Augustus

It is important to be clear what Antony was not doing. He was not giving the eastern half of the Roman empire away for good to Cleopatra and her brood of little Ptolemies. This was no abdication. As triumvir and commander of the armies of Rome, Antony remained the ultimate authority, and behind him stood the Senate and people of Rome. What he gave, he could take back.

The Donations were in line with the thinking that underlay Antony’s previous reorganization of the east. That is, it was far easier to allow locals to manage most of the eastern provinces on behalf of Rome, administering justice and raising taxes, than for the imperial authorities to do it. The Romans being unsupported by a permanent civil service, this would save them a world of trouble, as well as helping to solve the problem of rapacious public officials. The empire would be far more stable if its inhabitants did not feel that they were under foreign occupation.

However, unkind commentators, both at the time and later, saw something more alarming. A large part of the east, Antony’s allocated territory as triumvir, was being gathered together into a single monarchy, with Antony as emperor and Cleopatra as empress. Their long-term aim, it was suggested, was to overthrow Rome. Rumor assiduously put it about that the queen’s favorite oath was “so surely as I shall one day give judgement on the Capitol.”

This is implausible. Antony had a conventional mind that could not imagine an end to Roman dominion, and Cleopatra was too much of a realist to wish for more than the reassertion of Egypt as the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, under Roman protection. Most probably, the Donations were a symbolic gesture, a way of settling public opinion in the east and marshaling it behind Antony as Dionysus/Osiris and Cleopatra as Isis/Aphrodite. In fact, few if any practical changes were noticeable on the ground in Syria, or Cappadocia, Pontus, or Galatia. Hordes of Egyptian administrators did not spread through the Middle East, replacing local authorities and Roman officials and tax farmers.

It is hard to disagree with the sentiments that the great twentieth-century Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy attributed to the audience at that glittering ceremony in the Gymnasium.

And the Alexandrians thronged to the festival

Full of enthusiasm, and shouted acclamations,

In Greek, and Egyptian, and some in Hebrew,

Charmed by the lovely spectacle—

Though they knew of course what all this was worth,

What empty words they really were, these kingships.

XIII

THE PHONY WAR

33–31 B.C.

Trials were conducted here in the open air, senators met and debated in the Senate House, citizens’ assemblies were convened in an open space called the Comitia. Money could be borrowed in the Forum, and prostitutes bought. Statues of famous statesmen stood on columns, and large paintings illustrated Roman victories. Down the Forum’s long sides stood two basilicas, which combined the functions of shopping mall and conference center.

With the Second Triumvirate and Octavian’s growing domination of the political scene, a gradual change could be detected. Politics moved from the noisy open square up to a complex of houses on the fashionable Palatine Hill, where Octavian and Livia lived and worked. From “Palatine” derives the word “palace,” meaning that enclosed space where autocrats make decisions in private.

Today the Palatine is a quiet, almost pastoral spot, overshadowed by tall maritime pines. A short but brisk climb from the Forum leads to the summit of the hill, a flat area pockmarked with ruins, some of them protected from the weather by modern roofs. The top of the Palatine is a maze of shaded lanes and hidden corners.

To the northwest stand the buildings where Octavian and Livia spent most of their lives. In 36 B.C., a grateful popular assembly voted that a house should be presented to him at public expense. Octavian had already bought an expensive property at the southwest end of the Palatine Hill, but it had been struck by lightning—an omen that persuaded him to demolish the unlucky building and replace it with a temple to Apollo. With his grant from the Senate, he arranged the purchase of a house, or more accurately a group of houses, next door.