Augustus

The final agreement did little more than confirm what everyone knew to be the unstable status quo. Sextus was officially installed as governor of what he had already captured—Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. To these was added the Peloponnese (southern Greece). He was honored by membership of the College of Augurs, the committee of senior statesmen who were charged with taking the auspices at Rome, and he was nominated for the consulship in the following year, 38 B.C. Sextus’ followers in Sicily had their personal positions secured: all the exiles from Italy in his army (excepting, always, Julius Caesar’s assassins) were to have their civil rights restored; the buyback offer to proscribed senators and equites was confirmed; the runaway slaves in Sextus’ force were to be freed; and Sextus’ soldiers were to receive the same demobilization awards as those serving the triumvirs.

Sextus could claim that this was a reasonably good deal for him, in that he was no longer an outlaw. The Treaty of Misenum brought him inside the political fold. Privately, though, he already regretted rejecting Menodorus’ advice to avoid coming to terms with the triumvirs.

By contrast, Antony and Octavian had every right to be pleased with themselves. They had given Sextus nothing essential to their interests, but had won something beyond price. Although they may not have realized it at the time, they had initiated the process of detaching opposition politicians from Sextus. Once it became clear that the triumvirs were not planning a new bloodbath, many began trickling back either to Italy or to join Antony when he returned to the east. To Sextus’ alarm, the Pompeian constituency was set to decline.

The principals celebrated the peace with a series of banquets. They drew lots to decide the order. Sextus acted as host first, on his flagship (“My only ancestral home left to me”). The two sides did not trust each other; the triumvirs had their ships moored nearby, guards were posted and the dinner guests carried daggers underneath their clothes. On the surface all was smiles and friendship. Sextus gave a warm welcome to Antony and Octavian. The atmosphere softened and the conversation became coarse and convivial. Jokes were made about Antony’s passion for the queen of Egypt, a topic that Octavia’s brother and husband would ordinarily have found embarrassing.

As at Brundisium, the bond between the parties was incarnated in a marriage union. At the dinner table, Sextus’ infant daughter was formally engaged to the three-year-old Marcellus, Antony’s stepson and Octavian’s nephew.

According to Plutarch, Menodorus came to Sextus and spoke to him out of the hearing of his guests. “Shall I cut the cables and make you master not just of Sicily and Sardinia, but of the whole Roman empire?”

Sextus thought for a moment, and then burst out: “Menodorus, you should have acted, not spoken to me beforehand. Now we must be content with things as they are. I do not break my word.”

This famous anecdote has a suspiciously glib quality, yet it may be true, for it illustrates two facets of Sextus’ character. When he called himself Pius, “Dutiful” or “Honest,” the reference was primarily to his father’s memory, but it also indicated that he saw himself as a Roman of the old school, honorable and straightforward. In addition, the story points to a certain passivity that can be detected throughout his career, an absence of the killer instinct that marked out, in their different ways, Antony and Octavian.

On the following two days, Antony and then Octavian entertained Sextus, erecting dining tents on their sea platform. After this they left for their respective destinations—Octavian to Gaul, where there were disturbances; Antony to the east and the Parthians; Sextus back to Sicily. Most of the refugees in Sextus’ entourage said goodbye to him and left for Rome.

With the onset of autumn Octavian did something that, on the face of it, was out of character: for once letting his heart sway him, he fell passionately in love. The object of his affection was Livia Drusilla; about nineteen years old, she was intelligent and beautiful, although with a small mouth and chin. However, she suffered from one signal disadvantage: she was already married, to an aristocrat and cousin of hers, Tiberius Claudius Nero. Not only that, but she was heavily pregnant.

To add to the complications, Octavian’s wife, Scribonia, gave birth to her daughter, Julia, sometime in 39 B.C. Despite the happy event, the marriage—a political union if ever there was one—was not going well. As was pointed out earlier, Scribonia was substantially older than her husband; too, she was reputed to be a gravis femina, a dignified or serious woman. This did not much suit a young man with a reputation for copious adultery. On the very day that Julia arrived in the world, her father divorced her mother. “I couldn’t bear the way she nagged at me,” he explained.