Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [20]
Gaius was now thirteen years old and well able to understand the seriousness of the situation. He will have been aware that opinion in his family, as in many others, was sharply divided. His brother-in-law, Gaius Claudius Marcellus, was consul for 50 B.C. and, despite his family connection with Caesar, was anxious to bring him to justice. Closer to home, Philippus, never known for strength of conviction, had astutely married his daughter Marcia to his uncle-in-law’s sworn enemy Cato, thus keeping a careful foot in both camps. Philippus was not the only noble Roman to hedge his bets by ensuring that relatives could be found on each side. After all, it was not clear who would emerge the victor.
Caesar bought the services of indigent young tribunes of the people, who vetoed any hostile senatorial decrees on his behalf. One of these was Philippus’ son (yet another insurance policy), but the most important was the thirty-three-year-old Marcus Antonius, or Mark Antony as he is known to us, a distant relative of Caesar through Antony’s mother, a member of the Julian clan.
Mark Antony came from a good but impecunious family. He showed little interest in politics in his youth, sowing wild oats in spectacular manner and running up large debts. At one stage, he was rumored to have become the kept boy of a wealthy young aristocrat.
Sometime in his early twenties, Mark Antony realized that it was time to settle down. Following in the footsteps of many ambitious young Romans, he went on a “grand tour” to finish his education by studying public speaking in Athens or one of the great cities of Asia Minor. He took to what was called the Asiatic style of oratory, florid and boastful and swashbuckling—“in common with Antony’s own mode of life,” as Plutarch sharply remarked.
He also underwent military training and quickly showed his aptitude for soldiering, being tough and brave and possessing a gift for leadership. In 55 B.C., when he was twenty-five or twenty-six, he played a junior role in a Roman invasion of Egypt to restore an unpopular monarch, Ptolemy XII Auletes, to his throne. While in Alexandria he met for the first time one of the Auletes’ daughters, a fourteen-year-old princess called Cleopatra. According to Appian, he was “provoked by the sight of her.”
Antony then caught Caesar’s eye and fought bravely with him in Gaul, becoming one of the victorious general’s most trusted followers. His features were bold and masculine. He had a broad forehead and an aquiline nose, and wore a well-grown beard. He reminded people of traditional sculptures of Hercules, an association he cultivated in his choice of dress: at public events, he would wear his tunic low over his hips, with a large sword by his side and a heavy cloak. It was observed that his behavior was as Herculean as his appearance; he liked talking dirty and getting drunk in public. He used to sit down beside his soldiers as they ate, or he took his food standing up at the common mess table; they loved him for it.
He much enjoyed having sex with women, a weakness that won him considerable sympathy, writes Plutarch, “for he often helped others in their love affairs and always accepted with good humour the jokes they made about his own.” When he was in funds, he showered money on his friends and was usually generous to soldiers under his command.
Few senators had any appetite for civil war; in December 50 B.C. the Senate voted by a huge majority that Pompey and Caesar, both of whom had armies, should demobilize. It looked as if peace would break out, a prospect that the die-hard consul Marcellus, Octavia’s husband, was determined to avoid. He believed that Caesar would be easily defeated on the battlefield, and wanted to see him eliminated. He decided to act decisively. Without senatorial