Augustus

Octavian’s blood baptism was approaching. Mark Antony was encamped just outside Mutina, around which he had constructed a rampart. In the first week or so of April, news filtered north that the consul Pansa would soon (and at last) be arriving with four newly recruited legions, marching up from Bononia (today’s Bologna) to Mutina. It occurred to Antony that it would be a good idea to attack these raw, barely trained soldiers on the road, before they joined Hirtius and Octavian.

It simultaneously occurred to Hirtius that that was exactly what Antony might do. So, under cover of night, the consul sent the Martian legion (one of those that had defected from Antony) and Octavian’s Praetorian Guard, an elite body of about five hundred men, to reinforce Pansa.

The next day, Antony laid an ambush for Pansa’s army, sending in some cavalry and hiding two legions in a roadside village, Forum Gallorum, and nearby marshland. The Martian legion and the Praetorians could not be held in check and rushed at the horsemen. They noticed some movement in the rushes and here and there the glinting of a helmet; suddenly they were confronted by Antony’s main force.

A grim, speechless, waterlogged combat ensued, lasting for some hours. Pansa was wounded by a javelin in his side and taken back to Bononia, and Antony pushed the consul’s forces back to their camp. Meanwhile, Hirtius again engaged in some quick thinking, and came up with two more legions on the double to intercept the victors.

It was already late in the evening. Antony’s men, expecting no trouble, were singing songs of triumph and marching in no sort of order. To their horror, a fresh and disciplined army emerged from the twilight. They were cut to pieces, although Hirtius steered clear of the marshes and had to call off the fighting at nightfall. Those who had escaped death or serious injury made their way back to Antony’s camp. Out of victory had come catastrophe.

Wide areas of bog were clogged with dead or dying men who had tried to find safety there from the enemy. It is evidence of the care Antony took for his soldiers that he sent his cavalry during the night to hunt around and rescue as many of them as possible. According to Appian, “they put the survivors on their horses, changing places with some and lifting others up beside them, or they made them hold the tail and encouraged them to run along with them.”

Meanwhile, what of Octavian? He did not accompany his Praetorians, who were wiped out, nor the Martian legion, bloody but unbowed. According to Dio, he stayed behind to defend the camp, a useful if inglorious duty. Years later, Antony accused Octavian of running away from the battle of Forum Gallorum: “He did not reappear until the next day, having lost both his horse and his purple general’s cloak.”

The truth cannot be recovered, but it is clear that, at the very least, the inexperienced commander failed to distinguish himself. The fault would have to be quickly rectified: a noble Roman was expected to be as busy on the battlefield as in the Forum. The legions had loved his adoptive father at least in part for his intrepid generalship.

Decimus Brutus, beleaguered in Mutina, was in urgent need of rescue, and on April 21 Hirtius led his troops to the back of the town to make an entry. Antony felt obliged to respond, by sending out first his cavalry and then legions from other, more distant camps, which took some time to arrive.

On this occasion Octavian steeled himself to fight in the thick of the fray. Hirtius rode into Antony’s camp and was struck down and killed fighting around the commander’s tent. Octavian burst in and took up the body, like a Homeric hero dragging his friend out of the mêlée. He held the camp for a short while, but was then forced out. No matter, for the day was his. According to Suetonius: “Though bleeding and wounded, he took an eagle from the hands of a dying aquilifer and bore it back upon his shoulder to the camp.”

Antony had been comprehensively defeated, and the seize raised. After a pause for thought, he withdrew with the remnants of his army across the Alps to Gallia Comata (“Long-haired Gaul”). His men endured terrible hardship on the journey. In a fine display of leadership, Antony shared their sufferings, drinking foul water and eating wild fruit and roots.

Octavian visited Pansa, who was seriously ill and died some days later. Pansa’s Greek doctor, Glyco, was suspected of poisoning his wound, presumably in Octavian’s interest. Another story had it that Octavian had personally struck Hirtius down in the fighting in Antony’s camp. The accusation concerning Hirtius is almost certainly malicious gossip: a battlefield is not a private place and one would have expected eyewitness accounts of a consul being murdered.