Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [126]
The Senate voted Marcellus special honors; he was given the senior ranking of a praetor for official occasions. So far as the honors race was concerned, he received permission to stand for the consulship ten years before the legal minimum age of thirty-seven, and was counted as a former quaestor, the most junior elective post. This meant that he would be able to serve as an aedile in 23 B.C. The post would give him a chance to make his mark with the average citizen in Rome, for he would be in charge of the city’s public entertainments for the year. Spectacle at its most extravagant was what the public demanded, and they would show their appreciation at the ballot box. His uncle made sure that Marcellus had an unprecedented budget.
Rome had not seen its princeps for three years. At last, in the middle of 24 B.C., he struggled home, still weak and uncertain of his survival. If he hoped that his political settlement had been fully accepted and was working smoothly, he was to be disabused. In late 24 or early 23 B.C., Marcus Primus, the governor of Macedonia, one of the Senate’s provinces, was taken to court for having gone to war without permission with a friendly Thracian tribe. It was a serious offense for a proconsul to take an army outside his province.
Among Primus’ defenders was one of the consuls for 23 B.C., Aulus Terentius Varro Murena, a trusted and senior follower of the princeps. He was Maecenas’ brother-in-law, and the poets Virgil and Horace were his friends (he had lent the party of poets his house at the resort of Formiae on their journey from Rome to Brundisium in 39 B.C.). He seems to have been a dashing, impatient sort of fellow, and Horace took it upon himself to offer an ode of advice.
The loftiest pines, when the wind blows,
Are shaken hardest; tall towers drop
With the worst crash….
Primus’ defense was that he had been ordered to launch a campaign by both the princeps and Marcellus. This was most embarrassing, for in theory Augustus only held authority in his own provincia. Of his own accord he attended the court where the trial was being held. The praetor, or presiding judge, asked him if he had given the man orders to make war and he replied that he had not.
Murena made some disrespectful remarks about the princeps, and asked him to his face: “What are you doing here, and who asked you to come?”
“The public interest,” Augustus drily replied.
It is no surprise that Primus was found guilty; he was very probably sent into exile. However, many observers at the time must have thought it unlikely that Primus would have claimed to have acted under orders unless he had actually done so. The affair revealed the res publica restituta, the “restored Republic,” as something of a sham.
The Primus affair led to the formation of a little-understood conspiracy against Augustus. The leader was a young republican called Fannius Caepio. Apparently, the consul Murena was implicated, although Dio thought the charge might be false, “since he was notoriously rough-tongued and headstrong in his manner of address towards all alike.” The plot was uncovered and the accused men condemned to death in absentia. In constitutional theory, the execution of a serving consul was a contradiction in terms, for the Republic’s chief executive had supreme authority; if he broke the law, charges could only be brought against him after his term of office had expired. Once again, the libertarian pretensions of the regime were exposed.
What the aims of the plotters were and how they were revealed cannot now be recovered. Perhaps there was no conspiracy at all—or, rather, the princeps organized a setup. But why? We cannot tell. If it was a serious attempt to overthrow the new order, it was evidence the settlement of 27 B.C. was not working.
The story has a sad footnote. Maecenas confided