role as Pontifex Maximus. It is given for life, and it will remain yours while you live. I require you to sail aboard my ship with me, but you will be put off at Circeii, where you have a villa. You will not enter Rome for any reason, nor will you be allowed to tenant the Domus Publica.”

Face drawn, Lepidus listened, his throat working convulsively. When he could find nothing to say in reply, he sagged onto a chair and covered his face with a fold of toga.

Octavian was as good as his word. Full of Antony’s cliental adherents it might be, but the Senate enacted the decrees asked of it about Lepidus without a murmur. Lepidus was forbidden to enter Rome, and stripped of all his public duties, honors, provinces.

The harvest that year sold for ten sesterces the
modius,
and Italia rejoiced. When the vaults in Agrigentum were breached by Octavian and Agrippa, they yielded the staggering sum of a hundred and ten thousand talents. Antony’s forty percent, forty-four thousand talents, were divided off and sent to him at Antioch the moment his Athenian fleet was free to sail. To prevent theft, it was locked in metal banded oak chests, each nailed shut and sealed with a dollop of lead that bore a replica of Octavian’s sphinx signet, IMP. CAES. DIV. FIL. TRI. Each ship carried six hundred and sixty-six chests, one fifty-six-pound talent to a chest.

“That ought to please him,” Agrippa said, “though he won’t like your keeping Octavia’s twenty galleys.”

“Oh, they’ll go to Athens next year, with two thousand picked troops aboard, and Octavia as an extra present. She misses him.”

But Rome’s share, sixty percent now that Lepidus was out of the equation, didn’t reach Rome intact after all. The sixty-six thousand chests were loaded aboard the troop transports that first had to call into Portus Julius and there disgorge the twenty legions whom Octavian was bringing home, some for retirement, most to stay under the Eagles for reasons none save Octavian knew.

Word of the enormous treasure had spread. The legion representatives at the end of the Sicilian campaign were not an admirable lot, nor imbued with patriotism. When Octavian and Agrippa had marched them to Capua and inserted them into camp on its outskirts, twenty legion representatives came as a delegation to Octavian talking mutiny unless he paid every man a hefty bonus.

They meant it, so much Octavian could see. He listened to their spokesman expressionlessly, then asked, “How much?”

“A thousand denarii—four thousand sesterces—each,” said Lucius Decidius. “Otherwise all twenty legions will run amok.”

“Does that include the noncombatants?”

Obviously not; the faces looked bewildered. Decidius was a quick thinker, however. “For them, a hundred denarii each.”

“Pray pardon me while I sit down with my abacus and work out how much that amounts to,” Octavian said, apparently unruffled.

He proceeded to do just that, the ivory beads whizzing back and forth across their thin rods faster than any untutored legion representative could credit. Oh, he was a treat, was young Caesar!

“That is fifteen thousand, seven hundred and forty-four silver talents,” he said a few moments later. “In other words, the usual contents of Rome’s Treasury, whole and entire.”

“
Gerrae,
it ain’t!” said Decidius, who could read and write, but was hopeless at sums. “You’re a swindler and a liar!”

“I assure you, Decidius, that I am neither. I simply speak the truth. To prove this, when I pay you—yes, I will pay you!—I’ll put the money in one hundred thousand bags of a thousand for the men, and twenty thousand bags of a hundred for the noncombatants. Denarii, not sesterces. I’ll pile these bags on the assembly ground, and I suggest that you find enough legionaries who can count to verify that each bag does indeed hold the requisite amount of money. Though it’s quicker to weigh than count,” he ended demurely.

“Oh, I forgot to say that it’s four thousand denarii each for the centurions,” Decidius added.

