Augustus

Pamphlets and letters were published, and envoys traveled assiduously between Rome and Alexandria making claim and counterclaim. Antony huffily stood his ground. He complained that he had been prevented from raising troops in Italy, as had been freely agreed; that his veterans had not received their fair share of lands on demobilization; that, after defeating Sextus Pompeius, Octavian had taken over Sicily without consulting him; and that Lepidus had been arbitrarily deposed.

Antony’s case was stronger than that of Octavian, who had consistently been an untrustworthy partner. Whenever compromise or concessions were needed, it was always the older and more reasonable triumvir who had given way. But some of the issues he raised were no more than debating points; for example, Sicily was in the western half of the empire, and once captured would naturally have fallen to Octavian.

The accusations grew more and more personal. Octavian castigated his colleague’s drunkenness. He also made fun of Antony’s high-flown and overelaborate use of Latin; he was “a madman, for writing to be admired rather than understood,” who introduced into “our tongue the verbose and unmeaning fluency of the Asiatic orators.”

Antony gave as good as he got. He ridiculed Octavian’s provincial ancestry and accused him of lustfulness, cruelty, and cowardice (for instance, the scandalous fancy-dress party that Octavian had attended as the god Apollo, and his curious behavior when he hid in the marshes at Philippi, were unkindly exhumed). Antony also made an angry charge, very probably with good reason, of sexual hypocrisy:

What’s come over you? Is it that I am screwing the Queen? But she isn’t my wife, is she? It isn’t as if it’s something new, is it? Or has it actually been going on for nine years now? What about you then? Is Livia the only woman you shag? Good luck to you if, when you read this letter, you haven’t also shagged Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it really matter where and in whom you insert your stiff prick?

What truths lie behind these quarrelsome exchanges? Personal insults were the stock-in-trade of debate. Distinguished Romans often expressed political disagreements in slanderously personal terms and seized on their opponents’ sexual misdemeanors with lip-smacking enthusiasm. But while disputants’ allegations may have been exaggerated, they needed to embody at least a poetic truth if anyone who knew the principals was to take them seriously.

Each triumvir claimed that he stood for a restoration of the Republic, and the other for tyranny by one man. Neither was telling the truth. Ten years after the murder of Cicero, the Republic was a thing of the past, irretrievable. The choice was simply between two kinds of autocracy—tidy and efficient, or laid-back and rowdy.

Octavian was approaching a very dangerous moment. He was trying to precipitate a war without receiving the blame for it. For the present, he set himself limited objectives. First of all, he had to make his public position crystal clear, announce the inevitability of a showdown, and force the political world to choose which triumvir to back in the coming struggle. At the same time, he had to mobilize maximum support throughout Italy, which Antony might very well invade.

Octavian’s final letter in the war of words reached Antony in October 33, when he was at the Armenian border with Media, preparing to renew his Parthian war. When he read what his brother-in-law had to say, Antony realized that once again Parthia would have to wait. Having rejected every charge leveled against him, Octavian concluded, with biting derision: “Your soldiers have no claim upon any lands in Italy. Their rewards lie in Media and Parthia which they have added to the Roman empire by their gallant campaigns under their imperator.”

Accepting that relations with Octavian had irretrievably broken down and that consequently war was inevitable, Antony set off with a small advance force on the long journey back to the Aegean, ordering one of his generals, Publius Canidius Crassus, a loyal and able supporter who had campaigned successfully in Armenia, to follow with an army of sixteen legions. He summoned Cleopatra, who joined him en route, bringing with her an ample war chest of twenty thousand talents (about 480 million sesterces), and the pair made the port of Ephesus (near the modern town of Selçuk in southern Turkey) their headquarters.