Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [41]
Octavian wandered around the city center, with a crowd of followers like a bodyguard, making speeches about the disgraceful treatment he was enduring. “Heap as many insults on me as you like, Antony, but stop plundering Caesar’s property until the citizens have received their legacy. Then you can take all the rest.” Antony was furious and responded with threats.
At this point the consul’s officers intervened and forced a reconciliation. They loved Caesar’s memory and, equally loyal to his trusted friend and his adopted son, refused to fight for either against the other.
Antony was compelled to reassess his situation; although he still saw the “boy” as little more than a nuisance, Octavian had destabilized the situation. In order to stay on terms with his soldiers, Antony abandoned his statesmanlike compromise with the Senate, with which his relations had deteriorated sadly. Cicero, who thought him an unreliable drunkard and a political gambler (aleator, “dice thrower”), suspected his good faith and was stirring up opinion against him among republicans. Antony needed to secure his personal safety and to continue to dominate the political scene in Rome.
When his consulship came to an end in December, he was due to become governor of Macedonia—a little far away if trouble were to threaten him in the capital. So he exchanged the post for a five-year term in Cisalpine Gaul. From that vantage point he could overawe the capital, and if need be intervene directly, as Caesar had done in 49. It did not matter that a governor had been selected who was already in possession of the province. This was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, a distant relative of Marcus Brutus. A onetime follower of Julius Caesar, he had lost confidence in the dictator and taken part in the assassination on the Ides of March. Antony planned to transfer the army in Macedonia to Italy and lead it northward. He would make short work of the interloper.
In an attempt to weaken the republican cause, Antony initiated measures to persuade Brutus and Cassius to get out of Italy. To begin with, they were offered insulting proconsular posts: responsibility for the collection of grain in Sicily and Asia. “Could anything be more humiliating?” complained Cicero. The appointments were later upgraded, to the governorships of the politically and militarily harmless provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica. Brutus settled in Athens to wait on events, and in the meantime he pursued philosophical studies. Cassius eventually went to the east, whence little was heard of him for a while.
Now that Antony’s position was secure, Octavian was the odd man out in the great political game. He held no official post and controlled no army. If he was not careful he would be finessed into insignificance. In the first place, he had to keep open his lines of communication with the Senate. He spent a lot of energy flattering Cicero, whose suspicions of him were partially alleviated. The elder statesman wrote to a friend on June 10:
Octavian…does not lack intelligence or spirit, and he gave the impression that his attitude towards our heroes [the freedom fighters] were such as we would wish. But how much faith to put in one of his years and heredity and education—that’s a great question…still he is to be encouraged and, if nothing else, kept apart from Antony.
Octavian staged Caesar’s annual Victory Games in July, the month that had been renamed in the dictator’s honor. Determined to make his presence felt at Rome, he spared no expense, and the festival was a splendid affair.
The skies produced another auspicious omen to match that on Octavian’s arrival in Rome. He recalled the occasion in his autobiography:
On the very day of my games a comet was visible for seven days in the northern part of the sky…. The common people believed