Augustus

The triumvirs betrayed signs of unease, of the need not to alienate public opinion. According to Appian, the proscription decree stated: “No one should consider this action unjust, or savage, or excessive, in the light of what happened to Gaius [Caesar] and ourselves.” The triumvirs promised not to punish “any member of the masses,” a guarantee they wisely honored. The decree closed with an assurance that “the names of none of those who receive rewards will be noted in our records.” What was to be done was shameful and it called for concealment.

The proscription brought out the best and worst in human nature. Appian records many terrible stories of those times:

Many people were murdered in all kinds of ways, and decapitated to furnish evidence for the reward. They fled in undignified fashion, and abandoned their former conspicuous dress for strange disguises. Some went down wells, some descended into the filth of the sewers, and others climbed up into smoky rafters or sat in total silence under close-packed roofs. To some, just as terrifying as the executioners were wives or children with whom they were not on good terms, or ex-slaves and slaves, or creditors, or neighbouring landowners who coveted their estates.

One tragic tale may evoke the selfishness and despair of the time. It concerns a teenager, whom we only know as Atilius; he probably belonged to an old noble plebeian family that originated in Campania. His father was dead, and he had inherited a rich estate. He had just celebrated his coming of age at Rome and was proceeding with his friends, as the custom was, to sacrifice in various temples in or around the Forum. Adulthood rendered him liable to legal penalty. Suddenly his name was added to the proscription list displayed on the speakers’ platform, presumably because of his wealth, and when this was noticed all his friends and slaves ran off. The boy went, deserted and alone, to his mother, but she was too frightened to shelter him. After this betrayal, Atilius saw no point in asking anyone else for help; he ran away to the mountains.

Forced by hunger to come down into the plains, he was kidnapped by a bandit who made a living by preying on passing travelers, putting them in chains and forcing them to work for him. Atilius, brought up in luxury, could not endure the hard labor. Still wearing his fetters, he made off to a main road, where he incautiously identified himself to some passing centurions. They killed him there and then, doubtless taking his head back to Rome for their reward.

A funerary inscription dating from the late first century B.C. tells a very different story. It records the speech a grieving husband made at the funeral of his wife after forty years of marriage. We know neither his name nor hers, but she is usually called Turia, the name of a woman who led a similar life and who was once thought, wrongly, to be the same person.

Turia’s husband, an unrepentant republican, was proscribed and went into hiding. He recalled: “You provided abundantly for my needs during my flight and gave me the means for a dignified life-style, when you took all the gold and jewellery you wore and sent it to me.”

A year later, when the need for the proscription had ended, Octavian pardoned Turia’s husband, but Lepidus, then in charge of the city of Rome, refused to acknowledge his colleague’s decision. He seems to have enjoyed the proscription and did not wish it to be over.

Turia presented herself before Lepidus to ask him to recognize the pardon, and prostrated herself before his feet. He did not raise her up (as, according to convention, he should have done), but had her dragged away and beaten. This characteristically unpleasant behavior apparently angered Octavian and, according to Turia’s husband, contributed to his downfall. “That matter was soon to prove harmful to him,” the widower remarked with dry satisfaction.

The cruelty and confusion that the proscription brought about was widespread. As many as three hundred senators were butchered—among them Cicero—and perhaps two thousand equites. The republican opposition in Italy was largely liquidated.

Antony had a streak of savagery in his character and entered fully into the spirit of things (unless the record has been distorted by subsequent propaganda against him). He always inspected the heads of victims, even at table when eating a meal. His wife was equally ferocious.