The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Tales could be told of Antony anointing Cleopatra's feet in public, or reading love-letters as he delivered judgments - even springing from his tribunal to hang on to Cleopatra's litter as she passed!²¹⁸ Antony's entourage too came in for picturesque attack: stories were told of a banquet where Plancus danced, naked and painted, as a sea-god.²¹⁹ And Cleopatra herself: she evidently wished to rule in Rome - why, her favourite form of oath was 'so may I give my judgments on the Capitol'! But Rome might then be nothing: were they not scheming to move the capital to Alexandria?²²⁰

Cf. above, p. 20; Wallmann 1989 (c 243) 163-77, 185-220. Even after Sextus fell, this public front was maintained: cf. RG 25.1, 'mare pacavi a praedonibus', and 27.3, 'bello servili'; and in late 36 Octavian made a great show of restoring his 'slaves' to their owners for punishment (RG 23.1; App. BCiv. v.i 30.544-5 with Gabba 1970 (в j 5)ad loc.; Dio xlix. 12.4—5).

Plut. Ant. 54.1, 57.4, with Pelling 1988 (в 138) ad loc. In 35 sacrosanctity was extended to include Li via and Octavia (Dio xlix. 38.1 with Rcinhold 1988 (в 1 )o)adloc.;cf. Endnote 2): that was doubtless a related ploy. Octavian's women should have a solemnity to offset the awesome but shameless Cleopatra.

Plut. Ant. 58.9-11, the stories of Octavian's friend Calvisius Sabinus: Plutarch did not believe them, 59.1. ²¹⁹ Veil. Pat. 11.83.2.

²²⁰ Dio l.4.1-2, j, 26.5; Veil. Pat. 11.82.4; Livy, Per. 132; cf. Prop. 111.11.31-50, esp. 46; Hor. Carm. i.37.5-12; Ov. Met. xv.826-8; Scott 1933 (c.212) 43-4; Fadinger 1969 (в 42) 115-18, 163. Augustus himself included such material in his Autobiography, published in the twenties: cf. fr. 16M.

Antony of course responded. Octavian's battle-record was frivolous and cowardly; now his treatment of Lepidus was outrageous. What had happened to Antony's share of Sicily? Or to the troops he was owed? Now Octavian had found land for all his own troops, what would be left for Antony's? And Octavian's behaviour was pretty outlandish too: he had had his affairs with consular wives, indeed his friends were carefully inspecting unclothed matrons and virgins to pick for his pleasure; and had people not heard of that strange banquet of the twelve gods, when Octavian had taken the role of Apollo?[124] It was not just Antony who dealt in foreign marriages, either; Octavian had offered his daughter Iulia to Cotiso, king of the Getae - indeed, promised to take Cotiso's own daughter in return.[125] (One wonders what Livia might have said to that.) Octavian was much too fond of gaming, too.[126] But many of Antony's lines, far too many, had to be defensive. He wrote a work de sua ebrietate, On his own drunkenness, for instance[127] — presumably less enter­taining than it sounds, not a tippler's memoir but an earnest insistence that he was less drunken than Octavian alleged. But the attacks on Cleopatra were clearly the most damaging. In a public letter of 53 he remonstrated with Octavian:

What has changed your view towards me? Because I'm screwing the queen? Is she my wife? [Of course not!][128] And I've been doing it for nine years anyway. And what about you? Is Livia the only woman you screw? I bet, when you read this, you'll just have been inside some Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia — or all of them. Does it matter where and in whom you have your erections? (Suet. Aug. 69)

The tone as well as the content has its point. This is the broad, coarse language of the soldier, the thoroughly masculine Roman. A man like this would not waste his time with effeminate mosquito nets.