Antony and Cleopatra (67 page)

Arrested, he watched her face intently, not sure where she was going, but feeling in the pit of his stomach that what she was saying would be of enormous importance. Sometimes his Livia Drusilla had the second sight—or if it wasn’t quite that, it was frightening, otherworldly. “Go on,” he prompted.

“Drusus’s murder wouldn’t have been necessary had he not done something extraordinary, something that raised his status so high only murder could tear him down. He secretly exacted a sacred oath of personal allegiance from all the Italian noncitizens. Had his legislation been passed, he would have had the whole of Italia in his clientele, and been so powerful that he could have ruled as a dictator in perpetuity had he been so inclined. Whether he was, will never be known.” She sucked in her cheeks and looked fey. “I wonder—would it be possible for you to ask the people of Rome and Italia to swear an oath of personal allegiance to you?”

He had frozen; now he began to tremble. Sweat broke out on his brow, washed into his eyes, and stung like the bite of an acid. “Livia Drusilla! What made you think of that?”

“Being his granddaughter, I suppose, even if my father was Drusus’s adopted son. It’s always been one of the family stories, you see. Drusus was the bravest of the brave.”

“Pollio—Sallustius—someone is bound to have preserved the form of the oath in a history of those times.”

She smiled. “There’s no need to give the game away to the likes of them. I can recite the oath by heart.”

“Don’t! Not yet! Write it down for me, then help me amend it to suit my own needs, which aren’t Drusus’s. I’ll arrange for the Fetial ceremony as soon as I can, and start the agents talking. I’ll hammer away at the Queen of Beasts, have Maecenas dream up fabulous vices for her to practice, compile a list of lovers and hideous crimes. When she walks in my triumphal parade, no one must pity her. She’s such a wispy little thing that some who see her might be tempted to pity her unless she’s known to be a fusion of Harpy, Fury, Siren, and Gorgon—a veritable monster. I’ll sit Antonius backward on an ass, and put cuckold’s horns on his head. Deny him the chance to look noble—or Roman.”

“You’re drifting from the subject,” she said gently.

“Oh! Yes, I am. I’m to be senior consul in the New Year, so toward the end of December I’ll put posters up in every city, town, and village from the Alpes to the instep, the toe, and the heel. It will announce the oath, and humbly beg that any who wish to take it, take it. No coercion, no rewards. It must be pristine, a transparently voluntary thing. If people want to be free of the threat of Cleopatra, then they must swear to stand by me until I’ve done the job to my satisfaction. And if enough people swear, no one will dare to spill me, strip me of my imperium. If men like Pollio decline to take it, I will exact no punishment, either at the time or in the future.”

“You must always be above exacting retribution, Caesar.”

“I am aware of that.” He laughed. “Just after Philippi, I thought deeply upon men like Sulla and my divine father, tried to see where they had gone wrong. And I realized that they loved to live splashily, extravagantly, as well as rule the Senate and the Assemblies with a rod of iron. Whereas I decided to be a quiet, unostentatious man, and rule Rome like a dear, kind old daddy.”

Bellona was Rome’s original god of war, and went back to times when Roman gods were pure forces having neither faces nor sex. Her other name was Nerio, an even more mysterious entity entwined with Mars, the later war god. When Appius Claudius the Blind inaugurated the temple to get Bellona on his side during the Etruscan and Samnite wars, he put a statue of her in the building; both were handsome and well kept up, painted in vivid colors regularly revitalized. As war was not something that could be discussed within the
pomerium
of the city, Bellona’s precinct was on the Campus Martius outside the sacred boundary, and it was spacious. Like all Roman temples, it was elevated on a high podium. To get inside involved climbing twenty steps in two flights of ten; upon the wide sweep of the platform between the two flights stood, exactly in the middle, a square column of red marble four feet high. At the bottom of the steps was a full
iugerum
of flagging, its margins marked with phallic plinths upon which stood the statues of great Roman generals: Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Appius Claudius Caecus, Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paullus, Scipio Aemilianus, Gaius Marius, Caesar Divus Julius, and many others, each so beautifully painted it looked alive.