“Too late, Decidius! Centurions get the same as rankers. I agreed to your original request, and I refuse to alter it after the fact, is that clear? I am going somewhat further—after the fact, because I am a Triumvir and allowed that privilege—by telling you that you can’t have this bonus and expect land. This is your retirement payout, and it finishes us free and clear. If you get land, it will be at my pleasure. Fritter away what should be in the Treasury with my best wishes, but do not ask for more, now or in the future. Because Rome will pay no more big bonuses. In future, Rome’s legions will be fighting for Rome, not for a general nor in a civil war. And in future, Rome’s legions will get their pay, their savings, and a small bonus when they retire. No more land, no more anything the Senate and People don’t sanction. I am instituting a standing army of twenty-five legions, all of whose men will serve for twenty years without discharge. A career, not a job. A torch carried for Rome, not a candle for a general. Do I make myself understood? It’s over, Decidius, on this day.”

The twenty representatives listened in growing horror, for there was something of Caesar about that beautiful young face now that it was neither as beautiful nor as young as it used to be. They knew he meant what he said. As representatives, they were the most militant and the most venal of their kind, but even the most militant and venal of men can hear the closing of a door, and one closed on that day. Perhaps the future would hold mutinies too, but Caesar was saying that it would carry the death penalty for all involved.

“You can’t execute a hundred thousand of us,” Decidius said.

“Oh, can’t I?” Octavian’s eyes grew wider, more luminous. “How long would you last if I were to tell the three
million
people of Italia that you are holding them to ransom, taking money out of their purses? Because you wear a mail shirt and a sword? It’s not a good enough reason, Decidius. If the people of Italia knew, they’d tear a hundred thousand of you into little pieces.” He waved a contemptuous hand. “Be off, all of you! And look at the size of your bonuses when I pile my bags up on the assembly ground. Then you’ll know how much you asked for.”

They filed out looking sheepish but determined.

“Have you their names, Agrippa?”

“Yes, every last one. And a few more besides.”

“Break them up and mix them up. I think it’s better that each meets an accident, don’t you?”

“Fortuna is capricious, Caesar, but death in battle is easier to arrange. A pity the campaigns are over.”

“Not at all!” said Octavian in the most cordial of voices. “Next year we are going to Illyricum. If we don’t, Agrippa, the tribes will unite with the Bessi and the Dardani and pour over the Carnic Alpes into Italian Gaul. That’s the lowest and easiest way into Italia, and the only reason it hasn’t been used to invade is lack of unity among the tribes. Who are becoming Romanized, in the wrong way. Legion representatives are going to be heroic, and a lot will die in the process of winning a crown for valor. By the way, I’m going to award you a Naval Crown.” He giggled. “It will suit you, Agrippa—all that gold.”

“Thank you, Caesar, that’s very nice of you. But Illyricum?”

“No, mutiny. It’s going to go out of fashion, or my name is not Caesar and I am not the son of a god. Pah! I’ve just lost near sixteen thousand talents for a paltry campaign that saw more men drown than perish at the end of a sword. If for no other reason than exorbitant bonuses, there can be no more civil wars. The legions are going to fight in Illyricum for Rome, and only Rome. It will be a proper campaign, with no element of commander worship or dependence on him to grant bonuses. Though I’m going along to fight too, it’s your campaign, Agrippa. You I trust.”

“You’re amazing, Caesar.”

Octavian looked genuinely surprised. “Why?” he asked.

“You faced them down, that scabby lot of utter villains. They came here this morning to intimidate you, and you turned the table, intimidating them. They left very frightened men.”

Came the smile that (or so Livia Drusilla thought) could melt a bronze statue. “Oh, Agrippa, they may be utter villains, but they’re such
children
! I know that at least one in every eight legionaries must be able to read and write, but in future, when they belong to a standing army, they’re all going to have to be literate—
and
numerate. Winter camp is going to be stuffed with teachers. If they had any real idea of how much their greed has just cost Rome, they’d think again. That’s why the lessons begin now, with those bags.” He sighed, looked rueful. “I must send for a full cohort of Treasury clerks. Here I sit until it’s done, Agrippa, right under my own eyes. No peculation, embezzlement, or fraud on the farthest horizon.”