Augustus

The arrangement they came to distinctly favored Octavian, for it left him with Gaul and Calenus’ legions. However, this seems not to have troubled Antony; he came to a strategic decision that he could not go on treating Octavian as a temporary annoyance who would either disappear through illness (quite likely) or mistakes (unlikely), or whom he would swat like a fly at some convenient moment. He wanted a full, final, and permanent settlement. To achieve it, he was willing to make substantial compromises.

The Triumvirate was renewed for another five years. The empire was cut neatly in half, with Octavian taking all of the west, including Gaul, and Antony the east from Macedonia onward. Italy was to be common ground, where both men would be allowed to recruit soldiers. The increasingly insignificant Lepidus retained Africa, a courtesy granted by Octavian. Antony had received help from the anomalous and threatening Sextus Pompeius, who still held Sicily and the western Mediterranean; he now had to abandon him. It would be Octavian’s duty to dispose of Sextus, just as Antony would punish Parthia.

Divisions on a map were insufficient to guarantee a permanent peace, however. Octavian and Antony had never got on with each other and were unlikely to do so in the future. Unless something decisive was done to bind them personally as well as politically, the Treaty of Brundisium, as the accord is called, would not be worth the marble on which it was inscribed. A solution to the conundrum was made possible by two recent deaths. That of Fulvia not only enabled Antony to blame her for his past misdeeds, but also made of him a merry widower (Roman opinion regarded the queen of Egypt as an innocuous diversion). In the same year, 40 B.C., Octavia, Octavian’s sister, lost her elderly husband, Gaius Claudius Marcellus, and, perhaps five years older than her brother, became a highly eligible widow (albeit with two daughters and an infant son).

The proposition that the treaty should be sealed by their marriage was irresistible. Although Octavian’s brief betrothal to Fulvia’s daughter Claudia had failed to reconcile the two triumvirs, there was a benign precedent for such a union in the long-ago and extremely happy marriage between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar’s daughter, Julia. As long as she lived the two warlords had stayed friends; history would now be given an opportunity to repeat itself.

Octavian’s short but dazzling political career had exposed a ruthlessness that overrode ordinary affection, but on this occasion we may guess that he sincerely wanted reconcilation with Antony. Plutarch records that he was “deeply attached to his sister, who was, as the saying is, a wonder of a woman.” He is unlikely to have handed her over into the hands of his unpredictable and womanizing colleague if he did not have his adoptive father’s example in mind.

Great celebrations took place to honor the historic accord. At Brundisium, the triumvirs entertained each other at banquets in their respective camps, Octavian “in military and Roman fashion and Antony in Asiatic and Egyptian style.” They then moved on to Rome, where the wedding of Antony and Octavia was held; Antony struck a coin showing their heads (the first time a woman’s likeness is known to have appeared on a Roman coin). They marched into the city on horses as if celebrating a military triumph.

Only one shadow was cast across the new landscape of peace and harmony. Octavian’s friend and supporter, the talented Quintus Salvidienus Rufus, was in command of the legions in Gaul. Sometime before the triumvirs became reconciled, he had opened a secret correspondence with Antony, hinting that he might be ready to switch sides. His motives are obscure; perhaps there were hidden jealousies in Octavian’s circle of intimates, or Salvidienus may simply have judged that his leader’s prospects were poor.

Astonishingly, if we are to believe the ancient sources, Antony told Octavian that Salvidienus had been plotting to defect to him and had sent a message to that effect while he was besieging Brundisium. Octavian was loyal to a fault, but if a friend betrayed him he was merciless. He immediately sent the proconsul a summons to come to Rome for urgent consultations, after which he would return to his command in Gaul. Salvidienus unwisely obeyed. Octavian arraigned him before the Senate and had him condemned both an inimicus (a personal enemy) and a hostis (a public enemy), and put to death. It was the end of a spectacular career. Salvidienus came from a humble background and had started out as a shepherd boy. He had been designated a consul for the following year, 39 B.C., without ever having held civilian office or sat in the Senate.