When the College of Fetiales, twenty strong, assembled on Bellona’s steps, they performed to a packed audience of senators, knights, men of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Classes, and some Head Count paupers. Though the Senate had to be accommodated in whole, Maecenas had carefully chosen the rest near enough to witness events so as to spread them right across the social strata. That way, men of the Subura and Esquiline were represented as generously as men of the Palatine and Carinae.

All the other priestly colleges attended, plus every lictor on duty in Rome, so it was a colorful spectacle of togas striped in red and purple, round capes and ivory
apex
helmets, pontifices and augurs with togas pulled up to veil their heads.

The Fetiales wore dull red togas over naked torsos, as was the custom in the beginning, their heads bare too. The
verbenarius
held herbs and soil gathered from the Capitol, standing closest to the
pater patratus
, whose role was confined to the very end of the ritual. Most of the lengthy proceedings were declaimed in a language so old that no one understood it anymore, and by a Fetial who had perfected the gibberish; no one wanted to make a mistake, as even the slightest error meant the whole business had to be started all over again. The sacrificial victim was a small boar, which a fourth Fetial killed with a flint knife older than Egypt.

Finally the
pater patratus
strode into the temple and emerged toting a leaf-shaped spear whose shaft was black with age. He walked down the upper flight of ten steps and stood in front of the little column, spear lifted to throw, its silver head glinting in the chilly, brilliant sun.

“Rome, thou art threatened!” he cried in Latin. “Here before me is Enemy Territory, guarded by Rome’s generals! I declare that the name of Enemy Territory is Egypt! With the casting of this spear, we, the Senate and People of Rome, embark upon a holy war against Egypt in the persons of Egypt’s king and queen!”

The spear left his hand, flew over the top of the column, and landed in the
iugerum
of open space called Enemy Territory. A single flag had been dislodged, and the
pater patratus
was a superb warrior; the spear stuck, quivering, with its head buried in the soil beneath the lifted flag. A huge cheer arose as people tossed tiny woollen dolls at the spear.

Standing off to one side with the rest of the College of Pontifices, Octavian gazed on all this and was content. Ancient, impressive, absolutely a part of the
mos maiorum
. Rome was now officially at war, but not against a Roman. The enemy was the Queen of Beasts and Ptolemy XV Caesar, rulers of Egypt. Yes, yes! How lucky that he had managed to make Agrippa the
pater patratus
, and didn’t Maecenas make a good—if flabby—
verbenarius
?

He walked home surrounded by hundreds of clients, thoroughly enjoying himself for a change. Even the plutocrats—why were the richest always the most reluctant to pay tax?—seemed to be in charity with him today, though that couldn’t last beyond the first tax payment. He had completed his arrangements for the payments of tax using the citizen rolls, which detailed a man’s income and were upgraded every five years. By rights the censors did this, but censors had been thin on the ground for some decades. The Triumvir in the West for the last decade, Octavian had taken over censorial duties and made sure every citizen income was current. To collect his new tax was a complicated business that meant big premises—the Porticus Minucia on the Campus Martius.

He intended to make the first payment day something of a festival. There could be no rejoicing, but there ought to be a patriotic atmosphere; the colonnades and grounds of the Porticus Minucia were decked with scarlet SPQR flags, posters of a female figure, bare-breasted, with a jackal’s head and clawlike hands twisting SPQR into a mangled mess; another showed a cretinously ugly youth wearing the Double Crown, and read, below, THIS IS THE SON OF DIVUS JULIUS? IT CANNOT BE!

As soon as the sun was well above the Esquiline a procession appeared, led by Octavian in the full glory of his priestly toga, his head crowned by laurels, the sign of a triumphator. Behind him came Agrippa, also crowned, toting the curlicued staff of an augur and wearing his red-and-purple particolored toga. Then came Maecenas, Statilius Taurus, Cornelius Gallus, Messala Corvinus, Calvisius Sabinus, Domitius Calvinus, the bankers Balbi and Oppius, and a host of Octavian’s loyalest adherents. However, that was insufficient for Octavian, who had inserted three women between himself and Agrippa; Livia Drusilla and Octavia wore the robes of a Vestal Virgin, which rather put Scribonia, the third, in the shade. Octavian made a great show of paying more than two hundred talents as his twenty-five percent, though no bags of coins were tendered. Just a scrap of paper, a draft on his bankers.

