Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [100]
The Triumvirate’s second term was due to end in December 33 B.C., and it would be in Octavian’s interest to avoid any risk of an amicable renewal, for that would freeze a status quo he wanted to terminate. He was in as strong a position as he would ever be.
In 33 B.C., Octavian was consul for the second time. Early in the year he delivered a blistering speech against his fellow triumvir. He criticized Antony’s activities in the east: Antony had had no right to kill Sextus Pompeius, whom he would willingly have spared, and Antony had been wrong to trick the Armenian king into captivity. This behavior had damaged Rome’s good name.
Octavian also attacked Antony’s cruel treatment of Octavia and his relationship with Cleopatra. The Donations of Alexandria were unacceptable. Even more offensive, seeing that it was clearly aimed at undermining Octavian’s position as Julius Caesar’s heir, was Antony’s promotion of young Ptolemy Caesar, or Caesarion, as the great dictator’s natural son.
Little of this was very convincing in itself. It strains credulity that Octavian had a soft spot for Sextus or cared a sesterce for the fate of a far-off country of which most people knew nothing. And as for Antony’s sexual life, it had always been colorful.
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