Augustus

The upheavals at Rome were concentrating minds wonderfully. It was now certain that there was to be another round of civil war. Throughout the Roman world, men of importance in the state were considering their position: with whom were they to side?

XIV

SHOWDOWN

32–31 B.C.

In early 32 B.C., it became obvious to everyone that Antony and Cleopatra had made an important and highly controversial decision. She was to accompany Antony on the campaign, in which she meant to play a full part. In no small measure as a result of Octavian’s propaganda, the queen had become very unpopular among Romans, who disapproved of a foreign potentate interfering in their affairs. Her emergence as the co-general, in effect, of a Roman army further alienated opinion.

When Ahenobarbus and the others arrived from Rome, they were irritated by what they found. The consul cordially disliked Cleopatra, refusing to address her as queen and calling her simply by her name. He strongly advised Antony to send her back to Egypt to await the outcome of the war. Herod the Great of Judea, a bitter enemy after years of merciless bullying by the queen, gave Antony some confidential and cruel advice: Cleopatra’s continuing presence would damage his chances; the path to success was to put her to death and annex Egypt. At one point Antony did order her back home, but then relented, taking the line of least resistance, and let her stay. There were even reports that he was growing frightened of her.

In April 31 B.C., the multitudinous military machine set off on its slow journey to Greece.

Octavian’s strategy was to sit and wait. It was obvious that Antony was heading for Greece, but, although it would have been in Octavian’s tactical military interest to get there first, it was not in his political interest to do so. This was because he did not wish to be seen as what in truth he was: the aggressor, and the invader of his onetime partner’s agreed territory. That would neither harmonize with his new emphasis on legality nor win a war-exhausted public to his side. Antony must be left free to move westward, so that he might receive the opprobrium for opening hostilities.

In the meantime, Octavian had to maintain and enlarge his army and fleet. There was no alternative but to raise additional taxes. An unprecedentedly severe income tax was levied (25 percent of an individual’s annual earnings) and riots immediately broke out. Octavian became as unpopular as he had been ten years earlier, when the Triumvirate had been forced to raise money for the war against Brutus and Cassius.

In this climate of fear and rage, he took a bold step. At some point during 32 B.C., he held a kind of personal plebiscite, in which people were required to swear their loyalty to him. Later, he wrote proudly: “The whole of Italy [and the western provinces] voluntarily took an oath of allegiance to me and demanded me as its leader in the [forthcoming] war.” He claimed that half a million citizens bound themselves to him. We do not need to accept this suspiciously round number when conceding that the exercise was a surprising success.

It was still less than fifty years since the War of the Allies, when the peoples of Italy rose up against Rome to claim their rights and were granted full Roman citizenship. Octavian was a provincial, as were many of those who managed his regime. Italians were now getting their own back after centuries of Roman dominance. They liked the new status quo and did not want Antony and his eastern queen to threaten it. Anger over the new taxes was cooling off; something more than simple self-interest guided a growing Italian self-consciousness, a new patriotism.

Then came an extraordinary stroke of luck.

Lucius Munatius Plancus had been one of Antony’s closest advisers ever since defecting to him after Mutina in 43 B.C. He threw himself into the spirit of things at Alexandria. He flattered the queen shamelessly and, if an unfriendly commentator is telling the truth, was willing to humiliate himself to please. Sometime in the early summer of 32 B.C., however, Plancus began to get very worried about the situation in which he found himself.

In May or June of that year, Antony finally divorced Octavia and told her to quit his house in Rome. Octavia seems to have been an affectionate and maternal woman, for when she left the family home she took with her all of Antony’s children, except for his eldest son by Fulvia, the teenaged Antyllus. He left Rome to join his father in Greece, where he delivered the embarrassing news that Octavia had looked after him with great kindness.

The impact of the divorce on Roman opinion was serious for Antony. It was not simply that he had behaved cruelly to a loving wife, but that he had done so in favor of a foreign queen. The decision to send her away drew awkward attention to Cleopatra.