Livia Drusilla stepped forward to the table. “I am a Roman citizen!” she cried loudly. “As a woman, I do not pay taxes, but I wish to pay this tax, for it is needed to stop Cleopatra of Egypt turning our beloved Rome into a desert, denuded of people and of money! I give this cause two hundred talents!”

Octavia gave the same speech and the same amount of money, though Scribonia could give only fifty talents. No matter; by now the rapidly gathering crowd was cheering so loudly that it quite drowned out Agrippa, paying eight hundred talents.

A good day’s work.

But not as finicking and patient as the work Octavian and his wife put into drafting the Oath of Allegiance.

“Ohhh!” sighed Octavian, looking at the original oath sworn to Marcus Livius Drusus sixty years ago. “If only I dared make people swear to be my clients, as Drusus did!”

“The Italians had no patrons at that time, Caesar, because they weren’t Roman citizens. Today, everyone has a patron.”

“I know, I know! How many gods should we use?”

“More than Sol Indiges, Tellus, and Liber Pater. Drusus used more, though I wonder at his using Mars, since—at the time, at any rate—there was no element of war.”

“Oh, I think he knew it would come to war,” Octavian said, pen poised. “The Lares and Penates, do you think?”

“Yes. And Divus Julius, Caesar. He reinforces your status.”

The oath was pinned up all over Italia, from the alps to the instep, the toe, and the heel, on New Year’s Day; in Rome it graced the Forum wall of the rostra, the urban praetor’s tribunal, all the crossroads that had a shrine to the Lares, and every marketplace—meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, oil, grain, pepper, and spices—and the spaces inside the major gates from Capena to Quirinalis.

“I swear by Jupiter Optimus Maximus, by Sol Indiges, by Tellus, by Liber Pater, by Vesta of the hearth, by the Lares and Penates, by Mars, by Bellona and Nerio, by Divus Julius, by the gods and heroes who founded and assisted the people of Rome and Italia in their struggles, that I will hold as my friends and foes those whom Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius holds as his friends and foes. I swear that I will work for the benefit of Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius in his conduct of the war against Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy of Egypt, and work for the benefit of all others who take this oath, even at the cost of my life, my children, my parents, and my property. If through the work of Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius the nation of Egypt is defeated, I swear that I will bind myself to him, not as his client but as his friend. This oath I take upon myself to pass on to as many others as I can. I swear faithfully in the knowledge that my faith will bring its just rewards. And if I am forsworn, may my life, my children, my parents, and my property be taken from me. So be it. So do I swear.”

Publication of the oath caused a sensation, for Octavian had not announced it in advance; it simply appeared. By it stood an agent of Maecenas’s or Octavian’s, primed to answer questions and hear it sworn. A scribe sat nearby to take down the names of those who took it. By now the news of Mark Antony’s involuntary treachery had spread everywhere; the people knew that he was not to blame, and knew too that Egypt pursued the war. Antony was Cleopatra’s cat’s-paw, her instrument of destruction kept caged and drugged to serve her both sexually and in the field. The canards about her multiplied until she was seen as an inhuman monster who even used her bastard son Ptolemy “Caesar” as her sexual object. The Egyptian rulers practiced incest as a matter of course, and what could possibly be less Roman? If Mark Antony condoned it, he was no Roman anymore.

The oath resembled a wavelet far out to sea; a few took it at once, and having taken it, persuaded others to do so, until it became a tidal wave of swearing. Octavian’s legions all took it, as did the crews and oarsmen of his ships. And finally, knowing that not to swear was fast becoming evidence of treason, the whole Senate took it. Except for Pollio, who refused. True to his word, Octavian exacted no retribution. Objection to the tax ceased; all that people wanted now was the defeat of Cleopatra and Ptolemy, understanding that their defeat meant the tax would end.

Agrippa, Statilius Taurus, Messala Corvinus, and the rest of the generals and admirals were sent to their commands, while in Rome Octavian too prepared to leave.

“Maecenas, you will govern Rome and Italia in my name,” he said, not realizing that he had grown and changed over the past few months. He had turned thirty-one the previous September, and his face was set now; it looked strong yet tranquil, still quite beautiful in a masculine mold.