Augustus

Whatever the background to this mysterious affair, Appian remarks drily that “Antony did not win general approval for making this admission” about Salvidienus. In these murky and shifting times, few were without guilty secrets and Antony might have been expected to turn the same blind eye to Salvidienus as others were to his own maneuverings. It is hard to see what he expected to gain from his treachery. Perhaps he simply wanted to demonstrate, at someone else’s expense, that he was sincerely committed to his new friendship with Octavian.

Salvidienus’ death is a reminder of an alienation deep inside Antony’s personality. It was easy to be misled by his celebrated bonhomie, his fondness for fun and games, for binge drinking and easy women; but below the affability lay a casual brutality and an inability to imagine the feelings of others.

IX

GOLDEN AGE

40–38 B.C.

The rising poets of the age celebrated the arrival of peace with works that still speak vividly of their relief and joy. One of these, Publius Vergilius Maro (Englished as Virgil), came from the middle or lower middle ranks of Italian society, but his father ensured he received a good education. Virgil migrated to Rome, where, like any ambitious young man, he studied rhetoric. Painfully shy, though, he apparently lost the first law case at which he spoke.

Suetonius gives a portrait sketch of the man: “He was tall and bulky, with a dark complexion and the appearance of a countryman. He had changeable health [and] ate and drank little. He was always falling in love with boys.”

Virgil was thirty, approaching the height of his powers. Having abandoned Rome and a public career, he lived in Neapolis. His first major publication was the Eclogues (from the Greek for “selection”), a series of ten poems that describe an ideal countryside. But in Virgil’s neverland of lovely young shepherds and shepherdesses, real emotions and real events (such as the loss of the author’s farm because of Octavian’s veteran settlements, and its return thanks to the triumvir’s intervention) lie close to the surface.

The young poet could recognize reality when he saw it. Whatever emotional scars his brush with triumviral power left him with, he made his peace with the regime. In these days before print, a professional writer without a personal fortune had no large middle-class market to provide him with an income from book sales. He needed rich patrons to supply his means—in the form of money or gifts of property and slaves—and to pay for the laborious copying out of his books. In the first instance, then, Virgil probably attached himself to Octavian’s cause for the sake of financial security. However, he also acted from political conviction, for the triumviral regime promised stability and prosperity. The two men became fast friends.

Virgil wrote that the Golden Age had returned to Italy, and with a curious infantine addition. This was the messianic theme of his fourth eclogue:

The Firstborn of the New Ages is already on his way from high heaven down to earth.

With him, the Iron Age shall end and Golden Man inherit all the world. Smile on the Baby’s birth, immaculate Lucina [goddess of childbirth]; your own Apollo is enthroned at last.

What exactly is Virgil getting at? Who is this baby? Is he a metaphor for something, or is a real person being denoted? Some detective work is needed to unravel the mystery.

The poem is addressed to Gaius Asinius Pollio; he was a friend of Antony and had assisted him in the recent negotiations with Octavian. A man of principle in an age of turncoats, he was about to leave politics and write his History of the Civil Wars describing the period from the First Triumvirate to Philippi (sadly lost).

Pollio had a dry sense of humor and a reputation for straight talking. When Octavian once wrote some lampoons about him, Pollio only observed: “For my part I am saying nothing in reply; for it is asking for trouble to write against a man who can write you off.”

Some commentators have wondered whether the child could be Pollio’s son, but it is hard to see why Virgil should have imagined such a boy as savior of the world. A more likely candidate would be the predicted offspring of Antony and Octavia, whose union presaged peace after long years of war. Indeed, she was soon pregnant. Some scholars even believe that the poem was written as a wedding hymn.